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We're now in the seventh entry of the top.

There's a lot of bad anime out there. Probably more than there is good anime, but still, there's a TON of anime, and even if there might be more bad anime than good one, there's still a very big amount of great anime. That's the main reason I love anime, the reason I've been watching anime for so long with actually no intention to stop watching any time soon.

Now without further ado, let's go with the top:




40. Baccano!



When I have to think about a show about action (with it being the main attraction), Baccano! is always the first that come to mind. This is a show about action, about a lot of crazy action in the hands of some pretty memorable characters.

Baccano!'s storytelling is a mess, but a good mess. It is told in complete disorder, no character order, no timeline, no anything. For the majority of the series, you'll be pretty much lost and don't know what the heck is happening (kind of: "I don't know what the fuck is going on, but it's awesome.", but when getting to the final episodes, when each of the many stories going on in the bigger scheme begin merging, everything will suddenly make sense, the pieces of the puzzle are suddenly well-placed and everything makes sense. That is one of the biggest strengths of this series. It does it really well.

As I said before, this is about the action though, and here, I have to speak about all that's going on in a train (main scenario of the series is a train). I personally love action in a running train, and I can say with absolute certainty that I've never enjoyed these kind of scenes more than I did in Baccano!. It was just great. Characters were awesome and the action was outstanding.

And then there's the OST. A great high-paced jazzy OST that perfectly fits the series (the very opening being a prime example). One of my personal favorite soundtracks in anime.

It is a shame that the original source of Baccano goes on much more than what is covered in the anime, but even so, the anime has a pretty proper ending (which is not original), which doesn't give you a feeling of dissapointment for not being able to continue the story.

Baccano! is a very quick anime, I watched it in a breeze, and is definitely one of the most enjoyable things I've watched. With all that killing and stuff, it's far from being dark in any moment, and there's not really a complex story or anything of the sort. It's not an anime to make you think in the least or something like that, it's just a story to throughly enjoy. That's what it tries to be, and what it manages to be.


39. Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni



A story about cute girls doing cute things!.... Or not. Maybe, just maybe, that's completely off.

I remember when I first watched Higurashi, the artstyle of the series didn't quite convince me (and I wasn't even aware about the artstyle of the original source material!), but this series was recommended to me, and I decided to give it a shot. Glad I did.

At first, this seems just like story about different arcs of cute girls killing each other. Honestly, it doesn't really make sense at all. You never really know what's happening, and that goes on through the whole first season (you do get hints that something's going on though). Second season is where the puzzle starts getting resolved. Just like in Baccano!, but even better executed, everything, every arc in the series starts making sense, the character development starts getting clear, and we ultimately get a resolution to this confusing plot (which, by that time, isn't confusing anymore).

When talking about horror/mystery stories (though by horror don't expect to be scared or anything like it), Higurashi is one of the better ones, and the best when talking about the "isolated village" setting, even better than Shiki (which is also great).

The way this series changes from being something very light, full of comedy, that could really work as a slice of life (which they do in some horrible OVAs), to something very dark. Sometimes this changes can last episodes, but it's also impressive how they can last seconds. Moments when in the middle of that light moment, a character snaps for a moment completely changing the tone of the series.

Yes, characters in this series are crazy, very crazy. But there's some great development in this madness, in watching how it originated and how it transforms. To this day, this is still one of my favorite gore series, not by the way the gore is physically presented (how could it with such an artstyle), but by the characters act, the kind of things they do, and why not, the reiteration. It's absolutely fantastic.

I don't think I've seen OST's so fitting to their series as it is with Higurashi. The OST just works perfectly. There may not be a more fitting opening to it's series than with Higurashi and the first opening. The whole OST works like that. It just fits in there perfectly.

Higurashi is the best anime puzzle out there, with a very well thought plot and very memorable characters. You never know who's good and who's bad, and you'll eventually think they're all bad here, they're all crazy. And while it's not completely false, there is much more to it. Going through the whole process is really an amazing experience.


