Best Anime in 2016

Happy new years guys! It's finally that time of the year!.
And it's time to look back at things that happened in 2016, and honestly, mostly sucks...
Tragedy happens, A lot of famous celebrity passed away (David Bowie, George Michael, Prince, Mohammad Ali, Alan Rickman, and recently, Carrie Fisher). May their soul rest in peace. Ars longa vita brevis

Anyway, we're here talking about anime, and here are my personal favorite picks on Anime that released on 2016! But first I must state some ground rules first for this list:

1) I have to watched the anime series until the end and it has to be finished airing before 2016 ends. I really want to include the currently airing, Sangatsu no Lion by studio SHAFT, but it's still airing, so I can't put it here in the list. Let's save it for 2017! haha
2) I want to include movie anime too this year, But keep in mind that not all of them are released in my local theater, so sadly I didn't have the chance to watch them all including Koe no Katachi.
3) Speaking of "didn't have the chance to watch them all", yes, that includes series as well. And I'm quite picky when it comes to anime series lately. I haven't finished watching 91 Days, and I'm planning to watch Drifters since it's made by the same person who made Hellsing.
4) This list is not a ranking, I enjoyed all of them. So you can see this list as the anime that you should probably check it out.

So are we clear on this? Good! I think it's time we blow this thing, Get everybody and the stuff together, Ok! 3, 2, 1! Let's jam!

1) Girls und Panzer Der Film

Girls und Panzer Der Film is a continuation from Girls und Panzer series. You know what to expect from a movie anime like this, just another episode of anime but with movie budget! The animation in this movie is just really awesome and beautiful. The tank fights are much more smoother compared to the series. And they really deliver the intensity of the tank fights even better than the series. If you love GuP, you must watch this movie!

2) Kono Subarashii sekai ni shkufuku wo

I honestly kinda skeptical about any anime based on Light Novel and it's all about "isekai" genre. But this anime caught me surprised (I already reviewed this anime here in this blog). It has a good world building, genuinely funny scenes. If you are a fan of Isekai genre, you should watch this!

3) Love Live Sunshine!!

Love Live Sunshine, is the continuation of Love Live! well kind of, It has different characters from the first Love Live. The story is not about µ’s. This time we're looking at Aquors. They are group of girls who aspired to be Idol group just like µ’s. Animation wise it's much better looking than the first Love Live. And character wise, they are all loveable compared to µ’s. (because µ’s has Nico, who is pretty much obnoxious in my opinion, sorry Nico fans ^_^;). I have a lot of things to say about this anime, but that is another post for another day. But overall, I love Aquors! You Watanabe is best girl! XD

4) Mob Psycho

Mob Psycho 100 is done by studio Bones. This is based on manga by ONE, the one who made One Punch Man. And honestly this anime has great characters in it. And also have some really great and rather unique "Sakuga" animation. I know humor is quite subjective, but the humor in this anime didn't really hit me. *since I prefer absurd humor*, But overall, it's a good show and has some interesting character and story in it.

5) Flying Witch

I'm always a fan of "Iyashikei" (healing) anime just like Non Non Biyori, Azumanga Daioh. And I also enjoyed reading Yotsuba&!(manga). And this year we have Flying Witch that is done by JC Staff. Their animation is really awesome and relaxing to be looked at. If you are looking for something relaxing to be watched after you are done with your activities, I highly recommend this anime for you! XD 

6) Joker Game

Joker Game is a series about Japanese spies back in WW II. This anime is done by Production I.G who was responsible for great titles such as Ghost in the Shell and Psycho Pass (and also absurd comedy like Cromartie High School). If you are looking for an intense and thrilling spy action, go watch this anime! 

7) Boku no Hero Academia (Season 1)

This anime also caught me surprised. Honestly speaking, It's been awhile that I watch a shounen anime. And this anime have interesting fights and setting in it. I've already reviewed this anime in this blog here. If you want to have some good and refreshing shounen anime, this one is worth checking out!

8) Sakamoto desu ga?

I've read the manga long ago before this anime is announced. So I was pretty hyped on this anime! And my god, they did it! It's done by Studio DEEN, If you love absurd comedy, you'll love this! 

9) Saiki Kusuo Psi-nan

I honestly didn't know anything about this series, but my friend posted a screenshot of this anime, and that made me laughed out loud. This anime is about Saiki Kusuo who has psychic powers and he tries to live his life as a normal person. It's genuinely funny and entertaining. If you love Kamiya Hiroshi doing monologue just like Bakemonogatari, you'll love this anime. And if you love comedy in general, this anime is for you! 

