I Watched It For The Story

We've all been there—you find a show with such a compelling, engaging story that you can't stop watching...but it looks like absolute garbage. Maybe the character designs are terrible, maybe the animation is intensely subpar, maybe baffling color choices were made, or maybe it's all three, plus even more unholy visual choices. But it doesn't matter; you're hooked because the story itself is so good. We asked our editorial team to come up with examples of anime they watched strictly for the story. Do you agree with their choices?

It's no exaggeration to say that the Berserk manga played a pivotal role in popularizing manga in Western regions. The manga's dark fantasy setting, slow-burn revenge-to-self-actualization plotline, gorgeous artwork, and badass action resonated deeply with international audiences of all backgrounds. Even before mangaka Kentarō Miura's untimely passing in 2021, the Berserk manga was recognized as a unique achievement in the medium and celebrated across the globe. 

I knew how big a deal Berserk was heading into the summer after my sophomore year of college in 2016. Through my infrequent anime club attendance and the social media accounts I followed, the anticipation of the Berserk anime through this sequel anime was palpable. So, I did what anyone with a budding interest in anime, manga, and media criticism would do and tried to catch up on the series before the new anime's release. As soon as finals for that semester ended, I read through the Lost Children chapter of the manga during the frequent slow periods at my counter job. Between hangouts and summer classes, I watched the entirety of the sensationally dubbed 1997 Berserk anime which was (and inexplicably still is) uploaded in its entirety on YouTube. 

Then, July 1st rolled around, and I, now fully prepared to jump in and entirely emotionally invested in Berserk, signed into Crunchyroll to watch this new anime, and…it was shit. 

A lot of talented people have put a lot of time and energy into explaining how Berserk (2016) is widely disappointing and investigating why this happened to an adaptation of such a beloved work. I won't relitigate all of that here, but in summation, Berserk (2016) wasn't a disappointment solely because its visuals failed to live up to Miura's breathtaking animations. Every part of the production, from the sound design to the shot composition, was either amateurish or incompetent. While people were cautiously optimistic about the show's usage of CGI animation considering how good the Studio 4°C Berserk: The Golden Age Arc movies looked by the end of their run, it was clear immediately that the combined efforts of studio GEMBA and Millepensee could not match the quality of the movies. 

Despite universal panning, I continued to watch the Berserk (2016) anime. The sunk cost fallacy had its grip on me, and I had to know where the Berserk story went next. Through the muck coating this anime, the rumination on the human spirit that made Mirua's manga so special managed to shine through. In this season, I saw Guts transform from a ceaseless agent of revenge into a struggling caretaker for Casca and begin to learn how to heal from his trauma instead of just confronting it. I saw Guts begin to rebuild his community through fellow misfits like Isidro, Farnese, and Serpico. I watched Griffith claw his way out of hell and begin to build his utopia atop the bodies of his former Band of the Hawk. Lastly, I watched every character grapple with what happiness looks like and how they could possibly find it in a world marked by a crushing amount of violence and suffering. 

I did not continue watching Berserk (2016) after its first season wrapped. Even by the time that initial season ended, I had read far past that part of the story in the manga. I'll be charitable to the anime and admit that the stretch of the manga it attempts to adapt marks some pretty big tonal shifts in the series and was, therefore, always going to pose some significant challenges to even the most skilled of production teams. I'll forever recommend that people read the Berserk manga instead or dip their toes into the series with the 1997 anime. 

However, a part of me is always going to be glad that Berserk (2016) exists, as it was my motivation to invest a significant amount of time into experiencing a work that's both groundbreaking in its medium and hugely culturally influential. Yes, I watched Berserk (2016) for its story, but also so that I could experience alongside others a generational defining piece of art that's set to shape the art of storytelling for the rest of humanity's existence. 

Go read the Berserk manga! 

For whatever reason, a lot of BL TV series just don't look good. Whether it's the persistent shades of brown in Cherry Magic (my other choice for this assignment, but I suspect more people watched it, so I went with this one) to the weird censorship choices in Love Stage!! to those unavoidable floating pastel shapes, weird or cheap choices are consistently made when bringing BL to the small screen. Tadaima, Okaeri, which has the added burden of being omegaverse, is no exception. Adult characters are consistently stiff, perspective is wonky, and those thrice-damned floating pastel shapes are everywhere. Its one visual saving grace is that the children are at least nearly always cute.

It's a barrier to entry that fans of BL anime are familiar with. Fortunately, it can't destroy one of the sweetest family stories to be animated since School Babysitters. (Which also doesn't look great. I'm sensing another pattern.) The theme at the heart of Tadaima, Okaeri is family, both biological and found. Masaki and Hiromu are a married couple of the unusual-in-world omega/alpha variety, meaning they have biological children. At first, both of their families are against their marriage, with Masaki's family being more worried for him and Hiromu's more on the snobby side. While they love their parents, the two are also perfectly happy with the family they have created, especially with their children, first son Hikari and later daughter Hinata. The draw isn't that two men are co-parenting; a warm and loving family is getting through their day-to-day lives, interacting with each other and the people around them as they slowly build up their own larger, found family. While there's angst, it's not the driving factor in the plot; it's just something everyone experiences throughout their lives.

