2012: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The author is a life-long fan of anime. The author first acquired a taste for anime at the tender young age of five and has never looked back. The author spends far too much time treading back and forth between Japan―their homeland―and the United States, where they currently reside. (Apologies for the anonymity, but it was requested by the author. - Ed.)

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On December 31st, 2012, I walked out of the Mandarake in Akihabara into the chilly Tokyo night. After three days at Comiket, I was beat, but not beat enough to forgo the chance to pick up some last-minute goods before retiring for the night. On my way out, I saw a sign on the shop's door:

"The word of the year is 'imouto'."

So here we are, nearly fifty years after Tetsuwan Atomu. Our long, meandering journey through the history of anime leads us to this pithy little sign posted outside on of Tokyo's largest otaku interest shops, and the word of the year is "imouto". In one simple, elegant sentence, the staff of Mandarake evoked the zeitgeist of a generation: a generation who worships archetypes, not characters; a generation sensitive to trending words and phrases; a generation who revels in the predictability of industrially-produced plot lines and personages. There is no lament in the sentence, "The word of the year is 'imouto'." Only glee. In Dostoevsky's immortal words, from universal reason, we have arrived at universal madness.

2009: The Internet Finally Takes Over

Feeling rather humbled by participating in the project, Raindrops (@DaydreamsUK) is a relatively new blogger from the UK who has been a fan since the early nineties. She spends most of her free time watching anime and speculating furiously about the future of the industry overseas. Choosing 2009 was originally a thinly-veiled excuse to mention her favorite show, and you can follow all those opinions on her blog, Raindrops and Daydreams.

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As we draw closer to the fifty-year milestone for anime on television, we've seen the medium moving from monochrome to color and from cel animation to digital. Along the way, it's inspired a vast global audience and survived several new home video formats. 2009 ended up being a year bursting with the same rich innovation as anime continued to explore new approaches both on screen and behind the scenes. While I'm not sure whether any will end up as future classics, there were so many interesting projects on offer that I was forced to make some tough choices in selecting the series I wanted to introduce.

The first title on my list, however, should surprise nobody who was active in the fan community four years ago. Its sequels are still selling well today, its theme songs have become anthems and the script was often rumored to be "untranslatable" by fans trying to rationalize the length of time it took to appear in the US. The series I'm talking about is Shaft's Bakemonogatari.

2006: Welcome to the Next Level

Serdar Yegulalp, a tech journalist by day, is also the Site Guide for Anime.About.com. He also runs his own science-fiction-and-fantasy imprint, Genji Press, where he blogs about SF, movies, creativity, the complexities of self-publishing, the Sun Ra and Skinny Puppy back catalogs, and most everything else that catches his attention. He also occasionally sticks his neck out on Twitter (@genjipress).

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Back when I started curating Anime.About.com, one of the first feature articles I put together was a four-parter which involved a number of anime at different "course levels." An anime that required no understanding of Japanese culture or Japan to begin with was a "100-level" anime. Another that was still easy to get into but would be best appreciated with a little foreknowledge was a "200-level" anime. A show pitched mainly for Japanese audiences, or which one wasn't likely to find accessible unless you were already steeped in the tropes and quirks of anime generally was a "300-level" anime. (I later refined the categories a little, but the basic concept remains intact.)

I now wonder if listing Black Lagoon as a 100-level anime was such a good idea.

For the average adult (most likely male) Western audience member, Black Lagoon actually isn't difficult to get into at all—provided they don’t mind being dropped into the middle of the most violent, raunchiest, most foul-mouthed, cynically-scripted story this side of, well, every 1980s-era Chow Yun-Fat action vehicle and every 1990s Michael Bay production. Black Lagoon was created in homage to and for the audiences of exactly those things, and like a lot of anime itself, you either eat this stuff up or you run like hell.

But if Black Lagoon the anime is like that, it's only because Black Lagoon the manga, the source material—which started hitting shelves in 2002—is also like that. Form is merely following function, and Black Lagoon's function is to dance right on the line between being entertaining and being repugnant.

