This is the first entry in a semi-regular series that I'll be returning to every once and awhile. If anyone remembers, I did a list extremely similiar to this one a few months ago:
10 Anime to Watch Right Now, and doing that countdown kind of made me want to make it a regular thing. However, since 10 is a little much to recommended in every entry of a series, I've shortened it down to 5 and increased the perimeter of anime I'll be recommending. Below are 5 anime that for whatever reason I think are worth your time.
I've done my best to make these choices stretch over a variety of genres, but if there's nothing here that interests you, I'd direct you to the previously mentioned 10 Anime to Watch Right Now, or just wait until I come back a few weeks or months from now with 5 brand new anime. For now though, it's time to get moving.
Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, I hope you're making the most of this lovely wintertime, and welcome to a new countdown. Let's get started.
Gugure! Kokkuri-san
Gag comedy is a type of humor that is a lot more hard to get right than you'd think, but Gugure! Kokkuri-san, an overlooked title from Fall 2014, shows us all just how random situational humor is done. This episodic comedy follows the misadventures of our main heroine Kohina, a dead-pan little girl who claims that she is a "doll", who inadvertently summons a ghost from Japanese folklore: Kokkuri-san. However, upon seeing Kohina's dismal living conditions and diet that consists entirely of cup ramen, Kokkuri-san decides to stay with the lonely doll and take care of her. Along the way, various spirits and entities join the proceedings, building into excellent cast chemistry which is incidentally hilarious, mostly thanks to the anime's great use of comedic timing and ability to exploit the character's personalities for laughs.
I mostly tell people to watch Kokkuri-san just because I find it hard to belief that there's anyone out there who could dislike it. Even the gag comedy occasionally is replaced by referential humor or wit, catching a large demographic with its antics, especially since the show actually has some rather potent emotional moments to go around, especially in the last episode and concerning the psyche of our main character Kohina. You shouldn't watch the anime for that, because that's not what Kokkuri-san is there for, but it's good flavor to add to an already great anime. For fans of the comedy genre, this is absolutely recommended.
Acchi Kocchi
Acchi Kocchi is an anime I only saw a week or two ago, but it has stayed with me for this list for two main reasons. First, it was the first slice-of-anime that came to mind to balance out the genre diversity for this list, and secondly, I felt it was a show that really represented one extreme of the genre. We as viewers typically watch slice-of-life anime to either experience the drama or passing of everyday life. Acchi Kocchi very much looks to put the veiwer into a state of relaxation, as it takes us through the daily life of the characters and the quirky and charming circumstances they get into. This anime sets the stakes low right off the bat, looking into the relationship between Io and Tsumiki, two classmates who can't quite decide whether their feelings for one another is simply friendship or something a little more, which isn't being helped by their group of friends who are constantly trying to get the two of them together.
Acchi Kocchi is the very definition of an adorable rom-com, which made my heart melt at least once every episode with its light-hearted yet still sincere depiction of highschool heartache, never underplaying itself by stooping to fanservice or a harem sub-plot. It's just a simple tale of two people trying to work out how they feel about one another in various adorable ways, and if that sounds like 12 episodes of your time, Acchi Kocchi will be just what the doctor ordered.
Captain Earth
Mindset is important if you want to watch and enjoy Captain Earth. When it first came out, it was mostly critically flamed, but that was because everyone thought this original mecha by Studio Bones would be the next
Eureka Seven or something, which is most certainly is not. No, instead, Captain Earth is a stupidly fun mecha anime that doesn't bother itself too much with putting something complex forward and instead just tries to make its 25-episode ride fun for the audience, which I would argue it does with flying colors. Moving past the unnecessarily convoluted plot and rather flat characters, if you're able to just enjoy the spectacle of amazing mecha space battles animated by Studio Bones, and an overall direction that feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon more than anything, Captain Earth will serve you well to act as a time-waster. Besides, I sort of feel this is a good gate-way mecha for anime fans trying to get into the genre, from which I speak from experience; I have yet to touch any
Gundam or
Macross, but enjoying Captain Earth made me a little more impatient to get started with them. And if you're not interested in any of that and just want a show that mostly doesn't fall into the trap of taking itself too seriously, look no further than Captain Planet. Erm, earth. Captain Earth.
Chivalry of a Failed Knight
Girls with big swords and breasts in a magical highschool has pretty much become its own sub-genre of anime at this point, and has yielded some truly awful shows over the years like
Absolute Duo or
Sky Wizards Academy, so it's nice when a show comes in and reminds us that any anime, regardless of how cliche it may be on the surface, can still put up a good show if it puts some goddamn effort in.
Chivalry of a Failed Knight ran away as my biggest surprise of the Fall 2015 anime season, and that's mostly because of just how easily it could have sucked and sucked
hard. I mean, we've since this premise a million times before already: a LN adaption that has a protagonist in the role of being supposedly the weakest person at his magical highschool or whatever, but beats the strongest fighter in the school(who just so happens to be a princess, how original) in a duel because he's inexplicably secretly overpowered and inducts her into a harem that also includes his little sister for whatever reason, and then said protagonist goes on to basically complete annihilate whatever challenge comes his way. Trust me, Chivalry goes through those steps almost beat-for-beat, but it turns out when you have a well-developed romance that actually goes somewhere, cool ideas and magic powers, and antagonists who aren't just one-dimensional douches but actually fleshed out people whose goals unfortunately clash with the protagonist's, you can actually make a damn good show out of it.
Look, Chivalry isn't perfect. It ventures into the cliche bullsh*t it usually avoids more than a couple times, particularity in episode 2, and honestly, there's a fair amount of ecchi to go around, to such an extreme degree that sort of makes it hard for me to recommend it in earnest, but I feel the good outweighs the bad in this case. That surprised me. Give it a few episodes, and this 12-episode Silverlink anime just may surprise you too.
The Rolling Girls
The world of The Rolling Girls is what makes it completely unmissable for fans of brazen aestheticism, because otherwise, you would only be left with a somewhat unique but still all things considered light addition to the moe slice-of-life genre. See, The Rolling Girls radiates color and personality from every pore, not just in terms of the overall bubbly mood and cute characters, but in one of the most awesome settings I think I've ever seen, which level of design on every detail of its world makes it completely unforgettable. The plot skips through merrily in between explosions of color and action, which only leads to the overall atmosphere of euphoric incredulity, expressed through the inherent charisma of the whole experience.
The Rolling Girls is by any definition a spectacle, and I mean that in both good and bad ways. Even though it's easy to get lost in the action and color, once things slow down in the second half, it becomes obvious that The Rolling Girls has nothing substantial to grab onto, leaving the whole experience feeling lacking in any sort of genuine emotional core that may have elevated this show to become something truly unique. But despite the spectacle being, not hollow quite, but meaningless in the overall picture, it still delights on levels that can be quantified in smiles shown rather than sh*ts given, and though that mindset may not sit right with all viewers, I promise that when the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, The Rolling Girls becomes an experience that is impossible to regret.
Goodbye for now guys.
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