ODDTAXI
Ever wonder about how many odd folks a city taxi driver must deal with daily? Do you then reflexively ponder whether you yourself are the aforementioned odd customer? Odd Taxi pushes the pedal to the floor with that premise, with the taxi driver and his patrons being eccentric anthropomorphic animals.
First announced during the 2021 Crunchyroll awards, Odd Taxi follows an introverted 41-year-old taxi driving walrus named Hiroshi Odokawa. It begins with Odokawa, forced into mild-mannered conversations with his customers who range from being aspiring pop idols, wannabe influencers, and down-on-their-luck comedians. But the seemingly disparate lives of Odokawa’s patrons start to weave together as news breaks of a missing high schooler who just so happened to be one of his customers. Odokawa finds himself in the middle of a police investigation while under the eye of the yakuza, who have a personal stake in the missing high schooler’s safety. But the less I reveal about the anime’s plot the better.
While its premise seems grimdark on the surface, Odd Taxi has an infectious dry humor, mostly thanks to how nonplussed Odokawa is when he stiffly reacts to his bizarre patrons. Odd Taxi came in as a dark horse in the spring 2021 lineup as a show anime fans would be wise not to sleep on
SK8 the Infinity
SK8 the Infinity follows Canadian snowboarder Langa Hasegawa, who transferred to a school in Okinawa and quickly became entrenched in the city’s hardcore skateboarding scene. With the help of his best (boy)friend, Reki Kyan, Langa learns to transfer his skills of shredding the slopes to shredding the gnar.
Studio Bone knocked it out of the park this winter with the debut of its original anime. The show serves not only as an explainer for skateboarding terms and tricks but also as an exhibit of smoothly animated skateboarding and a wholesome coming of age story.
Horimiya
Horimiya primarily follows the budding love romance of two high schoolers: Kyouko Hori, the most popular girl in school, and Izumi Miyamura, the class recluse (see what they did there?). What makes Miyamura so interesting is that he is hiding a secret from his class that Hori stumbles upon by mistake: he’s a goth kid. And a stylish one at that.
These acquaintances, who’ve mutually agreed to hide his secret, blossom into a full-blown romance so potent and infectiously wholesome that it has their classmates itching for their own high school romance.
Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song
The show has many hearty episodes that focus on the complex natures of jealousy, greed, and loneliness. Some of the standout episodes even rival that of an introspective Cowboy Bebop episode (the anime not the live-action show) in how they let ideas and heartbreaking scenes breathe. Plus, when the action hits, it hits. Vivy’s sick-ass fight scenes feature some of the smoothest movie-quality sakuga animation I’ve seen in an anime series, which shouldn’t come as any surprise since Wit Studio is the same production company behind the first three seasons of Attack on Titan.
To Your Eternity
Not many anime pass the three-episode test run from the jump, but To Your Eternity had me choking back tears from the first episode. To Your Eternity is the anime adaptation of Yoshitoki Ōima’s The Immortal. The series follows an immortal creature called Fushi that starts its long existence as a rock before taking the forms of a wolf and human as it observes humanity. Ōima-san also happens to be the mangaka behind A Silent Voice, and its opening theme “Pink Blood” is sung by none other than Hikaru Utada, so my being moved to tears doesn’t come as a surprise.
The show pulls no emotional punches. Alongside the show’s endearing depiction of humanity striving to do what it believes is best, To Your Eternity isn’t afraid to get heavy when moments of dread, betrayal, and death arise. But oddly enough, the show finds beauty in how Fushi comes to understand our flawed but endearing tendencies and sees through its cast’s shortcomings to help them reach the potential they have dormant within them.
Beastars
season two picks up with best boy Legoshi putting on his detective hat as he tries to figure out who murdered his friend Tem the alpaca. As Legoshi’s sleuthing gets him closer to finding the killer, his wayward friend Louis, a deer, finds himself on the opposite end of justice as the new head of a yakuza family of lions called the Shishigumi.
Beastar’s second season builds on what made its first season so appealing. Fire opening theme? Check. Continually amazing vocal performances? Check. Horny undertones via animal kingdom predator/prey metaphors? Perfect attendance record.
Baki Hanma
Video Source Netflix
Baki Hanma finds the titular character behind bars in an Arizona state prison after he kidnaps the president of the U.S., George Bosch, not to be confused with George Bush. But it turns out the 18-year-old wanted to be sent to prison because he’s gunning to take down the strongest man there, Biscuit Oliver. What follows is a smackdown in a prison tournament where Baki rises the ranks to get closer to matching the strength of his father Yujiro Hanma, the strongest fighter in the world.
Baki Hanma’s singular location helped the show maintain the focus I found lacking in its earlier seasons. Plus, Baki’s universe running alongside our own historic events, albeit with more fanfare for martial arts, tickled me to no end. The show’s depiction of Mike Tyson, Che Guevara, and George Bush added to the already absurd series’ comedy and interpretation of historical events.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean
Video Source Netflix
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure follows the descendants of the Joestar family. Each part, or story arc, is set in a different time and follows a different member of the family as they battle bizarre enemies, usually with the help of their song reference ghost powers called stands. Stone Ocean follows the series’ first female protagonist, the oh-so-cool Jolyne.
The show exceeded my expectations, especially with the return of David Productions’ beautifully animated CGI opening. Plus, the claustrophobic camera work in Stone Ocean’s prison-centric season feels more dynamic than in previous seasons with its utilization of fish-eye effects, dolly zoom, and pallet-swapping of its characters whenever menacingly shocking moments arise.