5 Anime to Watch Right Now | 3

Hello people of "The Wired" my name is Quan, and welcome back to my series of five anime recommendations. We've been through this song and dance twice now, so let's not waste much time. The rules are simple: I randomly pick five anime that I've seen at some point in time that rank at least above a 5/10 and pitch them here. Hopefully, if you're stuck in a drought of not being sure what to watch next, one of these five shows will be able to satisfy. Now then, let's get started.

Kyoukai no Rinne

Modern day anime has a bad habit of taking itself way to seriously or not seriously enough. Either usually perky premises that should be a lot of fun ton to watch play out are sucked lifeless of "gritty realism" and "edgy characters", or anime that should have a little integrity become hard to take seriously thanks to the tongue-and-cheek meta humor that has become so oversatuated in the medium today.
     Kyoukai no Rinne is a refreshingly light-hearted take on the well-worn "supernatural school action-comedy", that knows it boundaries and never attempts to overstep them with melodrama or needless dark twists. Following the story of Mamiya Sakura, a  cool-headed highchool girl who suddenly gained the ability to see ghosts and other supernatural phenomena after accidentally stumbling into a portal to the afterlife that happened to be in the woods behind her house, the story begins when she meets her classmate Rokudou Rinne, a part-time shinigami whose duty is to guide lost spirits to the wheel of reincarnation: the Rinne no Wa. However, due to being egregiously poor, Rinne often needs to depend on Sakura to support the very expensive work of a shinigami, and gradually, the two form an unlikely partnership, encountering new friends and foes while guiding both friendly and evil spirits to a peaceful rest.
     The story is simple, and that's where the beauty of the show comes into play. All Kyoukai no Rinne needs is a simple formula to play around with many entertaining stories that typically only last half an episode, supported by fantastic cast chemistry that is almost always and funny and entertaining to watch. Sakura's habit of being completely unfazed by all of the supernatural stuff happening plays into how silly and low-stakes the grudges of the spirits of who cannot move on turn out to be(often stuck in the mortal world because they're pissed about things like how they never got to join the tennis club, or never hooking up with a hot lifeguard because they actually ended up drowning with pretending to drown to get said lifeguard's attention), which plays into the low tension chemistry that the cast shares.
     Admittedly, it does have its fair share of problems: since the manga the anime was adapted from is by the same author as InuYasha, the story takes way to much time to get anywhere or really do anything in terms of character development or plot progression, instead to flounder in its own status quo. That's not inherently a bad thing, but once the second season of Kyoukai no Rinne is done airing, there will be 50 episodes in total, and I know watching that much without a clear sense of progression can be frustrating to some.

Wish Upon the Pleiades

Since its peak of incarnation and popularity in the 90's, seemingly the only place for a magical-girl story in the modern anime landscape is if it is some kind of subversion or deconstruction of the genre. Ever since Madoka Magica's run-away success in 2011, a parade of emulator's hoping to capture just a portion of the critical and societal sucess sprung up in the following seasons(and there have only been like, two, that were actually good), establishing a new norm for the genre that seems to have vastly deviated form its child-friendly and often uplifting roots.
    With this in mind, it's not hard to see why Pleiades is such a goddamn breath of fresh air in the last few years. Base-formula magical-girl stories are rare enough these days, but to actually get a 12 episode television series by Gainax that is such a pure manifestation of everything the genre originally stood for seems so unlikely as to be miraculous, as if it was born of a wish upon a star a bright-eyes child made looking out their bedroom window. If that is the case, it would explain why Pleiades' narrative mostly revolves around stars, or to be more precise, a person's own vast universe that it the narrative of their lives from beginning to end. Pleiades starts off a little slow and perhaps even a bit generic, but once the surprisingly complex story gets going, a story that begins in a little girl's home and ends by tying together a multiverse of possible events into an emotional payoff so fantastically well crafted, Pleiades really does become ever bit as good as those old 90's magical-girl shows that it is trying to capture the magic of.
      This is a show that basically lives off its ability to emotionally engage the veiwer with its characters and world, and while nothing ever does get too dark in terms of where the story goes, its nice to see Pleiades can still manage to bundle some narrative stakes in between all of the light-hearted shenanigans that the story mostly gets up to in the first half. It's light without being unsatisfying. Simple without being emotionally complex. And Pleiades is good without needing to stretch beyond what it promised you in the beginning: a magical-girl story that is simply nothing more than a magical-girl story.