10) Garo : Divine Flame 

Garo Divine Flame is a movie anime which is a continuation of Garo Honoo no Kokuin. Just like I said before, it's just like another episode of anime but with movie budget! And my god, in my opinion they have the best fight scenes in 2016. "Sakuga"-fest movie. Beautifully rendered 3DCG compared to the series. And just genuinely entertaining fight scenes. If you have watched the anime series, I highly recommend you watch this movie! It's awesome!  

11) ReLife

This year we have a lot of great drama anime. This time we're talking about ReLife. It's about a 27 year old NEET who is looking for a job but suddenly a person from ReLife lab offers him a job to experience his current life as a high school. This anime is really interesting, it has great characters, great setting, and more importantly, a great story that can be related by both mature and teenager audiences. I highly recommend you to watch this anime! I've already write the review of this anime in here if you want to know my thoughts about it XD

12) Mobile Suit Gundam : Iron-Blooded Orphans (season 1)

I really wanted to put this anime last year, but since the first season didn't finish at 2015, so here we are! I'm a big fan of Gundam series, and this Gundam series is really awesome! It's all about some group of orphans who works for PMC (Private Military Company). We never saw Gundam with this setting before, usually we saw both of strong political views, but this time, we saw it from a PMC which usually goes like "You pay me, I'll protect you". So money is the strong driving force in that kind of company. And this time. they are hired by Mars Politician. It has some great animation, great themes, interesting characters, awesome soundtrack and also great fight scenes! The second season is currently airing. I haven't watched it yet because I want to marathon it when it finished airing. 

13) Kimi no Nawa

Kimi no Nawa is another Makoto Shinkai movie, if you know anything about anime community, you probably have heard about this anime. And it's a mega-hit in Japan! And finally I have the chance of watching it in my local theater. And my god, I can see why this movie anime is booming. I've already review this anime here in this blog. If you have the chance to watch this anime, just watch it! 

14) JoJo's Bizarre Adventure : Part 4 - Diamond is Unbreakable

What a beautiful, DUWANG! It's the best part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, guys! Part 4 : Diamond is Unbreakable! It's done by David Production, and I'm really happy how faithful they are when they are adapting the manga (even though some scenes are not included in the anime). But overall, I'm really satisfied with this anime! This anime sets on 1999 in a town called Duwang Morioh. And there's a serial killer who lives in that town. and it's up to Josuke Higashikata and his friends to uncover the identity of the serial killer. What? A group of teenagers who have supernatural powers that comes from within themselves and hunting down a serial killer? It sounds familiar doesn't it? Yes, Persona 4 has the same setting with Part 4. But since Part 4 was made first (1992-1995). So, there you go! Part 4 has some great characters, great Stand, amazing soundtrack, great setting, great story, and also they have the best villain ever, Kira Yoshikage! Someday I will review this anime, but I have to review Part 3: Stardust Crusaders first XP.  I highly recommend you watch this anime if you are JoJo fan! The last thing that I can say that this anime is GREAT! 

15) Shouwa Genraku Rakugo Shinjuu

And finally, One of the best anime that come out at 2016, Shouwa Genraku Rakugo shinjuu! It's a great historical drama that touches upon the Japanese traditional verbal entertainment called Rakugo. It's a slow burner, but you will enjoy this anime! I highly recommend this anime. if you want to hear my complete thoughts about it, you can read it here!

You might be asking, "where's  Re: Zero?", If you read my after thoughts, you know I won't put it here because honestly didn't really enjoy that anime. Boku dake ga inai machi was supposedly to be in this list, but unfortunately the manga is 200% times better and A-1 didn't really make a good job on hiding the identity of the killer by making some unnecessary foreshadowing which pretty much uncovers the true identity of the killer. While the manga didn't do that. SO! If you want a better experience on Boku dake ga inai machi, go read the manga! I highly recommend that! ^_^

Some honorable mentions (since I haven't watched it yet, but a lot of my friends recommended it) are Amaama to Inazuma (another slice of life anime), Udon no Kuni no Kiniro Kemari, Drifters, Fune wo Amu, and also 91 Days!

So those are the anime of 2016 that is worth checking out, in my opinion. I hope that you will find this list to be useful! And here's a hope for a better year in 2017!

This is Reikichi! Signing out! XD

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! - Anime Review

Hey guys! This time I'm going to talk about an anime which airs on Winter 2016, Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! or KonoSuba for short. I watched this anime after I finished with Re:Zero (which I already wrote here). I heard that this anime is a parody of Isekai genre itself. So I think watching this series is perfect for me who feels "meh" after watching Re; Zero. So how was it? Let's just dive into it!