Despite its sometimes ghastly pastel palette, Tadaima, Okaeri is the ultimate cozy, feel-good show. Even if you prefer pets to children, watching Hikari write a letter to the dog next door (his best friend, who he's also afraid of) is adorable, and Masaki and Hiromu do that most unusual of things in fiction: talk to each other when they have a problem. This is slice-of-life in the purest sense, a story that welcomes us into a family for a little while and allows us to share a piece of their life. Yes, it looks bad. Yes, it's omegaverse. But what's more important is the warmth of the series and the comfortable way it lets us believe that, ultimately, everything's going to be all right.

So I'm a Spider, So What? is one of my favorite fantasy stories of the past decade. It begins as a comedic twist on the isekai genre, where our protagonist is reincarnated as a spider monster deep in the world's most dangerous dungeon while her classmates get to be knights and nobles. Much of the show follows Kumoko's battle for survival as she step-by-step moves up the food chain—literally.

As the story moves on, while the comedy remains, mystery and danger mount. It becomes clear that things are far from what they appear. Who are the heroes and who are the villains is thrown into question, and even the very nature of the world, with its game-like magic system, becomes a mystery to be solved. Better still, the entire first season is built around a well-crafted and actualized storytelling trick—one that's not fully revealed until the series' final episode. But as for how it looks… well, I suppose now's the time to mention it is animated by Millepensee and directed by Shin Itagaki just like 2016's Berserk.

Watching the first episode—or even the first half-season—of So I'm a Spider, So What?, you might be shocked to find it on this list. While there is a lot of sub-par CG in this show from the start (along with more than a bit of good-looking CG), the fact that it's used to animate monsters hides just how low quality it is. However, once our spider protagonist leaves the confines of her dungeon and more and more fights include human characters, the blemishes become obvious and outright painful.

In the final few episodes, where the action graduates into scenes of all-out war on an epic scale, things hit their lowest point on the CG front. The 3D models for the main characters stand in stark contrast to their 2D art, and endless amounts of the same soldier or two are copy-pasted across the battlefield to perform robotic-looking actions. The worst-looking thing is the background in some scenes. To say they look like PS1 graphics with their unnaturally flat geometry and single tiny texture block repeated ad infinitum would be an insult to games of that era. Even when the show tries to do something cool with the 3D animation, like a moving or rotating shot that would be impossible for a real camera, the frame rate plummets into the single digits—making you wonder if it's your computer or tablet's problem and not an animation one.

Sadly, the show doesn't fare much better in the 2D department. As the story moves ever closer to its final climax, the actual animation gets more and more sparse. We get pans over static frames to give the illusion of movement and even have characters talking over unmoving wide shots where no mouths are shown and nothing is animated. And even when things are moving, we have problems like nonsensical shot composition, wonky eyes on the characters, and a lack of detail on characters standing at an honestly silly distance.

With all the visual negatives and the fact that you could just read the novel series for the story, you might wonder why you would ever want to watch this. The answer is simple: Aoi Yūki. Most of this anime is a one-man show with Aoi Yūki's Kumoko at its center. We have only her running monologue to connect with as viewers and she delivers a veritable tour de force. Both the comedy and the danger come through pitch-perfectly and it's impossible not to root for the adorkable Kumoko—even as she does ever-more-horrible things. It's an experience well worth the subpar animation and I encourage everyone to experience it for themselves.

So much of Higurashi's impact comes from its twists and tricks, and it's a shame to spoil them, the same way you should never spoil someone who's watching Psycho or The Wicker Man for the first time. (What do you mean, which ones?) As those comparisons suggest, Higurashi is a horror series. Its early episodes tell a familiar creepy tale. A boy, Keiichi, moves to a remote Japanese rural village, meets the lovely locals—especially the playful girls at his school - and engages in hijinks with them. Granted, that's after a flash-forward prologue where we see the same boy in a distressed situation. A baseball bat is involved, and blood—lots and lots of blood. Ah well, I'm sure it's not important.

The early scenes feel like a spoof of anime harems. What are the unexpected dangers for a boy surrounded by lively females, as they lead him to the myths and mysteries of their town? A masterclass of non-linear storytelling follows, skipping around viewpoints and timeframes yet staying compelling and addictive. Higurashi's main trick wasn't new even in 2006; what's dazzling is how beautifully the show's built around it.

The series consists of several multi-episode storylines, and character-driven horror tales presented as being the same story. They interlock so intricately that you start perusing every detail. The stories all involve the country town, mostly set in the same summer. They carry over the same characters—about ten important ones, including Keiichi and the assorted girls.

These characters act in radically—though never impossibly—different ways from one story to another. Murderers become heroes, then murderers again. Villains become victims. Characters switch in a second from friendly to frightening. Hunters of forbidden truths vanish or go mad. I should stress this is horror. There's much bloody-bladed violence, some against shockingly tiny victims, though even the horrid scenes often run contrary to the rules of torture porn. Many victims refuse to see themselves as victims, staying defiant as they're sliced and torn. There are touches of more humorous horror; a middle plotline deals with a botched “perfect” murder.

This excellent series is told with sloppy, shoddy, sketchy drawings, courtesy of Studio DEEN. I can understand anyone who drops Higurashi long before they reach the good stuff. But mercifully, the show's well-directed enough to transcend the shoddiness when it counts, with hysterical twisted faces and artfully edited suspense and atrocities. It also has a terrific title sequence, with flowers opening in kaleidoscope displays and waifish girls gazing from the screen, their faces stained with tears or blood.

