It’s that time again. This season took a little extra time to get through my small backlog to all the shows I actually finished.

3. Jojo – While an excellent series overall, I didn’t find Kira to be quite as engaging a bad guy as the infamous Dio, and the sort of arc around him felt like a bit of a mis-step. Still good, but the villain of the week format felt kind of forced this time around and a few story lines seemed to patter of quietly. Looking forward to part 5!

2. Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume – Cute girls do shounen sports right. Good animation, just the right weight of technical jargon and larger than life table tennis for my palate.

1. Saiki Kusuo – To be able to overcome a level of animation roughly similar to powerpoint in its quality and hit my top spot is the sign of comedic greatness. Every episode had one or more things I was audibly bemused by.

Special awards:

“Binge or Bust” award: Girlish Number
About half way through this saccharinely cynical tale of a little voice actress who couldn’t, and an industry that didn’t care, I just sort of stopped watching. I don’t know why. It may have been due to the lack of a grabbing climax or cliffhanger endings, but I felt ‘content’ with what I’d seen. Fast forward to after the show is over, and I was able to complete it in short order. I feel a story like this becomes more watchable when I know I can already see the next episode now, as little actually happens or changes per episode in a character driven piece like this. I’m glad I did, because it was ‘grounded great’.

“Deja Who?” Award: Shuumatsu no Izetta
Same story as Girlish, but I never got back to this one. After about four episodes, I felt like I’d seen this before, in another permutation. I’m sure I haven’t, but so many story elements are familiar that I had that epiphany where you imagine the ending of the series, and it’s not one you find particularly interesting.

“Fate filler” Award: Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku
Not a great show by my count, but it did employ the narrative trick of not being predictable in the journey to the forgone conclusion. I like when anime storylines surprise, and the details of how this death game played out make it worth the memory of having watched, if not the time to watch it itself.

“Goodbye Friend” Award: www.Working
Not as enjoyable as the original series, but definitely cut from the same stuff. More amusing than funny, this feels like watching an old show again.

“No one reads these, right?” Award: Keijo!!!!!!!!
Trashy trash. You’ll love it unless you hate it. Raises the bar for just how seriously something dumb can be taken for comedic effect.