Conor Hehr

​Next is about a group of close friends that got caught up in a messed up game reffered to as the Tomodachi Game, which is meant to test the friendships of its players. The reason they were dragged into it is because somebody betrayed everyone else and then planned on betraying the group in the game. The traitor actually gets revealed pretty early and I was little unsure of how to feel about that, but I eventually realized that the traitor wasn't the whole point or who everyone needed to worry about. Everyone involved in the game is hiding something, so nobody is truly innocent. One second, the show will drop some info about one character and the next, you're learning some bad things about the next. To get through these games, the players have to rely on all kinds of tricks to their group through them.

Imagine a peaceful world where nothing really bad like murder happens. In this show, that's what society sees, but these things are still happening behind the scenes. They're just being taken care of behind the scenes, by a bunch of girls known as Lycoris. The show begins with Lycoris Takina Inoue making a mistake, losing her position, and getting relocated. She then meets Chisato Nishikigi and the two end up becoming very good friends. The two of them have different approaches to their jobs: Takina takes things seriously and wants things to be done well. On the other hand, Chisato is more laid-back and doesn't want to take the life of another person no matter what. Eventually the two of them get caught up in incidents involving what happened to Takina before, Chisato's past, and the fate of all Lycoris.  ​

I really enjoy cute anime and those involving a guy taking care of a kid usually end up becoming my favorites. The main character, Kirishima Toru likes to solve problems through violence. One day, the head of the Sakuragi family summons him and gives him a new task: taking care of his only daughter, Yaeka. For the most part, the show is pretty cute, but there is some violence here and there. Throughout the show, Kirishima has to get used to babysitting while rivals of the Sakuragi family try to go after him, some of them thinking that his new job has made him go soft.  

This is one of the shows I saw all over Twitter, so I knew I had to check it out. We follow Wakana Gojo, a high school student who wants to make traditional Japanese Hina dolls. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't know anything about what's popular and has a hard time fitting in with his class. But one day, he would have an encounter with the popular girl, Marin Kitagawa. After finding out Marin's into cosplay and becoming friends, Gojo uses his skills to make costumes for her.

I saw a lot of people were talking about this show online, so I figured it was gonna be one of the big ones. I was not disappointed with what I saw. The main character, Denji, is a young boy that works as a devil hunter with the "Chainsaw Devil" Pochita. For years, he had been working to pay off the debt he inherited from his parents, but in the end, he gets killed. While losing consciousness he made a deal with Pochita and got resurrected as "Chainsaw Man". Afterwards, he meets several other devil hunters and like before, things are dangerous (and very bloody).

For some reason, they couldn't come up with an official English title for this, but piracy sites had no trouble with that much. That aside, I really enjoyed this show. The main character, Raido spent his middle school alone due to his "unfriendly" appearance and wants to high school to be different. He wants to make friends and decides to start with the girl sitting next to him, Aharen Reina. After getting to know her, he finds that she can be a little hard to understand, often coming to very huge misunderstandings in his head. Despite that, the two of them end up getting along pretty well, but their behaviors are bit odd so you never know what to expect from any episode and that's why I like it as much as I do.

There are two countries at odds with each other: Westalis and Ostania. Westalis sends agent Twilight to Ostania to investigate Desmond, who is planning to start a war. While staying in this country, he has to blend in for what they're calling Operation Strix. For his mission, he is told he has to be a part of a fake family. Under the name Loid Forger, he ends up adopting a young girl named Anya, who has the power to read minds and not long after, he "marries" Yor Forger, who is secretly an assassin. Anya ends up growing attached to Loid and Yor, even knowing their secrets due to being a telepath. If I'm being honest, she is the best part of the show. She's just so adorable and the funniest character out of them all. 

