The Plot of Summer Time Rendering (No Spoilers)

As it says, no spoilers in this section. You’ll just some synopsis of what you can see in that first episode and the theme of the show.

Shinpei is returning to his home island after going away to study in Tokyo. He hasn’t been back in two years, but when his friend passes away, one whom he’d grown up in her home after his parents died, he returned for the funeral. He didn’t plan on staying long. But on his journey there he has a bad dream that something is wrong. And when he gets there, there are a lot of things that tip him off that something isn’t as it should be. Is Ushio’s death really an accident or is there more going on?

What Doesn’t Work

I’m going to say that the end isn’t a 100% smash success for me in this series. It is still very good, but based off of where everything started and the twists and turns along the way, I’d have loved one more flashback element to it to just really flesh out the story and motivations.

I also want to say that I found the dub not completely consistent. By that I mean I think they got good voice actors doing the work for it. But how the audio comes across from some of the voice actors isn’t quite as consistent as I’d expect. It’s more of a situation where it sounds like one or two of the voice actors weren’t in a room where it was as well padded for sound as needed.

What Works

This is a time looping story, you get that right away in the show. And it uses it to great affect. It reminds me of something like Steins;Gate that way which I really enjoy that one as well. This one has some solid twists on it as well. It feels like it’s telling it’s own unique story as well.

The characters are very solid as well. I think that the main three characters, Shinpei, Ushio, and Mio are all well done. And the supporting character work is very good as well. The story does a good job of building up those supporting characters and while Shinpei and Ushio are the main characters with the most screen time, the rest feel like they impact the story a ton as well. Especially Hizaru is worked well into the story and given a lot to work with for those supporting characters.

Another aspect that I want to touch on is the mythology weaved into the story. I think that it was just great and really fleshed out the island and the superstitions there. I want to say that it gave me a Stephen King type feel in some of what it did with the mythology. Though, it did a better job of building it more and creating something that felt like there was a payoff in the end. While that payoff wasn’t 100% landed, I think it worked really well.

Who is Summer Time Rendering For?

If you like something that is a mystery, mythological, and spooky while still having emotional moments and heart to it, this is a solid show for that. I won’t way it’s a direct comparison, but there are elements of what the story does that remind me of Stranger Things. The question of who knows what is happening and who believes the kids is important to this story. And it also has that unsettling feeling that you get from Stranger Things and Steins;Gate.

My Final Thoughts on Summertime Rendering (Spoilers)

First off, I did really enjoy the show. My issues with it are minor. In particular with the voice work. I think that it was well done, it was just not mixed or recorded quite properly. Though that element of it does give it an unsettling feeling as well. The best way I can describe it is that it feels like there is too much empty space and you can just hear and feel that. Which, in a lot of the ways works with the story.

The Time Travel

Let’s talk about the story as well. The time travel is well done. I said that before and I’m sure I’ll say it again. But it works for the show. And I love how it works. The system is simple enough, Shinpei getting the power makes sense. It is the idea that this is a closed loop in some ways, while the world is still changing in others. The end is always decided but it works because you don’t really feel that until the end.

The fact that Shinpei has to die to reset the loop is great for the story as well. And when Ushio and Hiruko start traveling with him as well, that is an added element to the story. Especially with Hiruko it really ups the tension when we as the viewer start to understand that Hiruko is now so tied into the time loop.

Finally with the time travel, I like how the loop shortens every time. That means that Shinpei becomes more and more limited as to what he can change. When it stays longer, like in Steins;Gate it plays around more with the depressing and hopeless feeling aspect of it. But in Summer Time Rendering with the shortening loop you feel the stress and the tension more as more and more events become locked into place.

The Mythology

Since we’re talking about Hiroku/Haine, I think it’s great to talk about the horror and mythology that the story creates. This idea of these shadow people. Haine creating some to really save the island originally but it not just being that. That now these shadows copy people and are used to replace people is really interesting and horrifying. The tell for if they are are a shadow or not also works really well. The idea that the shadow doesn’t care about the “body” but they don’t want people to touch the shadow is great.

And the idea of Haine and how she came from this other land out of time is interesting as well. This idea that she lived in the ocean for a long time after crashing to Earth and only when she beached herself as a whale did she become a “god” so to speak. But at the same time while she is the god of the island, she is also just a little girl. And seeing those interaction with Hizuru really change how you see Hiroku/Haine.

Final Grade

I really like this type of anime or show. I don’t want to watch the likes of it all the time. But when I’m in the mood I really enjoy something that just leaves me feeling unsettled. And while it ends good with just little fragments and memories and people reconnecting, it doesn’t feel like that’s a big miss from the show. Nor does that make a ton of sense. It’s kind of like how most seasons of Stranger Things end with them “winning”.

And the journey along the way for Summer Time Rendering is just so well done. And, yes, I’m saying it again. The time travel just works so well and it sells me on the show. Another example I could give of this great and unsettling time travel is Dark. Summer Time Rendering isn’t as dark as Dark, but I think there are times it is as unsettling.

My Grade: A-

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Top 50 Anime – 20 through 11

20. Steins;Gate

Like I said, this is one that was on the top of the list for me for a long time. I still love it and have fond memories of staying up late and binging it because it’s that good. It’s one of the best time travel shows I’ve ever seen and one of the best time travel things period. It’s up there with something like Primer in terms of time travel.