Story
The story starts on our real world, where we meet our main protagonist, Satou Kazuma, He is a hikkikomori. But on that day, he went outside to buy some game. On the way home, he saw a girl and a vehicle is rushing to her. Seeing that, Kazuma tried to save her. And then he woke up in the "after life". Enter Aqua, the goddess who told Kazuma that he is already dead. Kazuma thought that he died heroically. But apparently he didn't. He died horribly and pathetically. Aqua laughs when telling him that, even the doctor who tried to save him laughed at his corpse (seriously tho ^__^;). So Aqua offers Kazuma two options. Sending him off to the heaven, or reincarnate once again in a different world while keeping his current memories on his life. She gave a little heads up that if he chose heaven, it'll be boring because everyone in the heaven doesn't have any physical body and just wandering around the heaven for eternity. Listening to that, Kazuma chose to be reincarnated in the other world instead. And then Aqua told him that if he manages to kill the Devil King in this other world, he will be granted one wish. Anything will do. So before he goes to the other world, he must chose anything that he must bring something to that other world in order to defeat that devil king (it could be weapons or anything). Since Aqua is being a jerk to Kazuma by laughing to his death and so on, Kazuma chose to bring her to the other world. So Aqua must live together with Kazuma in that other world. And of course that pissed Aqua off. And thus began their life at the other world living their lives in order to defeat the devil king. Will Kazuma and Aqua be able to defeat the Devil King and get out from that other world?


My thoughts on the series 

1. We all know that anime with isekai genre is quite popular these days, and this anime is a perfect parody of that genre. This anime is genuinely funny and enjoyable for those who are really familiar with that kind of genre. 
2. Even though it's a parody, their world building on the first episode caught me off guard. They really nailed it on the world building, And yet again, this anime only have 10 episodes. Unlike the other isekai anime that I just review couple of weeks ago. *cough* Re:Zero *Cough*. The mechanics of this other world is just like mostly MMORPG where there's some stats. And I can see some "Monster Hunter" like system. Where there's a guild, and they posted some quests for the adventurer's to take. And then they report back and get some rewards. But it's different from MH of course since it tackles the "Exp" system and it has various jobs like any other MMORPG would have. 
3. What makes this show entertaining are the casts. Aqua is a stupid goddess. She is a arch-priest who has good healing abilities, but as she levels up, she spent her skill points for cheap party tricks. While Kazuma, he learns a lot of type of skills from thievery and dark magics. At first, he used thief skill and accidentally become panty thief. Everything gets even more interesting when Kazuma and Aqua finally starts recruiting other members to the party for some quests, But all of the party member (just like Kazuma and Aqua), are good for nothing characters (for comedic purposes). Like Megumin, a crimson demon who can only use one type of spell, Explosion. But after she used it, she will be out cold since it took all of her magic power. She only master that kind of magic because she believes that kind of magic that is important other than other skills and she refuses to learn other magic skills without thinking about her survival after she casts that magic. And the other party member is Darkness, a crusader, but she constantly misses when she attacks, but she loves to take damage from enemy and enjoys being a tank in the team since she is a masochist (^_^;)
4. Continuing from last point, every flaw of all of the party members are exploited brilliantly for comedic purposes. This is a stupid show with stupid characters and they are self aware of it. It's not trying to be so serious about it which is good for this kind of parody. Every ordeal that they overcome are because of sheer dumb luck, since that's what Kazuma is good at. His luck is the best stats among other party member. 
5. However, among other characters, Darkness' character trope is gets old quite fast. And she didn't really have some meaningful act on this series (in the anime, so far).
6. The voice actor are great, they really deliver the emotion and the comedic value of the series.

Minor Problems that I had with this series

1. The animation is done by studio DEEN, and they have this kind of reputation of "standard" and "quarity" anime studio. The quality is are good at the first 7 episodes even though there are a lot of repeated animation scenes. but episode 8 is the worst looking episode among them all. But I must say, whenever Megumin cast the spell, the animation looks pretty. I think this series' budget went there ^_^;
2. Speaking of animation, the fanservice animation on this anime is quite distracting. Every time a boobie woman moves, it has some intense boobie shake. For me, it's an unnecessary fanservice animation. It feels like the animator was like "What kind of animation to make it more interesting? I know! JIGGLE DEM BOOBIES EVERYTIME A BOOBIE CHARACTER MOVES!" ^_^; 
3. The pacing are actually good until we reach eps 8. Where there are some context that we don't get to see and the anime decided to tell us on a quick flash back and skipped it. IF they manage to tell us the story, this anime could have been 12-13 eps long rather than 10 eps

So here comes the final verdict, should you watch KonoSuba? If you are a fan of isekai genre or at least familiar with it and need some good laughs, you should check it out. They announced the 2nd season of this anime. But it worries me if they will be as good as the first season if they don't add some characters or new party members to the plate. 

So that's it from me, I hope that you'll find this review helpful, this is Reikichi, signing out! XD