38. Takarajima



Now this is what you call an adventure anime and a story about pirates and treasures.

Takarajima is an adaption of the famous novel "Treasure Island" written by Robert Louis Stevenson, a classic that a lot of people have to read sometime at school.

Just like the book, this series is all about the adventure of getting the hidden treasure, which is extremely well written. The story is full of action, character development, betrayals, friendship and more, and in some ways that are just quite unique.

I enjoy One Piece (and you can see that as it is part of this top), but if you're looking for pirates, this is the place to go, these are the real pirates, people that steal, sink boats, people that are feared by everyone and do all kinds of criminal acts, but that also happen to be sailors. This really is about adventures and searching for treasures.

Something that impressed me about this adaption is that I might have actually enjoyed it more than the original novel, mainly because I think characters were portrayed even better in this story, especially our two main characters: Jim Hawkins and John Silver. They were incredibly well written, and Silver really became one of my favorite characters, he was just fantastic through the whole series.

While I was not a fan of Jim's character design, the overall art was great and the animation was pretty good considering how old is this series (1977). Music was also pretty good, I loved the jazzy tunes that played through some of the action scenes.

Osamu Dezaki again proved to be one of the greatest anime directors ever, keeping the series faithful to the original story, but without ever becoming a copy, and, like I said before, he might've even managed to 1-up the original source, which is not something easy to accomplish.


37. Gin no Saji



I can't say there's a lot of anime that teaches me things I didn't already know, but Gin no Saji (or Silver Spoon) is one of the select few that does. It teached me about a lifestyle I knew it existed, but I was completely ignorant about.

This series might be the best definition of what a slice of life should be about (I think lately pretty much everything is tagged as a slice of life). In this case, it's a slice of life about life in the farm, and the anime makes a point of emphasis in that. This anim really is about the daily life of a group of people (mainly Hachiken) in the farm. While the series gives us a lot of funny (actually, hilarious) moments with the animals and the dialogues as a whole, Gin no Saji really shows us what living and working in a farm is like. It's detailed in showing us how you have to be up and working when the sun rises, it shows us that behind everything, a farm it's still a business and it also shows us how hard it can be to not actually get attached to animals, because, in the end, those animals will soon be food.

It is pretty clear that Hiromu Arakawa made a lot of research when writing this series, because the farm setting is really far from an excuse to the story.

The other really important aspect about this series is the character development. Hachiken, a city boy, starts getting to get used and love this new life in a farm (which he chose just to be as far as he could from his parents). Hachiken's development is one of the biggest developments I've seen in any character, and this is both in his relationships as in his farming life.

But Hachiken isn't the only character developing. Mikage, the main girl, which seems almost perfect at the beginning, is little by little shown how she also has her fair share of problems, and eventually starts really growing as a character. Minor characters, while not being as developed as this two, are also changing little by little, and by the end you really do care about pretty much every character in the series.

Behind some of the best comedy I've ever seen in an anime, Gin no Saji can also be one of the most serious anime out there. By that I don't mean a dramatic anime, a series about large scale conflicts or anything of the sort... it's actually something I find much more impactful, as it is things in a smaller scale, but things that are much closer to the viewers. Silver Spoon really shows us the importance of hardwork, teamwork and friendship. It also shows us that the world is not perfect. I said before how it shows how farms are a business, and sometimes a business just can't be sustained and it bankrupts. Some families are completely dependant on their farm, and bankrupting can mean some serious trouble, and sometimes you just can't really do nothing but move on.

There are a lot of things to be learned from this anime, both in an external way (you really do learn about farm life) or an internal way (life lessons).

Only shame about Gin no Saji is the fact that the story isn't finished, and it is possible we never get to see a season 3. Hopefully sometime we do, and if not, I'll probably end up reading the manga.