But to do it that well, you need part of it to be that time travel goes wrong. And it does in this show, and because it does, there are some heavier moments with it. One that I probably should watch again, it’s not that long, but it’s that good.

19. Kaguya-Sama: Love is War

Now for one of them that I watched the most recently, this one is amazing. It’s a super fast paced comedy that I love. I saw the first episode or maybe two, in Japanese a bit ago. And I thought it was great, but it’s a lot of reading. Well, turns out that he dubbed version is amazing as well. Ian Sinclair is able to overact in it as the narrator and it really sets the tone for this fast, smart, and absurd romance. The two characters who should fall in love and do love the other can’t admit it because it would be losing. So it becomes a battle to get the other to admit their feelings.

The reason it didn’t work for me in Japanese is that there is so much reading, like I said. This reminds me of witty slapstick comedies where it is a mile a minute dialog. Bringing up Baby is a great example of that. This is way more sarcastic and still as over the top. One that I really think will appeal to a lot of people, even if you don’t like romance anime.

18. Ghost Hunt

I like to find horror anime to watch, from time to time. You’ll notice not a ton on my list, though. Mainly because a lot of them are just okay. Ghost Hunt, however, really was a ton of fun. And I like how it worked as well. It didn’t do the thing where it was one massive horror/ghost hunt that happens. But it’s also not monster of the week. Each case that the team investigates takes a few episodes. That time to breath lets them build up the horror and build up the lore. Each case wraps up quickly enough though so it doesn’t drag.

17. Mashle

I expect Mashle to move higher over time. It’s an anime that doesn’t set itself apart as something that is completely unique. In fact, a lot of what Mashle does, the main character who is the chosen one to bring balance to a corrupt world that looks down on those who can’t cast magic, it’s pretty normal. It’s set in a school, also normal. But it then makes fun of those tropes.

The main character, Mash Deadburn is a moron, how he will bring balance who knows. He also is insanely strong, that’s how he makes up for not being able to do magic. But it’s not that he overpowers everyone, he has to use it to pretend to be doing magic because otherwise he’d be cast out from society. This is a good action and comedy anime storyline.

16. Bofuri

We’ll see were this one lands, I need to watch the second season of Bofuri. But the premise is a fun one. A girl takes up playing an RPG. But she’s afraid of dying and getting hurt in the RPG. It’s her first time playing one. So she maxes out her defense, that’s part of the long title. And as she does that, this sweet RPG player comes up against more powerful, more cutthroat players, but can she overcome them just with her defense? And will she lose her sweetness? That’s the biggest part of this pretty wholesome feeling anime.

15. Assassination Classroom

Assassination Classroom is another one that was higher on my list, and it’s dropped some. This is an absurd anime again. The main character is an “alien” who needs to be killed before they destroy the world. Well, they take up teaching a remedial class of students who need to learn but also are tasked with coming up with a creative way to take him out. Because he knows he needs to die, but he’s not going to make it easy.

The whole thing is really built around the emotional stories and growth of the students. But it’s done with one of the weirdest backdrops ever. Assassinate your alien teacher is not where you’d expect to get character development and growth stories from.

14. A Returners Magic Should Be Special

I’ve found a trope that I really like which A Returners Magic Should Be Special is one of. What do you do when you know how everything ends. You know that in the end, everything is for not because you fail. But now you’ve been sent back to where you started at, how do you do it differently. That’s the question that is being asked in this action and adventure anime. Where there are portals opening up and a dragon at the end of them destructs and destroys the world. The main character’s mind is thrown back into his body when he started out training. So what is he going to do different.

I like the story, I like the overpowered nature. And I really appreciate that it is a fun character as well. This could be dark, and there are some elements or some ways where it feel like it is. But overall the story is handled pretty lightly, there are fun moments, and I want more of it.

13. Horimiya

This is one that we, both my wife and I, read first before watching. I think that helps build it up some as an anime and as a romance. The books are great, and the anime, while it bounces around and basically wraps up the whole story in a season, and then goes back, it’s weird. But the heart of the story is great. Two highschoolers fall for each other, but both of them kind of live a different life in and outside of school. It’s just a good heartfelt and funny romance anime.

12. Spy X Family

The biggest hit in the past few years. I mean, you can say Attack on Titan, but that had it’s start before the past few years. Spy X Family is about a spy who needs to set-up a family to get close to a political leader. Turns out, you can lie about that, and he creates a fake family. It has some spy stuff, it has some assassin stuff. But it’s really about that family element. How does the spy, and their fake spouse an assassin, keep their hidden lives hidden from each other? Plus, how do they actually act like a family?

11. Komi Can’t Communicate

This anime is just adorable. Komi Can’t Communicate is about Komi, a girl who has severe social anxiety and can’t communicate with anyone. She comes off as cold and aloof because of that. But when one of her classmates actually spends the time to reach out to her in a way that she can handle, they start to form a bond. And she doesn’t want to be cold and aloof, but wants to make 100 friends. So how can he help her do that when she can’t talk. The anime is adorable, and it’s a good romance, and there are a lot of funny moments. It’s one that is just easy watching in the best way possible.

Final Thoughts

There it is, the penultimate last. Next week, and I will remember to write it for next week, the Top 10 Anime for me. Don’t expect a ton of heavy hitters on the list, though a number of them are quite popular. I have my type of anime that I like, though I will watch most.

Based off of what I’ve written about thus far, which anime do you think will make the top of the list? And which anime do you think I should continue to checkout that maybe I haven’t. Let me know down in the comment section below.

