My 5 favorite anime of 2014

Credit to linked pixiv user

It’s once again time for me to look back on all the anime I watched this year and decide which 5 were my favorites. Some years it’s easy for me to pick, other years it’s not so easy. I actually didn’t watch quite as much anime in 2014 as I did in previous years due to being busy with work, school, and other hobbies, so it wasn’t too difficult to narrow down my favorites this time…

Below is a list of all the anime I watched this year. As usual, I consider an anime to be a title of the year if it finished airing during that year even if it started airing the year before.

finished airing from 2013 or before
Golden Time
Nagi no Asukara

finished airing from the winter ’14 season
Inari Kon Kon Koi Iroha
Chuunibyou Ren
Wizard Barristers
Silver Spoon 2nd season
Tonari no Seki-kun
Nisekoi

finished airing from the spring ’14 season
Mushishi Zoku Shou
Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou
One Week Friends
Mekaku City Actors
Gokukoku no Brynhildr
Mahouka

finished airing from the summer ’14 season
Tokyo Ghoul
Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun
Free! Eternal Summer
Glasslip
Zankyou no Terror
Sword Art Online II

finished airing from the fall ’14 season
Watamote OVA
Mushishi Zoku Shou 2
Amagi Brilliant Park
Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works part 1

Sometimes I can put my top series of the year in order, but this year I liked them all kinda the same. So yes, here are my 5 favorite anime of 2014, in no particular order XD

Credit to linked pixiv user
One Week Friends

One of the most prevalent series among people’s top anime of the year, and for good reason – it’s a very sweet, touching, and beautifully bittersweet series, with characters that are easy to sympathize with and a simple but intriguing plot that keeps you in suspense. Unfortunately One Week Friends finished airing when my blog was on hiatus, so I wasn’t able to give it a proper review. But it’s a great school drama series with likable characters, good atmosphere and animation, and is quite the emotional ride. If you like those tear-jerker drama anime that focus on character relationships, this is certainly among the best of the year.

Credit to linked pixiv user
Zankyou no Terror

As I said in my review of this series, it had me hooked from beginning to end. The storyline was really interesting, the relatively small cast of characters were well developed, and the many scenes of action and suspense were perfectly executed. I even thought the ending was satisfying, which is rare for a short but complex anime like this one. Definitely one of the best action/drama series I’ve seen in a while.

Credit to linked pixiv user
Nagi no Asukara

I’ve already praised this series through the roof in my review of it and there was little doubt in my mind that it would end up among my top 5 of the year. The underwater world setting is amazing, and together with the show’s gorgeous animation and camera angles, makes for a fantastic viewing experience. But mostly, it has one of the best cast of characters I’ve seen – they’re all likable, they’re all interesting, they all go through some kind of personal growth or change over time – they’re just great. NagiAsu makes excellent use of being two-cour by having a time-skip in the second half which, as I said, really helps develop the characters and story. It’s P.A. Works’ best series in my opinion and I highly recommend it not just to fans of its themes and genres, but to anime fans in general.

Credit to linked pixiv user
Mushishi Zoku Shou

Eight years after the first Mushishi series aired, we finally got a second season in 2014. Mushishi was actually one of the first anime I started watching seasonally, and even among the first I reviewed here on the blog. It’s one of the most unique anime I’ve seen and I feel like I’ve gone through a calming yet mind-expanding round of meditation after each episode. With that said, it’s not a series for everyone, especially if you’re more into the action, comedy, and drama genres of anime. But luckily Mushishi is the kind of series where you just need to watch one episode to decide if it’s something you’d like or not (and it doesn’t matter which one since it’s very episodic). It could be boring and repetitive to some, but I love it.

Credit to linked pixiv user
Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun

Like One Week Friends, Nozaki-kun was another popular pick for favorite series of the year, even among Japanese fans. And what can I say, it is just so much fun! Not many anime can be consistently funny to me, whether they’re total comedy series or regular series with some comedy here and there. It takes a certain kind of humor in anime to make me laugh…and Nozaki-kun had a lot of it! The characters were funny, the situations were funny, it’s just an overall great comedy. My full review of it can be found here.

Credit to linked pixiv user
*Bonus pick* Space Brothers

I’m counting Space Brothers as a bonus pick because I don’t consider it a 2014 anime, since it ended up being a long running series of 2 years, with the majority of its 99 episodes airing in 2012 and 2013. So like all other long anime that go on for multiple seasons without breaks, you can’t really put it on a list of yearly favorites. Space Brothers just happened to end in early 2014, so I wanted to at least give it a shout out here because I watched all of it and think it’s a wonderful series (I reviewed it here as well).

