Batman has never been The World’s Greatest Detective on The Big Screen.

I know I’ve said this before, but I want to make this point the focus for a change.

The reason is so annoys me when part of the hype for Matt Reeves’ The Batman is being the first Batman movie to really showcase Batman as a detective is that the same promise was made by The Dark Knight back in 2008 and as much as I love that film having for a long time called it the greatest movie ever made, it failed to deliver on that promise and so did The Batman. 

I don’t care that these films have scenes that carry the aesthetic of an Investigation.  Batman doesn’t deduce anything until it’s too late, in one the villain never had a secret identity and in the other that identity was never uncovered prior to him being arrested exactly when he planned to be arrested. 

The pseudo Detective Film qualities of The Batman are because of what it inherited from what  pre 2010 Fan Trailers thought Nolan’s take on The Riddler would be, a cringe awkward mashing together of Se7ev, Zodiac and Saw.

These kinds of Batman stories give you the edging of a detective story, but not the happy ending where the Great Detective actually outsmarts the criminal or exposes their perfect crime they thought was unsolvable. These are stories that make a point out of Batman’s victory being hollow or pyrrhic so much that in-spite of the nominal stopping of the villain’s plan it still feels firmly like the Hero was the one outsmarted every step of the way. 

I’ve been thoroughly spoiled what for a Detective Story that also works as a satisfying Action film can be by the fact that I’ve seen all the Detective Conan films (well not the most recent since it’s still in Theaters in Japan).

I am the kind of Conan fan who sometimes complains about how the Conan films have become more Action oriented over time.  But make no mistake, I think even the most overly action bloated, explosion heavy and dumb Detective Conan film (Movie 16 The Eleventh Striker) is still a more satisfying Detective story then any live action Batman movie has ever been. 

And at their best the Detective Conan films are better Detective movie/Action movie hybrids then even the RDJr Sherlock Holmes movies. The top tier of Conan movies I view as movies 1, 3, 4 and 5, the next tier just below them are 7-9 and 11-12.  I also think movie 14 Lost Ship in The Sky makes a better Die Hard sequel than any actual Die Hard sequels and movie 18 The Dimensional Sniper was a great Swan Song for the guy who wrote 14 of the first 18 movies. 

If I had to pick an absolute favorite from that top tier of films, I’ve gone back and forth between picking the third movie The Last Wizard of The Century and the fifth movie Countdown to Heaven. 

The fourth movie Captured In Her Eyes is one I know some would criticize for not giving the audience a fair shot at figuring it out themselves, but as I’ve said many times that’s not what I care about in a Detective Story. What matters here is it does it feel like the villain was outsmarted in the end and not beaten ONLY by brute force. This movie is also the most like a Film Noir of any Detective Conan movies is relevant to another claim people keep making about The Batman.

The first film, The Time Bombed Skyscraper, you could argue has the opposite problem, I don’t see anyone guessing wrong about who the villain is. But that goes to show that you can have a satisfying Detective Film in the way I’m talking about even if the villain is an established member of Batman’s Rogues gallery. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s obvious to the audience who the villain if because he shares a name with a villain from the Comics, or the film was promoted partially on seeing this A List Actor play this Iconic villain, what matters is does Batman figure out who they are on his own or does the villain just reveal himself after jerking Batman around all film.

None of the ones I just singled out are the most accessible to watch legally in the United States right now, and I recently learned I can’t even count on the BangZoom dubbed movies to stay on Amazon PrimeVideo. The first 6 movies were dubbed by Funimation but aren't legally streaming anywhere, they all had DVD releases but they are out of print and so might be pretty expensive now.  Movies 7-18 have never had an English Dub release and have only ever been legally Subbed in the US when they were each temporarily on YouTube for a week last year. 

But perhaps none of the theatrically released Detective Conan films are the purest of detective films. Perhaps what people really want from a movie length detective story is something more like the 2 hour special episodes of the series, some of which are now part of the collections of episodes on Netflix.  

But also the 2014 feature length TV Special The Disappearance of Conan Edogawa is pretty great. It’s not afraid to move slowly at first, or be minimalist in its use of music.  And it contains one of my favorite Ran moments, which since we’re comparing them to Batman movies here I will say feels very Denny O’Niel.

