Best Anime Of All Time: 2013

Monday, 30 September 2013

Chihayafuru

Plot

Chihaya Ayase is a girl who has spent most of her life simply supporting her sister in her model career. That changes when she meets a boy named Arata Wataya, a talented karuta player. After becoming friends, he believes that Chihaya has potential to become a great player. As Chihaya takes on a new dream of becoming Japan's best karuta player, she is soon separated from her karuta playing friends as they grow up. Now in high school, Chihaya is reunited with her childhood friend, Taichi Mashima. Together, they form the Mizusawa Karuta Club. With her teammates and friends supporting her, Chihaya strives to become the best karuta player in the world and to one day be with Arata again.

Sunday, 29 September 2013

Sword Art Online

Plot

In the year 2022, the Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG), Sword Art Online (SAO), is released. With the Nerve Gear, a virtual reality helmet that stimulates the user's five senses via their brain, players can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds.

On November 6, 2022, all the players log in for the first time, and subsequently discover that they are unable to log out. They are then informed by Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of SAO, that if they wish to be free, they must reach the 100th floor of the game's tower and defeat the final boss. However, if their avatars die in-game, their bodies will also die in the real world. The story follows Kirito, a skilled player who is determined to beat the game. As the game progresses for two years, Kirito eventually befriends a female player named Asuna with whom he ultimately falls in love. After the duo discover the identity of Kayaba's avatar in SAO, they confront and defeat him, freeing themselves and the other players from the game.

Upon returning to the real world, Kirito learns that Asuna and 300 other SAO players have still not awakened yet. Following a clue about Asuna's whereabouts in another VRMMORPG called Alfheim Online (ALO), Kirito also logs in there. Helped by his sister Suguha, known as Leafa in the game, he learns that the trapped players in ALO are part of a plan devised by Nobuyuki Sugō to perform illegal experiments on their minds to put them under his control, including Asuna, whom he intends to marry in the real world in order to take over her family's company. After Kirito stops Nobuyuki's plans, he finally reunites with Asuna in the real world.

Soon after, Kirito plays another game called Gun Gale Online (GGO) to investigate the mysterious connection between it and deaths occurring in the real world. Assisted by a female player he meets in the game called Sinon, he identifies and exposes the culprits, who include some former members of a murderous guild he had previously encountered in SAO.

Kirito is later recruited to assist in the development of a state-of-the-art game, UnderWorld (UW), which has an interface that is far more realistic and complex than the previous games he had played. In UW, the flow of time proceeds a thousand times faster than in the real world. However, he ends up falling into a trap set by one of the murderers from GGO and wakes up inside the game, unable to log out, with his real self left in a comatose state. Eventually he starts to question if he is the real Kirito or an artificial intelligence modeled after him.

Fruit Baskets

Plot

When high school student Tohru Honda's mother dies when she is hit by a car on her way to work, and, after moving out of her grandfather's house temporarily, Tohru begins living in a tent and supporting herself. That is, until she finds a home in the least likely of places, inhabited by her classmate Yuki Sohma and his cousins Shigure and Kyo. The Sohmas however, live with a curse. Twelve (not including Kyo, who is the cat) members of the family are possessed by spirits of the Chinese zodiac and turn into their zodiac animal when hugged by the opposite gender, are weak, or when under stress. When Tohru discovers the Sohmas' secret, she promises not to tell and is allowed to keep living with them. Although the Sohmas' curse is deeper and darker than Tohru realized, her presence soon becomes a large, positive influence on those possessed by the zodiac. She sets out to break the curse, and on the way, meets and discovers each of the Sohma's vengeful zodiac spirits. Each has a different personality, just like the animals in the Chinese zodiac. Tohru's existence changes the Sohma clan's lives forever...

Differences between manga and anime

The anime itself is based, very faithfully, on the original manga by Natsuki Takaya. As the manga was still ongoing during the anime's production, the animated series makes some changes to the story. Several events are combined, and some events, such as Tohru's first meeting with Momiji and all references to Tohru's baseball hat, never happen. The anime makes no mention of the fact that Yuki and Kyo have met Tohru's mother, or that Kyo blames himself for her death. Many of the events surrounding the revealing of Kyo's true form are greatly changed in the anime, including adding an extended chase sequence, Tohru meeting Akito in the woods none of which happen in the manga.

While the anime faithfully adapts most of the characters from the manga series, it does make some changes. In the manga, Momiji is half-German and half-Japanese and regularly speaks German, particularly when he first meets Tohru, while in the anime no German is spoken.Shigure's darker side is toned down in the anime, with many remarks he makes in the manga that hint at a hidden agenda are left out, along with most of his early scenes with Akito.In the anime, Akito is biologically male and will die at a young age because of the curse,while in the manga, Akito is biologically female but brought up as male and is not dying. Additionally, Isuzu "Rin" Sohma, the Horse, and Kureno Sohma, the Rooster, are never mentioned or shown in the anime and are only in the manga. Finally, the curse is not lifted in the anime.