2005: In A Silent Way

@QX20XX does not have a Ph.D. in cultural studies, is not featured in any magazines or books, and only writes for anigamers.com. Once deemed "a great example of cognitive dissonance in action," QX started writing about anime as a joke, but that joke stopped being funny over a year ago. QX likes hamburgers, probably enjoys your least favorite anime, prefers Asuka over Rei, and dreams of designing a video game you will regret letting your children play.

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Ask anyone for post-2000 anime recommendations and you're guaranteed to receive at least one of the following responses.

"You should watch Aria."

"I definitely recommend Aria."

"What do you mean you haven't seen Aria?"

If I said Mars of Destruction was the only anime I had seen from the year 2005, I wouldn't be lying except that Akagi also happened to air in 2005.

What do you mean you haven't seen Mars of Destruction?

Best known for its extensive catalog of otome games, video game publishing company and development studio Idea Factory occasionally produces anime series and OVAs based on their properties. In 2005, Idea Factory produced a twenty-minute OVA for a visual novel they developed for the PlayStation 2, Hametsu no Mars, or Mars of Destruction. As best as I can commit it to words, Mars of Destruction is a sci-fi story about a virus from Mars that arrives on Earth, infecting people in Tokyo and turning them into "Ancients". This woeful cartoon has the distinction of being one of, if not, the worst rated anime on both MyAnimeList and AniDB. For such a minor blip in the grand scheme of things, how does Mars of Destruction get one over (under?) other legendarily awful productions such as M.D. Geist and Garzey's Wing?

Despite the game's rapid descent into obscurity, the tie-in anime that was destined from inception as a throwaway extra stands out as such a blinding example of terrible, it refuses to be forgotten long after the game proper was buried in a bargain bin. In a succinct twenty minutes, Mars features a nonsensical story rife with clichés, regrettable acting and dialogue, thoughtless direction, amateurish animation, shameless parallels to Evangelion, evisceration of generic anime girls, and the vocal talents of a young Chihara Minori (Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) who couldn't have known better. Being a mere promotional video attached to a low tier game release, Mars of Destruction may not have been so disastrous as to shutter Idea Factory or force a renowned creator into early retirement, but it is exceptional in how immediate and aggressive it is in being bad. Thanks to its short run time and dubious interest from the rights holders, the anime is easily found on YouTube for the benefit of future generations of anime viewers.

I am aware I am being facetious. Since even I'm not comfortable saying Mars of Destruction defines anime in 2005, let's talk about Aria.

2004, Part 2: Respectful, Yet Rebellious

Over 130 new anime shows debuted in 2004 on Japanese television, a number in magnitude that would be the norm for the next decade. Naturally, George J. Horvath from The Land of Obscusion needed just a little more space for his coverage on what shows made 2004 what it was. If you need a refresher on the first half, click here.

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It could have been easy to give a simple mention of each of these titles and get this year covered in one post, but as the essay titles indicated this year had to be covered in more detail, respecting the reader and the blog while also bucking tradition and giving more. Luckily, the latter half of 2004 felt the same way...

Being a visual medium anime has to do something to really catch viewers' interests at times and while the year had a few worthy contenders, like Windy Tales and Tweeny Witches, no anime from 2004 did that as well as Gankutsuou–The Count of Monte Cristo. Based on the legendary novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, Gonzo took the story and put it a new spin on it, while also giving the entire show a look that, to this day, is still one-of-a-kind.

Simply from a storytelling perspective Gankutsuou took the tale and put it into the far-future year of 5053, even having the titular Count live on Luna, a colony on the Moon that houses the worst criminals. After saving Viscount Albert de Morcerf from certain death at the hands of Luna's bandits he finds the opportunity to make his way to Earth, Paris in particular, so as to enact the revenge that he's wanted to do, much like the original novel. While the story stuck to the novel's original time period, specifically in terms of social classification and general attire, the show also fully embraced its futuristic shift, with the poor people living a world of dirty pipes and grunge, while the rich live in a seeming-utopia, and grand battles are dealt with by way of giant robots that are piloted by the duelists when the need arises. The idea that the rich are in fact the ones who are caged like birds was indeed brought up and it helped push the thought that these people were truly living in their own fantasies.