Are animated Batman movies better than Detective stories?  Some of them by a little bit, when the villain isn’t a standard rogue, something special for that film. Mask of The Phantasm, Under The Red Hood, kind of Batman Beyond Return of The Joker and Mystery of The Batwoman.  But just like The Dark Knight and The Batman they are often too fixated on making Batman’s Victory not very victorious. Batman The Brave and The Bold’s Scooby Doo Crossover film is somehow actually the best Batman movie at being a Detective movie.  

The Downside of Physical Media that no one wants to talk about.

Mass producing Physical Media means also mass producing plastic which has an environmental impact. But this is the one thing Internet Leftists don’t want to think about the Environmental impact of right now.

How much the 2020s have been defined by concerns about Cryptocurrencies and NFTs and Generative AI has put a lot of focus on how doing things digitally can have an environmental impact. But that Environmental Impact is entirely a symptom of Fossil Fuels being our primary energy source. Cryptocurrencies and NFTs and Generative AI have reasons to be opposed that have nothing do with the Environment, storing data digitally in general will have no adverse effects on the Environment once Fossil Fuel industries are destroyed and all energy is clean energy, which is what needs to happen to save the planet regardless.

The concerns that digital and streaming replacing physical media are bad for Art Preservation is also a symptom of Capitalism and Copyright Law. Intellectual Property Laws need to be abolished or at least massively reformed and there should be laws mandating all even minimally culturally significant Art and Entertainment Media be archived by as many Public Libraries as possible. 

Art Preservation is an ongoing process even when it's physical media, your physical copies will be ravaged by time even when not used. It's never going to be as simple matter as there are physical copies in a vault somewhere so now they are preserved. 

Plastic Production is an environmental concern that exists independent of those issues. And it’s very messed up how when something related to that issue trends it’s usually something like Plastic Straws which many people with disabilities need.

I understand the impulse behind wanting Physical Media, I have an emotional attachment to every VHS and DVD and Blu Ray I already own. And destroying what already exists will not solve the problem, it could make things worse (never burn plastic, that's the worst thing you can do), so go ahead keep what you have.

But there was a time early in the streaming era when some people were talking about how unhealthy this obsession with collecting Physical Media is. Owning stuff for the sake of owning it used to be included in what people critiqued when they critiqued “consumerism”.

The Profit Seeking Corporations have made streaming less convenient than it was supposed to be, but that should not discredit the concept itself, it should discredit Capitalism. Instead people started romanticizing Physical Media again.

You don’t want to support the Corporations that own the official Streaming Sites and Digital Purchase platforms, good, but guess what most Piracy is digital nowadays too. Buying bootlegged physical media requires connections you are probably better off not having. 

I have very recently felt the frustration of something I bought a digital copy of being removed from PrimeVideo when there never was a Physical Release meaning I now have to resort to Privacy if I want to watch it again. But the way to prevent that should be first and foremost laws banning such practices. 

Worldbuilding doesn't and shouldn't matter.

I’ve increasingly come to feel there is nothing people should care about as an “objective criticism” less than “Bad Worldbuilding”. 

When the Worldbuilding in something is genuinely well thought out and holds up under scrutiny that’s a neat bonus, I love watching YT videos about the hidden depths of the lore in ASOIAF as much as anyone else who only watched the TV shows. But it should not be a requirement and certainly not an end in and of itself, and I kinda feel like what’s happened to that very franchise proves my point. 

Tolkien was a worldbuilder like none before him because he spent 20 years writing about this fantasy world just for himself before he actually published anything set in it. And even then he still had to partially rewrite The Hobbit later when he fully integrated it into Arda’s overarching history. Chances are you have not read the book that was published in 1937. 

I don’t care whether or not the world of a story makes sense, I care whether the characters are people I like spending time with and then if the story being told with them is compelling. And if anything related to worldbuilding as a concept affects my ability to enjoy a story, it’s not detailed the history is, or how unique it is and unlike other fantasy worlds it is, or whether its internal logic really makes that much sense. As I explained in my post on why I couldn’t get into Magic Knight Rayearth it’s whether or not the world actually feels alive and lived in, like the people playing specific roles in the story are not the only real people in it. 

