#like. i am always at any given moment rotating all aspects of this chart in my mind

[stickersgeorg]

Sticker page of stickers by @chick-it-out!!!

[illeity]

The Best of Anime Winter 2018!

Older anime recommendations [here].

Best Overall

Sora Yorimo Tooi Basho - A Place Further than the Universe

You taught me the courage of stars before you left.

How light carries on endlessly, even after death.

With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite.

How rare and beautiful it is to even exist.

Tamaki Mari wants to achieve something special, something that would make the most of a youth that she is aware is slipping away with time. Kobuchizawa Shirase, who lost her mother during an expedition to Antarctica, is struggling to find the means to see her again. Alongside Miyake Hinata and Shiraishi Yuzuki, these four friends brave obstacles to travel to one of the most inhospitable places on earth, to a place further than the universe.

It's my pick for the season because of how determined the show is at beating you over the head on the value of chasing after your dreams, no matter how foolish, no matter how difficult because of the finitude of this life. If shows have a "monster of the week" format, this show has a "lesson of the week" format, as each episode exhausts every angle on dream-achievement and its various opportunities and threats without being completely on the nose.

The four are subjected to self-doubt and doubt from other people and friendships that wane as they chart a trajectory that only they can take. They cling to each other in shared sentiment, as the farther they get, the lonelier the path becomes and even progress and exciting new sights are weakened as they find themselves way past their comfort zone, beyond any shore line they're familiar with, with other people they barely know.

And that's how life is supposed to be: You build a world around yourself and craft order out of the chaos, but order creates boundaries, and shuts us from growing and expanding and becoming prepared for dangers beyond our garden. And so we willingly subject ourselves to more chaos, because we're strong enough to do so and because failing to grow might as well be something akin to being dead. And by this dance of order and chaos, we reach ever farther and move with time, as meaning condenses around us like a medal ever being made.

Best Drama

Koi wa Ameagari no You ni - After the Rain

We hate the rain when it fills up our shoes

But how we love when it washes our cars

Tachibana Akira is a High School runner who lost everything when her Achilles tendon ruptured. Kondo Masami is a 45-year old manager of a chain restaurant who had resigned himself to ageing without any ambition. Tachibana is in love with Kondo.

This age-gap romance could have gone any other way but it went with the kindest, most sensitive treatment to its characters with neither condemnation nor approval. The story goes from Tachibana's fledgling affections and pivots to Kondo's struggle to find self-worth when his dreams had faded away. And all of this came about when he realizes that someone can love him for all his failings and forces him to take a long hard look and to reconnect with friends and his passions.

The anime then becomes a 12-episode long metaphor for rain, making use of its various traits as clever figurative language. They water each other, and grow beyond their injuries and histories. And like rain, they comfort, and sometimes inconvenience, but above all, they purify and makes things new again.

Best Comedy/ Best Cute Girl Anime

Yuru Camp - Laid-back Camp

Oh, one day you will go away from this

Oh, one day you will know we’re men of snow

We melt one day

Shima Rin is a quiet girl with a streak of independence, preferring to camp by herself. When a camping trip is crashed by Kagamihara Nadeshiko, an irrepressibly energetic girl who discovers the joys of winter camping for the first time, she reaches out of herself, and discovers the quiet pleasures that come with having an experience alongside other people.

It's so strange why I find myself laughing up in this series. The humor is diverse from acorns suddenly talking to Kagamihara and Shima Rin playing each other off like an elder couple. The humor pulls itself from out of the blue, from events where you don't expect them and they work.

And when the series isn't making you laugh, it's making you awe in wonder at Nature with beautifully rendered landscapes and a very, very cozy atmosphere of good sights, good food, and good friends.

When Non Non Biyori, another slice-of-life anime with stunning visuals and light tone, ended, I thought there would never be another show to approximate it. It’s here, it’s funny, it’s warm and it’s called Yuru Camp.

Honorable Mention

3-Gatsu no Lion - March Comes in Like a Lion

Oh my friends I am heavy Can I beat within your heart? Can I bleed within your love?

There's nothing more to add what I haven't said before: Chica Umino has crafted a live beating heart of a world that protagonist Kiriyama Rei lives in. Centered on Shogi, growing up, and coming to terms with the choices we've made in life are repeating themes even as they are shuffled and played with to differing effect.

Instead of an everyday that we tend to take for granted, every scene carries the weight of ultimate significance, where even tertiary characters are given history and language, their character represented and described in visual metaphor. From the weighty cloth sashes of a history of carrying the lost dreams of friends, to a colorless, rain-soaked painting of existence as payment for perfection in Shogi, the show makes use of the medium to its fullest. And if that's not enough to entice you, the last episode has the greatest first eight minutes to ever grace the medium.

Best Sci-Fi/ Fantasy

Mahou Tsukai no Yome - The Ancient Magus' Bride

You lean towards despair Any given opportunity you're there But what is there to gain? When you're always falling off the fence that way.

The romance between Japanese girl Hatori Chise and mage Elias Ainsworth comes to a head as she steps into her destiny as mage and fights off her impending death. Her growth as a person and her maturity were a pleasure to watch as she rotates through aspects of the feminine: as friend, as sister, as a mother, and as a wife. Her hero's journey is as much a repaving of the road she was supposed to take, destroyed by the past and discouraged by the future.

Best Girl

Takagi (Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san - Skilled Teaser Takagi-san)

Takagi is the queen of smug anime girls, dishing out an endless torrent of teasing upon her sole target, childhood friend Nishikata. It's endlessly entertaining to see Takagi win the upper-hand in every matchup between the two wits because she is exceptionally skilled in reading Nishikata and lucky in circumstances that depend on chance.

But as sweet as this youthful play is, it's easy to see that while Takagi runs circles around Nishikata, she always stops short of coming too close, unable to convey her affection past anything more than mere play and impenetrable smile.

Best OP

Flashback - MIYAVI Vs KenKen (Kokkoku -  Moment by Moment)

TV Size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhBA6ynorvc

Full: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79IYCjmP_RM

Infectiously catchy, Flashback bounces along with rude guitar licks and a drop made of clouds and pins, propelling the viewer through a sense of excitement, strangeness, and dread alongside unnaturally tinted scenes of dark neon and tall, boxed typography.

Best ED

Ref:rain - Aimer (Koi wa Ameagari No You ni - After the Rain)

TV Size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVahv8rcQY

Full Size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLbOid9mRi4

This was the pick for the sole reason of the song, which is an astoundingly moving ballad which (from the OP, the show, and this ED) again uses rain, this time as a metaphor for desire and fears of regret. The visuals are spartan and entirely aesthetic, of raindrops on an umbrella and then zooming shots of Tachibana as she slowly comes into color.