Breaking news: Anime is STILL the worst thing ever—and I'm one more year closer to proving it once and for all.

Just like I did for 1995 last month, I went ahead and tried every single anime, movie, and OVA released in the year 1996 that I could find a stream for on the Internet (not that I condone piracy or anything). I may not have been able to watch literally every little thing, however, because (believe it or not) there's some obscure shit out there that simply cannot be found anywhere on the Internet. I've still seen a good 90%, though, and that's gonna have to be good enough.

Why am I doing this? So that you, an intelligent person who doesn't like anime, don't ever have to. If you hate anime, but you have a friend who's really trying to get you into some stupid looking shit that you know you won't like, just come to me, and I'll be sure to let you know whether you should give it a try. That's the goal. 99% of the time, my answer will be "don't bother," but once in a thousand blue moons, there is an anime that transcends the medium, breaks all of its conventions, shits down the industry's throat, and is just, overall, a cut above the rest in terms of its artistic quality and is well worth your time.

Those are the anime that I'm endlessly searching for, and those are the shows I want to share with you. Lists like these will help facilitate that imperative.

Last time, for all of 1995, I was able to find two things worth watching—a single short film in an anthology of three, where two of the others weren't nearly as good, and a guilty pleasure ecchi comedy show that's only good because of its off-the-wall dub. That didn't bode well for the future, but I pressed on anyway.

So, across the entirety of the year 1996, what was produced in the anime industry that was actually worth a singular fuck?

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That's right, I couldn't find a single goddamn thing for that entire year. Now, some of you might be thinking, "That doesn't make sense. Even if you hated all the shows, you could still just make a top 10 list of the least-worst ones."

True, but that's not how I like to do things. The thing is, "top 10s" are kind of arbitrary. If there were more than ten shows worth recommending to you, why would I not recommend to you ALL of those shows? Why limit myself to just ten? Furthermore, if there weren't ten shows I thought were good enough, why would I fill up the list with a bunch of horrible crap just to round out the list to the random and arbitrary number that is ten? That would be silly.

So, at the end of the year, if there wasn't anything that made the cut, I'm submitting a blank list.

Hell, here's a list of every single thing that I didn't watch, either because it was too obscure and I couldn't find it, or because it was part of a larger series that I've already given up on, like Dragon Ball.


For all I know, any of these could be absolute gold, and I'm completely missing out on it because of how I choose to consume this medium. So by all means, maybe check those out at your own risk, if you can even find them anywhere. In terms of them actually being good, though? I'd say the odds are against you, because 1996 was a dogshit year for a dogshit medium.

Mind you, my absolute bare minimum score to end up on one of my lists is a 7/10. That's me trying to be generous. Originally, I set it to 8/10 until I realized I wasn't going to have anything for the 1995 list, either. So I lowered it by a full point just so I could squeeze Magnetic Rose and Golden Boy in with a couple of asterisks. I can't even justify doing that with anything I've seen for 1996, because the highest score I gave was a 6/10.

I was dropping so many 1/10s that my mean score on MAL dipped below 3, giving me the "Less than three" achievement.


So, I suppose in order to prevent this from being a total shitpost, I suppose I might as well pad it with... I don't know, something. I guess I could try to give you a bunch of stuff that might suit your fancy, if you have low standards. I don't know if I'd consider these honorable mentions—they're certainly a cut above the rest, but they're ultimately just typical anime garbage. So, I'm not formally recommending ANY of these to anybody. Watch them at your own discretion.

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Spring & Chaos - If you put a gun to my head and asked me to give an AotY award to something from 1996, I guess it would have to be this. Directed by Shoji Kawamori of Macross fame, this is a touching little art film made to celebrate the Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa's 100th birthday (despite having been long dead since 1933). I think it's meant to be somewhat of an artistic retelling of the man's life or something. Everyone in the story is depicted by a cat, which is kind of weird until you realize it's a reference to another adaptation of one of Miyazawa's more famous stories, Night on the Galactic Railroad, where everyone is also a cat. Anyway, it's not fucking fantastic or anything—there's a couple of terrible scenes that use CG that are incredibly off-putting and pretty much ruin the whole thing for me, but if you were wondering what my 6/10 was for this year, this would have to be it. It's the best thing 1996 could muster.

Rurouni Kenshin - It's a fairly standard yet highly sterile shonen series with mature, likable characters, a decent if kinda dull at times plot, and most notably, is relatively low on the stereotypical shonen tropes that so many detractors of anime are sick of. It's not completely bereft of them, or anything, but with regards to female characters being portrayed like actual human fucking beings, this show manages to impress. But I find it a little bit too long and too boring to hold my attention. It's just not terribly interesting to me. This is probably the most successful show to come out of the year 1996, if that means anything to you at all. It doesn't to me, but there you go. It's a 5/10.

Martian Successor Nadesico - Another relatively popular show. It's not at all for me, but I can see some extremely nerdy Star Trek-watching loser just eating this show up. It's not particularly serious in tone—in fact, it almost comes across like a parody of the sci-fi genre at times—so if you want to have a lighthearted little space romp with annoying Japanese anime characters, I don't know, fucking go for it man.

Jigokudou Reikai Tsuushin - This one, I'm only mentioning because I think it has really cool atmosphere and art design. It's a 30-minute horror-lite OVA with just one episode, so if you scare easily, maybe miss out on this one, but it shouldn't be that bad. I think it's made for kids. It's a hard one to find on Google, and I had to watch a version that didn't have subtitles—but the story was easy enough for me to follow that I honestly didn't even need them. If an anime is able to keep me entertained without even needing to understand what anyone is saying, that deserves props.

Remi, Nobody's Girl - A World Masterpiece Theater production. People seem to love those. If you don't even know what that is, skip it and watch Romeo and the Black Brothers instead. Or not. I would suggest that you just read the original stories, personally.

There's also Case Closed (AKA Detective Conan), Spooky Kitaro, The Vision of Escaflowne, Chocchan Monogatari, Kodocho, Baby and Me, and the X/1999 movie directed by Rintaro. I rated all of these between a 3 and 4/10, so I have no kind words to say about any of them, but they're all rated relatively high on MAL, so maybe they're worth giving a simple mention to.

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That is all.

1997, you're next. I might do 2018, too.

Youre turning into a weeb ya know.

otaku*

Quote from: Batch on April 08, 2018, 04:46:21 PM

Youre turning into a weeb ya know.

by hating anime more than i enjoy it

gotcha

First stage of weeb denial