I saw someone say how a particular Urban Fantasy Pet Peeve of theirs is when the Economy doesn't make sense, and then went about all the math they did regarding some story's Economy. The fact that you put more thought into this silly thing to even care about in the first place than the author did doesn’t make you a better writer than them. 

Another incorrectly named Detective Conan Collection on Netflix.

It should be named The Vermouth Arc because it's real purpose is finally filling in what they skipped in the first collection. I wish they could have just added these to that.

My nitpicking the presentation aside, they are all episodes I'm glad to see Dubbed finally and as usual this Cast Dubs them all excellently. It's also nice to finally have one with no extra long episodes and thus an episode count that doesn't look deceptively underwhelming

This was half episodes that barely if at all feature FBI characters, and for the ones that do it's a kind of a spoiler to be advertising them as FBI episodes, these are all from before that was supposed to be known. When they announced the new collection will be FBI themed I expected a few of these but mostly episodes continuing after 425. But this is for the best, those post 425 episodes should be part of a future Collection branded as The Clash of Red and Black.

I'm glad the Nano voice for Sonoko of finally got to do a Deduction show. And I'm pleasantly surprised Higo's introduction got to make a collection at all.

The case this batch ended on is the first case in this Dub that I hadn't already seen in it's entirety before.  It's a good case, some unique non standard tension that makes it stand out. 

After ending where it did, I'm now expecting the second Cour of this collection to open on Contact with The Black Organization and then include both Four Porsches and The Connivence Store Trap, and I'm hoping at least also the Hidden Bathroom Secret. After that it could go either way on just being the other 2003 Vermouth Arc episodes or including some episode following it's finale.  Episode 346-347 is easy to dismiss as a mere aftermath episode but it is the episode that properly reveals certain things. And Aftermath episodes are fun.

Based on the pattern of how the last collection was released, I'm expecting July 1st to be one the second half drops.  But I do hope it can happen sooner after having to wait so long for the 3rd Collection.

And then there is the matter of the Watch order.  I may add a more refined update on this later, or link to someone laying it out well if I find one. But the gist is...

The first case of this collection should be watched before The Desperate Revival.

The second case in it between where the Rivals Collection ends and The Mysterious Passenger.

The next 3 cases between The Mysterious Passenger and The New York Case.

And the last case after the New York Case.

Update: The Director of the Dub has updated her Chronological order list. I should just always link to that instead of trying to explain it myself. 

https://matchaandmayhem.tumblr.com/post/799001080524570624/detco-dub-order

Anime that are more Christian then Frieren.

Christian Anime fans are becoming more visible on Antitube and other places online, but I can't help but find it odd how many are leading with Frieren as the natural Anime to be the face of that.  

I like Frieren, it's a good show, I gave season 1 a 9 out of 10 and season 2 an 8 out of 10, and I'm expecting to like season 3 more. But when it comes to Anime I would recommend to watch for a Christian reason it's nowhere near the top of my list. 

There is a certain type of Christian who still sees the Platonic Ideal of what Christendom should be as Medieval Western Europe. It doesn't surprise me that some Catholics and Episcopalians are like that, but what's become more visible in online Christianity are people denominationally Low Church who are like that. So these types for purely Aesthetic reasons want their ideal Christian Anime to be a Medieval European style Fantasy story, and Frieren is even by its secular fans praised as the contemporary Fantasy Anime most true to the Tolkienesque roots of the genre and free of modern Isekai and Gamer trends. 

But even for that appeal there are better choices then Frieren in my opinion. Maquia, Grimoire of Zero and it's Spin off Dawn of the Witch, various Tales of Anime (sometimes the Fantasy Anime that feel the least Gamey are the direct adaptations of Specific Games). Or watch a real classic like Record of Lodoss War. And for something pretty recent The Witch and The Beast.

Frieren's most actually contentious element has also garnered it Christian apologists for misguided reasons.  