2004, Part 1: Rebellious, Yet Respectful

George J. Horvath had been a fan of Toonami's airing of G Gundam and Rurouni Kenshin as well as Fox's airing of Digimon and Escaflowne before being an "anime fan", but in 2004 he went into the medium full-bore, always looking for what came from the past while also seeing what the future would bring. After writing a Guestspotting article for GameSpot and two reviews for Sega-16, though, he decided to take use his B.A.-quality education in Journalism and Media Studies from Rutgers University and start reviewing, on his own, the obscure and forgotten anime and manga of the past (and present). He now runs The Land of Obscusion, talking about anime you may or may not have heard of, and posts semi-randomly over at Twitter.

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When it comes to the history of anime, 2004 was a great showing of how the industry was changing. More titles debuted in letterbox format instead of the usual "full screen". Digital animation was replacing cels. Late-night anime was hitting just about every major TV station in Japan after its slow, growing presence was felt starting from the late 90's. Most importantly though, chances were being taken on all sorts of genres and ideas while also celebrating the history that had already been made. To truly understand how diverse the year was for anime one must look deep into the jungle and see what titles defined themselves among others. Among a list of some of the most well-known titles to have come and gone were shows that dared to be different and change the way we viewed anime. In the first half of the year they managed to not only respect the past and even the viewer but some also challenged tradition and made the viewer think of anime in brand new ways.

Before 2004 the last real vestige of the magical girl genre was Sailor Moon, which finished back in the late-90s. There were titles like Magical Doremi (Ojamajo Doremi in Japan) in between that span of years, but none of them truly broke through that glass ceiling and became major hits, even if they had multiple season runs. Toei, though, didn't just rest on their laurels, and in this year they debuted Futari wa PreCure, also known simply as Pretty Cure. On the surface the show's plot about two girls with completely different ways of life who end up becoming guardians of good against the powers of darkness wasn't anything original, but what made people tune in was the execution.

2003, Part 3: Ten More for the Road

Last time, Bradley talked about some of the most notable series that aired in 2003. This time, he concludes by talking about some of the more obscure series you might have missed, and closing with a comparison of anime in 2003 and anime a decade later.

And now, our exciting conclusion...

So in addition to stalwart anime subject matter like giant robots and bouncing breasts, 2003 also had plenty of weird, out-there stories. Kino's Journey is one such anime, based on an adaptation of some unconventional material, this time from a light novel series telling the tale of a boy and his talking motorcycle who travel a world with an incredible variety of cultures and wildlife. Kino's stories often bloom into short, poignant observations about life that echo many of Aesop's Fables. Combined with a muted but very pretty animation style, this is a series that really earns its moments of emotional resonance with a little bit of fairy tale magic and a lot of earnestness.

Also weird but a lot more pretentious was the follow-up to the depressing and beautiful Haibane Renmei from writer Chiaki J. Kanaka and character designer Yoshitoshi ABe: Texhnolyze. The two created a vibrant yet depressing cyberpunk world with underground fights between cyborgs and social strife that become gang wars. It's an utterly surreal watch, but difficult to penetrate. Partly this is because the story is non-linear, but also because the pacing is really slow, which doesn't quite fit the action that the DVD cover promises with an angry kid with a metal arm looking like he's ready to punch someone.

2003, Part 2: Fullmetal and Full Frontal

Last time in our thrilling exploration of 2003 anime and what Cool Japan meant then, Bradley Meek talked about how the true test of whether anime was going to continue to be perceived as cool would be made or broken on TV. And how did that pan out? Read on...

Okay, never mind what I said last time; let's start by talking about Fullmetal Alchemist.

