Top 25 Anime of the 2000s: Prologue
With 2009 coming to a close, it's not just the year that's coming to a close, but the first decade of the 2000s as well. As such, I've decided to write up a piece about what I consider to be the Top 25 anime of the 2000s. There's a lot of ways to go about creating a list like this. The easiest & usual rout people take on this is what their personal favorites were, or which series they thought were the coolest. I'm not taking this approach though, & am instead writing about the top 25 important series of the decade. What makes a series important varies, but I've spent god knows how long perfecting this list, & I am proud about how it turned out.
It should be noted that this list is from an American fan's perspective. What appears on this list wouldn't be the same as someone from Japan. So does that mean only titles that are licensed & released in the US made the list? No, because like it or not, watching fansubs is an important part of being an anime fan, regardless of how damaging it may be to the anime industry.
It was really hard to narrow the list down to just 25 titles. So to start out with, I'll be writing about the honorable mentions- titles that almost made the list, but didn't quite make the cut. I even had to narrow this list down to just 10 titles, as I had plenty of potential titles. For example, I even thought about putting DNAngel on the list, simply for the fact that it launched NebsTV way back in 2003. But instead, I went with these titles (in no particular order):
TOP 10 HONORABLE MENTIONS
Vision of Escaflowne
Originally airing in Japan in 1996, this series qualifies for making the list for airing on US television back in the year 2000. This beautiful, serious, & overall fantastic series aired in an unlikely place in the US- Fox Kids. Now it wasn't as if Fox Kids hadn't gotten into the anime craze already, but they went for more kid friendly (& marketable) titles like Digimon & Monster Rancher. Escaflowne would be much more suited for Toonami, & indeed Toonami did want the series as well. But Fox Kids wanted Escaflowne bad, & they outbid them for the TV rights. This turned out to be bad news for both Fox & anime fans, as Fox Kids quickly canceled the series after about 10 episodes, & the series never aired again anywhere on US TV. Fox did make some aggravating changes & edits to the series however, such as skipping the entire first episode. But somehow the series still got away with showing blood. Blood... on Fox Kids. Most Toonami series couldn't even show blood at this time.
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Mobile Suit Gundam SEED:
Gundam SEED was designed to be the birth of a new era of Gundam series. Up till then, the original Universal Century timeline was the big Gundam in the house, despite popularity of other universes like Gundam Wing & G Gundam. SEED shared many similarities to the original Gundam series, but was designed to bring the Gundam franchise into the 21st series. It exceeded to an extent, with the first series & its characters being quite popular even today. Heroine Lacus Clyne is still probably the most popular female character in all of Gundam's history. & of course it was popular enough to get a second series, but that's where the series lost its way. Most fans hated Seed Destiny, even those who liked season one. After that Seed kind of died out, despite Sunrise's desires to make it the next big thing. It similarly fizzled out in the US. SEED was designated to be Toonami's new flagship series when it moved from weekday afternoons to Saturday nights in 2004. But the ratings never matched Gundam Wing's, & the series was eventually banished to the dead-of-the-night Friday night hour to finish off its run. Destiny never aired here at all. Still though, talks about a new movie have never completely died out, & it just might happen sometime next decade.
IGPX:
Toonami will always be THE home for anime in the United States, & IGPX deserves to be remembered as the series that Toonami created. Toonami was full of anime fanboys, & like any anime fanboy they dreamed of making their very own anime. IGPX first started as a series of shorts during one of their famous Total Immersion Events. It was about five 5-minute episodes, & the premise of giant robots fighting each other was a familiar one. However, Toonami made it in their own style, & got extra cool points for that. Flash forward a few years later, & Toonami managed to turn their IGPX idea into a full blown, bonafide anime series. It had amazing animation & visuals, an all-star cast (Haley Joe Osmond!), & even Toonami's signature awesome music used for the BGM. Yes sir, this was the series that Toonami created. Just a shame that it sank in the ratings & was banished to the dreaded middle-of-the-night Friday block to finish off its final few episodes.
Ultimate Muscle / Shaman King:
4Kids Entertainment did a lot of things wrong with anime during this past decade, but two series that really shined with their dubbing were Ultimate Muscle & Shaman King. Of course purists will argue fiercely with this, especially regarding Shaman King. But while these series weren't what you'd consider faithful adaptations, they stood out from 4Kids' usual muck as being truly good & entertaining. For Ultimate Muscle, the humor & wackiness of the series was dead on. The series even pushed the boundaries of what could be said & done on a 4Kids series. 4Kids had so much fun with UM that they even funded a second season of the anime, which originally didn't get renewed in Japan due to low ratings. Oh, & it had a character named Dik Dik van Dik. Something that Adam Sessler from X-Play talked about for years, making it his personal catchphrase & creating a shirt out of it.
