Decade Anniversary of 2016 Anime

2016 happens to be an important year in my personal history with Anime. Even though I’d had some interest in some Anime for 20 years previously, and at the end of the year still had only seen a fraction of the Anime I’ve seen now (maybe even specially a minority of what had existed up that point), it was during this year I feel I truly became an Otaku, became someone whose interest in Anime and related media took priority over all the older Nerdy interests I do still have. 

For Winter 2016. 

Grimgar of Ashes and Illusions is an Anime I didn’t finish but it’s notable to some as what a lost potential of what Isekai could have become if it’d been Darker or more Realistic and or just generally taken itself more seriously. 

Knosuba is the opposite yet also a show I never finished even the first season of as the ultimate Isekai parody.  This season also had the second cour of Gate which I’ve talked about before.

Erased is a show I’ve watched twice and I like it, yes even its ending. 

And it had the last season of Durarara!! Which was excellent. And also the last cour of Lupin III Part IV which was also good. 

Aokana is a show I’ve seen and consider pretty okay. Also the last part of Code Geass: Akito of the Exiled and the Selector Destructed Wixoss movie. 

Spring 2016 had Re:Zero, Netoge, season 3 of Sailor Moon Crystal, High School Fleet, Flying Witch and the second part of Concrete Revolutio an Anime I only very recently became a fan of. That's six very solid shows right there. It also had the 20th Detective Conan film Darkest Nightmare which was good and the movie version of Gundam Thunderbolt December Sky which was very good. And the third Gundam The Origin OVA, the fourth would come out in December. 

Summer 2016 had the second half of Re:Zero season 1 but also the first half of Tales of Zestria which is a great example of how the Fantasy Anime adapted from specific Video Games often feel the least Gamey. 

New Game! was great, Prisma Illya 3wei is as well. 

The separate Anime listed on the database Websites as different Danganronpa 3s should not be watched separately but in the episode order they are placed in on Crunchyroll.  In that form they are The Godfather Part II of Anime and in my opinion even better, a true masterpiece.

For movies Summer 2016 has two of the biggest of all, Your Name and A Silent Voice, both of which are great movies. It also has the Accel World movie which I enjoyed and Pokémon: Volcanion and The Mechanical Marvel which was okay. 

For Pokémon this year was the end of the X and Y Generation which I really like, probably the last Generation of Pokémon I really got into. That also means it’s the start of Sun and Moon which I’ve always found the art style of off putting.  But the Pokémon Generations ONAs were pretty good. 

Fall 2016 is a fascinating season, one of it’s biggest shows I’ve still never watched but conceptually do respect and want to give props to, Yuri On Ice. Another show from that season I know of but haven’t seen is Keijo. Of the six shows from this season I have watched to completion, all are shows I like.  I also recall that the second season of Sound Euphonium aired this season.

What’s special about this season is it’s my first time really following Seasonal Anime as they aired. Earlier in the year I had heard of both Re;Zero and Konosuba and maybe also Erased but didn’t follow them. I had watched Crystal season 3 on Hulu (which was Free with Ads back then) as it aired where I was also following the finishing of SailorStars being uploaded there, but I’ve always compartmentalized Sailor Moon from general seasonal Anime. 

Those six Fall 2016 shows are Izetta The Last Witch, Flip Flappers, ViVid Strike!, Lostorage Incited Wixoss, Occultic;Nine and Magical Girl Raising Project which is the only one I’ll qualify, as a defender of so called “Dark Magical Girl shows’ in general this isn’t one of the best of them but I like some of what it does.  The first two of those are the ones I actively followed at the time.

When talking about 2017's importance I have sometimes mistakenly referred to that Winter as my first time following seasonal Anime.  This is because of three things.  I didn't watch much of Fall 2016 at the time.  I kinda just happened to be following these currently airing shows not registering that this was an Anime Fandom practice I was doing for the first time. And 2017 was my first full Gregorian calendar year following Seasonal Anime. 