36. Tokyo Magnitude 8.0



This really should be call something more like Tokyo Magnitude 10.0, but well, I won't complain about the detail. What's important is that is about a huge earthquake that would pretty much destroy Tokyo (they got a 9.0 earthquake a year and a half after this anime was released).

When talking about animes with drama as their main genre, I don't think there is an anime that can top Tokyo Magnitude. This is a story about a pair of siblings and a woman who need to survive through a ruined Tokyo after a devastating earthquake.

It is only normal that you would want to be with your family after a devastating earthquake, and not even knowing if they're alive without any form of communication must be one of the most desesperating sensations to feel. In the case of Mari, she just want to know about her little daughter, and in the case of Mirai and Yuuki, they're just children who want to see their parents.

The story is pretty straight in that regard, and we see the relationship between all three main characters grow a lot as their journey progresses, with Mari taking a role as close to what a mother would be, taking care of this two children even when she was drowned in worries about her own daughter.

While, again, the destruction might be exaggerated for an 8.0 earthquake (as a sidenote, I've been in the center of an 8.8 earthquake... while it is devastating, it was not like the anime), the important message is imagining an earthquake that would be too much for a city. In the end, nature is still much more powerful than humans. That is pretty well done, and it really shows how things would be like in such a situation. A really good point for this anime, which had double effect as I watched it just a little after living my own earthquake.

But the best part of the show probably comes about halfway through. While I won't directly spoil, I'll right the next paragraph in spoiler, as I think reading this before watching the anime might ruin the experience a little bit.



I just recently watched a recap episode to write this with the series a little bit more fresh, and I can definitely say it hasn't lost its touch at all. It's still as good as ever.


35. Cross Game



It’s not even tagged as such, but let me start saying that the main thing about Cross Game is the Slice of Life element, much more than baseball or even romance.

The first thing I noticed about this series is that it’s engaging from the first moment and remains constant through all 50 episodes. The very first episode delivers a huge blow, and does it in such a good way that it doesn’t feel forced in any way. It’s a pretty dramatic moment, but instead of trying to induce a sea of tears from the audience by overacting, it creates a sense of emptiness by using a lot of silence combined with a great reaction by the main character against such an event. A beautiful ending closes the episode leaving me speechless. The first episode of Cross Game was one of the best premiere episodes I’ve ever seen.

From that point on, the series builds up always using the events of that episode as ground base. The tragic event changes the life of the main characters, particularly Aoba and Kou, who very slowly need to overcome the tragedy. The series is about this slow but steady process while at the same time it starts creating and strengthening bonds using baseball as a medium. Characters unite for the sake of one big goal, to make that one last dream real.

The great thing about Cross Game is that it always feels both relaxing and engaging. You want to keep watching and the series makes you feel relaxed but concentrated. This is done with some great sound direction, never overusing BGM, and that combined with Adachi Mitsuru’s drawing, which created some really nice stoic expressions on the characters. And of course, the most important thing is the interactions between characters, which are just fantastic, sometimes being very subtle, using a lot of ironies, sometimes being extremely honest, and sometimes not so much. Again, it all feels very real, it never feels like you’re watching a play or something like that. No dramatic moments even in the most dramatic times. There’s no one who does this as well as Adachi Mitsuru; no one.

Because of the above, the chemistry between characters, especially Kou and Aoba is simply fantastic, because of how slowly the build on it, but without ever getting stuck, always flowing naturally, like a gentle stream.

Cross Game is one of those sports anime that are a perfect recommendation for both, people who are fans of sports anime and people who’re not. Which pretty much means it’s a valid recommendation for anyone (except maybe those who only like fast-paced action, gore and such).

Another thing I really like about the series is that they literally grow a lot from episode 1 to episode 50. Time does steadily pass as the series progresses. The characters grow in every possible way, and the series makes a point in the fact that this doesn’t happen in a day. The progress shown in the series is a work of years for the characters.