Top 15 Anime

HM: Fruits Basket, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K, Restaurant to Another World, After School Dice Club

These were all close. Fruits Basket is so heartfelt. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K is really funny. And Restaurant to Another World is a lot of fun with great food. After School Dice Club is about board games, and it’s good but not as great as it could have been so just misses as well. All of these, probably, could have made it only my list.

15. Ghost Hunt

Oddly enough, this is the only horror one on my list. Ghost Hunt is about a kid who can deal with ghosts who has his own agency. But he’s not the main character, the main character is a girl who gets roped into being his assistant and might be better at the job than he is. He knows how all the things work but is too cold and calculating. It’s a nice balance of everything for an older anime.

14. BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense

There are some premises for anime that just get me. BOFURI is one of them. A girl joins an MMORPG and she’s worried about it. What will it be like to die, will it hurt, and she really doesn’t want to die. So instead of leveling up by going out on epic adventures, she levels up by grinding and focusing only on her defensive stats. It’s a fun play on the genre with a character getting really over powered, but in such an odd way.

13. Gamers!

This follows another trope that I really enjoy. A main character who maybe is a bit out there, they have their own nerdy hobby or odd thing that they do that makes them not quite fit in. Gamers! follows that character who loves video games, into finding out that there are more people like them in the world directly around them. It’s cute and heartfelt and just works well.

12. Dagashi Kashi

Dagashi Kashi is all about yummy snacks, their history and eating them. Mixed in with all of that is a slice of life show that is a lot of fun. You might notice there are a few shows on the list about food. Anime tells a lot of really enjoyable stories about food and Dagashi Kashi gives more of a unique flare to it than some. While not the highest on my list, it is very realistic and focused on tradition of these snacks and shops.

11. Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? does some of my favorite anime tropes. Mainly the clueless main character so focused on one goal he doesn’t notice the group forming around them. This isn’t the best I’ve seen of that, but Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? works well and especially for the first season gives a fun romp. I don’t like season two nearly as much, but it is an anime that I keep on coming back to. There is just something wholesome about the main character that makes this fantasy, and fairly standard fantasy, but with good twists, fun to watch.

10. The Devil is a Part-Timer

This Isekai really handles the genre differently. Most Isekai a character gets pulled out the real world and into a crazy world. In this case, the Devil is pulled out or leaves their own world and ends up on Earth without enough power to go back. So now he needs a part time job. This is another one that I need to watch again, I started the 1st season because a 2nd season just came out. But it’s fun and well done.

9. Cowboy Bebop

Used to be higher on my list. And in terms of technical, this is probably the best anime on the list. An anime that tells interesting stories and all set to different types of music, it’s just fascinating. But it also falls into that category of an anime that I’ve watched, and I’d watch again, but I’m less likely to pick it myself. Still, the music in it is so good and just the story that it weaves, it’s done so well.

8. Space Dandy

Space Dandy is another anime set in space and this one is easier to watch again, mainly because it’s such a comedy. The main character, Space Dandy, is not a competent character at all. But through dumb luck he somehow survives. He doesn’t do so well, but with a cat and a robot he somehow makes it work. Just well done comedy throughout this series.

7. Food Wars!

Food Wars is odd to me that it’s so high. Mainly because it can be a bit inconsistent. There are some arcs in the show that are amazing. It is also one of the highest on the list that has this amount of fan service. But it’s generally fan service overall and played for a very specific reason. But the whole concept of the show is about being the best chef that you can be, and the enjoyment that can come from food.

6. Assassination Classroom

Assassination Classroom might push Food Wars! for the weirdest anime on the list. Part of the moon is destroyed and an alien decides to become a teacher of students who are poor students so that they can try and assassinate the alien. That sounds so crazy, but what worked for me with it is that it tells a good story of the characters coming together. Yes, it is an completely absurd situation and setup, but somehow it manages to work.

5. My Senpai Is Annoying

Now we hit a few that fall more into that slice of life category. My Senpai Is Annoying is about an office worker who has an annoying senpai that she is under. Well, maybe he’s not quite as annoying as she thought. It’s really a romantic comedy of characters liking each other but not knowing how the other character likes them back. Plus a whole lot of fun and crazy situations to get into revolving around work. I think the whole work setting is a lot of fun and works really well for this type of story to make it feel different than high school.

4. Komi Can’t Communicate

But speaking of high school and romance we have Komi Can’t Communicate. It’s about Komi who is the prettiest girl in the class and seems aloof. But really she just has crippling anxiety when talking to people and can’t for the most part and it is a lot of effort for her when she does. Tadano, new to the class ends up making friends with her through writing and agrees to help her with her goal of making 100 friends. This is a sweet show with a lot of weird characters.

3. Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki

And then another high school series. This one again about a nerdy character who loves the game TakFam, think Smash Bros sort of game. To him, it’s the best game ever, much better than life. When he finds out that the #2 player of the game in Japan is in his town too, he’s #1, they decide to meet up. It turns out to be a classmate, but not one who is a bottom-tier character like him, someone who doesn’t think that life is a lousy game. Can she convince him and level him up so that he’s not a Bottom-Tier character anymore?

2. Steins;Gate

Constantly a high one on my favorites list. And it’s also one that I probably would watch again, but man, would it be hard to watch again. There is so much depth in this time travel story with tragedy and distress. But the story is told and woven together so well that it just stands out. While Cowboy Bebop can be heavy and gorgeous, Stiens;Gate for heavier anime on my list, just tells such a good complete story. And it handles time travel in such a good way.