This year was the 20th Anniversary of Detective Conan’s Anime just as current year is the show’s 30th. Which is why this year had the Episode One OVA which was an okay way to get the gist of how it started with more modern Animation, but I’d more recommend just watching the early episodes which are currently on Netflix.  

For the show proper 2016 began with two 1 hour TV Original special episodes (804-805) written by the same guy who wrote movie 11 and was pretty fun. The Darkness of the Prefectural Police (810-812) was a fun episode that introduced a new character important to the Rum saga. The Shadow Chasing Amuro (813) was a tie in episode to the movie I mentioned before. The Actress Blogger’s locked room (814-815) is the next appearance of that new character. The suspects are a Passionate Couple (822-823) is a fun episode, one of the rare modern DC episodes I’ve watched 3 times already. Ramen so Good it’s to Die For 2 (827-828) is another fun episode, it has Sera in it. The Unfriendly Girls Band (836-837) is another fun episode I’ve seen 3 times, it’s a K-On reference and builds on some important lore and has one of the most memorable EDs which I suspect Yuki Yuna is A Hero fans will get a kick out of.  If I’ve seen more from 2016 I don’t remember for certain, but those are already more interesting episodes then I was expecting a single year from the Rum era to have when I started writing this. 

And the year ended with the Fate/Grand Order: First Order OVA which was fun. 

Going back to an observation I made at the start, even most Anime from 2016 I hadn’t seen at the time.  Most stuff from the first three seasons I didn’t even know of at the time, for the movies and some shows their Dubs didn’t exist yet, and even for that last season there’s still many I didn't watch till later. 

I got into to Anime during this year watching stuff that wasn't new at the time, or at least wasn't brand new, like Yuru Yuri, Lucky Star, Haruhi, Future Diary, Selector Infected Wixoss and Selector Spread Wixoss, Fate/Zero and Stay Night, and then Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and it’s sequel A’s on Thanksgiving, and possibly some more that I’ve forgotten exactly when I first watched them. And also revisiting some of the Anime I’d already been a fan of (including being the year I watched my favorite Anime Noir Subbed for the first and still only time). I didn’t realize at the time how for some of those Anime this year was their 10th anniversary and are thus turning 20 now. 

So perhaps it’s a little silly to celebrate the Anime that actually aired this year alongside it being the anniversary of my becoming an Otaku. But every time I find out something I watched more recently is from 2016 my brain goes “that makes sense” it’s like this was meant to be the year that got me to go full Weeb. 

There is none Anime stuff from 2016 I like in a similar way. I’m still a Suicide Squad apologist with mixed feelings on both BvS and Rouge One and all the American TV shows I was watching at that time. I may have even still been reading BlackCoatPress books. But Anime became my priority and it’s stuck. 

Anime that are more Communist then Hayao Miyazaki

For some reason, there is a narrative that Hayao Miyazaki is the most Leftist creator of Japanese Animation and Manga. The problem is even when Miyazaki was still identifying as a Marxist he was always a Malthusian and that’s mutually exclusive with Marxism. 

This list will still likely be incomplete as my own knowledge of Anime is itself still far from complete, for example I haven’t consumed much of anything from Leji Matsumoto or Osamu Tezuka and they were both known JCP members. 

This is not a ranked list of how good or how Communist they are.  I’m going to start with those that from what I’m aware of have the most external confirmation of the creators Leftist politics and then work down to ones that are arguably just my personal interpretation. I am a Death of the Author advocate so I believe some stories are Communist in spite of Authorial intent.

The Rose of Versailles.  The original Manga was written by Riyoko Ikeda who was a member of the Democratic Youth League of Japan, the youth wing of the Japanese Communist Party. It’s a shame only two of her Manga have ever been Animated.  And I consider it a personal shame that I still haven’t watched Dear Brother as both a Yuri Fan and a Communist.  But I suspect it’s a safe bet that the one about the French Revolution is more explicitly Political. The original 40 episode series is on Retro Crush and Prime Video but has no Dub, a new film version should drop on Netflix with a Dub the day before I post this, but I’m skeptical of the story’s ability to work as a single film.  