Kōichi Mashimo's 1997 Eat-Man adaptation is, as Justin Sevakis once put it, the kind of thing you only release when you want to go bankrupt. Is it a good adaptation of Akihito Yoshitomi's 1996 manga? No; the anime takes only the most basic elements of the manga and sprinkles them around sparsely. It maintains protagonist Bolt Crank and his two abilities (eating inedible industrial scraps and summoning fully-formed weapons out of his hands). Otherwise, it goes completely on the lam.

Does it look good? No; the show had a shoestring budget so a lot of animation shortcuts were taken. Far from being filled with zany gunfights where Bolt summons a massive doomsday gun out of his hands, the show uses a lot of slow pans and pauses to pad out its episodes--almost frustratingly. The show loves pausing on seemingly random imagery for what can feel like too long.

But that has to mean the story is good, right? Not exactly; Eat-Man is a decidedly episodic narrative along the lines of the 1970s The Incredible Hulk; Bolt Crank wanders into someone's life, offers his services as a jack-of-all-trades, stuff happens, and Bolt wanders off into the post-apocalyptic wasteland blanketed by a devastated spaceship hovering in the sky. Do the stories get happy endings? They get endings, that's enough.

Does the show suck? No. Eat-Man is far more than the sum of its parts. It's been my understanding that Eat-Man was an anime that aired at what I like to call "Otaku o'clock" (1 AM). It's a show that takes advantage of that time slot. At 1 AM, the dusty visuals and slow pans give this show a contemplative mood; every glance Bolt steals at whatever is going on feels more meaningful. The repeated cut-ins and flashbacks are fleshed out every time you see them, filling in more and more blanks for the weekly drama. Every shadowy figure the helpless waif of the week is hiding from is that much scarier. It's a tone that hearkens back to an older age of television, where you could sit back and indulge in the vibes of a show--if you'd allow it. We learn little about Bolt, but it almost doesn't matter; we're engaged by the people Bolt helps instead, the mysteries left behind by those who've passed long before them, and the life they lead in their hopeless post-apocalyptic world. In some ways, it's a bit like an anime take on a slice-of-life show set in The Dark Tower's Mid-World: the world has moved on, but those who live in it continue to eke out their existences.

Eat-Man would get a "better" sequel the following year in the form of Eat-Man `98. The animation is better, the colors are brighter, the stories tie into each other instead of episodic shaggy-dog tales, and they all do a better job of tying into stories from the manga. And yet--the original Eat-Man is the one I prefer. Its flaws resulted in something memorable that I can't find anywhere else. Sometimes, less really is more.

Projects like these can be fun since they prompt me to reach deep, deep into the recesses of my mind palace and recall anime I hadn't had much cause to think about since. "Right," I tell myself, "there was some show I distinctly remember having fun with despite its animation comprising so much crust. I can recall having conversations with friends specifically about this. What was it again?" Of course, it was Phantom in the Twilight, the 2018 supernatural reverse-harem story from when the hot industry trend was coproductions with Chinese animation studios. It was sweeping the nation.

Phantom in the Twilight never looks especially awful. Some episodes are even pretty polished! There's a generally cool sense of style backing everything, which makes sense given the ostensible appeal of selling hot boyfriends who are also werewolves and vampires and the like. But Phantom in the Twilight is stiff pretty much all the time, and when its polish isn't present, the character models slide around more than an angsty wolf-boy power sliding around a roof. Visual effects trend toward the cheap and stock, and a lot of hasty, often baffling editing brings it all together. This 200% isn't a show I was watching for the visuals, which is so funny since "looking sexy" should be the entire reason for a series like this to exist.

What was I watching Phantom in the Twilight for? Simply put, it's just a lot of fun, mostly on account of its characters and some of its choices that are rather unique in its genre. The Universal Monsters gijinkas that are the alleged main event aren't bad—though in a series that's already hardly on-model, I'm pretty sure Jiangshi boy Tauryu is never drawn right. Shout-out to hot werewolf Luke and his brother Chris, who somehow looks like the Kingdom Hearts version of characters that don't exist. The real appeal is heroine Ton, who, while hardly the only strong reverse-harem lead, is nonetheless especially awesome. The way Ton reins in, manages, and overall handles the monster boys in her romantic orbit, particularly her would-be dangerous boyfriend vampire Vlad, is incredibly endearing to see. And she does it all while fighting with this sick supernatural multi-chain weapon and glowing red hair that lets her look super-cool. Or at least as cool as this show's art allows.

On top of all that, Phantom in the Twilight is a girls' harem series that's also brave enough to be yuri. The actual emotional core is Ton and her special friend Shinyao doing a gals-being-pals thing that starts on the level of "there is no heterosexual explanation for this" and only escalates the romance from there. Shinyao gets damsel'd for a huge chunk of the show, with Ton seeking to rescue her, I presume because they realized their relationship would overpower any possibility of shipping Ton with the monster manual of male paramours otherwise. It mostly works, since it all gels with how earnestly, enjoyably stupid Phantom in the Twilight is. It would be frustrating if Ton were even 20% less cool, and it might take me out of the show if it looked better. Every time the character models devolve into jank, or there is an ill-advised Dutch angle or wipe transition, it reminds me of this exercise's unseriousness, exemplifying why sometimes a solid 7/10 is more enjoyable than any perfect prestige production.