1. Sword Art Online

Finally, and I know this one bounces around a lot for me, we have Sword Art Online (SAO). SAO is just comfort food of an anime for me. It gives me big adventure, romance, comedy, all wrapped up in one. But it is mainly about that adventure and how the characters are navigating different worlds, of computer games, as they go. And the craziness that can end up following from these games into the real world or the other way around. Plus, there is just so much story and so much work done on developing the characters, you care for them as you go through it.

Final Thoughts

It’s tough to do a Top 10, it’s even tough to do a Top 15. I’ve really found myself gravitating towards watching anime a lot. It used to be and it does happen in certain time periods, of throwing on a cooking show or some house remodeling show. But there is just so much anime out there that I need to checkout still and want to checkout. I actually went through recently and created a massive list, I just don’t know when I’ll have time.

And I am guessing that I’ll think about it and come up with a show that I missed that I really enjoyed. And for as many good or great anime as I watch, there are a lot that are just fine. Pretty rarely do I end up sticking with and watching one that is bad. But if it’s short enough I might power through it. I can think of one example which just went from being okay starting out to so bad at the end.

What are your top anime?

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10 – My Roommate is a Cat

This is just a really fun anime, slice of life story about a writer who has a cat adopt him. The writers life is hard, his parents have passed away and he’s living in the house he grew up in. But with the help of the cat, he’s able to start to reach back out into the world, though not always because he wanted to. The story does a great job with it being focused on what the human is doing, but then the second part of each episode gives you the cats perspective on everything that happened and what the cat is worried about with the human. It’s very adorable and just one of those anime that is relaxing to watch.

9 – Space Dandy

He’s a dandy guy in space. This anime is just a completely silly romp as you follow around crew of the Aloha Oe as they travel space looking for exotic and new monsters to bring back to the central processing agency in order to get a reward. Now, it would work better if he was even remotely competent at his job, but he’s not and his crew is even less competent than he is, possibly? All the while, well doing this, they are being chased by Dr. Gel who is out to get them. The whole thing is just absurd but such a good time.

8 – Dagashi Kashi

Another sillier and lighter anime, this one delves into the world of dagashi, cheap candy and snacks. The main character works at his families dagashi shop, Shikada Dagashi but doesn’t want to take it over. When someone from the Shidare corporation comes to try and get Shikada Dagashi to join them, the owner agrees but only if they can convince his son, the main character to take over the shop. The story is just little vignettes for the most part and stories about how certain dagashi came to be. It’s a lot of fun and has more energy than the previous two, but is still very relaxing to watch.

7 – The Devil is a Part-Timer

Another slice of life anime, I do like them quite well and they tend to run less into fan service, though, this one has it’s fair share, The Devil is a Part-Timer focuses on what happens to the devil when he ends up on Earth with no way to get back to his realm. That means that he has to take on a part time job and a lot of weird adventures ensue has he starts to figure out how to deal with the mortal world and maybe, it turns out, the Devil isn’t such a bad guy after all. Very much a slice of life, but has more of a full through storyline running along in the background than some others.

6 – The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Saiki K has special powers. He can teleport objects, read minds, and do many amazing crazy things. But for the most part, he just wants to be left alone. Of course, he can’t be, and it’s even a bigger issue because he doesn’t notice the pretty girl who everyone notices, so she wants him to notice her, he can’t read the mind of an idiot so he can sneak up on him and wants to be Saiki’s friend, and of course, there are the evil forces of Dark Reunion, a completely made up organization. It’s completely absurd and just little vignettes into Saiki’s life but very much worth checking out.

5 – Sword Art Online

SAO, one of those classic anime that really isn’t that old but has gotten a huge following and even a spin off show, which I didn’t like. Sword Art Online is the story of what happens when full dive MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) go wrong and everyone becomes stuck on it. The only way to get out of the game is to clear the game and if you die in the game you die in real life. This could have been a massive hack and slash adventure type of game, but instead we get an interesting look into the minds of those trapped in there, those who want to survive, and those who have something to fight for, and those who let them game twist them.

4 – Assassination Classroom

An alien has landed on earth after destroying half the moon, and what he really wants is to die. But he won’t go easily and he won’t let just anyone kill him, because most normal methods of death, he can avoid. Instead, he wants to teach a class, and those students, through training, will be the ones who will be creative enough how to kill them, plus, they just might learn something along the way. A completely absurd premise, but they do a really good job with the anime and with the students. It’s less about assassination and more about how he ends up helping all the students in some way. Also, he’s a human size yellow tentacle monster, so there’s that weirdness going on as well.

3 – Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon

It’s a long title and one that seems like it should just be a dumb fantasy anime, and in some ways it is, but it is really entertaining. There’s some fan service in it and falls into the trope known as a harem anime, but it feels different, probably because the main character never puts together that hes the person the harem is forming around, he is too innocent and pure. All he cares about is becoming strong enough to be worthy of the girl, Aiz Wallenstein who saved him from a Minotaur in the dungeon. It’s a lot of fun, and it takes something that you see a lot in anime, leveling up, and codifies it into the story so that while it is silly that it’s in the world, it makes a lot of sense. A light hearted fantasy anime that’s definitely worth checking out.