Let's set aside what the Demons in Frieren are called.  Demons in Freiren are not analogous to any theory about what Demons are Biblically.  They aren't fallen angels or disembodied spirits of   "Nephilim" who died in the Flood. They are a natural species who seem to be the way they are for biologically determined reasons, but regardless are capable of human levels of intelligence. They have Souls based on what that word (both the Greek Psyche and Hebrew Nephesh) objectively means, I don't care if the in universe world building ever says they don't. 

I like some others believe Frieren is eventually going to subvert what it's been doing with the Demons and that's why I'm not letting it bother me for now.

Of all the Fantasy Tropes associated with Tolkien, what the Orcs wound up being is something he regrated, he was himself uncomfortable with the implication, and I can sympathize with someone writing themselves into a corner as they basically help invent a genre. But those following in Tolkien's footsteps should learn from his mistakes.  From a Christian perspective, nothing capable of Human intelligence should ever be considered ontologically irreversibly evil from birth, Christians can have different views on the theoretical possibility of an individual becoming irredeemable based on their choices, but no one should ever be irredeemable because of what they had no choice in. 

Now when a story does call a species Demons but depicts them unlike Biblical Demons in similar ways to Frieren's Demons and then does depict them as redeemable or even Good actually, that will be called Anti-Christian at least on the grounds that they shouldn't have labeled these beings Demons.  But it makes sense to me that an intelligent species viewed as Evil by their Enemies would be called Demons and maybe even internalize that label over time. There is in my view something very Christian in exploring that, certainly more Christian then just having evil things you can kill without consequence.

The Title of this post promises recommendations, so that's coming up. 

Talking about by why I like these shows as a Christian while trying to be as broadly appealing as possible is a bit tricky. I believe these Anime can have Christian appeal even to Christians who disagree with me on certain things I disagree with other Christians on. In fact a lot of what makes a Christian lens more applicable to them then Frieren is specifically my affinity for a very Evangelical understanding of The Gospel rather then Catholic. But they do also speak to me in ways that connect to those disagreements too.  But to be clear none of my disagreements with the majority of American Christians are on anything any major denomination considers an essential doctrine of the faith, I'm Nicene and Trinitarian with a High View of Biblical Inerrancy. 

Rather then listing these in any order that ranks them on how good they are or how Christian they are, I'm going to try and list them in an order that helps me lay out my logic, almost a narrative itself. 

This should be obvious, but again I'm not suggesting any of these were intended be intentionally Christian.

SSSS.Gridman

The reason Gridman works will also be applicable to other shows on the list, but might be more of a spoiler for them. One thing that really helps a Gospel reading of something to me is if one of the Villains is also the person our Heroes specifically want to Save. The Good Shepherd came specifically to find the Lost Sheep. And Gridman is one of the purest examples of that. This isn't applicable to every time villains are redeemed (though that never hurts), it's about when Saving someone in-spite of what a bad person they've become is an explicit part of the heroes' goal.

Robotics;Notes

This show is one of the best expressions of Collectivism in Anime. A Collectivism you don't have to agree with any particular Political or Socio-Economic ideology to appreciate.  The Robot Research Club is a Body and each member could be considered a different body part, like how the NT talks about the Body of Christ.  Add to that it's strong sense of optimism and themes it shares with others on this list, and it's one of the shows I most strongly recommend in general, to Christians or Secularists.

The Magical Girl Warrior genre in general has a lot of themes I see as very Christlike.  

But some in particular that I have thought about along these lines include Peartear which would be the one I'd list here if I limited myself to only one, I consider it in general the most underrated and overlooked classic entry in the genre.  Wedding Peach for something that more often has a coincidentally Christian Aesthetic going on, and Blue Reflection Ray for something more recent then most I've been talking about.   

Higurashi When They Cry

Most specifically the original 2006 Studio Deen Anime adaptation and it's 2007 sequel Kai. It's lore is ultimately built around something I think makes a good analogy for Original Sin.

Steins;Gate

This one works for it's particular approach to the theme of self sacrifice, in ways that are a Spoiler but not the potential Spoiler I was talking about with Gridman. It's probably the most uncontroversial Visual Novel adaptation to consider good, I happen to like a lot of them though.

Re:Creators

This forgotten classic of 2017 has a lot going for it. 