Friday, 27 September 2013

Toradora

Plot

Toradora!'s story begins with the male protagonist Ryūji Takasu who is frustrated at trying to look his best as he enters his second year of high school. Despite his gentle personality, his eyes make him look like an intimidating delinquent, so he feels utterly hopeless about his chances of getting a girlfriend anytime soon, and does not have many close friends either. After being greeted by his hungover mother in the morning, Ryūji goes to school and is happy to find that he gets to be in the same class with his best friend Yūsaku Kitamura and a girl he has a crush on, Minori Kushieda. However, it is then that he unexpectedly knocks into "the school's most dangerous animal of the highest risk level"—Taiga Aisaka—who just happens to also be in his class, and is a good friend of Minori.

Taiga has a negative attitude towards others and will not hesitate to snap at people. After meeting Ryūji, she takes an instant dislike to him. Taiga comes from a rich family, but she has moved out to live on her own due to family issues. She is coincidentally living in an apartment next to Ryūji's. When Ryūji discovers that Taiga has a crush on Yūsaku, and Taiga finds out about Ryūji's affections towards Minori, Ryūji suggests that they cooperate to win the objects of their affections. Taiga exploits the fact that Ryūji will do anything to get closer to Minori. She makes him her personal servant, getting him to do all her household chores (cooking and cleaning). Taiga spends a lot of her time over at his house, so much that she could almost be considered a member of his family. Since Ryūji spends a lot of time with Taiga, he has opened up to her world and to a side of her that most people do not see. The two also try to help each other improve the way people view them. However people they know from school start to become curious about their strange relationship and rumors begin to spread about them behind their backs. Ryūji and Taiga start getting along more as things progress with the relationships between the characters and eventually confess their true feelings of love towards each other.

The World That Only God Knows

Plot

Keima Katsuragi, a second-year high school student, is an avid bishōjo game player. He is known on the Internet as "The God of Conquests" (落とし神 Otoshi-gami^?) for his legendary skills to be able to "conquer" any 2D girl in games. However, in his actual school life, Keima is known asotamegane (オタメガネ^?), a derogatory portmanteau of the two words otaku (オタク^?) and megane (メガネ^?, "glasses"), and is considered nothing but an intelligent yet gloomy geek with glasses.

At the start of the series, Keima receives an e-mail offering him a contract to "conquer" girls. When he accepts it, thinking it is an invitation to a game challenge, a cute demon from Hell named Elsie appears: a Spirit Hunter. She asks for his cooperation to help her in catching the evil spirits that have escaped to the Human Realm: the "Loose Souls", which were once Old Demons from Hell. These evil spirits hide themselves inside the hearts of people (in their case, girls), feeding off the hosts' negative emotions to replenish their power and strength, in becoming whole demons once again (which in turn, the host becomes an empty shell of a person). Elsie suggests that the only method to force the evil spirits out is by "conquering" the girls hearts, making them fall in love with him and filling up the gaps which the escaped evil spirits hide in, in which she is then able to capture them. Interested only in video game girls, however, Keima is appalled by the idea, and refuses the assignment as he has no romantic real life experiences whatsoever. Nevertheless, with the contract already agreed, Keima has no choice but to help Elsie no matter what, as they will be beheaded by an invisible (to others) red collar around their necks if they fail.

After winning the hearts of several girls (and capturing the spirits residing in them), Keima and Elsie are given an even greater mission: to awaken the six goddesses who are daughters of the god Jupiter, the "Jupiter Sisters". Each sister is dormant in the heart of a girl among those they have previously helped, thus Keima must locate them and conquer their hearts a second time, as all girls had their memories of falling in love with him erased. However, the time for Keima to awaken and assemble all goddesses is limited as he must do so to prevent an imminent invasion of the human realm by a rebellious group of demons called "Vintage".

After Vintage's plans are thwarted, Keima starts seeing visions of a child who is somewhat familiar to him, and the goddesses send Keima and Elsie to the past with the task of helping her. According to them, the future of the entire world depends on their success, although they were fed with little to no information about the nature of their mission. Upon arriving there, they team up with a mysterious girl who apparently has some connection with Dokurou, Elsie's superior in the underworld, and Keima discovers that several features in the past are different from what he remembers, leading to a tragic chain of events that he must avert to ensure that the present stays unaltered.

Aside from focusing on Keima and Elsie's adventures, the series also makes fun of and parodies common, and popular cliches about dating sims, anime character stereotypes, and pop culture.

Media

The World God Only Knows is written and illustrated by Tamiki Wakaki, serialized in the Japanese manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday since April 9, 2008.^[4] Wakaki created a prototype version of the story which debuted as a one-shot in Weekly Shōnen Sunday 2007 Issue 32 and was titled, "Koishite!? Kami-sama!!" (恋して!? 神様!!^?).^[5] Publication is ongoing in Japan by Shogakukan; the first tankōbon was released on July 11, 2008, and as of September 18, 2013, 23 volumes have been released.^[6] A 3-chapter spin-off series, titled Magical Star Kanon 100% (マジカル☆スターかのん１００％^?), portrayaing Kanon Nakagawa as a magical girl ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday from March 27, to April 10, 2013. The series was published along with additional chapters in a book, bundled with the limited edition of the 21st volume of the main series, released on April 16, 2013.^[7]

The series is licensed in South Korea by Haksan Culture Company, and the first two volumes of the series has been simultaneously released on August 2009 with limited edition supplement for each.^[8]