This anime has become one of those cartoons that you can be fairly certain many of your classmates have seen or heard of, at least a few of your coworkers and possibly your boss have watched a bit of, and has roughly a 30% success rate as way of striking up a conversation at a bar, which puts it in the vaunted realm of success somewhere between college hockey games and American professional soccer. It's often mentioned in the same breath as Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebop, and other near-mainstream successes. It was many fans' first anime, and for some, it would be the only they would ever want to watch. When describing the recent success of Attack on Titan on an episode of ANNCast, Funimation reps described it as potentially a new "Fullmetal" for them, and it's telling that they didn't have to clarify which of their two successful licenses that starts with "Fullmetal" they meant. This was, and in some ways still is, a really popular anime, and it seems the only thing that took some of the shine off it in popular opinion was when Studio Bones went back and made a bigger, better "Fullmetal" in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.


Which raises an interesting question: is there any reason left to watch this, now that Brotherhood is as easily available as its predecessor on home media and does a better job retelling much of the same story? Does nutjob screenwriter Shou Aikawa's bizarre ending still hold up all these years later? I remember loving it at the time, but I'm not sure now. Can we still forgive those short bursts of filler in its early and latter episodes? Is the Lupin parody episode as great as I remember? The answer is probably easy, because when asked, I have always recommended people watch Brotherhood instead. But I kind of wish it was more difficult.

2003, Part 1: The Cresting Wave of Cool Japan

When Bradley Meek is not coding, sleeping, reading or playing Dota 2, he's watching every kind of anime he can get his hands on. At times, this means he subconsciously channels Madarame from Genshiken, which is known to frighten away women and small puppies. Sometimes he writes on his blog, Those Damn Cartoons, but to be honest, he would usually rather watch anime than write about it. You can find him opining about cartoons over on Twitter (@BradleyCMeek).

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Do you remember superflat?

That bizarro pop art movement of the early 2000's where Andy Warhol, street graffiti, ukiyo-e and thirty-plus years of anime and manga were dropped into a blender, dished out onto canvases and sculptures, and then served to the world of high art in Tokyo, New York, Paris and London? It featured art that was a cheery mix of kawaii mascots and apocalyptic imagery, with dollops of a potent mixture of sexiness and child-like innocence familiar to anime fans. It was a grab-bag of forty years of Japanese culture informed by much older, more traditional Japanese art styles, and it was, by all accounts, a big success. One of the short-lived movement's primary authors, Takashi Murakami, was profiled in the New York Times in 2005, and it's an instructive read.

Murakami was an otaku throughout the 80's and 90's, and that meant grappling with the destructive legacy of serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, who embedded a nasty impression of otaku on a culture that was already suspicious of them. As the article recounts:

"When Miyazaki's room was revealed to the public, the mass media announced that it was otaku space,'' Murakami once told an interviewer. ''However, it was just like my room. Actually, my mother was very surprised to see his room and said: 'His room is like yours. Are you O.K.?' Of course, I was O.K. In fact, all of my friends' rooms were similar to his, too.'' Murakami added that Miyazaki was only ''different from us'' because he ''videotaped dead bodies of little girls he killed.''

Miyazaki's murders were a dark cloud that hung over otaku, and superflat was part of Murakami's attempt to wrestle with that legacy and contextualize it in Japan's larger cultural struggles to define itself. Riding a wave of renewed interest in Japanese culture, he found international success and inspired others who would make similar work.

What interests me about superflat isn't so much what it was, but what it represented to anime fans in Japan and elsewhere: legitimacy. Here was the world of high art writing flattering profiles and gallery reviews of art that was inspired by anime and its culture, and in the same way that Roger Ebert's enthusiastic reviews of Ghibli movies galvanized and inspired fans, the renewed interest in Japanese culture gave fans who had been around for years reason to hope that more mainstream recognition was soon to follow. And the growing popularity of superflat in high art was reflecting a trend elsewhere: anime was becoming exponentially more popular, with growing fan convention attendance in the US and bigger and bigger sales of home media and merchandise in Japan. Anime and its fandom really left behind the long shadow of Miyazaki and other basement-dwelling creeps and was coming into its own as a medium to be recognized by even the most mainstream and highbrow of cultural critics and consumers.