2 – Cowboy Bebop

Now if we’re talking revered anime, Cowboy Bebop has to be up there. This space opera follows a group of bounty hunters as they travel around to different planets, meet different people and tell their story. However, what really makes this anime work is the music. The music is just amazing and it’s a new for each episode. And each episode has it’s one distinct style and feel to it because of the music, the story was woven into the music, not the music put around the story. It’s just so well done and while it might not tell some massively epic tale throughout everything, it creates a mood that just works so well and you care about the characters.

1 – Steins;Gate

I don’t thin there will be many surprises with my #1, I’m pretty sure every time I do a top five, it’s my number one as well. But Steins;Gate is just so good. It’s a time travel story, which generally I’m a sucker for, and it tells it really well. The characters are so sympathetic and what seems like just a silly quirk early on ends up revealing way more about the character than you’d think later in the show. The time travel aspect is well done and while there are some completely implausible things, overall, I think it works really well. There’s just a sense of the conspiracy around it and the story just speaks so much into the characters and the world. Clearly I highly recommend this one, it can be intense and times, but so very good.

There are a few that just missed the list that I wanted to mention as well. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, I need to finish watching it, but I did enjoy it. Ghost Story, just a really enjoyable anime and something different in how it told it’s stories. After School Dice Club which is about board game. There’s so much out there that’s good that I probably could have done a top twenty, also a lot that is pretty crappy, so hopefully this’ll give you some new shows to checkout.

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5 – Sword Art Online
#5 was actually the hardest spot to fill, because I have a number of anime that I want to put here after a definite few that are some of my top ones. But Sword Art Online (SAO) is just a solid anime that has had multiple stories through it, regular SAO, Gun Gale Online, Ordinal Scale, and they are all solid. It tells an interesting story in the first season as well, where you have the main character (and a lot more people) who are going into a full immersion video game, like they’ve done before, but the creator of the game is making his masterpiece and legacy and traps them all in the game. And, if you die in the game, you die in real life, but if you can beat the final boss of the game, you can escape the game and free everyone from it. But that means clearing a lot of levels. SAO isn’t a show about clearing levels, though, it’s about how people adjust to living in this digital world and the problems that arise from it. Then the other seasons deal with more virtual reality or augmented reality, but not in the same way as the first season. There’s definitely fan service in this show, but not a ton, and the story can be simplistic at times, but the premise was interesting to me.

4 – Assassination Classroom
A silly anime, it actually ended up having more heart to it than I expected, which I enjoyed. Assassination Classroom is an insane premise, which most anime area, and from the sounds of it should be about a classroom full of assassins, instead, it’s about a class of middle school (maybe junior high) age kids who have been tasked by the government to kill their teacher, a weird yellow tentacle monster. That is an insane premise, but what you get is a classroom of misfits who eventually have to start working together and growing after getting in trouble previously, all of this being led by their weird yellow tentacle monster teacher. I don’t think this anime is for everyone, but I think it did a good job of doing what it was trying to do and tell a compelling story of the growth of the kids.

3 – Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
Long title, good fantasy anime. This is one of the things that really got me checking out LitRPG on Audible, for better or worse (fairly often they were worse), but in Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeons (IIWTPUGIAD (not catchy)), it does a good job of creating an interesting world and an interesting story. And it does a trope that I enjoy, the clueless hero, he’s very earnest, and he wants to do the best possible after being rescued from this magical resetting dungeon by Aiz Wallenstein, this extremely talent female dungeon delver. Then there are a bunch of other characters who may or may not be interested in the main character. It has some of the harem anime feel to it, which isn’t a genre that I care about, but the main character is so earnest and caring that it doesn’t feel as gazy as some of them, but it does still have fan service in it. I also like how it ties in real world pantheons in an interesting way, so it’s not just a generic fantasy setting.

2 – Cowboy Bebop
Cowboy Bebop is a very immersive space opera that pulls you in not just through the story telling, which is well done, but so much through the music. The music of each episode helps inform the story that is being told and draws you further into what you are watching. It also is really well done and the variety of music throughout the show, because each episode has it’s own feel, is really impressive. This is an anime that has good character depth as well, even with being thrown into the middle of their story, you start to get an idea of who the characters are, and what they have gone through in their lives.

1 – Steins;Gate
This has been #1 for me for a while, this time travel anime is just well put together with a good cast of characters. I really feel like they do a good job of developing those characters as well. And while there are definitely characters that can fall into various anime tropes, they do a really good job of keeping most characters out of them and even the tropy characters end up having more depth than it seems. The time travel is also really well done. Time travel is one of those things that I generally like in concept, but too many shows and movies end up having time travel become so convoluted that it doesn’t work, or too simple that you can poke holes in how they are doing things. Steins;Gate does a good job of making something simple enough that you can generally understand the concept of it, but complicated enough that it doesn’t feel like time travel can be easily solved.

As always there are some honorable mentions that I need to add in as well.

Honorable Mention:
Ghost Story
Fruits Basket
The Devil is a Part-Timer
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K
My Hero Academia
My Roommate is a Cat
Dagashi Kashi

There are a lot of anime out there that I want to watch more of that I either can’t easily find on Funimation or just haven’t had the time for yet. But Ancient Magus Bride, Fairie Gone, and Afterschool Dice Club are all that I’ve watched a chunk of and want to watch more that could make it to my list eventually.

What are some of your favorite anime? Do any of the ones I’ve listed here sound interesting to you?

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1 Steins;Gate
I love this anime. It’s smart with well written and developing characters throughout the story. It’s also one of the few stories that gets time travel right. Too often you just end up with a convoluted mess, but Steins;Gate turns that mess into artwork. We’ve talked about it before, so go check out those articles if you are curious about it.