I'm sure some of you know already that I have an interest in genderswap content and this year my top anime is one of those. I actually read a bit of the manga before, but didn't get too into it. However, I really enjoyed the anime and really hope we can get more of it someday. The story begins with best friends Tachibana Hinata and Jinguji Tsukasa who were just living their lives as ordinary office workers. On the way home from a mixer, Tachibana is very drunk and saying a whole bunch of stuff about if he was a girl and the kinds of things he'd do. Not long after that, the two of them are sent into another world and Tachibana has turned into a blonde-haired and blue-eyed girl. Not only that, but he (now she) has the ability to easily charm people she comes across (including Jinguji). The two of them want to keep their friendship from getting destroyed, so they need to defeat the demon lord as soon as possible so they can go back to their original forms.

It was a little difficult to choose this year because there was so much to watch.  I was running low on time to play video games because of my job so I ended up spending more time watching anime (a lot of it in the Walmart break room). Too many shows sounded interesting, so I didn't want to skip them. Plus, I got a smart phone last year, so now I have another device to watch stuff on. I mostly use my phone and the Nintendo Switch I got near the beginning of the year. Anyways, the shows this year were pretty good. Really liked the new stuff and some of the shows I liked had new seasons this year (My Hero Academia, Welcome To Demon School! Iruma-kun, Classroom Of Elite); all of which I really enjoyed.

I didn't watch every anime that came out this year and sometimes a show everyone likes, I'm not really that into. There are already a handful of shows I plan to watch when they come out next year (Cold Steel: Northern War, Bofuri Season 2, D4DJ All Mix, DR STONE: NEW WORLD, the Love Live Sunshine Spin-Off, The Misfit Of Demon King Academy Season 2, Classroom Of The Elite Season 3, Tomo-chan Is A Girl, ONIMAI: I'm Now Your Sister!, and Ayakashi Triangle). I can't wait for the new shows/seasons and games coming out too (Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden on all platforms, Trails To Azure, Trails Into Reverie, Rune Factory 3 Special). I just wish I had more time for this stuff, but that's just the life of an adult. Things have been tough, being stuck at Walmart, but I'll live and I'm sure I'll get out of there one of these days. Just don't know when yet.

I know I'm not the only one that felt like way too much anime was dumped out this year. We've definitely got this "never-ending" pandemic to blame for that. So many shows that were supposed to come out last year were delayed until this year, and some were pushed to next year. Thanks to that, some seasons in 2020 felt pretty empty and some this year felt a bit overwhelming. Since we got so much content, that made it hard to figure out what my top anime for the year was. But that was mostly because most of what the shows I watched weren't really anything too amazing. Of course there are shows a lot of people liked that I wasn't too crazy about (86 for example), so they won't be included. Anyways, here are my top shows for 2021.

I'm not the craziest about shows that don't really have much of a plot, but this was a show I actually enjoyed. The protagonist is 31 year old gymnast, Uramichi Omota who is a part of a TV Show for children. While on the show, he acts really upbeat and happy but he's not able to keep that up all the time and ends up telling the children about some of the most dreadful parts of adult life. It's not just him, though. Even his co-workers join in on that. Every day, they're showing up to work and doing their best to put up with the demands of their director, which does get to be too much on some days. If you want to watch something comedic, this is something I highly recommend. 

Trouble has a habit of following Kimihiko wherever he goes. One day, he ends up thwarting a plane hijacking with a detective calling herself Siesta. Little did he know, their encounter would end up changing his life. At first, he isn't really happy to have her around but eventually he gets used to it and it leads to years of them solving crimes together until Siesta eventually dies. After she's gone, he goes back to trying to live a normal life. Unfortunately, that wouldn't last too long because a girl named Nagisa Natsunagi would end up dragging him into an all new case connected to an assassin, a world conspiracy, and his dead partner. One complaint I have is while I normally like backstory, I felt like it spent a little too much time in the past. Other than that, it was a solid anime.