2002: Anime Rising to the Top - Believe it!

Savanna Smith, more commonly known around the net as "lostty", has been into anime for over five years. Although she is currently stuck in summer school along with a job that takes up too much of her time, she still considers her full time passion to be procrastinating. One of her many pastimes is analysing anime like Evangelion in way too much detail. She runs a blog known as Anime Princess where she tries to update when time permits, and you can follow her daily rantings on Twitter.

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When choosing 2002, I did so without much thought into what had actually aired. Back in these days I was pretty much a youngin' who hadn't yet discovered anime outside of the things that had made its way to North American television. 2002 was a year that anime really started to thrive in the West with Spirited Away even winning the Oscar for Best Animated Film, but as for Japan? I wasn't really sure how it was shaping out there, but what I ended up discovering was that it was a year filled with some of the most popular series out there that new and old anime fans still turn to watch today.

2001: 21st-Century Digital Toys

Alexandra Roedder is finishing her Ph.D. in musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, writing about Joe Hisaishi's Ghibli soundtracks. She first encountered anime on her TV in the form of Sailor Moon, but didn't recognize it as anime until years later when a friend who was really into anime had her watch Spirited Away, Grave of the Fireflies, and then the first few episodes of Ergo Proxy, all in one night. Since then, she's never turned back. When she's done with her degree she plans to write a few books about anime music aimed at closing the gap between academics and fans. She also plays cello professionally. You can find her personal blog (blog.alexandra-roedder.net) and her Twitter account at on @alexandramuses.

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2001 was a year mostly notable for its anime films: Spirited Away is probably best known, but there was also Studio 4ºC's Princess Arete, the gekijouban presentation of Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, and the epic Metropolis based on Tezuka's manga. However, television also had its gems from the year, surprisingly enduring shows on surprising subjects, each of which showed sensitivity and depth and tried to turn away from many of the stereotypes which 1990s anime had developed. Below I will discuss three shows I feel to be representative of the year: Mahoromatic, Hikaru no Go, and Angelic Layer.

2000, Part 2: Retrospect Before Passage

Happy 2000 (all over again!)

At the rollover of the 1990s into the 00s, fandom was digesting the collectability of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Digimon in Japan, while America was awash in the competition between the likes of ADV Films, Viz, Bandai Entertainment, CPM, Media Blasters, and Pioneer. Perhaps due to the thickness of the market, Patrick Stoeckel's analysis on the biggest shows from the last year of the last millennium was just so big that he decided to give us a glimpse on the lesser-known shows of 2000 that were lost in all the kerfuffle.

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As I look at more animated output for the year, I'm struck by the connections to the past. As the 20th century drew to a close, anime studios had a great opportunity to examine Japan's history and see where the country's headed. John Coltrane's 1942 rendition of "I'm Old Fashioned" makes for a good piece to listen to while writing this article; as the years pass by, being old-fashioned isn't so bad when you have someone to be old-fashioned with. The approach of a new millennium provides ample opportunity to see the history of a society, and where to go from here.

2000, Part 1: Last Stop of the Millennium

Patrick Stoeckel began his anime life with the Toonami line-up, then moved on to the unedited DVDs. After that, it's been a steady stream of writing about it (via The Anime Discussion Corner before moving the blog to Anime Commentary) and occasionally teaching an informal class on the subject. His passion for anime runs deep, and his blog is his outlet for commentary. You can also find his commentary on Twitter at, appropriately, @AnimeCommentary.

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I chose the year 2000 primarily because it lay within my early years of anime-watching (and, to be honest, it was one of the few remaining years available that I had any real knowledge of). My first real exposure to anime came through the significantly edited broadcasts of shows like Sailor Moon that made the rounds on Cartoon Network back in the day. That first experience got me hooked, and I began purchasing DVDs when I could. The unedited DVD releases of these shows informed me of how diverse Japan's animated fare could be, and I remained a fan ever since.