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway’s Flash.  This is a film adaptation of the first novel of a trilogy written by original Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tommino who we have on record talking about how he and most Anime creators of his generation were Communists at least in their youth. While Malthusianism also seems like a theme in UC Gundam stories I don’t think Tommino is accepting it as uncritically as Miyazaki does, especially given the themes of Brain Powered.  Hathaway is what I’m putting on this list because for once the narrative is principally on the side of the Revolutionaries rather than the defenders of the Status Quo.  It’s on Netflix.  But it’s not the best entry point to Gundam, it’s best to have at least seen the Mobile Suit Gundam Trilogy and Char’s Counterattack for context, fortunately they’re also on Netflix though the Dub for the Trilogy isn’t on any official streaming site. [Update June 18th: So the Trilogy and CCA are leaving Netflix.  The Trilogy is up on YT now and CCA is on Crunchyroll as "season 2" of the original series but this is still annoying, it was very convenient when I could recommend people to watch this whole saga on the same App.]

Mawaru Penguindrum.  Leftist readings are pretty common for all of Kunihiko Ikuhara’s works, but I think Penguindrum is the most about society as a whole and not more specific forms of oppression. 

Robotics;Notes is a show I’ve often defaulted to as an example of good Leftist Collectivism in Anime. 

Durarara!! Is also a story with a practically Anarchist sense of Community.  But it does at times undermine itself, I mostly wish they hadn’t backed out of how they first depicted the Cops.

Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine episode 7 Music and Revolution.

The Loudly Laundry episode of Princess Principal.

What I’ve seen of the .Hack franchise also lends itself well to Leftist readings, it’s a reminder of the Revolutionary potential the Internet once had, and could have again.

Hugtto Pretty Cure has a really interesting final arc. 

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya.  No, I’m not joking. 

Characters I interpret as Ace

This is not a complete list of every character in works I’m into that can be interpreted as Asexual and/or Aromantic.  They are characters I have a particular interest in interpreting this way, and largely came to this interpretation on my own before seeing any evidence that anyone else had also interpreted them as Ace.

I’m not Ace myself and so none of this is driven by a desire to see myself in these characters and in fact some of what I say may unwittingly reflect my own lack of understanding of Aceness.

Being Ace is a nuanced identity, besides the Sexual/Romantic distinction many make, there are some who wind up in sexual or romantic relationships in spite of identifying as Ace.  So some of these may be characters who the Canon gives a partner eventually but that doesn't invalidate my reading.  Some may even be characters who I myself also Ship with another character, but Shipping to me is not inherently Sexual or even always Romantic, it’s ultimately about liking the chemistry between two characters and wanting to see more of them together.

So I’m not even going to clarify whether I think a given character is Asexual or Aromantic or both as I’m not even sure I understand the line between them.

Cassandra Cain/Batgirl:  Since Batman is my oldest Fandom I figured I should start with the Bat Family member on that list. My direct experience with this character is limited, mostly Comics after she was no longer Mute but before Infinite Crisis, and even within that time frame is by no means complete.  But she does show a lack of interest in Romance.  

She is the main reason for one of my above clarifications since I’m also a StephCass shipper, but how I view Steph’s orientation isn't solely defined by this Ship either.

Terra Branford: A good deal of her early game dialogue is about being unaffected by the flirting of the charming male character and feelings like she lacks something because of it.  She’s from Final Fantasy VI originally released in the US on the SNES as Final Fantasy III.

Paul of Tarsus: Is not a Fictional Character but I wanted to cover him here anyway. Much of my efforts to debunk Puritan and Ascetic readings of the New Testament involves stressing how in 1 Corinthians 7 Paul expresses hesitance to even talk on this subject and clearly says he’s NOT speaking with the Apostolic Authority he is on other issues. The fact is he clearly has a lack of ability to even relate to the desires that most people have.