This may be an unpopular opinion in certain circles, but animation quality matters. Just like strong visuals can elevate a mediocre story, uninspired direction, and stiff characters can actively hamper the visual storytelling, dragging the whole production down. It takes a lot for me to sit down and give my time to a series with poor presentation, especially since I barely have time for the ones that are strong on both fronts that I want to watch. Still, every so often, one comes along that's compelling enough to keep me watching, and Ōoku is one such case.

It's an adaptation of a masterful piece of speculative alternate history by the acclaimed mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga, where a deadly illness kills the majority of men in Japan. As a result, the country becomes run by women while men are prized as commodities. As the title indicates, the story focuses on the shogunate court, particularly the inner courtyard – the Ōoku, where hundreds of men are kept, inaccessible to anyone but the shogun. Yoshinaga uses the setting to explore how societal power dynamics would shift in such a situation, considering and incorporating a wide variety of factors beyond making a matriarchy that is functionally identical to patriarchy except that women are in charge.

As its inclusion in this list implies, the animation is not great. The character animation is stiff, and the storyboarding is an artless direct copy of Yoshinaga's paneling put together without consideration for the intent of how the images are arranged and how the shift from one medium to another may affect how the viewer receives it. However, outside of one or two unintentionally funny erotic scenes where it looks like the couple on-screen is attacking each other's faces rather than caught in the throes of passion, the poor production doesn't hold it back as much as some of the other series I considered for this list, such as Farewell, My Dear Cramer.

The first is that this truly is the kind of story driven forward primarily by people sitting in rooms talking. This is a tale of court intrigue, after all, and many of the characters are in positions where they are shielded from physical conflict. Instead of action, the tension stems from watching humans struggle through desperate situations where they feel trapped, plotting and conspiring as they jockey for whatever slivers of power they can find. It's in the conflicting emotions and fleeting connections. While beautiful animation would undoubtedly support this variety of stories, it stands well enough on its own.

The production's other salvation is the truly incredible voice cast that delivers those lines. Yoshinaga's excellent writing comes to life with vocal performances including the likes of industry legends Kikuko Inoue, Mamoru Miyano, and Seki Tomokazu. Every character is complex, navigating a world of competing personal motivations and societal obligations. Every single voice actor does their character justice with multilayered performances. Miyano's performance as Arikoto, a monk kidnapped and forced to be one of the first men to enter the Ōoku, includes line reads that I can still hear in my head, even over a year after watching the show.

Ōoku is the kind of anime to which I can apply both meanings of “I watched it for the story.” Straightforwardly, it simply has a very good story that is worth watching! It's well-written and thematically rich! In the second, snider interpretation, the visual presentation is severely lacking, and nobody is going to watch it for the animation. Still, Yoshinaga's incredible storytelling makes it all worth it… especially if you can't afford the manga.

I did watch Elfen Lied for its story, but not because I thought it was great. It's because its misanthropy was so insipid and heavy-handed that I couldn't resist watching the rest. The problem? I watched it at the wrong time. As a sheltered kid whose family forbade him to play M-rated games and was left with the Shadow the Hedgehog GameCube games as the proxy for edginess, I'm sure that Elfen Lied's juxtaposition of kawaii moe and graphic violence would have worked wonders on me. But I watched it nearly a decade after its release, years after the anime's phenomenon had died down. I was no longer a teenager but 21 years old in college, my school's uber-macho football-and-beer zeitgeist having me do a 180 right into the world of a slice-of-life. That's largely why Elfen Lied is so controversial. It works if you can put yourself in the mindset of a 00s-era emo teenager. If you can't, you'll see it as bullshit Evangelion-meets-A Clockwork Orange. For me, it's a bit of both.

Elfen Lied remains one of the edgiest anime ever to grace the airwaves, and its first episode will forever be remembered as a watershed moment for folks who thought anime was harmless kiddy stuff like Pokémon and Sailor Moon. But its edginess is hardly backed up by anything intellectual. Not that you could squeeze any brilliance out of its Jekyll and Hyde plotline, but I don't think it's asking for too much when you demand gratuitous violence, sex, and misanthropy to be more than window dressing. Lucy switches back and forth from being a childish amnesiac to a cold-blooded killer who hates humanity. The worst of humanity is shown here and there, and there's that death dirge of an OP that makes quite the entrance. The rest of the show and its characters feel shallow thematically, watered down by dated 00s-y animation and reading like fanfiction a fourteen-year-old would pen out of anger towards Mom grounding him for a week. When its story isn't soaked in blood, it appears awkward and unintentionally hilarious.

And yet, the show works as a guilty pleasure, so I'll give it the credit it deserves. It does live up to its controversy by making the action ultraviolent and some scenes disturbing. Lucy's character design and the show's horror aesthetic probably helped give way to the likes of Madoka and School-Live!. The English dub isn't exactly the most polished, but it's still done well; it's mostly accurate despite the changes, although the addition of swearing is hilariously unnecessary. I'm not offended by it—I'm from Philadelphia. Vulgarity is just part of the vernacular here. Still, when one of the bad guys swears like a sailor to make him seem more antagonistic, it feels so stiff that I can't help but chuckle every time. Again, this would have probably fascinated me as an immature pre-teen. But having rewatched this series as an adult, the dialogue reads like a bad comedian who thinks adding more swear words will make his act more memorable.