2000 was an interesting year for anime. Toonami still broadcast edited versions of shows that remained popular; the debut of [adult swim] the following year will change the broadcast dynamic for Cartoon Network. With Toonami, it would broadcast old favorites (such as Rurouni Kenshin and G Gundam) throughout the upcoming decade. As should be noted, Pokemon's popularity in the 1990s saw the emergence of the controversial 4Kids releases–controversial because of the "Americanization" and censoring elements prevalent in their broadcasts.

The dawn of the 21st century (and the new millennium) marked a surge of popularity in the Dragon Ball franchise, as well as other titles such as the various Gundam shows and Pokemon (all of which remain major pulls). The U.S. market proved very receptive to anime, ever since the previous decade, and the upcoming decade would see more shows being released (particularly on the Adult Swim block). As far as television in general goes, a few live-action dramas debuted (including Ikebukuro West Gate Park, which received a manga adaptation), and TV viewing had been astounding from the 1980s onward. But what did the anime scene look like in that year?

Well, that's what we're going to examine with this article. Sit back and enjoy; 2000 had some great releases, and this article looks at three.

1999: Towards A New Era

In middle school, Naru appreciated anime, fanfiction, and pretty guys just as much as the next internet-surfing pre-teen, but it was actually in her high school years when she began to discover what was so "special" regarding the former. On a whim, she created her main blog Oromywhat where you can occasionally find her explaining or rambling endlessly about the Japanese pop culture and its secrets unknown to outsiders. If she ever disappears from her blog, you'll easily find her at Organization Anti-Social Genuises as an anime/manga reviewer or ranting on Twitter.

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Before we begin focusing on the quiet year of 1999, I believe I should be honest with you all and straight out say 1999 was a year I personally did not know much about until I made the decision to participate in this project. Between the end of the 90's and the beginning of the 2000's, my little self was rather occupied with shonen anime being aired in my country at the time–Yu Yu Hakusho, Gundam, and the like–which aided and formed me into the grumpy hard-to-please anime appreciator that I am today.

However, it is until just recently that I've taken the time to search around the deepest parts of the dark hole that is the Internet to find out that, while 1999 isn't the most memorable year for some of us, it certainly wasn't an uneventful year. Heck, the year 1999 gave birth to cult anime adaptations that are still present in the minds of old fans, and now to new fans of the current generation.

1998: The Birth of the Cool

Evan Minto, also known as Vampt Vo, went from wide-eyed newbie anime fan to hardened cynic in just over ten years in the game. Nowadays he serves as the editor-in-chief of anime, manga, and video game blog Ani-Gamers, writes reviews for Otaku USA Magazine, and goes to a heckuva lot of conventions (he was even Con Chair for Genericon 2013). If you can handle an overdose of bad puns and nerd snark, go ahead and follow his exploits on Twitter @VamptVo.

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If I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest for a moment that 1998 is the most important year in the 1990s—at least in terms of its effect on American anime fandom. Sure, 1992 introduced Sailor Moon, and 1995 brought us game-changers like Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell, but 1998 is notable for something other than just its spectacular list of memorable series (and boy oh boy, is it a spectacular list).

That's because in 1998, anime was finally cool. The only problem was that Japanese otaku didn't know it yet.

1997: Take My Evolution

Eric McLeod (@SweetDurga) didn't really know what anime was until high school. His only anime before that point were Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, but after discovering shows like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, he decided to give this thing called anime a try. He is currently the editor of anime content at TheBrokenInfinite, where he blogs about the current anime season, and is working to become a history teacher when he's not bemoaning the anime fandom on Twitter.

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1997 is a prime example of the adage "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

Many franchises would be born, die, or take a break in 1997. Magical-girl shows were still selling like hot cakes, super robot shows still had a footing in the market, and a little series about taming magical monsters would become one of the biggest things in the world. However, there was a noticeable shift in the content of TV anime this year, and that shift owes Neon Genesis Evangelion a favor.