I'm definitely not the best at communicating with people in real life, nor did I ever really care that much about fitting in. However, the same can't be said about Tomozaki Fumiya. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't really understand the real world that much and sees life as some garbage game because there are no written rules and the "gameplay" seems to work against him. Luckily, he'll be able to receive some help from the very person he keeps winning against in Super Attack Family (shortened as Tack Fam). She keeps giving him goals to accomplish and he's often unsure if he can actually pull them off, occasionally questioning his tasks. Over time, he'll start making more friends and somewhat fit in better.

Kukuru Misakino is a girl that really loves fish and her family's aquarium, Gama Gama. Unfortunately, people are losing interest and its at risk of shutting down. Around the same time, Fuuka Miyazawa, a former idol who has lost her place in Tokyo, runs away to Okinawa where she ends up getting a job at the aquarium. Kukuru has a tough time accepting that she might lose that aquarium and does everything in her power to keep it up and running. She'll eventually learn that things don't always go the way you want them to and that you'll just have to deal with whatever happens. Halfway through, there is a time skip where several more characters are introduced and things get more serious and interesting. Kukuru has the most trouble out of everyone adjusting to change. The first half of this show felt a bit slow to me, but the second half was where the show got pretty good.

This one's definitely a bit of a controversial pick due to the whole age gap thing. But there's one thing I do like about this anime: it doesn't really sexualize its characters. The story is about a salaryman named Amakusa Ryou, who happens to be a bit of a womanizer. One day, he is saved by a high school girl he doesn't know at the station. He later finds out that her name is Arima Ichika and she happens to be his younger sister's best friend. To repay her for saving him, he suggests a kiss or going on a date. Ichika responds by telling him he's creepy. Ryou wasn't used to having women being that honest with him and ends up falling in love with her.

​After being told he's creepy, he continues trying to express his feelings to her, constantly sending gifts and checking in on her. Ichika isn't really fond of this and wants him to knock it off, but eventually she starts to like him to and Ryou is willing to wait until she's old enough to officially become a couple. While I can understand the age gap thing making people uncomfortable, at the very least Ryou waits to go out with Ichika for real. Plus, some real life couples are several years apart, including my parents, although they met when they were both adults. 

A young girl named Mayumi Doujima has spent years searching for a start that she saw only once when she was a kid. She ends up getting help from her school's Pretty Boy Detective Club, where she meets five guys who are each unique in
their own way. Little did she know that her search for that star would be extremely dangerous. It turns out that she has such good vision that allows her to see things that most people can't, including things that she'd be better off not witnessing. Because of this, she ends up wearing glasses. After the search for that star is over, she ends up joining the Pretty Boy Detective Club and wearing the boy's uniform. Together, they end up working on several more mysteries. She doesn't really try to keep her gender secret or anything so her classmates are able to figure it out pretty quickly, most of them not really caring much. However, the mysteries she works on with the club are end up being just as, if not more dangerous than her search for the star.

What surprised me the most about this anime is how the opening was done by Poppin' Party. If you know anything about BanG Dream, then you definitely know who they are. Other than doing some songs, they don't really have anything to do with this show. At 28 years old, Hashiba Kyouya lost his job at a shady game development company. He ends up moving back home with his parents and ends up between jobs. As he's trying to figure things out, he can't hep but wonder what would happened if he had a chance to redo his college years. If he had gone to art school instead, perhaps things would turn out differently?

​Luckily for him, he'd get that chance. Waking up in the past, he ends up going and ends up moving into a share house with a few people. He soon finds out that these are the very people he had admired in present day and he takes advantage of his opportunity to work with them. Unfortunately, things wouldn't go as he had planned and he'd end up getting to see a future where things don't quite work out for everyone. After a good while, the answer to how he travels through time is partially explained. As for why it happens, we don't know at the moment and the season ended on a cliffhanger. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what happens next.