For Shaman King, the dialogue & interaction between the characters can't be described as anything other than top notch. As an example, the friendly banter between Tray, Len, & Ryo felt so natural & funny in the dub that I actually prefer 4Kids take on the series than the Japanese version. Of course there were lots of edits & such, but 4Kids really put their best efforts into Shaman King, more than any other series. & the edits were relatively light compared to their other titles. Name any other 4Kids series that left in hard nipples on the female characters, I dare you.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex:
Take a fantastic & critically acclaimed anime movie from the 1990s & adapt it into a modern anime series. Okay, easy enough to do. But IMPROVE upon said classic film? That's something only Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex could achieve. It's easily to describe this series as "boring," despite it's very nice art & animation. But what really makes this series stand out from the crowd is its fantastic writing. This is probably the smartest written anime series ever created, filled with complex dialogue that doesn't dare talk down to its audience. I personally know the translator for this series, a Mr David Fleming, who's repeatedly stated how insanely challenging the series was to translate to English, as if translating Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. In short, this series had brains & beauty. It should also be noted that this series debuted on Adult Swim the same night as FullMetal Alchemist back in late 2004. FUNimation was pulling out all the stops promoting their dub of FMA, advertising the premiere everywhere & asking fans to help make it the most watched anime premiere in American history. GitS:SAC, with far less promotion & broad appeal, beat it in the ratings that night.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time:
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, or TokiKake for short, was Mamoru Hosoda's first true masterpiece film. He truly left his mark on animated cinema with this film, which is a heartfelt story that looks great & truly captures the wonders of one's youth. Critics around the world were awed by this relatively unkown director, though previous credits include the first two Digimon movies. More recently, Hosoda has seemed to even surpass TokiKake with his most recent film, Summer Wars. Unfortunately most people outside Japan have yet to see it, but I've heard nothing but great things about it. So why does Hosoda only get an honorable mention rather than making the real list? I feel that the 2000s were merely his starting point, & by the end of the next decade he'll truly become a world famous anime director & a household name among animated masterpiece fans.
Pretty Cure:
The 2000s brought us Futari wa Pretty Cure, the most popular magical girl series to hit Japan since Sailor Moon. While virtually unknown in the US, this franchise is a gigantic hit in Japan. Airing since 2004, every year a new group of magical girls come forth to obtain the PreCure powers, & there's no sign of this tradition stopping anytime soon. The series has become a little more well known across the Pacific in the past year, what with the first series streaming on Crunchyroll. & Canada even got a butchered Americanized (Canadianized?) dub of the first series as well. But neither Crunchyroll nor Canada have given any signs of bringing any of the other series over here, & it seems the US may never get the dubbed version at all.
Genshiken:
Genshiken forced otaku to look at themselves in the proverbial mirror & take a good look at what they saw. Really they were looking into the TV screen, but saw themselves staring back at them. Plenty of series over this past decade have been about anime fans doing otaku things, but none of them have come close to the perfection that is Genshiken. Not only are the characters' antics eerily familiar to us, but its charm & wit is second to none. The comedy in both seasons is truly hilarious & easily relatable to its audience. It's never been so good to be an otaku.
Digimon Tamers:
Digimon made its debut in 1999, so it doesn't qualify to make the list. But its third series, known as Digimon Tamers in Japan, made its debut in 2001. This series drastically differed from the previous seasons of Digimon, becoming a much more serious & cerebral series that seemed to be aiming at an older audience. Chiaki Konoka was the mastermind behind this series, whose other works include Big O, Serial Experiments Lain, Shadowstar Narutaru, & Texhnolyze. While Tamers wasn't as much as a mind f*ck as those series were, it was still a pretty dark & sophisticated take on a children's anime series. The first half was a bit slow, but only because Konoka took his time developing the story & characters. The action stepped up in the second half, but so did the dark story telling. It hardly felt like a Digimon series in its second half, but I mean that in the best way possible. Ask 10 Digimon fans what their favorite season was, & at least 9 of them are guaranteed to say Tamers. It's just a shame that its darker story drove away much of its younger audience, & with it a lot of its ratings. The Digimon franchise never recovered from it either.
CardCaptors:
Probably THE most controversial dub to ever come out in America. The English dub CardCaptors drastically differed from its Japanese twin CardCaptor Sakura. The first commercial speaks volumes about these changes "About a boy named Li, & a girl named Sakura." In 2001, Kids WB tried to downplay the fact that this was a shojo series & the show was edited in such a way to make Li's character seem more imporant. For example, the first dozen or so episodes without Li were completely skipped over. This show was butchered beyond belief, but to be fair it wasn't really all that bad. As long as you didn't try to compare it to the Japanese version, it actually an enjoyable series. The voice acting was pretty good & the dialogue was decent (as long as you were ignorant to what you were missing out on). & it was still a CLAMP title so it looked great. Sakura's ever changing wonderful outfits in every episode was really a nice treat. & the series harks back to a purer time when a 10 year old girl could bath naked without any edits even on a show as butchered as this one. In 2001, censors were like "Oh, she's just a little girl. No reason to censor that." & now in 2009 they're more like "Holy sh*t, that little girl's naked! Ban this show NOW!" & say what you will, but the English theme song was insanely catchy.