2 Cowboy Bebop
This anime is close to being number one with as much as I love Steins;Gate. Cowboy Bebop just has this lyrical beauty to it from the animation of the world and characters to the actual music which really drives the show. I feel like I’m about ready to go back and watch it again because of how well put together it is. It came out the same year as Firefly and in some ways I feel like there are a few similarities with them. But the show is just amazing and the music is the best use of music in any media that I can think of.

3 My Hero Academia
I believe that this one is a new one to the list, but I really dig it. It’s a world where a lot of people have super powers, some use them for good and some use them for evil. The main character, however, has no powers and he wants powers more than anything, so he can be like his hero All Might. He has a chance meeting with All Might which leads to some major changes in his life. The story has emotion and a bit too much crying at times, but they delve into characters and create something that has those super hero moments but also has so much heart.

4 Space Dandy
He’s a Dandy guy, in space. Another anime that uses music well, Space Dandy is just an absurd romp with an incompetent creature hunter. This anime is completely over the top and quite pulp like in how it’s created. The characters are bumbling and arrogant, but generally end up having their heart in the right place. Each episode stands pretty much by itself, so what happens in one episode doesn’t matter for the next. This is by far the goofiest of all the animes on the list, but it is so great.

5 Assassination Classroom
This was really tough for the last one, and I think last year this was my #2 anime or #3. Assassination Classroom is not that accurate a title, because it makes you think of lots of violence, and this is a goofy junior high school anime about  a bunch of misfit students coming together. With their teacher being a crazy yellow tentacle monster who is going to blow up the earth unless they can kill him. They take the time and look at each character and you get to see how the teacher helps them grow into better people.

There are so many options for honorable mentions as well, and animes that I need to finish watching that might end up cracking the top 5, but who knows. Soon I’m going to have to do top 10’s just so that I don’t have 20 honorable mentions.

Honorable Mention:
Sword Art Online
Ancient Magus Bride
Blood Blockade Battlefront
The Devil is a Part-Timer
Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon

What are some of your favorite animes? Are there any that you think I should watch?

There’s a lot of media out there about time travel, and there are two directions that time travel stories usually go — the first is more lighthearted time travel stories like Back to the Future, where the whole concept is pretty goofy. The second is the heavier time-travel stories such as Primer or Dark. In the lighter stories, the way time travel works isn’t all that important, everything works out in the end, and there’s a lot of comedy or goofiness; writing time travel in that way is much simpler. But for the heavier time travel stories, you have to think a lot more about how the time travel works, so that’s the one I’m going to be focused on.

Time travel and time itself, when written well, are characters themselves in the story. Even if it is just used to send a character backward or forward in time, time is something that the characters have to interact with. Often, when you watch something like Primer or Dark, time is something that the characters are interacting with and pushing against. In both of those examples, it is actively the antagonist in the show, and while Dark has another antagonist, time itself is the larger concern in many ways for the characters. Time is actively trying to stop the characters from getting what they want, because if they get what they want, then it changes the timeline from what it should have been in the first place.

I want to delve into that more, the idea of time being a character and what sort of character time is, but that’ll come later. Right now I want to deal more with the mechanics of time travel.

There are a number of questions you need to ask yourself when thinking about time travel. For example, is it limited in the direction and distance it can go? Dark has a time loop with very specific time frames you can go to. In Primer, the characters can only go back in time. Steins;Gate has rules about how much information can go back in time. In Back to the Future, it’s a free-for-all. The level of structure the means of time travel in the story has in terms of limits and direction influences how much a character can use time travel to change things.

How much can a person actually change? I won’t go too much into examples, but different shows handle this differently. Is time basically a linear path so that the fact that you’ve jumped back in time has always happened and you therefore can’t really change anything, or is it a situation wher, each time you hop backward in time, you are causing a new timeline to branch off of the one that you started on? This will  come into play later as I talk about time as a character again.

Does your time travel send things backward or forward? In a show like Dark and the movie Primer, they are sending their whole bodies back in time. In Steins;Gate, characters are just sending information backward in time that then influences what happens in the future (though that model does change partway through Steins;Gate. Back to the Future handles it differently with the DeLorean, which travels with its characters back in time.

Do you need to worry about running into yourself? What happens if you cause a paradox? This often strays into the goofier side of things — for example, in Futurama, Fry becomes his own grandfather. But there are often more serious consequences for this, as well. For example, in Harry Potter, if the characters run into themselves while using the Time Turner, it can drive their past selves insane (if I’m remembering correctly). Some stories even explore the idea of whether a paradox caused by two versions of the same person being in the same place at the same time would cause everything to end and the universe to implode.

Final question: How easy is time to reset? Can you go further back in time than you did before to reset the timeline to what it had been before you even went back in time in the first place? In Steins;Gate, they deal with this by showing that, when someone goes back in time and takes a different action than before, there is then a divergence from the timeline that they were on, and they explore how far away from the original timeline you have to get in order to jump into a new one. Dark deals with this concept by showing that the things that have happened have already been determined to happen one way or another, no matter how the timeline is manipulated (or at least from what we can tell thus far). But can you go farther back than you were before to reset onto a new timeline and undo everything that you’ve done up to that point?