Released in the early aughts, Elfen Lied remains a product of its time when Hot Topic was still in its infancy, and the Tim Burton renaissance was right around the corner. To enjoy Elfen Lied today is to look back at that era and the dozens of Evanescence AMVs spawned in its wake. For those nostalgic for 2000s anime, Elfen Lied's story is still worth looking into, even if it doesn't hold up.

Long before it was reduced to shilling NFTs, the Gonzo anime studio had a reputation for visually ambitious productions with big budgets and then-groundbreaking CG effects (they used to be called “Gonzo Digimation”). 2000s-era CG hasn't always aged the best, but the effort was there, and series like Last Exile, Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, and Afro Samurai still hold up visually today thanks to great design work and impressive hand-drawn animation. Welcome to the NHK—one of nine anime Gonzo made in 2006, two years after the studio dropped the “Digimation” from its name—was not the studio's top priority on the animation front. One might hope the series being less ambitious than Gonzo's more effects-heavy fare might at least allow for visual consistency, but nope. The animation quality goes up and down throughout, reaching heights of “passable” at best and falling into off-model scribbles (and not the fun artistic kind) at worst. Even when drawn on-model, the character designs are a generic downgrade from Yoshitoshi ABe's illustrations for Tatsuhiko Takemoto's original light novel.

I'd wager that Welcome to the NHK's visual issues are the second most significant reason the show doesn't get talked about quite as much as other great anime of the era. However, I suspect the biggest reason for its lower popularity is one of its biggest strengths: it's just so real. Takemoto was one of the first writers to seriously delve into the subject of being a hikikomori, basing Satou's struggles with extreme anxiety and depression on his own experiences. Any progress Satou makes towards becoming a productive member of society always leads him to run into some new big problem, from developing a porn addiction to falling for a multi-level marketing scam to accidentally joining a suicide pact. As the show eventually reveals, Misaki's fraught Manic Pixie Dream Girl quest to cure Satou of his hikikomori-dom is driven by her deep psychological wounds. None of this makes for easy casual viewing, and if you found this anime too triggering, uncomfortably relatable, or just plain cringe to keep watching at any point, I can't blame you.

That's not to say the show isn't entertaining. It's often hilarious, just in a very dark register. Scenes like Satou talking to his furniture about his conspiracy theories on how TV networks are turning their viewers into hikikomori or Satou and Kaoru trying to apply every single fetish to their gal game protagonist are comedy gold. The English dub gets credit for doing a good job localizing and punching up jokes (I'm thinking of Chris Patton's delivery of “BEGONE, DIRTY WHORES” and “SUCK ME DRY!”). The anime's sense of humor prevents this series of so many unfortunate events from turning into misery porn, guiding the viewer along to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

Welcome to the NHK uses its pitch-black humor and twisted story to explore many social problems, deal with mental health issues, and expose the darker sides of otaku culture. Ultimately, it's a story about trying. It doesn't promise everything will turn out okay, but it says it's worth it to keep living and trying to help yourself no matter how much you mess up. Satou and Misaki might not find redemption, but they find hope and the strength to keep going. The many places where the show's animators messed up should not detract from the strength of the series' message, the realism of its characterization, and the catharsis of its comedy and drama.

Gakuen Babysitters is a comfort anime for the ages. The lockdowns of 2020 must have done a number on my brain because I forgot this anime was released in 2018, not 2020. I have watched a clip or a full episode of Gakuen Babysitters anytime I need a pep in my step, and that's a testament to the levels of serotonin this series has brought to my life. Its premise is straightforward as the slice-of-life anime focuses on the life of Ryuuichi Kashima and the children in the daycare part of his high school.

Every episode has one or two self-contained stories, some more emotional than others. However, there's character development and overall plot progression as brothers Ryuuichi and Kotaro learn to adapt to their new normal after losing their parents in a tragic plane crash. Although the series lacks any notable moments for animation quality, each episode is consistent and mirrors the charm and simplicity of the source material. The muted, pastel colors help to provide a relaxing watch for the eyes, while the overall character designs easily communicate their unique personalities. Mina Oosawa, the character designer who adapted the manga art for the anime, has gone on to work on designs for other heartwarming series like Given and Tadaima, Okaeri.

Ryuichi and Kotaro are taken in by the matriarch of Morinomiya Academy, Yoko Morinomiya, on the condition that the Ryuichi help with the school's babysitter center. The series' twelve episodes are a collection of various stories, such as a zoo field trip and Kotaro going on his first errand to deliver his brother's lunchbox. To put it simply, cute preschoolers are always busy with the normal antics expected of schoolchildren.

Of course, it's not only the children who care deeply for Ryuuichi. The parents also watch over the two orphaned brothers as an unofficial community, guiding them without being patronizing. Chairwoman Morinomiya, who also lost her son and daughter-in-law in the same plane crash, provides the brothers with tough love, which is undercut when Kotaro occasionally calls her hair “shaggy.”

There are no overarching stakes, though, I find it emotionally heart-wrenching to see young children in distress even if it's relatively minor. For example, my heart simply breaks when Taka—the loudest and ‘brattier’ of the children—loses his beloved toy sword during a festival. Or, on a more serious note, when Kotaro attempts to jump into open water when he thinks his brother is drowning and cries in anguish when the mother of his classmates holds the toddler from doing so.