​This was a show that everybody was praising when it came out and now most people that said it was the best thing ever will tell you that it became a huge mess in the end. The story follows a girl named Ai, an introverted girl with heterochromia that one day ends up getting her hands on a mysterious "Wonder Egg" from a deserted arcade. When she goes to bed that night, she finds that her dreams blend into reality. It turns out that these eggs are a way to help girls that have previously killed themselves. And to help them, Ai will have to fight all kinds of strange creatures, eventually meeting other girls that are getting their hands on eggs. After meeting them, Ai starts to feel less lonely.

Thankfully, they won't be going in blind as there are two living mannequins that will guide all four of them, one of them more laid-back and preferring to be honest, and the other more formal and not as willing to share information. There isn't really much else I can say without spoiling anything. However, I remember getting to the end and wondering the heck it was the made it so bad and then I found out there was actually more episode to go which was mostly a recap, which was lame. Aside from that final recap episode, the ending wasn't really that horrible.  

This anime follows Akira Shiroyanagi, a high school kid who loves kopeito candy and gaming. One day, he ends up in a fight with a mysterious girl named Mion, and then pretty much "dies" in battle. After that, he ends up in some strange place with several other people. Mion tells everyone that officially, they are all dead and don't exist in any records. They all have become test subjects and are given powers to use. They are thrown into a death game with multiple rounds, starting with 1-on-1 combat. All everyone can do is try to survive and kill if they wish to. Akira won't to do everything alone though. After a while, he'll be able to rely on a high school girl named Yuuri Amagake. For the most part, I did enjoy this show but the ending wasn't really anything that impressive and all it tells us is that the death game is still going.

Romance and comedy seem to be my top genres according to anime tracking sites, so it's not too surprising that I'd rank a romcom so highly. This anime follows two high school students that most of their classmates would never really see getting together. Kyouko Hori is known to be an smart and attractive girl while Izumi Miyamura seems meek and distant. However, after the two of them meet outside of school by chance, they learn more about sides of each other that they don't really share at school. While Hori is popular at school, she has very little time to socialize with her friends due to housework.

​With Miyamura, since no one at school paid much attention to him, none of them knew that he secretly had tattoos and piercings that make him look like somewhat like a delinquent. Despite having different personalities, the two are able to quickly become friends since they do share some similarities and often spend time together at Hori's place. After spending time with each other, they become more interested in becoming a couple. It's not just them though. Other students, like friends of Hori's and mutual acquaintances have their own relationship problems to deal with. Overall, the show was pretty comedic, so if you want to get a few laughs in, this is definitely something you should check out.

And these are my top shows for the year. I'm not sure how much I'll watch in 2022 since at present, I don't have too much time to watch and for the last several months, I've been watching anime a bit less. That might change in the future but we'll just have to wait and see. For the most part, I'm satisfied with these picks but I don't feel like most of what came out this year was anywhere near as strong as some stuff from previous years. Maybe having too much come out this year contributed?

Having less last year helped different shows feel a bit more "special". I didn't watch everything and I'm sure there are some shows from this year that I won't check out until later. There are several reasons why I might not have gotten to a show originally: waiting on a dub for some, not available to watch on usual streaming services, or I've already got too much going on. Anyways, consider checking these out if you haven't, and if there are some shows you liked that aren't the list, let me know. 

Audio: ​​https://youtu.be/CCij0fFA5Ds

Not everyone that watches anime is fond of anime dubs and some dubs are just considered bad by nearly everyone. According to its fans, the popular series, Love Live, doesn't seem to have the best dubs. While the dub for School Idol Project seems to be considered "passable" for most, a ton of fans consider Funimation's dub of Sunshine to be complete
garbage. The good news is they've been reading what fans have been saying about it and usually it ends there. It's very rare for Funimation to actually accept criticism. For some reason, they decided they wanted to fix the wrong they made with Love Live.

In late 2022, they will be launching a re-dub of Love Live! Sunshine!! on their platform, which will be locked behind a paywall for five years. Every single character has been recast. However, they haven't revealed too much about it. The only thing that they were willing to share was the fact that the main character, Chika Takami, will be voiced by Chris Pratt. When asked why they were replacing Jad Saxton, the only thing Funimation had to say is "he's so cool." They also told us that they're very confident about their new cast and that at some point next year, they will be removing the original dub from their service and personally visiting every household that owns a physical copy of the dub, and disposing of the content that they no longer need. 