Runner-ups:

Sword Art Online II: Like I said in my review of it, I really enjoyed SAO II and thought it was better than the first series.

Fate/Stay Night UBW part 1: It’s been a long time since I was as excited about a new anime series as I was when this new season of Fate/Stay Night started airing. If the full series aired this year, I would have placed it among my top 5. Depending on how part 2 ends next year, it will likely be among my 2015 picks ;)

Tonari no Seki-kun: This one competed with Nozaki-kun for Best Comedy in my opinion, but in the end the former won out. But Seki-kun definitely deserves an honorable mention for being such a simple and short series (each episode is only 3 minutes) and yet being so ridiculously creative and funny!

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So what were your favorite anime of 2014? Heh, I haven’t even looked at the winter ’15 schedule of anime yet XD Gonna get to it soon.

No Comments… read them or add your own.

  1. Myna says:

    Wow, second year in a row without KyoAni in your top five.

    Here are all the TV series I completed this year.
    ’13 Leftovers & Winter ’14: Doki Doki! Precure, Houzuki no Reitetsu, Inari Konkon Koi Iroha, Kill la Kill, Nisekoi, Nobunaga the Fool, Nogunagun, Noragami, Pupa, Samurai Flamenco, Silver Spoon 2, Space Dandy, Strike the Blood, Tonari no Seki-kun, Wizard Barristers, World Conquest

    Spring ’14: Akuma no Riddle, Brynhildr of the Darkness, Captain Earth, Knights of Sidonia, Magica Wars, Mekaku City Actors, Mushishi Zoku Shou, One Week Friends, Ping Pong the Animation, Nanana’s Buried Treasure

    Summer ’14: Akame ga Kill!, Aldnoah.Zero, Hanamonogatari, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun, Nobunaga Concerto, Space Dandy 2, Tokyo Ghoul, Zankyou no Terror

    Fall ’14: Amagi Brilliant Park, Mushishi Zoku Shou 2, Psycho-Pass 2, Shingeki no Bahamut Genesis, Tsukimonogatari

    Still airing: Cross Ange, Parasyte, Sailor Moon: Crystal, Your Lie in April

    I didn’t have a singluar standout favorite either. My top three of the year are definitely Mushishi, Kill la Kill, Space Dandy. And if I expanded it to five, I think it would be between One Week Friends, and maybe Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun. Not every episode had me laughing, but I thought it was adorable and I laughed more than I do during most anime comedies.

    As for movies, my favorites of 2014 are Ghibli’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya and Tiger & Bunny 2: The Rising.

    For Winter ’15, I plan on watching Dog Days”, Death Parade, Durarara!!, Rolling Girls, and Yuri Bear Storm. Might pick up a couple more eventually (Kantai Collection, Saenai Heroine…, Maria the Virgin Witch), but those five are definite weekly watches. Have you seen this site btw? http://anichart.net/winter

    • Yumeka says:

      Well, yeah, I just haven’t liked most of KyoAni’s recent works as much as their old stuff. I still like their shows as a whole, but not in the same way as, say, Haruhi and Lucky Star XD I didn’t watch any anime movies this year, which isn’t unusual as I don’t watch them that often.

      Of the series you watched, I ended up dropping Captain Earth and Bahamut. But I am continuing Sailor Moon, Parasyte, and Your Lie in April =)

      Oh yeah, I go an AniChart now and then, mostly when I’m not sure if a show is on hiatus for a week and I check to see when the next episode will be (happened a lot recently because of the holidays). But I will look at the winter shows soon!

  2. CoolCARTGuy says:

    I was out of the loop most of this year, so I can’t really say much about 2014 in anime – I spent most of the year focusing on games and anime-style art, especially the work of a South Korean artist under the pseudonym “Saver” and a writer he usually teams up with by the name of “Aster”. That being said, I did like the second cour of Nagi no Asukara and am currently waiting to see episode one of the Strike Witches OVA; I am looking forward to the latter namely because I like the German witches, especially Minna. The Girls und Panzer Anzio OVA was also pretty good and I’m waiting to see if the UBW anime gets better.

    2015 looks to have some titles I might look into such as Idolmaster Cinderella Girls and the Girls und Panzer movie.

    • Yumeka says:

      Glad to hear you liked NagiAsu!

      I did quite enjoy the first part of UBW, but I will admit that not too much happened and it was a bit more “talky” than Fate/Zero or even the original Fate/Stay Night. I don’t mind though because I know it’s based on a visual novel, and I find most of the dialogue interesting anyway. It’s not a fast-moving series either in terms of plot advancement, so it can be tedious to watch for some people. I still enjoyed it though and I’m sure I’ll like it even better when part 2 comes out next year.

