I’ve been through a lot over the past year, and it’s just now occurred to me that we’re about to enter a new decade (well, depending on how you count your years… due to work-related reasons I’m more inclined to start a new set of 10 things on a “1,” but I suppose that’s pedantic and also completely beside the point). This decade has definitely been an interesting one for anime series and movies. At the beginning of the decade the industry was still in the process of shoveling itself out from beneath the the remains of its busted economic bubble and because of it there were a few years where there just weren’t as many series being released. That’s not to say that there weren’t still some very good and memorable ones, but there were few enough that a decently-motivated person could catch all of the year’s stand-out series without investing a lot of extra time.
Nowadays we’re comparatively inundated by anime (at last count this year we were somewhere around 150 anime series, and that number doesn’t include films, ONA series, or OVAs… yowzers!). I’m continually both thrilled and frustrated by the fact that, as much as I would like to watch every better-than-average anime series that comes around, it’s almost impossible for me to do so without sacrificing something else in my life. Still, I’ve seen a lot of anime over the past 10 years, and looking over lists of the various series and films has been a good reminder of how much good the industry has been able to accomplish with its storytelling, even while sometimes struggling financially and in areas related to the treatment of its workers. Like many other bloggers, I think it might be fun to look back on some of my favorites over the years, as we prepare to plunge forward into a new decade.