Hey guys! The Winter 2021 Anime Season has officially come to a close this week and I have to say that this season absolutely killed with the content we got! So much was so good that I don't even know how I'm going to break it all down!
Jujutsu Kaisen is definitely my anime of the season and perhaps this isn't the most fair cause it is a leftover drama from the Fall 2020 season but I can't help but think that nothing else I watched this season compared! The world this show built was so fun to see, the animation was out of this world, and the magic was nuanced and unique and I can't wait to see it explored more cause I feel like we're just scratching the surface. I do have to admit that at first I wasn't the biggest fan of the ensemble and I did think the tournament arc took place a bit too early but in the end I ended up really enjoying how the whole season played out and how attached I got to the characters in the end.
Runner Up - Horimiya
Kemono Jihen is my pick for hidden gem of the season cause though I definitely enjoyed the runner up a lot, I feel like a ton of people checked that anime out while I heard of practically no one watching this one! I actually didn't even know that it was a shounen jump anime until the anime was practically over which is why I was extra confused as to why no one checked it out. It reminded me a lot of shows like Demon Slayer in which the main plot of our show was to hunt down and kill demons though I think it was unique of this show to use actual children as their leads. I loved every single one of our main characters and I even adored some of the supporting characters as well. The mysteries were fun to watch and some of the darker stuff hit just as hard as the show would have wanted it to.
Runner Up - SK8 The Infinity
Promised Neverland Season 2 is the best sequel of this season and this is another pick that isn't entirely fair cause it was actually the only anime sequel that I watched and in actuality I don't even think it deserves this win by default cause of how poorly this second season butchered this show. Now here's the thing I wasn't one of those fans of season 1 that claimed this show was a godsend but I didn't hate it either so when this season started and all I heard was that this season would be animating the best manga arc I was excited only to be disappointed by how rushed the pace felt. The first half really did fascinate me but then everything sped up as if the show was like we will not have another season so we need to wrap things up! The world became bigger and more fascinating but at the cost of the characters we adored.
Runner Up - None
Runner Up - None
SK8 The Infinity had the best animation this season and you know this is true cause I wasn't even planning on watching this anime when I first heard about it cause I'm really not the biggest fan of animes in which all the characters are guys or girls but I checked out the first episode out of curiosity and the sheer beauty of the animation in that first race that Langa had at the end of episode one got me to come back for more. I love the way all the characters and skateboarding are animated as well as the color and tone of the show!
Runner Up - Jujutsu Kaisen
Runner Up - Jujutsu Kaisen
Paradise by Rude-a from SK8 The Infinity is definitely my favorite OP of the season and this one was kinda hard cause there wasn't too many OPs that I didn't want to skip on the regular so the fact that I listened to this one a few times was enough to let it win!
Runner Up - Shake Shake Shake by Yuuma Uchida from Dr Ramune: Mysterious Disease Specialist
Yuuji Itadori from Jujutsu Kaisen is my protagonist of the season and really there was no competition here. I gushed about why Jujutsu Kaisen was my anime of the season earlier but I tried to avoid talking about Itadori during it cause I knew that he was going to be my protag for the season! The thing is that you all know if you've followed me for a while that I love shounen animes but I tend to find that I enjoy the ensemble more than the protags but in this show I ended up getting attached to Itadori before anyone else! I mean of course he's got a lot of the characteristics that shounen protags have like a big heart, love of his friends, and a strength that most do not but I liked that Itadori wasn't the typical naive attack first think second type of character that I dislike. He is able to think things through when he needs to and he feels more mature and grounded than a lot of others.
Runner Up - Kumuko from So I'm A Spider, So What?
Runner Up - Kumuko from So I'm A Spider, So What?
The demons from The Promised Neverland are my antagonists of the season cause I actually really like the way The Promised Neverland utilizes them. In season 1 they were more of the background villains in that we rarely saw them but we knew that they were there while here in season 2 they're much more front and center and yet we find ourselves questioning everything we know. We've met both good and bad demons throughout this show and we're left wondering if they're really as evil as we thought they were. Beyond that it asks us to think about the fact that the demon/human relationship in the show isn't much different from the human/animal relationship in real life. Demons need humans to eat the way that we like to eat meat. The rich demons are the ones that get the prime cuts while the poor demons get the leftovers and there are others that want wild humans rather than farmed ones. We also see demons that like to use humans in experiments to test different hypotheses and between Emma and Norman we are left wondering which side is right.
Runner Up - Mahito from Jujutsu Kaisen
Hori and Miyamura from Horimiya are hands down my ship of the season! Part of this might be unfair cause Horimiya was the only romance anime I watched this season but it was also one so good that it might end up on my favorite romance animes of all time! Hori and Miya were absolute perfection together and I loved that the show allowed us to see their relationship progress in such a natural way. Within the course of this season we saw them become friends, confess their feelings, hold hands, kiss, sleep together, and even explore their kinks. When was the last time a romance anime went beyond the will they/won't they?? I loved that Hori and Miya showed their true selves to each other first and that they were the first to accept all the positives and negatives they had.
Runner Up - Reki and Langa from SK8 The Infinity
And with that I'll see you all in the Spring 2021 Season!!
xoxo Allie
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