My all time favorite Anime, Noir, I connect to me Faith in ways I don't think I can adequately explain.

For an example that I don't count as Anime but others would, Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind. It like others examples is a nice gender inversion where the Christ Figure is a Woman. 

I should try to mention something more contemporary, that is a major factor in why Frieren gets to be in so many thumbnails, it's the current most popular trending show. 

Zenshu shows classic Fantasy Vibes can still prevail even when something officially qualifies as Isekai.

Tower of God as a lot going for it.

Shy is a show I've praised mainly in it's context as a Superhero Anime, but it also shares themes with these Anime. 

For another show from the same season as Frieren's debut, I'd also recommend Pluto.

A few that are specific episodes more so then the show as whole.

Detective Conan, The Mysterious Passenger, among the episodes currently on Netflix, mainly for one specific plot point.

Detective Conan's 12th movie The Full Score of Fear for it's use of Amazing Grace.

Sailor Moon R episode 24 Battle of The Flames of Love Mars Vs Koan, episode 70 of the show as starting from the original series, and episode 64 of the DiC Dub where it was named Enemies No More. 

Sailor Moon episode 26, 22 in the DiC Dub, is also neat.

The first six episodes of Sailor Moon SailorStars also some good material. 

Episode 18 of Corrector Yui. 

Below shall be examples I recommend in-spite of how they also contain content many Conservative Christians might have trouble tolerating.

If Anime were Mainstream then Anime that are adaptations would be allowed to stand on their own.

I guess this is part 5 of my “no Anime isn’t mainstream” series.  But each prior part I genuinely felt like now I’ve made the most important point and these should be read backwards. But in this case I'm not sure this point is actually more important than the last two, but it is more of a coherent point then the first two.  It does still stand on it's own however. 

Stephen Spielberg's Jurassic Park is a bad adaptation of Michael Crichton's book, it only even tried to adapt the last half of it and changes everything, who lives and who dies isn't even the same, the very moral of the story is arguably changed somewhat.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is a bad adaptation of Stephen King’s book that King has vocally expressed his intense undying hatred for. 

James Whale’s Frankenstein movie is pretty much in name only (when it isn’t changing even some of the names). 

Each of these movies is near universally considered a Cinematic Masterpiece, why? Because Cinema is respected as an artform, if the movie is undeniably a good movie then how it's not like the source is fun academic trivia at best. Only if the movie is seen as a bad movie all on its own will its infidelity to the source material be then added on as another offense it committed. 

But when it comes to Anime that are adapted from a source material, especially Visual Novels, you will see a refusal to accept this, I've even literally seen people argue an Anime that seems good on it’s own is worse then one that is simply Bad because it gives people the wrong idea of what the source material is. 

This proves Anime isn’t mainstream, or to be consistent with this post’s predecessor is not currently any more mainstream than it was 20 years ago. What has increased in being at least more well known in those 20 years is the very existence of Visual Novels to westerners. So now fans who do care about the Visual Novel at least in concept (even if they aren't actually going to read it) are a large enough percentage of those watching the Anime, especially the ones invested enough to make YouTube videos about them, that their perspective can dominate the discourse.

Visual Novels are themselves a not very mainstream artform, especially here in the west where they are inarguably more niche then Anime is. And so their grudge against Anime they feel misrepresents certain VNs comes in part from that place of resentment. 

If any of the artforms related to Otaku Media is mainstream at least in Japan it’s Manga.  Not all Manga, not Doujinshi by definition, but the ones serialized in popular weekly Magazines by the biggest publishers. So no surprise the rare Anime that are somewhat normal to be praised as equal to or even better than their source are Manga Adaptations, not all or even most of them, but enough to be notable. It does kinda bug me how often this happens to be Shoujo Manga made by Women adapted to Anime primarily by Men.  But I will highlight an example of the opposite, the Manga for  K-On was made by a dude, but the Anime was written and directed mainly by two women and a studio largely founded by women (and a woman did the Character Designs too) and that Anime has been proclaimed by one highly respected Anime Scholar, The Ultimate Adaptation.  