The only thing I can really say against Cross Game is that it ends. This is the kind of series you kind of feel you’d enjoy for all eternity. I’d love seeing the main characters through adulthood and more. I don’t think I’d ever get bored, even if it’s just seeing them simply interacting between each other.


34. Perrine Monogatari



Hector Malot is really good at making good kids suffer while learning how to survive without a penny, isn’t he?
Perrine Monogatari is based on the book En Famille (not to be confused with Sans Famille) and it actually expands the story a little bit, but remaining faithful to the book. In this case, while the series starts slow with some original episodes, we get to learn a bit more from Perrine and her mother at the beginning when they’re travelling to France while trying to make a living by taking photographs in their travels. Those first episodes are a little bit slow, but really help develop Perrine, and more importantly, her relationship with her mother.

The series really starts getting good when they get to Paris, as things get more difficult, the drama begins and, well, this is where the book actually begins. Perrine is forced to go through a lot of development through the series, growing into a very capable human being, all while never forgetting her parent’s teachings and always being the same girl. Through a number of episodes, Perrine learns a bit of the bad things in life in the hard way, she learns that not everybody is good, she learns about the value of food, a roof and, of course, good people. While she also learns some people will try to harm her, she also learns there are people willing to help her without hoping to gain anything. Just like it happens with Sans Famille (Ie Naki Ko), Perrine is a bit of a life lesson in many things.

Now, for that kind of things, Ie Naki Ko is miles ahead of Perrine, but where Perrine really does shine on its own, is when she actually gets to Maraucourt and takes the name of Aurelie. Now the story mainly becomes a tale of a girl warming the heart of an old man, the tale of a girl that’s afraid of revealing her identity and that little by little gets to know the grandfather she never got to know before, as the grandfather little by little starts appreciating Perrine without actually knowing she’s her granddaughter.

The art in this series is honestly not good, and I love old anime, so it’s not just a thing about “being old”, but then again, I think I was already used to it by the third episode, so I guess I just don’t care that much about that. Characters are really fleshed in the series and something that is shared with a lot of older stuff, they actually feel real, and they don’t feel like tropes you see in every anime, even if the general profile of Perrine is actually relatively common in WMT anime.

Maybe the character that stood out the most for me here was Perrine’s grandfather, Vulfran. The reason for this is actually a personal one: he is almost the living image of my father. The whole development of Vulfran is something I can see in my father. From being a bit too stubborn sometimes, really difficult to convince against something he thinks, but admittedly, a very intelligent guy who more times than not is actually right. He can look very cold to outsiders, but he actually loves his family more than anything, and is just not really good at simple social interactions, even if he’s great at serious stuff. It was absolutely impossible to me not to relate him to my father, and his development feel a bit like what my father went through from the beginning of the 90s to today.

The way this series combines dramatic difficult moments, warm moments, improving situations and deteriorating situations together, all while managing to keep thing real, with the events never going too much into the “unrealistic” region and, most of all, the characters reacting in ways that are perfectly understandable given the different situations is what really makes Perrine Monogatari stand out above most series. That’s what makes Hector’s Malot book a “literature classic” and what makes the faithful adaption an impressive series.


33. Trapp Ikka Monogatari


An adaption of an incredibly famous novel and an even more famous musical, Trapp Ikka Monogatari is the story about the von Trapp family; a story about family love, about building relationships through music and an excellent historical piece from just before the beginning of World War II.

Let’s start by saying that Trapp Ikka Monogatari is a real story (with some added stuff of course, but mostly real) that just like the famous musical The Sound of Music (if some of you are jazz fans or saw Sakamichi no Apollon, you might recognize THIS classical theme from the musical), is based on The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, a book written by Maria Kutschera, who besides being the author of the story happens to be the main character of it. The other important characters are Georg Ludwig von Trapp, a World War I Austrian hero and his seven children. This is the story of Maria from the moment she went to a convent to live as a nun until she found a place of happiness in her life.