This brings us back to time as a character itself. If time is portrayed as an antagonist that is actively working against you, how do you deal with that? Time can be used basically as an omniscient power. So often you see in stories that when someone goes back in time to change something and then comes back to the future, the thing they tried to change is even worse. They figure out what might have caused that problem and they repeat it again, and it still isn’t better, and so on and so forth. To me, that’s the most interesting way to handle time, because it opens up an interesting dilemma — namely, how can you beat time? If it takes whatever you’ve done a few years in the past and changes it to something worse in the future, how can you really beat time?

I think that’s where seeing time as a character is interesting. Either time is truly omniscient and controls the outcome so that you will never get the outcome you want and you have to figure out how to get it back to the original, good-enough state, or there’s some way to actually beat it and change the timeline. But how do you beat something that has that much power/control? I think you normally have to cheat it to win. There is generally some outside factor, some twist of logic that needs to be employed to actually beat time itself; otherwise, it keeps piling on and on. So how do you cheat time? This is where seeing time as a character helps. If time is an active antagonist, what are its weaknesses that you can exploit, what are the blind spots it might have, and what won’t time be able to handle because it doesn’t make sense in the flow of time?

I don’t have answers for you as to what those should be — maybe time truly can’t be beat. I’ve written a story where there was a way to beat time, but not one that was good for the character; it changed the rules of the problem the main character wanted to solve, and that’s how they cheated time out of what it had done before and how it had messed up their life. It wasn’t a happy story, but heavier time travel stories rarely are.

What are some of your favorite time travel stories? How do the characters get around time screwing them over?

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Since my to-be-watched list of anime series is still really long, there’s a chance that at least some of the spots on my top 5 list will change as time goes on — but for now, here are my five favorite series!

5. Kamisama Kiss

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This series is one I’ve gotten into more recently — I’ve been watching through it casually when I have some spare time and am in the mood for something lighthearted. It’s a romantic comedy about a girl named Nanami who, through a bizarre chain of events, ends up becoming the Earth deity of a nearby shrine, taking over the post from the former deity, who has gotten tired of the job. A fox demon named Tomoe, a resident of the shrine, becomes her familiar, and is bound to her by — you guessed it — a kiss. Nanami’s feelings for Tomoe quickly grow into something more than gratitude and respect, but can a romance between a human and a fox demon ever work? Well…I’m still waiting to find out!

As I’ve said before when describing this series to friends, it’s like someone took all the best parts of Inuyasha and Fruits Basket and fused them together into a fun new anime that’s reminiscent of both of these, but that is still very much its own story. This series is an absolute delight for so many reasons — it reminds me of the series I loved when I first started watching anime, it has lovable characters whose interactions with each other are by turns hilarious and heartwarming, and it has just enough conflict to keep things interesting while still having plenty of fun, fluffy scenes to enjoy. I can’t wait to see the rest!

4. The Devil is a Part-Timer

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This is another recent watch for me, and one of two on my list that overlaps with Peder’s choices. We watched this one during the depths of last winter, when I was craving something goofy and fun to get me out of my annual February funk. It did the trick perfectly, let me tell you. I won’t go into the summary much, as Peder has already done the honors, but suffice it to say that as this series starts off, it behaves as though it’s going to be a high-stakes, high-concept fantasy piece, and then does a total heel-turn, becoming a silly slice-of-life story about an incarnation of the devil who’s stuck in our dimension and has to make a living as a part-time manager of a burger joint. Bizarre and hilarious doesn’t even begin to cover it, my friends.

My favorite parts of this show are when Sado (the devil) and his right-hand-man-turned-roommate are trying to figure out the ins and outs of everyday life in our dimension. They may look like normal humans, but just knowing that you’re watching two beings from a fantastical world try to set a budget for their meager income and deal with their overly eccentric landlady takes the absurd hilarity to new heights. It’s one of my favorite fish-out-of-water stories, and was exactly the kind of lighthearted fun I needed at the time I watched it.

3. Ouran High School Host Club

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This was one of the first anime to become a favorite of mine. It follows the story of Haruhi, a scholarship student at the elite Ouran High School. Early on in the story, she’s mistaken for a boy due to her androgynous appearance and clothing — not wanting to deal with the hassle of setting the record straight, she decides to just go with it. The members of the Ouran High School Host Club (a sort of flirty high society club that primarily caters to young women) take Haruhi under their wing, and before long, she’s the most sought-after member of the host club.

The premise of this show is pretty farfetched, and it takes at least a base knowledge of some aspects of Japanese culture to really get what’s going on in the story, but once you’re on board, you’re bound to have a great time watching this series. In my opinion, it’s shojo (anime aimed at teenage girl viewers) at its finest and most delightfully over-the-top, and watching it feels like reading a really fun yet really weird contemporary young adult novel. It’s a series I enjoy from start to finish, and one I’ll most likely end up returning to again and again.

2. Inuyasha

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When I was a fledgling anime fan, this is one of the first few series I really got into, and was also one of the first I watched all the way through (not too shabby, seeing as there’s over 160 episodes!). The story focuses on Kagome, a teenage girl who falls down the well in the shrine her family tends, only to be transported through time to feudal-era Japan. There, she meets a rough-and-tumble young dog demon named Inuyasha. He leads her through all sorts of adventures and scrapes as they fight off the other demons who are trying to get their hands on the shards of the Shikon no Tama, a sacred jewel that’s rumored to give great power to any demon who wields it.