  3. Kal says:

    I like all your picks, but I have not finished watching Mushishi. Need to get up to date on that one. Nagi no Asakura was one of my favorites. It was just too good. But Gekkan Shoujo was really good as well. It was so funny, but sweet. I would have to put Nisekoi up there as well. I also found it quite funny and memorable. I watched the Selector WIXOSS, which were ok, Gundam Unicorn, and a few others, but not as good as the ones you have there. It was a pretty good year though, so let’s see what we have for the next year. So have a happy new year! and let’s hope for lots of good anime as well :)

    • Yumeka says:

      Happy New Year to you, too ^_^ Glad to hear you also enjoyed the ones I picked!

      I liked Nisekoi for a while, but towards the second cour it just wasn’t as funny to me and became really predictable – I literally found myself predicting what Raku would do or what tsundere reaction Chitoge would have, etc., just from all of the other similar anime I watched. I did get some good laughs out of it though, so I wouldn’t say I disliked it. Just not among my favorites ;)

  4. Rioraku says:

    I didn’t watch a lot of current anime this year. But of the ones I did I really loved Noragami and enjoyed Nozaki-kun, Terror in Resonance and Akame ga Kill. I will say (as I had in previous posts) one the REALLY disappointed me was Chuunibyou Ren…I can’t say enough of much it let me down!

    But to end on a positive note I would like to mention a show (NOT an anime but anime-ish) Legend of Korra which I cannot recommend enough! Definitely worth checking out.

    • Yumeka says:

      Yeah, I know you really didn’t like Chuunibyou Ren XD I personally thought it was alright, but I’m sure I didn’t have the same expectations for it that you did.

      I do want to watch both Avatar and Korra one of these days. I want to find someone to borrow the DVDs from since I don’t feel like tracking down poor quality streams online. Unless they have good quality streams available somewhere, like on Hulu?

  5. jimmy says:

    I’ve seen 150 anime from 2014, according to MALgraph. I can make a top 5 using 8/10 and above anime, if you count Kiseijuu, which hasn’t finished yet. Put it in 4th/5th along the series that’s in there currently if you do.

    A lot of my top 5 is pretty clear-cut: Mushishi is the top series. I don’t really have anything further to add: it’s really interesting, individual episodes range from good to fantastic, and the mood is just perfectly crafted.

    Second place has to be Ping Pong: the characters were fantastic, their individual stories fascinating in addition to the overall plot, and the direction is brilliant and evocative.

    Third is When Marnie Was There, which did seem to wring drama out of nowhere, and which featured some rather irresponsible guardians, but which had a really interesting pair of leads, with Anna especially complex and believable, and a relationship simply beautiful.

    Fourth is UBW. I do agree with what you said about the dialogue in UBW: I don’t see that it’s an issue, as it simply always maintains my interest. The last spot would be the second season of Love Live!. The first season was always amazingly good-natured, with an old-fashioned, quality sense of character, humour and story. In a word, writing. The sequel was probably better, and brought evolution and a great conclusion to the story. だってパーティー終わらない。。。

    I also really liked Barakamon. I think I’ve commented about it before, but it was really funny and really cute and had a great, low-key narrative thrust, which was Handa’s winding down and growing accustomed to island life.

    Isshuukan Friends was a title that got lost in some stuff that happened this year, and I haven’t caught up with it yet. I was enjoying it, though. Zankyou no Terror, Nagi no Asukara and Nozaki-kun I all watched and enjoyed, but not as much, I supposed. Space Brothers and Seki-kun were also great.

    • Yumeka says:

      Wow,150…that’s a lot of anime! My free time and motivation has me average about 20-30 new anime each year =P

      I’m making a wild prediction that UBW and Kiseijuu will be on my top 5 favorites for next year. Also glad to hear you enjoyed Mushishi, Zankyou no Terror, Space Brothers, Seki-kun, and NagiAsu too =) I highly recommend finishing Isshukan Friends when you can.

  6. Lem Enrile says:

    Of all your favorites, none are my favorites. Or rather, I haven’t watched any of them. I dropped Zankyou no Terror and Gekkan something after watching their first episodes. Anyways, everyone has his or her own preferences. Keep up the great blogging!

  7. I think it’s great that Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is making so many people’s fav list for 2014. It was a series that caught me by surprise by how consistently good and funny it was. I am really hoping for another season at some point. XD

    • Yumeka says:

      Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by it too ^_^ That scene where Nozaki tips the umbrella and inadvertently pours the rain on Chiyo is still my favorite. I’ve seen people post funny memes of that scene (like, “what NOT to do on a date” XD) I hope there’s a second season eventually.

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