Rei Hino/Sailor Mars in the Manga/Crystal:  Rei in the Manga canon is quite adamant about her lack of interest in men.  And as someone more sympathetic to the Manga fans complaints about the 90s Anime then most it still bugs me when they default to framing how Rei was changed as Straight Washing a Lesbian.   Rei’s wording it as not interested in “Men” does not mean she is interested in women, we live in a Heteronormative society where often the default way to express a lack of interest in Romance is to say you're uninterested in the other Sex. 

Anri Sonohara: There is a lot made in Durarara!! about her inability to Love in a traditionally romantic sense.  Made all the more awkward by her being bonded with a sentient magical Yandere Katana.

Akito Yamada: It’s particularly awkward when you are coming to an Ace reading of a Romantic Lead in a Romantic Anime, and one example of that happening to me is with the title character of My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999.  This character very heavily comes off as Asexual and the knowledge that the genre setup sees that as an issue he needs to overcome is frustrating.  

Yuu Koito: Bloom Into You is one of the most beloved Yuri Anime of the last decade, yet the Asexual vibes of its protagonist are just as thick.  Yuu isn’t the only possible Ace character in this show however. Seji Maki is definitely Ace, and there is the scene where he distinguishes his lack of interest in Romance from Yuu’s, but I don’t really think that means only one of them can qualify as Ace.

Ai Amatsu: Injuu Seisen is a Hentai series, so this might be the most baffling of all, how can I argue a Hentai character is Asexual?  Well the story involves evil Lust Demons as you might expect, and Ai seems almost completely immune to their lust inducing powers.  Now you might think that’s simply because of her own super power as one of the Twin Heroines of this series.  But her sister Mai who has the same magical gifts is absolutely NOT so immune, she is very very horny actually.

Yuno Gasai and the Yandere timeline

Yuno Gasai from the Anime/Manga Mirai Nikki aka Future Diary is the single most well known Yandere, or at least she was when I fully joined the Anime Community in the mid to late 2010s, so much so that Gigguk’s Yandere video could make a Joke out of pretending she’s the only one who matters.

But unlike most characters who have become virtually synonymous with their Archetype she is not the first or even the first really popular one, or even really among the first.  I would dare say by the time of her creation the Yandere was already becoming an overplayed Cliche.

Now when I started researching this thesis I was shocked how much older Mirai Nikki’s source material is, I’m not used to popular Manga taking over 5 years to get an Anime.  But it was still not old enough to destroy this premise.  It started publication on January 26th 2006.

Now I’m someone who is fairly strict in how I even define a Yandere, I talked about elements of it in a post I made earlier this year.  So for example the character from Shuffle who some call a Yandere (I’ve heard she’s more of one in the Anime then in the original VN) I’m iffy on counting.  But if we count her then Shuffle’s Anime ended on January 6th 2006.

Amelie Doree has a video on the 2003 Visual Novel Cross Channel, from it I can conclude it has a character who can be considered a Yandere.

Most of Higurashi was released by the end of 2005 including the two most Yandere relevant chapters.  Getting back to the relative strictness with how I define a Yandere, Sonozaki I consider a Yandere even if atypical in some ways, while Ryugu is not a Yandere, when she acts Crazy it has nothing to do with romance, apparently she's considered a Yangire a term I know less about.

The original School Days Visual Novel was released in 2005.  And in my opinion Kotonoha is still the best Yandere.

The first Durarara!! Light Novel came out in 2004 and the second came out in 2005.  They feature even by my strictest definition multiple Yanderes.  And if you loosen the definition it might just be possible to argue this is a saga where (almost) everyone is a Yandere.

And that’s the key to my thesis really, it is particularly the role Yanderes play in Durarara!! that even in these early novels makes it feel like it’s already a cliche, like the author is on a Meta level joking about how arguably overused this character type is.