This is one of those series with a premise that’s really hard to explain when talking about it, but which is really easy to get into when watching it. There are a lot of different opinions about this series — some (like me) find it really enjoyable and rewarding to watch, while others see it as too mainstream and formulaic. While it does fall into the monster-of-the-week rut fairly often, I love it anyway, and I can’t get enough of the great characters it’s filled with, or the unique settings and plot lines that set it apart from other anime I’ve seen. Regardless of others’ thoughts on this series, it’ll always have a special place in my heart.

1. Steins;Gate

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Soon after I started watching this series, I knew it was going to end up ranked among the very best anime I’ve ever seen. By the time we reached the end of it, it was my new favorite. As with my #4 choice, I won’t go into great detail with this one, since we’ve already talked about Steins;Gate quite a bit on this blog, but I can’t close out this list without talking about just how truly great this anime is. As we’ve noted before, the story of Steins;Gate focuses on the concept of time travel, testing the limits and possibilities therein, and finding out just how far-reaching and dire the consequences of messing around with it can be.

As we’ve mentioned before, Steins;Gate seems to almost transcend its own medium — more than being a great anime, it’s just a great story, period. The characters are masterfully rendered and feel so believably human, the themes the series focuses on are weighty and important, and the plot is (for the most part) tightly woven and emotionally satisfying. I can’t say I’ll rewatch this one often, as it’s pretty heavy (despite some humorous elements), but I know I’ll revisit it again someday. And regardless of how many times I do or don’t rewatch it, it’s a story I know is going to stick with me, no matter what.

To close–some honorable mentions: Bleach (so good, but so fraught), Soul Eater (just a good, solid anime with a great premise), Naruto (I loved it for a while, but it caused even more mixed feelings for me than Bleach did), Cowboy Bebop (space opera at its best), The Daily Lives of High School Boys (I’ve only watched a few episodes, but have absolutely loved what I’ve seen so far), Haibane Renmei (the definition of short and sweet anime), Little Witch Academia (just adorable and delightful in every way), and Fairy Tail (another I haven’t gotten far with, but am really looking forward to watching more of).

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I do have some honorable mentions, as well. I mentioned Berserk and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Berserk is a dark, very serious anime, and Neon Genesis Evangelion is your classic mech anime. I enjoyed both, but they are both in very different realms. Kristen and I have also watched Fairy Tale, which I’ve enjoyed quite well, as it’s a blend of fantasy and silliness; however, there is some terrible filler in it. And speaking of filler, I have watched the first couple main arcs of a show that is almost 50% filler with Bleach. Bleach is a lot of fun, but the amount of filler and the fact that I haven’t watched much of the series has kept it off my list. And finally, Dragon Ball Z: Abridged, a fan parody of Dragon Ball Z, is just hilarious.

There are so many more anime that I want to watch and just need to make time for. What are some of your favorite anime? Seeing what I’ve liked, what would you recommend I check out next?

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The theme this year was Space Operas — think Star Wars, Firefly, Dune, and other such sci-fi epics. We were much bigger fans of this year’s theme than 2016’s (which was titled “But How Will We Get There?” and focused on…nerdy transportation? It was kind of a hot mess, to be quite honest). Being the huge space opera fans that we are, we resonated with the aesthetic, and there were a lot more panels we were interested in this time around, both space-y and otherwise.

Panels are always a bit of a gamble in terms of enjoyment value, but the good ones we went to were real good. Some of our favorites were an inspiring panel called “Geeky Careers You’ve Not Thought Of” (featuring a full-time knitting designer and a dating/social coach for nerds, among others), a panel on Asian folklore that was a wealth of fantastic stories and tropes I’d never heard of, and a truly delightful fan panel about Stranger Things.

Beyond the panels, we got the chance to experience all our favorite parts of the con, like copious amounts of people-watching (so many great cosplays!), seeing a few of our good friends play in a taiko drumming show, and hitting up the ever-amazing party rooms. Along with our old favorites, there were some great new ones this year, including a Spider-M an-themed room and a Harry Potter one that was so detailed and just impressive as all get-out.

As far as cosplay went, we definitely did our fair share, but we decided to keep it more low-key this year (no, not Loki…not this year, at least) — after constructing Groot and Rocket costumes at like 2:00 in the morning the night before the con for the first year and fabricating/otherwise putting together so many pieces for my Rey and Raven costumes last year, I was ready for comfy clothes and zero body paint this time around. Nevertheless, we had a great time with our costumes! I was femme!Fourth Doctor on the first day, and Peder and I went as hipster!Beauty & the Beast on the second day, with our friends dressed as other assorted hipster-ified Disney characters (Smee, Tink, Ariel, and Hook, to be exact). Saturday was our favorite cosplay day–we went as Okabe and Kurisu from Steins;Gate, a new favorite anime of ours (which Peder reviewed a little while ago). It’s by far the most obscure cosplay we’ve done to date, so there weren’t many people who recognized us, but that just made it all the more fun when someone did. And we even spotted another couple who dressed as the same characters the day before, which was so much fun to see!

But enough squeeing for now…time for more pictures!

All in all, this year’s con was highly successful — I felt like I got everything out of it that I wanted to, and planned things out well enough that I didn’t tire myself out in the process (something that must be learned the hard way, it seems!). We have all sorts of great memories from this year’s con, and are already starting to muse about what cosplays we’ll do next year.

If you’re in the Twin Cities area, did you make it to CONvergence this year? What were the highlights for you? If you’re not from around these parts, tell us about your favorite nerdy event to attend in the summertime!

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