2024 review: part 3, shows

Alli Grant Est. 5 minutes (1040 words)
year in review shows 2024
Year in review of shows! 2024 edition.

Moving right along! Shows. As a note, I did not reliably finish many! I could have absolutely done better about that, normally I did get at least a season or two.

One Piece is a delightful long running anime that I have already gushed about as a manga. I will elaborate a little bit on the filler – G-8 in particular is an arc that is so delightful I could have sworn it was canon on first watch. Not all of it is that quality, but One Piece’s structure (island to island, no direct power scaling) means that early in the series it was incredibly capable of just adding a few episodes of made up content here or there with few-to-no problems on overall pacing. As the series moves on, that stops and the more traditional “we slow down dialog and overextend run cycles” kicks in, but I still think it’s an enjoyable watch on a week-to-week basis. Megumi Ishitani, and anything she touched in regards to the show, are incredible. One Piece Fan Letter is probably my single favorite episode of anything that I saw this year, and that had some incredible competition. As far as which audio track to watch, it’s really hard to pick my favorite version of the Straw Hats. No disrespect to the incredible Yao (first Straw Hat to retire), but Franky’s English rendition is incredible, and Ian Sinclair as Brooke (or any other role he’s ever done for that matter) is unmatched. Jinbei’s Japanese voice carries more weight to it, adding to some of his already coolest scenes in the series. I really don’t think you can go wrong, but seeing as the English dub isn’t caught up, prepare to have to switch at some point.

Frieren’s adaptation adds incredible music and effects to what were already a top tier fantasy story. Fantastic vocal cast.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is Science Saru flexing on most other studios, as well as a delightful continuation? AU? reflection? on what Scott Pilgrim as a series even means, written by someone with much more life experience. While on the Science Saru mention, Dandadan was also delightful (though I can’t compare it) but in an oddly running theme a little overly focused on rape even considering its source material’s plot.

The Expanse’s show adaptation is masterful. Adding more perspective characters (moved forward from later books) to flesh out the understanding of what’s going on in each location, toning down some of the unnecessarily graphic depictions, etc. Some of the best science fiction I’ve seen, and I’m ashamed that I didn’t watch it more as it was coming out.

365 Days to the Wedding is incredibly cute fluff. My Dress-Up Darling is also incredibly fluff, but the characters are fun, and the experience of being around cosplayers is pretty dang accurate. The Case Study of Vanitas is a generally fun adaptation, but leaves out odd details and stretches some things in weird ways to hit runtime. When it hits, it does a very solid job–depictions of the world formula tend to be when the series is shining.

Jujutsu Kaisen is top-notch punchbattling in anime form. The studio practices that created this adaptation, however, are not. You can tell the budget started to run thin towards the end, or perhaps the burnout took over a bit too highly. Black Clover, on the other hand, shows what happens when you have a strict runtime in a weekly show and only so much pacing to work with. It improves dramatically after the first two episodes – roughly 27 minutes of content was spread across 45 minutes, in those – but the start is rough.

Delicious in Dungeon is much, much funnier fantasy than Frieren. I haven’t finished watching the season yet, but Sungwon Cho as Senshi is a delight.

Bang Brave Bang Bravern is… what if Gundams were horny for their pilots? Instead of the mech pilots being into each other, this new frontier in mecha works is to my experience unprecedented and should be commended.

The Apothecary Diaries has a beautiful adaptation, with some fundamentally puzzling choices that I can only believe are weird last minute censorship.

Did Jet die?

You know, it was really unclear.

That came to mind a lot while watching Apothecary Diaries – a few deaths that were heavily implied in the anime were just explicitly confirmed in the manga. Other details are left vague where the light novel and manga confirm them, such as relationships or titles of characters. I can’t think of any reason to obscure these. A color choice or two makes some things stand out that probably shouldn’t, and a few things that should have been confusing less so. Not going to hold those complaints against it, though.

Konosuba is one of the funniest isekai I’ve ever seen. Lovable cast of idiots who, as much as they all hate each other, absolutely delight in being around each other. The movie could be better–it’s got some weird character breaks for everyone–but the seasons are great. The simple designs make for great animation without needing to do tons of filler to save budget.

Honorable mention: Bofuri is basically what if my youngest child became a guild leader in a competitive Ragnarok Online guild. So, so funny to watch. The Getaway is some great Nebula silliness for a season.