All that and I still have a hunch none of these is where the Yandere trend began.  It’s difficult to research because characters who technically qualify have always existed, with some even suggesting the first Anime Yandere was a character from Uresei Yatsura or Ranma1/2 or something like that, or even Jojo.  And Gaijin Goomba of course wants to connect it to some pre-modern Japanese Folk Tale.

But when I ask who the first Yandere is I mean the beginning of this trend in Otaku oriented Visual Novels and Light Novels of the early 2000s which may have actually began in the mid to late 90s.  There may not be a definitive single first one, but I get the sense that even the oldest of the ones I’ve discussed above were already part of a trend.

But let’s return to the mystery of why Yuno Gasai was able to steal the spotlight from all these predecessors.  Is it because she’s the best?  I already said I consider someone else the best.  But this is one of those tropes where so many people want to argue why the one they like is the only one who was written with a complex Psychological profile that makes their insanity not truly only about the person they are romantically fixated on, but the truth is they were all written with depth.

Maybe why Yuno overshadows the rest is because of the Anime adaptation, because of how well she was performed by Tomosa Murata and later in the English Dub Brina Palencia?  

Glass Reflection I remember said in his Future Diary review that he didn’t like Brina as Yuno and that ticked me off.  One of Brina’s unique talents is to sound vocally more "normal" then most Anime characters even while still having an eccentric personality.  And for the Bipolar quality that a good Yandere is supposed to have that kind of voice is actually perfect.  

Cross Channel still doesn’t have an Anime, but besides that all those Pre-Yuno Yandere also made their Anime debut before her.  Mirai Nikki started airing in the Fall of 2011.  School Days technically was an Anime in its source material but got its TV Anime in 2007.  Higurashi had its Yandere Arcs in its first season in 2006.  And both of the first two Durarara!! LNs were covered in the first season of its Anime in the first half of 2010. And they all had good VAs who did a great job bringing their character's Insanity to life.

It honestly might be more that Yuno was the LAST notable Yandere as far as actual Japanese media goes.  The shows that copy everything else about Future Diary make their female lead very much not a Yandere. Instead for the terminally online the Yandere has been kept alive by a perpetually in-development American Indie Video Game and ASMR videos.  And maybe there's some V-Tubers who's gimmick is that they're a Yandere I wouldn't know.

So when Anitube as we currently know it started Yuno was the freshest Yandere in everyone’s memory.  And for plenty of newer Anime fans she may have been the only Yandere recent enough for them to have seen in action when she was new.

Update February 13th 2026: I recently learned of a 2000 Visual Novel called Silver that has who can perhaps be considered the first Yandere of VNs named Sasai Yuuna.

Light Novels should be adapted as Movies rather then TV Shows more often

I say this as someone who is in general biased for more serialized modes of storytelling and in fact that bias has played a role in why I like Anime so much to begin with.

But the Anime that embody the strengths of serialized story telling are usually Original TV Anime (and some OVAs and ONAs), and Manga adaptations.  And a lot of Visual Novel or Video Game adaptations work being adapted into a more serialized format because their structure is often like something serialized so that the player can be given convenient places to take a break.

LNs however are kind of the Japanese equivalent to YA novels or airport novels except shorter in length, their original narrative structure is usually much more similar to Movies then to a TV Series. And the Light part of term implies it's pretty rare for there to be too much for a single movie. 

My problem with the broadcast order of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is that it butchered the structure of the original LN which actually is a good stand alone work of art on it's own even if it had never gotten sequels.  The chronological first 6 episodes of Haruhi are the adaptation of that LN and I kind of wish someone would just fan edit them into a movie (both a Subbed version and a Dubbed version).

Sword Art Online was actually adapted similarly to Haruhi in this regard except in that case the inserted short stories written later to flesh out the original arc made the Anime more chronological then the source material rather then less.

The fact that some LNs are short story collections is perhaps the counter point to this thesis.  I suppose the short stories could be adapted as OVAs or ONAs.  But some movies are made as collections of shorter stories rather then one feature length story.