I led with Jurassic Park because it’s the least contentious. Stephen King has his fanboys willing to defend his perspective on the film (I'm one of them sometimes honestly). And Frankenstein’s Novel has fans who keep wanting each new Frankenstein film to be the perfect adaptation and then complain when it isn’t (the 2004 version is the closest I think a dramatized adaptation theoretically can be). 

In the case of Jurassic Park however I find it telling that the film version’s popularity overshadows knowledge of the book’s very existence to such a degree that half of what people say when hating on the Jurassic Park sequels are unknowingly them becoming more like the original book. Chief example being every time someone gets so offended at the very concept of allowing a human to be able to kill a Dinosaur, that happened multiple times in the original novel.  

Back when most westerners didn’t even know what Visual Novels were, Higurashi When They Cry’s Studio Deen Anime was very popular and universally praised as the best Horror Anime.  It is in terms of the basic sequence of events less different from the source material than any of the three movies I mentioned up top, and certainly can't be accused of inverting the moral or the themes the way they do. But now popular opinion is turning on it because of the influence of VN fans. 

A lot of times people critiquing an adaptation will accuse it of lacking an important theme or subtext that I absolutely got from the adaptation simply for not being conveyed in the exact same way. With Visual Novel adaptations that is especially potent. As someone who defends Voice Over Narration and Inner Monologues in Anime in general, I’m baffled at how determined VN fans are to think the pages of inner monologue cut from the Anime are the only way to convey a certain character has a certain psychological issue when simply watching how they act makes it incredibly obvious. My past anti "Show don’t Tell" rants were about defending the artistic value of telling not denigrating the value of showing, but VN fans really do seem to think telling is the only way to convey information. 

Maybe it seems like I’ve rambled off topic.  The point is if most Anime were in fact being watched just as widely as Disney movies, there would be no shortage of people just enjoying the Anime as Anime and hopefully respecting the VN when they hear of it but not letting any complaints change how they feel about the Anime that got them into it in the first place. 

No one thinks Visual Novels are mainstream now, certainly not the ones actually made in Japan. What this observation proves is that Anime, especially Anime based on Visual Novels, are more mainstream then Visual Novels but only barely. 

The Best Year in the History of Anime?

This is a follow up to a post I made at the start of 2026 where I made the case for 2006 being the best year of Anime History while doing my usual, “look back on Anime that turn 20 this year” thing I started doing in 2024.

The thing about years in Japan however is that in every way but nominally Japanese society really functions as if years begin with Spring and end with Winter, the first month being April and the last being March. 

So the thought entered my mind that maybe an even better year could be created by swapping out Winter 2026 for Winter 2027? 

It so happens that would correspond to exactly the year that Nana was airing.  So we could call it the Year of Nana, or Nana Year or Year Nana. 

I already said in that first post that the Spring season is where the argument for 2006 really kicked off. Some of what was airing in Winter 2006 were multiple cour shows still airing in Spring. 

So the full shows we lose from dropping Winter 2006 are mainly Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl and Neirma Kaidun Brothers. Both shows I like a lot but wouldn't call either the best of its genre, Kashimashi is closer to being an essential viewing of its genre(s) but is also arguably surpassed by later 2006 shows. 

On the subject of Detective Conan we do lose what I consider perhaps the single best episode of that show in 425. But the trade off is getting Shadow of The Black Organization and The Unsmashable Snowman. We also switch out the 6th OVA for the 7th, they are all about equal in quality. 

What we gain by adding Winter 2007 includes Shattered Angels which I consider a very underrated Jem, Hidamari Sketch which is a show I haven’t seen yet but know is considered important to the Slice of Life/CGDCT genre, and Venus Versus Virus which I haven't finished and haven’t seen what I did see for awhile.  Plus the start of Yes! PreCure 5, a show that proved important to setting the tone for Pretty Cure going forward. 

Looking more at stuff I haven't seen there is a Shuffle sequel called Shuffle Memories I didn’t know about till recently. And the start of that Les Miserables Anime.  

And then there’s Loving Angel Angelique which I should look into as an early Otome Game Anime, and it was a sequel whose first part aired in Summer 2006 so is a show I should have known about back when making the first 2006 Anime post, it looks like it was the first TV Anime based on an Otome Game adding more to the argument for this being a particularly important year for VN Anime.