Knights of Sidonia

Knights of Sidonia is dumb. Unapologetically dumb, some might say. The world as a whole makes little to no sense, world concepts and stakes are changed around without a second thought most of the time, and the characters often don;t extend outside of predetermined archetypes whose action only make sense in terms of what needs to happen for the story to make sense. However, in my opinion that fact that Knights of Sidonia can have all of those things and still be enjoyable is nothing but a compliment.
     The first obvious hang-up with this series that people are going to have is the fact that the entire thing is rendered with CG, which fortunately looks good for the space mechs that the characters are mostly piloting in this show, as they use them to defend their space station from mysterious alien monsters known as the Gauna, but unfortunately looks absolutely horrible when it tries to capture the image and movements of an actual, you know, person. Once you get used to that CG though, you can start enjoying this show for what it truly is: which is nothing more than a big dumb fun action anime with plenty to offer a casual veiwer.
     The notion of shows that you are supposed to just turn off your brain and enjoy is far from a new one in anime - there's been plenty of examples classic and contemporary that come out nearly every season - but Sidonia is one of the only I've seen that really just bundles together an array of children's room toys for the narrative to play around with. Awesome robot suits with badass designs, impractically huge spaceships with giant lasers and cute tentacle monsters are abound in this space-action show, and having all of these elements not only present but present at the same time only adds to the insane croc-pot of narrative elements that make this show what it is. However, never does Knights of Sidonia feel stupid to an aggravating degree, it knows that the viewers it was built for will enjoy whatever is happening on screen just as long as the show's kinetic energy stays high(which thankfully it does most of the time), and it uses that mutual understanding between audience and media to go all out with the sort of captivating propulsion that it has. Knights of Sidonia isn't a show that will stay in your long term memory for long, but the two seasons it currently has available for viewing are just about some of the best mindless popcorn material that you can get out of Polygon Pictures, and the year that it was launched.

Classroom☆Crisis

I suspect the reason Classroom(Star)Crisis was so widely ignored by the general anime season viewers and those who came after to feed on whatever show's maintained a reasonably small amount of angry backlash throughout their duration, was because early on it gave very little indication on where the narrative would actually go. Hell, I would know, I actually dropped the show two episodes in when I was watching it weekly, because while the premise was sort of unique(a highschool class of super genius kids who work for a rocket manufacturing unit must find a way to stop their program from being shut down by company bureaucracy), I felt like there was very little to get invested in, as the characters seemed like walking taking expository machines, and the narrative suffocated by how contrived it seemed to be in order for the premise to actually work in a real-world scenario. From what I've heard, most stopped watching the show for similiar reasons, and because the Summer 2015 season in which Classroom☆Crisis aired had a number of much more interesting grabs in their first few episodes, whether that be Rokka no Yuusha's fantasy sensibilities(even if that show turned out to be something quite different than a generic hero's journey), or Prison School's indelible mixture of body humor and overdramatization. That reason turns out to be quite ironic, because out of all of the anime that aired that fateful summer, Classroom☆Crisis by the end turned out to be one of the most human.
      Boiling under of the surface of the narrative is a fantastic political thriller that unitizelles its futuristic setting and real-world groundedness to deliver cathartic punches of emotional and story-wise catharsis that only get harder and more frequent as the anime goes on. Yes, what really makes Classroom☆Crisis good doesn't really show itself until the second half, but that's because a lot of set-up is needed for the practical and character stories to work, and that's something I'm willing to accept. Headed by an absolute all star of a main character in Kiryu Nagisa, an irresistible mixture of the arc of Edmond Dantès and the bravado of an anime character, once the set-pieces are out of the way, the anime can start telling the story it wants to, and all bets are basically off at that point. Mixing action, intelligence, character development and hell even romance seamlessly, Classroom☆Crisis is a show good enough and with enough heart to make the veiwer root for it that many of its issues can be overlooked. And yes, issues are everywhere, but the curtain drops on the final act with a flourish of a hand, Classroom☆Crisis is sure to make anybody not care that it is extremely flawed. Because, like the group of misfits that make up its cast, Classroom☆Crisis makes you want to see it succeed, and pull of the greatest presentation in the universe.

Yuri Kuma Arashi

If you haven't noticed by now, somewhat the theme of this list has been anime that start off being seemingly like generic fat brought together by well-worn story elements in order to deliver a bland experience, but turn out to provide a valuable viewing in terms of either storytelling or emotional connection, so it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Yuri Kuma made it onto this list. Kunihiko Ikuhara is a director whose style has formed some of the most visually stunning anime that have ever been conceived, from the audacious Revolutionary Girl Utena to the flawed but still brilliant Mawaru Penguindrum, so I'm not sure why so many people dismissed this show right off the bat just because the beginning was a little hard to comprehend. By their nature, Ikuhara anime are hard to comprehend, for a veiwer not familiar with his style, the absolute overflow per second of visual metaphor and baffling cutaways might be uncomfortable to view. This sort of misses the point though. anime directed by Ikuhara aren't unique because their narratives use an abnormal amount of symbolism, they're unique because the symbolism is tightly interwoven with the narrative.
     I'm not blaming anybody for not enjoying Yuri Kuma when it first started. Even if it is an Ikuhara show, it has a number of flaws on a story-telling level that no amount of pretentious overthinking could wave aside, like how the narrative is extremely rushed with only 12 episodes, or how many of the characters like a substantial amount of charm, or how nothing really starts getting interesting until the second half. And look, those are all legitimate issues, when it all comes down to it, Yuri Kuma is easily the weakest Ikuhara anime yet on a purely technical level, but like its spiritual predecessors, what's not important is the technicalities, what's important is the message, and a message Yuri Kuma definitely has. A message about individuality, faith, sexuallity, society, revenge, human connection and so much more, which all bundles one of the best lesbian romances that anime has been able to pull off so far. It's an experience that I wouldn't want anybody to miss regardless of your personal taste in stories, because even if you don't like it, Yuri Kuma doesn't give up until you at least appreciate it. Because it doesn't give up on the love that is the forefront of its entire narrative. And neither should you.

Goodbye for now guys.



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