Maria gets to the von Trapp household to teach one of the von Trapp children as she can’t go to school because of being sick, which ends up being quite a hard job considering there’re seven kids there, and they’re not initially happy to receive someone. Through music and a constantly cheerful attitude, Maria little by little starts winning the kids over, and at some point, becomes an invaluable person for the von Trapp household, and the first one to really be accepted as a teacher after something like 25 people (aprox) who failed before. Through this process, the series is really good at showing the value of a family, how important it is for kids to have someone, and the series is mostly a slice of life during a big portion, just developing characters and relationships. A really good one, I must add.

All of that said, the series shines the most when the Anschluss happens. For those who don’t know, the short story about the Anschluss is the term the Nazi used for annexing Austria into the Nazi army. When we talk today about the Nazi army, we mostly talk about them as if they were devils, and one of the few political things were most people agree is that the Nazis are bad. The Nazis are always the bad guys in movies, videogames or whatever; but it is really important to remember that that was not necessarily the case in 1938. When the Nazi army marched into Austria, it was not received with opposition but with cheers and applause. The Nazi gained an incredible support and, for many, Hitler was considered a fantastic human being in the eyes of many. We should never forget that, in large part, Hitler won all his power because he was an extremely charismatic person. Anyways, the thing about Trapp Monogatari is that is shows us this side of the story. As common as they are as a topic today, the Nazi are rarely a topic in anime (maybe because Japan was an ally to them), and when they are, it’s usually in a non-serious way, things like Nazi vampires (hi Hellsing) or sometimes just modern groups of Neo-Nazis, which would be the case in Monster. But Trapp Ikka Monogatari shows the daily life of a group of people who didn’t support the Nazi, but they were the weird ones, because most of Austria supported them.

Annexation is a pretty interesting term, because contrary to just “beating the enemy”, it means making them part of you, and this story shows just that, it shows how an Austria annexed by the Nazi works. Some really nice small details like how they actually forced people to walk in one direction through a road or how kids were forced to always salute with the famous Nazi salute “Heil Hitler”, and the series shows how this actually becomes just a part of a routine for most people. The Trapp Family had no interest in serving Hitler, but Hitler had interest in them in various ways. First of all, Georg von Trapp was a war hero, and as such, Hitler wanted him to join the Nazi ranks, something Georg von Trapp, as a very patriot Austrian, was always trying to avoid. Even more, Hitler even becomes interested in them as singer, and as an ultimate honor, he even invites them to sing for his birthday.

For a family that was going through some big financial problems and ideology problems, the whole Anschluss was a big nightmare and we all know that things actually got worst from there with the War exploding through the world. Watching the family go through that became a fantastic experience, with this being probably the best anime when treating the topic of Nazis. With some great character development, an impressive historical context, even more so by the fact that the story itself is a classic and a great plot development, Trapp became better and better with each passing episode, delivering a grand final arc that its only problem would be the fact that it could’ve been a bit longer, not because of pacing, but just because of having the opportunity to watch more about the Anschluss. Also, before that, a thing I really liked about the series is that, even if through details, the series shows the deteriorating state of Austria as the series progresses, which basically means showing how the Anschluss came to be from the Austrian side.

The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, The Sound of Music or Trapp Ikka Monogatari, like many other WMT works, is a classic precisely because it gives some great understanding about the Nazi oppression, and it does it from the inside, from the point of view of a family.

With some catchy music themes, great characters and a really nice art, Trapp Ikka Monogatari became a more than worthy adaption of this big classic.


32. Planetes



This is easily the most believable space sci-fi series I've seen. It's the one most close to real science that I've ever seen, and poses something that is, at the very least, a bit more believable for a probably still distant future.

Because of the above, Planetes presents us a really interested and well executed setting, where our main characters are basically garbage men in space. Their work is picking up the debris in space, cleaning it. They're actually perfectly combining one of the most typical children "things I want to be when I grow up" (astronaut) with one that's probably never been mentioned (garbage man) (PS: This is, by no means, an insult to the people who work at that).