After close to a whole month of back and forth with Steam Support, School For The Friendless is finally coming to Steam. For the most part, it’s the same game, just with minor changes that don’t affect the gameplay at all. Other than add Steam achievements, which took forever to figure out how to do, I’ve updated the credits for the free to use assets with links to their licenses. The store page is up now and if things go according to plan, it will launch on Steam this month!

Check out the store page here!

I recently completed all four Trails Of Cold Steel games and playing through all of them was pretty exhausting not gonna lie. I went straight to Trails Of Cold Steel right after Trails In The Sky SC, because I didn’t think I needed to play 3rd chapter and the Crossbell games between Sky and Cold Steel aren’t out in the west yet. Honestly, I ended up enjoying Cold Steel way more than Sky. Being several games later, several things about the game are improved, including the poor game balance that most of these games have. It’s nowhere near perfect in Cold Steel, but it’s definitely way more tolerable. Out of all the games, I found the first Cold Steel to be the least frustrating and most fun. Not only that, but a handful of elements introduced in this game were featured in Tokyo Xanadu, another game I’ve played and really liked. When I got to the ending though, I really wasn’t sure how to react since it was a cliffhanger. 

Eventually, I’d start Cold Steel II, picking up right where the previous game had left off. Although, this was after I decided I wanted to play Sky 3rd Chapter. Cold Steel II took on a way different format and had everyone travelling all over, which sounds cool on paper but it ended up feeling pretty tedious. The majority of the game was good, taking what I liked about the previous game and adding more stuff. Unfortunately, the game’s ending I take some issue with. It’s not the reveals. I’ll be honest, Cold Steel II probably has the most shocking revelation of all the games. At least to me it is. The problem I have is the final moments drag on and the final boss was bullshit. Also, there’s some stuff with Crossbell stuff that’s hard to appreciate when the Crossbell games have yet to be officially localized. 

The third game was horrible about this. Techinally, it’s not the games fault, but it’s definitely on Nihon Falcom and the localizers for getting these games localized out of order. There’s an entire chapter in Crossbell and I really couldn’t appreciate any of the returning Crossbell stuff. To kind of make up for it, some characters from Sky return. I did like seeing Rean go from being a student to an instructer and his students were decent characters but this is when I really started to feel like these games were dragging on. Cold Steel III is hours longer than Cold Steel II and I often felt like it went on way longer than it needed to. One of my least favorite parts is the bosses that heal themselves. Of course, they’re not new to RPGs but Cold Steel III took it way too far. Several bosses are capable of healing themselves and they do it CONSTANTLY and that resulted in me getting several game overs. It’s a decent game, but definitely my least favorite Cold Steel. 

Then IV, I had some issues running but I was still able to play it from start to finish. Since IV continues right after III, the Crossbell stuff is still here and I still didn’t feel much for any of the Crossbell characters. However, there were several more characters returning from Sky and I was happy to see a lot of these characters. The plot however, I found some parts a little dumb, I guess. I don’t know, I just didn’t find it too impressive or interesting. The other games had shocking revelations but IV really didn’t have anything like that. It was just thing happening after thing happening until it was over. 

Most major events got barely any reaction from me. As for the gameplay, it was more tolerable than III, aside from some technical problems like falling through the floor during combat constantly in Orchis Tower, long loading screens, and getting stuck on cutscenes. For the latter two, just changing the computer I used helped. Since III took on I’s format, IV took on II’s and I felt it pretty exhausting in this game too. I played all the way to the end and I gotta say, I didn’t really have that strong of a reaction to the ending. I did enjoy playing all of these, especially I and II, but I’m glad I’m done with them for now. And who knows, maybe I'll do a more detailed review on YouTube some day...?