By the end of episode one, you'll be emotionally invested in the well-being of Ryuuichi and Kotaro, which will extend to all the characters in the series. The lighthearted nature of Gakuen Babysitters leads you to forget that it revolves around a teenager and his four-year-old brother who lost their parents, and only have each other. Every episode provides a moving, overarching narrative, and shows simple moral lessons that kids can understand while including relatable subjects for adults. Like a father who fears his children are emotionally distant from him because of his busy work as an actor, or an emotionally insecure schoolgirl. Maria Inomata, Ryuuichi's classmate, is a book-smart but socially awkward schoolgirl with a stern attitude. She bottles up her feelings of loneliness, which the children help unload and relax by simply being happy to see her. Gakuen Babysitters also dabbles into light romance but never goes anywhere with that subplot, as the number one person in Ryuuichi's heart is his younger brother.

You'll laugh and you'll cry at this simple series about babysitting in a daycare center. Come forget your woes while watching a heartwarming anime with cute depictions of toddlers.

There is a lot about xxxHOLiC that I think still holds up today. Just like how the title is a play on words with the xxx representing a blank space, and the rest of the title is a stand for addiction (for example, being an ALCOholic), the series is all about going through the miserable experiences that are afflicted on other people. Sometimes, these afflictions are random and circumstantial, while other times, they are self-imposed. There's a strong emphasis on how words and language hold special meanings that can physically and spiritually affect others. Our main character, Watanuki, is somebody cursed to see horrific spirits that also find themselves attracted to him. All he wants to do is live a normal life. There's this prevailing sense of misery throughout the show and while there are genuine moments of old-school comedy thrown in there for the sake of levity, almost every episode ends on a bit of a downer note. The series is episodic, going through different types of people who need help from our beautiful witch Yuko, who does her best to help. But I never walked away from an episode feeling happy. It's more like a cold, hard truth gets revealed, and a lesson is learned, but that doesn't necessarily mean the world gets brighter.

It makes sense that a show where words hold such power would have the dialogue and writing would be treated with such care. A major selling point of this show is Yuko and how she talks to those around her, particularly with our main character Watanuki. The writing is so tightly packed with comedic punch and plenty of wordplay that it doesn't always translate well in the English version, but the effort is still there in trying to communicate the layered double meanings in a lot of the exchanges. There is a lot of exposition about spirits, but there's also a lot of talk about the human spirit, destiny, and the power of choice. I'm glad these exchanges still hold up because the animation and art direction certainly have not.

Some gorgeous, aesthetic shots work perfectly as stills, and almost all of them have to do with Yuko. She is the definition of aesthetic, and the animation staff tries their hardest to ensure we, the viewers, understand that. But this animation style has not held up so many years later, outside of those shots and a few scant moments throughout the season. This is the show that I think about whenever somebody makes fun of the CLAMP art style with the incredibly long and lanky body proportions. These body types work for comedy, but so much of the show is dragged in serious melancholy that it gets incredibly distracting. The show is trying to combine real-world issues with supernatural influences and the art design doesn't work in communicating that idea. The color palette emphasizes shades of brown and plenty of black with the illusion of very dim lighting across most scenes outside of the high school the main character attends. However, the character designs and movements are too cartoony to convey any major sense of realism. Everything looks so flat and lifeless.

At best, the show can look very messy, and at worst, it just looks very boring with a soundtrack that mostly exists as background noise outside of a few scant tracks, such as the themes that play when Yuko is present. In some ways, I almost think the show would work better as an audio drama where I can just listen to the characters describe everything taking place. Maybe that would've been a better way to consume it, or maybe the show would work a lot better if there was some kind of reboot with an updated aesthetic because other studios have shown that they can adapt the CLAMP art style incredibly well.

You hear it before you see anything, like a ghost howling through the trees. A high-pitched SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE of tires skidding on pavement, an angry banshee being chased through a valley. The next sonic wave hits—a twang of guitars that evokes something nostalgic before giving way to the relentlessly upbeat guitar riffs and synths of Dave Rodger's “Spaceboy.” And then you see it. Is it a box? An angry trapezoid on wheels? No, it's a car lurching through the darkness, a handful of smooth polygons gliding through the patchwork, moon-dappled night of a road barricaded by bright white guardrails. It's punctuated with a glimpse of round-toed sneakers and the same two shots of a key fob jangling next to a steering wheel.

Everything in your brain tells you all looks too suspiciously smooth, but you can't tear your eyes off what's happening. Before you can climb up for air, you've already been sucked into the six seasons plus extras of Initial D. A series that had you on the edge of your seat, inadvertently shifting your body left and right as you watched weightless polygons slide across various mountain roads, gasping as wheels slid into gutters and passed other polygons with barely a finger's width of room. And the characters! Oh, the characters. The potato-faced, bologna-lipped characters whose exaggerated facial expressions could be embraced as part of the late-90s anime zeitgeist, but whose jerky editing and slapdash modeling couldn't. The body proportions are arbitrary, the facial features are a suggestion.

But the story! The story was pure perfection. It turned an entire generation of fans into street racing enthusiasts. Even if you didn't care about cars, the tension of every episode kept you coming back for more. Initial D wasn't just a sports anime—it was the story of an unlikely underdog whose coolness wasn't even desired. It was just thrust upon him as a filial chore!