Hold your horses. I know we already have an article on Evangelion, and you should go and read it now if you haven't already, but I need to set the tone for this year and the anime I'm about to talk about. Were it not for Evangelion smashing all conceptions of what televised anime was capable of, the anime I am talking about might not have found an audience. This was the year that Evangelion was supposed to end, but its legacy would live on, not only through its massive merchandise franchise, but through the anime trying to recapture its magic.

1995: A Year of Old Ideas in New Ways

Ray (@R042) originally didn't intend to be an anime blogger, but quickly discovered he quite enjoyed it. A big fan of mecha and science-fiction after his first experience of anime were Evangelion and Macross Plus, he writes articles at Ideas Without End about a wide range of subjects, and tweets endlessly when he isn't writing blog-posts or novels.

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To start looking at a year in anime history, why not start with what the primary audience thought of it?

For this, Animage Magazine's annual poll and review of the year in animation provides one snapshot of what some fans and viewers thought defined 1995. The answer appears to be that 1995 was the year of Megumi Hayashibara, who had already shown her chops as fiery lead characters (Ranma's female side in Ranma 1/2; Ai from Video Girl Ai). Voted "Best Voice Actor/Actress" purely on the basis of fan submissions to the magazine, it is quite possible to argue her immense popularity that year came from one role which provides the perfect place to begin looking at the year's most influential and significant series.

Neon Genesis Evangelion, winner of the "Best Anime of 1995" award in Animage as well as three entries (#1, #3 and #9) on "Best Female Character", #2 on "Best Male Character" and winner of "Best Song" for its opening "Zankoku na Tenshi no Teeze" ("A Cruel Angel's Thesis"), is a fair candidate for the defining anime of the year. A series that, despite having a fraction of the number of episodes or series of any long-running big-name shonen show, or mecha juggernaut Gundam, has in its own way become a cornerstone of how anime is perceived both in Japan and overseas. Its enduring popularity is as much a result of the controversies and mysteries surrounding it–the prevalent symbolism and imagery are said to be meaningless, while the apparent non-ending of the TV series is resolved much later in End of Evangelion–as its specific merits as a super-robot anime.

1994: Introducing the Supporting Cast

Brian (@awesome_engine) used to have to write hundreds of movie synopses for the UK video market, which has left his brain full of unnecessary information. He is the co-host of the Dynamite In The Brain podcast and owner of AWESOME ENGINE. If you must see him in the flesh you can usually find him at UK anime conventions like Ayacon, hosting events such as MADstravaganza (now in its seventh year).

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Not every year gave the viewer a brand new anime TV series that achieved greatness, longevity, or popularity. 1994 was one of those years.

The big shows of 1994 were all shows that started years previously. There are series that are still ongoing today like Sazae-san (1969), Doraemon (starting in 1973, but airing since 2005) and Crayon Shin-Chan (1992). In addition, there were the monster Shonen Jump shows of the day: Dragonball Z, Slam Dunk, and Yu Yu Hakusho. They all managed to get over a 20% audience share at various points in the year (with Dragonball Z doing it week in, week out). Finally, there were a couple of shows that have had little following in anglophone fandom, Kiteretsu Daihyakka (1988-96) and Tsuyoshi Shikkari Shinasai (1992-94). These aired either side of Sazae-san and regularly got at least a 20% audience share. One reason why it may have been difficult for new shows to get a footing was that 1994 was the year that some of these established shows hit their peak ratings; Dragonball Z, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Tsuyoshi Shikkari Shinasai, Slam Dunk, and Yu Yu Hakusho all had their highest rated episodes during this year.

So what new shows were trying to get their voice heard this year?

1993: Everybody Wants To Rule Za Waarudo

[1993 was the year that Geoffrey Tebbetts (@GeoffTebbetts) learned that "anime" was a "thing". After watching Locke the Superman and Akira in his first year of college, he joined Atlanta's Anime X and helped co-found Georgia Tech's first anime club in 1996. Geoff wrote for Animerica Magazine as a reviewer and columnist from 1996 to 2004, and he has been covering anime through his own blog AniMaybe since 2010. He's also the editor of this very blog, the Golden Ani-Versary of Anime.]