Planetes is a slice of life anime with romance, were we get a main couple early, with a relationship that's always developing. They're pretty likeable characters (okay, Hachimaki could be annoying sometimes, but Tanabe was awesome). As a whole, Planetes has a very likeable characters and some subtle comedy that never invades the series in excess, but can result very effective (it is not a comedy though).

Beyond that romance, Planetes goes much more further, and really tries giving a bit of a life lesson. A lesson about following your dreams, but a lesson of taking care of not getting lost in them. It also makes a lot of use of it's magnificent setting, it shows us the good, but also the bad that might come with space development for mankind, it shows us a lot of things that if you think for a little bit, might really actually happen the day humanity starts developing in space... the best proof is the very same development we've already seen on Earth.

Planetes is definitely an anime that is unique in its own class. One of those anime that can actually make you think a little bit about the possible futures for the humankind.

The series is already more than 10 years old, but to this day, it still looks very good, and having an excellent soundtracks also helps.

Finally, Planetes gives us a pretty great experience through the whole series, starting like a slice of life a bit episodic, but then shifting more into a story with much more continuity and with more developed characters, and everything to end up with one of the most memorable endings I've seen in an anime.


31. Casshern Sins



Casshern Sins is a series that actually never even crossed my mind watching it for many years. I mean, it’s based on a 70s show I’m not interested at all, and by the same line, it’s a series about a guy who goes through the world with a kind of ridiculous costume reminiscent of and Ultraman… and I pretty much despise Ultraman, Power Rangers and pretty much all those kinds of shows.... but boy, what a deceiving thing was Casshern Sins, because it really has nothing to do with those kind of shows, I mean, really, this is mostly a philosophical show above anything else, it’s a show about thinking, a show about setting a dark and depressing atmosphere.

This series has a clear theme, and that’s death, which in the end, is commonly the most depressing theme for human beings… though in this case is mainly in robots. We first get a completely dystopian setting, which adding salt to the wound, it seems to have become like that because of our main character; everything was perfect before, but now, because our main character killed someone that was pretty much God, the world is dying, and the previously inmortal robots are suddenly afflicted with the ruin, which is basically getting rusty and dying. And just think about it a little bit, because if death is already depressing for us, how would it be to someone who wasn’t really familiar with the concept, to someone who really didn’t die. The results are pretty obvious, and everyone begins despairing.

You’re supposed to think a bit with this series, that’s what it invites you to do in a story that has mostly an episodic format, but that little by little progresses with a main plot revolving in the truth behind the past of Casshern, all while developing relationships and feelings of the different main characters in the series. Of course, with death comes the idea of acceptance. No one can beat death, so of course, besides all the despairing, the series does delve into the idea of accepting death for what it is and just enjoying the time you have.

This is by no means a happy series, it’s quite depressing. It has somewhat of an encouraging message, but it really is dark from start to end, keeping itself very faithful to the concept it explores so much.

The artstyle plus animation of this series is a big case of old meets new. As I said before, Casshern Sins is based on a 70s show, which is named Shinzou Ningen Casshern (you DON’T need to watch this to understand Casshern Sin… actually, I recommend not even bothering with it), and well, the kind of drawing is very typical to the 70s, and Sins keeps those things intact, all while obviously improving qualities and making it modern. But the best production feature of this series comes from the OST, which is absolutely wonderful at creating the appropriate dark atmosphere in the series (which in this case is specially crucial). I can only tip my hat to Kaoru Wada for his work in the music and to Shigeausu Yamaguchi for his work at directing this project.





And that would be it for the seventh entry. Now there's only 30 anime left.

From now on, each entry will only contain 5 positions, as they'll usually have longer texts.

Feel free to leave a comment in my profile or in this entry, it would actually be appreciated, as it's always nice to see that someone's reading what you write (at least when you put some effort in it).


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