You see, the main hero of Initial D, Takumi Fujiwara, wasn't even the chosen one. He was just a guy who had to deliver tofu for the family business in the early hours before school. And if you've ever had freshly made silken tofu, you know how delicate it is. That was the burden thrust upon Takumi, whose daily chore led his father—a racing legend back in his day—to teach Takumi the finely honed art of drifting. It's a technique where drivers intentionally oversteer a car through a turn so that it skids sideways with the wheels turning in the opposite direction. It was also awesome that Takumi's car was an underdog too.

Compared to the flashier, much more expensive cars driven by the other racers, Takumi's ride was a Toyota AE86 Trueno, part of the Corolla lineup. On the straight-aways, it simply couldn't compete with the fancier race cars, but on the turns? That's where Takumi's ridiculous and unbeatable skills shone. And yes, that's the entire show. Sure, there are some side stories here and there about the people in his life, and he gets embroiled in several racing team spats and increasingly complex race courses, but at the end of the day, he always pulled ahead because he's just a damned good driver.

The fact that this series became such an enduring cult classic despite its unfortunate character designs, clunky animation, and truly awful CG car animations is a pure testament to how magnificently the action was written. They probably could have animated the entire show with stop-motion Kleenex boxes, and it would have still been immensely thrilling—that's how good the story is for Initial D. The classic Eurobeat soundtrack doesn't hurt either.

Before you all raise your pitchforks in protest, hear me out. Yes, Jojo has a pretty distinctive visual style, and yes, the quality of David Productions' work on the series has (mostly) gone up with each subsequent part that's been adapted. However, that hasn't always transferred over to its actual animation quality, especially so with its first season when David Productions was a much smaller studio. Going by their portfolio before 2012, they were a pretty strange pick to adapt a property like Jojo, as their biggest claims to fame at the time were titles like Inu x Boku S.S., Ben-To, and assisting Studio Pierrot with Level E. It's not a terrible track record, but certainly not the one you'd expect when they were given the keys to one of the biggest and seemingly unadaptable manga franchises in Japan. As such, it's not too surprising that the animation quality of Jojo's first season is pretty inconsistent. While there are a couple of standout episodes on that front, the majority are merely passable compared to what you'd expect out of the adaptation of such a big title, and some of the shortcuts taken with action scenes make it feel more like watching a comic book in motion than a TV show. However, it speaks to the strengths of Kenichi Suzuki and his team that they were able to leverage that into a feature rather than a weakness, and compensating for production flaws by leaning into that comic book aesthetic is a great example of how direction and intent can be more important to the aesthetic of a show than raw animation quality.

Of course, it also speaks to how great Hirohiko Araki's writing is, that it's so easy to get swept into the series despite some of those shortcomings. The pseudo-Victorian drama that forms the basis for Phantom Blood is more entertaining than it has right to be. It's fun seeing the conflict between British gentleman Jonathan Joestar and his newly adopted brother, Dio Brando, escalate from a battle for the family fortune to vampires versus humans with magic breathing. Dio contributes a lot to the appeal here, as he's the kind of villain you love to hate, and both Takehito Koyasu and Patrick Seitz do a great job of chewing the scenery regardless of which language track you listen to. Whether he's stealing the first kiss of Jonathan's girlfriend Erina, or tricking a newly formed vampire into eating her baby, he's so delightfully punchable that it's hard not to be drawn in by his villainous antics. That energy gives the story a kind of goofy charm that's impossible to look away from.

This goes double for Battle Tendency, which shifts into a style more akin to an Indiana Jones movie and sees Jonathan's descendant, Joseph trying to prevent the resurrection of an ancient race of superhumans as he crosses paths with vampires and actual nazis along the way. However, while a lot of series survive on escalation, the real strength behind Jojo is in just how good Araki is at crafting melodrama out of even the most bizarre of circumstances. For as silly as things like Jonathan and Dio's rivalry, or the tragic history of the Joestars can get, a lot of it manages to be genuinely compelling, and Araki knows how to squeeze the most out of even the most off-putting of characters (that Stroheim, is even tolerable despite being a literal nazi-cyborg speaks volumes). With all those strengths working together, it makes sense that this first season helped take Jojo from a property with little reach outside Japan, into a global powerhouse, and while this isn't the best-looking entry in the franchise, it wouldn't be where it is without it.

Ajin is one of those shows where I couldn't even form a sentai team with all the people I've met who've seen it. But few as they are, everyone I've ever encountered who's watched Ajin thinks it's fantastic. One of the first few inmates of what would eventually become known as “Netflix jail,” Ajin primarily follows a seemingly ordinary high schooler named Kei Nagai. He has two key things that set him apart: first of all, getting hit by a truck didn't result in him getting isekai'd. He probably would've been better off if he had been because, secondly, despite being soaked in his own blood, he didn't die—in fact, his body instantly healed itself. He didn't realize it until now, but he's an Ajin: a rare, immortal demi-human. Ajin is routinely subjected to a relentless, neverending onslaught of painful tests and experiments, so thus begins Kei's new life on the lam.