And for Shounen fans the start of Naruto Shippoden (it occurs to me that means the closing arc of the original Naruto Anime must have aired during this year). I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to care about standard Battle Shonen enough to find out what was going on in the other two of the “big three”.  Maybe someone else trying to follow up my thesis could do that. 

The other major Four Cour show connected to 2006 was Blood+, it changes from three fourths airing during the year in question to just the second half, but that’s still enough to matter. 

And we also gain the second cours of a lot of Fall 2006 shows like Kanon and Le Chevalier D’Eon. There must have been some delays in the original broadcast of Code Geass because I expected it to end in late March but it was actually in late April, same with Death Note, I expected episode 26 to air in the first week of April at the latest but it didn’t.  Still for both those shows adding Winter 2007 adds a lot of why they are considered great. Same with early Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, episode 25 aired in Japan on March 29th

In the OVA department Winter 2007 had the Burst Angel OVA and the first episode of Murder Princess. And some Maria-Sama OVAs.

Something I should have mentioned in the original 2006 post is Summer Days from June.  It’s not on the Anime Database websites due to how it’s released being a Visual Novel but like School Days the prior year it was Animated, seemingly even more so. I, like many Americans, have only been able to play the censored version of its later remake titled Shiny Days, but it seems a lot of what I like was already there in the original, but there is a lot of Shiny Days content that wasn't there originally.  It’s the Anime where my favorite Anime character gets to be the lead, so it’s important to me. 

The annual Lupin III TV Special during this year was Seven Days Rhapsody in September.  But I haven’t seen it or most 00s Lupin specials since they aren’t among those Dubbed, so I can’t say if it was even above average for the time. 

I considered looking at what source materials for future Anime came during this year, but there wasn't much.  2004 might be the better year for that, containing a number of source materials for what got animated during this year as well as some that came even later.  But I didn’t think to look into that in 2024.

Four of what I’m currently listing as my top 23 Anime on Anilist are from this year, no other single year is that overrepresented. Those are three shows I consider the best of their genre, Nana, Kanon and Higurashi, and one that in the past I’d labeled my second favorite of all time, Code Geass.  Add to that the importance shows like Haruhi, Death Note and Gintama have, and a few other best or most important of their genre candidates like Strawberry Panic, and the case for this being the best year is pretty easy to make.  [Update: Black Lagoon is another pretty popular Anime from Fall 2006 I forgot to mentioned before.]

Talking about all the hidden gems adds some nice flavor to the argument but every year has those so they aren’t the crux of it. 

Of the 2006 shows I consider the best of their genre, Kanon is probably the most controversial. Yes they’re all gonna be disputed by someone, Strawberry Panic is hated by people with very different priorities for what they want in a Yuri Anime (some of them might like Simoun the best) and Higurhshi is hated by VN purists who don’t like it being classified as Horror in the first place and others who think no Anime has ever been good at Horror. But with Kanon it tends to be nearly universally viewed as surpassed by its own spiritual successor Clannad and Clannad After Story. 

I do love Clannad and place it just below Kanon.  Some of why I prefer Kanon is more my personal tastes then anything remotely objective, but I also think getting the entire story in one single Anime instead of across two counts for something. Clannad fans I’m sure at least respect the fact that Kanon made Clannad possible both as a VN and an Anime. And with Kanon it has been argued the KyoAni Anime is an improvement over the source material while Clannad is still viewed as falling short of the VN. Since as an Anime specifically is the point of comparison here, I think you can even argue Knaon is better animated. 

Haruhi, Death Note and Code Geass are important to Anime culture as a whole in a way that transcends whether or not they are the best of their genre. Haruhi created her genre, making her important regardless of if you think something like Bunny Girl Senpai has surpassed her. Code Geass and Death Note can’t be considered the best of any Genre simply because they aren’t pure manifestations of any Genre you could slap onto them since they are Genre Mixes ultimately, they are compared to each other more often then they are the rest of their genres. If any Anime is as important to the 00s as Eva was to the 90s it’s one of these three.  Clearandsweet has a video on how Haruhi is singularly important to redefining what most Anime looks like.