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After years of riding a monster wave of success, economically speaking, Japan in 1993 had found itself treading water. The Nikkei stock market had managed to reverse its course after losing over half its value, but its GDP hadn't changed in three years, and the yen itself was falling against the dollar, the stable platform since 1987 taken out from under the currency until it bottomed out in 1995. The unemployment rate, traditionally a comfortable rate between 2 and 3%, had started to creep upwards until it peaked in 2002 (although some will argue that the rate had been notoriously underestimated for years). While the industries were boosting production, bankruptcies had tripled since 1990, and business confidence was at an all-time low.

That's not to say that Japan's anime industry was suffering from its own lack of confidence. Perennial all-stars such as Sazae-san, Doraemon, and Chibi Maruko-chan (which unfortunately ended in 1992 during the height of its popularity, but returned in 1995 to stay) were consistently gathering weekly television ratings that rivaled numbers set by Tetsuwan Atomu in the 1960s, while Yuu Yuu Hakusho discovered its own ratings bonanza alongside its Shonen Jump brother, Dragonball Z. (Of course, ratings can only say so much about success. If you were to look at the numbers, Sailor Moon's first-season ratings in 1992 were comparable to those of the short-lived nonsense anime Obotchama-kun that ran in the time slot thirty minutes afterwards.)

You could arguably state that televised anime's rivalry with the direct-to-video OVA market was keeping both afloat during these times. Trounced suddenly in the late 1980s by the deluge of OVA titles, television was making its comeback, but not without stiff competition. The Tenchi Muyo! juggernaut launched in 1992 with the Ryo-Ohki OVA series, which quickly became the biggest OVA success story since Patlabor, while critical acclaim would be passed to the slow-and-steady Giant Robo over time. (Seriously, Brian. Just one small mention?)

Based on the confidence in older shows and the industry's creativity in 1993, if you were to look at anime's activity and claim there was economic turbulence in Japan, you'd be hard-pressed to view it from its outward appearance (partly due to the lag between brainstorm and video release). However, that was two decades ago, and time has been a judge that has been harsher on some shows over others. What shows could we consider to be the bedrock on which many of today's anime skyscrapers have been built?

1992: Anime Goes Over the Moon

In the late 1990s, Brian Ruh became seduced by the dark side of anime–the academic side. After reading the chapter “Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts” by Susan J. Napier, Brian decided that he wanted to become an anime scholar too. After all, what else was he going to do with a philosophy degree? He went on to get an M.A. in Asian Cultures and Languages from the University of Texas at Austin and then a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from Indiana University. Along the way, he's written articles, book chapters, reviews, and a column for ANN. He also wrote the book Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, and is currently at work on a second edition to be released in 2014. He can be found on Twitter at @animeresearch, where he opines about anime and tells terrible puns.

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Until I began investigating all of the shows that came out in 1992, I didn't really have any idea of the embarrassment of riches this year provided. I had originally decided to write about 1992 because it was around this time that I began re-discovering anime. I was born a couple of months after Star Wars first came out in the theaters–this created a wave of SF entertainment, particularly cartoons, throughout my formative years. My afternoons were filled with watching the likes of Battle of the Planets, Voltron, Starblazers, Robotech, and Tranzor Z, although I didn't know it as anime at the time. In late elementary and junior high school, I grew more towards Star Trek and the like, but early in high school I found myself back in the anime groove, thanks to a friend with a couple tapes of Robotech and Gunbuster.

Although I had my own subjective experiences of anime in 1992, at first I wasn't sure how to get a handle on what the year looked like for the Japanese industry. I figured that if I wanted to hit some of the highlights, it couldn't hurt to check out the covers of the major Japanese anime magazines–Newtype and Animage. Of course, I knew this wouldn’t be the whole story, but it would point us in the right direction of what was popular (or at least what the magazine editorial teams thought would sell) that year.