But good as it is overall, this anime has some issues that are nothing if not visible—because most of them center around, well, the visuals. This TV anime from 2016 was animated entirely in CGI by Polygon Pictures (who, at the time, was fresh off the heels of Knights of Sidonia—another CGI, Netflix original anime). Now, does being animated entirely in CGI inherently make this show ugly? No. That being said, this isn't exactly Land of Lustrous. Among other issues, figures (and especially the hair) tend to look a bit blocky, movements are choppy, and the color palette barely ever leaves the realm of neutral tones. Though, to be fair, I've seen way worse-looking CGI in anime, too (cough EX-ARM cough).

But once you get past the visuals, you're left with one of the most thrilling “maybe humans are the real monsters”-stories in all anime. This anime has interpersonal drama, violent ghost fights, and the kind of tension that constantly keeps you at the edge of your seat, but more than anything, this anime has spectacle and plenty of it. And it's often helmed by this anime's shining star, the strategic and highly capable Ajin Satou.

Satou is the force of nature behind more or less everything that happens in Ajin—and oh, how shih-tzu-minus-the-zu hits the fan in this show. While things become more complicated the further this anime gets (but I don't dare spoil it for you, so we're going to leave it at that), for most of the show, he seems to be acting primarily out of a desire to see the suffering the Ajin are subjected to put to an immediate end—no matter what it takes. He stands in sharp contrast to Kei, who's far from the altruistic hero that you might expect an anime like this one to follow. This unusual dynamic between the two main characters is fascinating and also makes this anime perfect for people who like a story where the protagonist isn't necessarily a good person.

I think in 2016, the visuals and Netflix jail were the main two factors that kept more people from watching Ajin. But in 2025, Netflix has become a much bigger player in the anime industry than they were a decade ago. And the visuals—well, okay, fine, they haven't aged all that well. Still, my point is that this anime has been massively overlooked, and a really big part of that has been because of how it looks. While I think the criticisms to be made about this anime's visuals are fair (or at least the actual criticisms relating to the CGI itself, rather than the plain fact that it's CGI), the show itself is nonetheless a fun watch, and I'm willing to die on this hill.

Back in 2014, I'm not sure what possessed Netflix to license a Polygon Pictures CG animated series as their first ever “Netflix Original Anime,” raising more than a few eyebrows among anime fans. At the time, Polygon was most recognized in the West for their contribution to US-produced animated shows Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Transformers Prime, and Tron: Uprising, all CG-animated shows that didn't exactly scream “typical anime.” Similarly, the works of mangaka Tsutomu Nihei weren't typically mainstream either. Even his most notable manga, the inscrutable but fascinating Blame!, had only received a seven-episode short ONA/OVA series in 2003.

Based on Nihei's fifteen-volume manga series of the same name, Knights of Sidonia follows young male protagonist Nagate Tanikaze's life in the gargantuan (29 x 5km) sub-light-speed seed ship Sidonia, a typically stark, alien Nihei setting. Having been raised in seclusion by his grandfather, deep in the bowels of the ship, following his grandfather's death, Tanikaze finds himself as an outsider among the other, subtly posthuman, Sidonia residents.

One thousand years previously, the seemingly mindless alien “Gauna” entities destroyed the solar system, with humanity's survivors fleeing in their huge concrete ships, expanding from the asteroids from which they were mined. To adapt, humanity developed the ability to photosynthesize (to reduce food requirements), while also maintaining population via cloning and asexual reproduction. One prominent character is a new, third sex, with the ability to choose between biological female and male sexual capabilities. The comparatively unaugmented Tanikaze struggles to assimilate while also being drafted into the military as a child soldier in the eternal war against the ever-pursuing Gauna.

Knights of Sidonia is a mecha show with fairly standard shonen action and romance filtered through Tsutomu Nihei's deeply strange mind. Tanikaze finds himself embroiled in a weird love triangle between one of the aforementioned third sex characters, and a fifteen-meter-tall human/Gauna hybrid who interacts with other characters mainly in the form of a massive phallic tentacle. No one else does romance quite like Nihei, and that's probably for the best!

Compared to the exemplary work of Studio Orange (BEASTARS, Land of the Lustrous, Trigun Stampede), Polygon Pictures' Knights of Sidonia looks jarringly janky. While the plentiful and kinetic mecha action scenes are incredibly detailed and dramatic, the character rigs and accompanying animation are hopelessly stiff and jerky. Faces are difficult to distinguish, with mask-like expressions that barely change, let alone emote. With a muted color scheme erring on the side of visually boring, it's no wonder that many fans of more traditional 2D animation were repelled by Sidonia's substandard presentation.

Beneath the surface, however, is a compelling story of a people driven to desperate measures to survive. Tanikaze himself isn't that interesting a protagonist, but the surrounding characters are quirky and entertaining, such as the twenty-two-strong “Honoka series”, a group of cloned pink-haired sisters with accelerated growth and development. Sidonia also isn't afraid to kill off or horrifically alter characters if it serves the plot, which isn't at all predictable.

While its visuals can easily repel potential viewers, the soundtrack is superb, especially the first season's pulse-pounding opener, and the dramatic, operatic score that accompanies battle scenes. After a six-year break following Sidonia's second season, the story definitively concluded in the theatrical movie Love Woven in the Stars, which greatly compresses and alters the manga's conclusion. Sidonia must have met with some measure of success for Polygon Pictures, because they subsequently produced a movie version of Nihei's Blame! (which I also enjoyed), and the more recent Kaina of the Great Snow Sea (un?)fortunately using the same divisive CG approach.