We've already seen success in adapting LNs as movies rather then TV shows.  The Live Action Boogiepop and Others movie, the Kara no Kyoukai films, the SAO Progressive movies of which only one I've gotten to see currently.  Aura: Koga Maryuin's Last War which I think is a pretty underrated entry in the Chunibyo genre.  And most successful of all The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

But I also think about the niche examples where the serialized format combined with wanting to make a lot of progress in one season has hurt a story structurally.  I'm The Villainess, So I'm Taming The Final Boss rushing to the end of the first novel in only the 4th episode killed my initial enthusiasm for that series.

There are exceptions, Fate/Zero and Fate/Apocrypha are LN adaptations and I don't see how they'd work as a string of movies.  Some LNs do seem to be written from the start with the idea of being adapted into a TV Anime.  However more often then not in Japan the Anime is glorified marketing for the source material not the other way around.  But sometimes whether it gets adapted or not a first novel can seem more like set up for future stories then a satisfying story on it's own.  Maybe it's mostly older LNs this is true for.

The point I'm making is perhaps most proven by the Raildex franchise and the popular discourse around it.  

A Certain Magical Index's first LN was also written to originally stand alone if no sequel was greenlit, that is the plot of the first 6 episodes and they too feel like they could've been a movie.  I enjoy the Index Anime just fine but I'm a notoriously easy person to please, and I can definitely see how every arc that is given only 3 episodes or less (Deep Blood, Tree Remnant, Crystal Fleet, all of season III) could have used more screen time to flesh everything out.

A Certain Scientific Railgun was serialized from it's inception and so the Anime is able to improve upon the Manga in the same way many past Anime based on Manga have from Sailor Moon to DBZ to the original FMA Anime by adding much needed episodic filler episodes and the occasional filler arc that is just as peak fiction as the Manga yet purists hate on them anyway.

Railgun works as a series because the source is also a serial, Index would have been better as movies.

It is true that sometimes even the LNs will split an arc across more then one LN.  SAO started doing this as early as Fairy Dance, and Boogiepop did it back in the 90s with Vs Imaginator, and Index has indeed done it a few times.

So those being adapted as a movie per LN can at first glance be mistaken for those misguided times Hollywood has split the last novel of a YA saga into two movies.  However Across The Spiderverse was pretty universally praised in-spite of ending on a Cliffhanger.  And in the world of Anime we have prior precedent for this with the Nanoha Reflection and Detonation movies being one story split across two films, and then the latest Prisma Illya movie also ended on a cliffhanger.

Maybe 20 years ago the idea of devoting a 20+ novel saga to movies rather then TV would have seemed unthinkable.  But now we live in a post MCU world where Cinema itself can be a little serialized.

Update November 2024: In the slightly over a year since I wrote this I've now finally seen Durarara! and Baccano!

Durarara! works surprisingly well as a TV series, I wouldn't change anything about it or recommend doing anything different if more season of the Anime are made.  It can be another lead counter example to my thesis.

Baccano! also worked very well as a miniseries, but I do think what Baccano! pulled off is likely to only work as a one season gimmick, I'm skeptical a second season could do the same thing with another 4 LNs.  It helped that the Flying Pussyfoot story was a two parter and that they could use Isaac and Miria as the main glue connecting the different stories.

If Baccano! gets more Anime, and I very much want it to, I would suggest just making movies out of as many of them as possible.

Perhaps some of you think too many individual Light Novels are not "Epic" or "Cinematic" enough to warrant a movie.  But I like plenty of small scale low stakes movies, from random Lifetime Original movies I've watched to old movies set in very isolated settings.  Not everything needs to be about the potential end of the world or destruction of an entire city to be film worthy.

Update September 20025: After reading up on what happens in the So I'm A Spider, So What LNs, I'd have the to say the first 5 volumes jumping around between time period would have made them more difficult then usual to work as films.  But that aspect of the story is done going forward and Volumes 6 and 7 which pick up where the Anime leaves off  but only on the earlier part of the time would each make very epic awesome and fairly stand alone movies.