Anime Watch of 2022

2022 was pretty monumental for the anime industry, especially here in the United States. After much stalling and people lamenting when the other shoe would drop, it was announced in March that Sony would consolidate their anime brands. Funimation, the long time anime distributor and licensor company which had survived both the 90s anime rush and the mid-to-late 00's dark age of anime, would be consolidated with Sony's streaming service Crunchyroll. All of Funimation's current acquisitions and airing shows? Now premiering on Crunchyroll, including the dubs. Their back catalog? Slowly being added throughout the year. The online store? Also consolidated with Crunchyroll's. The home video releases? All now under the new name and sporting the Crunchyroll logo. And their current streaming platform? Still up as of January 2023 but no new titles and will eventually be sunset.

I get it, the Crunchyroll name and brand is more well known across the globe but it does still suck. Despite their own history of issues, I've always liked and trusted the Funimation brand; whenever I saw their logo pop up before something, it would make me smile and give me some assurance that everything would relatively be in good hands. Unfortunately for me and everybody else, there were far more things that sucked with the Crunchyroll "takeover". First, most obviously because of the merger, Sentai Filmworks removed many of their exclusive titles from the Crunchyroll platform by the end of March, including several big shows such as the first two seasons of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. Then to further conquer the anime market and beef up their frankly poor online store presence, Crunchyroll bought up the popular anime online retailer Right Stuf in August and did the obvious corporate decision by immediately jettisoning their adult section. And finally, to hurt even more feelings and cause a lot of controversy, the company in September chose to not renew voice actor Kyle McCarley's contract to voice the main character of hugely popular show Mob Psycho 100 largely due to him being a member of SAG.

All of that sucked but unless you wanted to enter pirate waters to watch anime, you just had to swallow it and move on. And the thing is, at least with me, it wasn't really that bad. I was very concerned about the merger especially since I had a yearly subscription to both Funimation and Crunchyroll. Thankfully, Crunchyroll was aware of this issue with many of their subscribers and thanks to the very helpful customer service department, I have a free subscription until December 2023. Though they took over Right Stuf, non-adult business is still usual and Crunchyroll hasn't prevented any of their competitors from having their products be listed. However, though I am happy that a lot of the Funimation crew and cast are still being retained, I do really wish that Crunchyroll start to take voice acting and unions more seriously.

Now enough about Crunchyroll, what about the anime of 2022? Well, as I said up top, is was pretty monumental. Spy x Family and Chainsaw Man were the two most popular new shows of the year and crossed over with a lot of non-anime fans. Romantic comedies were all the rage led by the pretty surprising success of My Dress-Up Darling. Netflix and Studio Trigger's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners surprised everyone by actually being very good, so much so that it helped spur sales of the infamous video game it's based on. Several cult gems popped up and became the most talked titles of the year, such as Lycoris Recoil, Bocchi The Rock!, and the non-licensed Summer Time Rendering. Many shows returned with another season, Urusei Yatsura got a modern remake, Bleach came back, Blue Lock made Americans interested in soccer and people started to care about Gundams again with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. And then you have the rich collection of anime movies that all quite surprisingly got theatrical releases here in the States, including One Piece Film Red, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Jujutsu Kaisen Zero, The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie, Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island and Teasing Master Takagi-San: The Movie.

Of course, not everything was truly rosy. Some of the new seasons/parts ended up being huge disappointments. The most notable examples: the second seasons of The Rising Of The Shield Hero, The Devil Is A Part Timer!, and Rent-A-Girlfriend; the second part of Ranking Of Kings; and the final season of Attack On Titan. People were rolling their eyes and mocked the heavily censored World's End Harem and Harem In The Labyrinth Of Another World. The highly anticipated anime adaptation of Lucifer And The Biscuit Hammer was so bad it created a ton of vitriol online not seen since The Promised Neverland Season 2 (wait, no, there was no second season). And truly the worst thing to happen last year for anime, worst than anything you can say about Crunchyroll, voice actor Billy Kametz passed away shortly after revealing that he had been diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

As for myself in 2022, well, though everything eventually worked out with the Funimation-Crunchyroll merger, the drama of it all coupled with my declining interest in watching anime let alone television in general hurt my anime watch. Of the six titles I mentioned at the end of my Anime Watch of 2021 article that I planned on viewing, I only saw half of them. I stupidly skipped out on Spy x Family, Chainsaw Man, Love After World Domination, and Shikimori's Not Just A Cutie even though I'm a fan of their respective manga. Did the same skip with The Genius Prince and Trapped In A Dating Sim despite being a fan of the light novel series, especially of the former. I couldn't stupidly bring myself to spend $5 for at least one month for Hi-Dive just to view Call Of The Night and most egregiously Season 3 of Teasing Master Takagi-San. And despite my praise for them in the past, I didn't watch the latest seasons of Uzaki-Chan Wants To Hang Out! and Welcome To Demon School! Iruma-kun. I spent more time last year caring about watching anime on the movie theater than I did on my computer or television. Fun note: I literally planned on making a long drive to Boston in order to see Teasing Master Takagi-San: The Movie, this despite again not even attempting to watch Season 3!

Since I like to capture my thoughts and feelings, I once again decided to create a list of my watched anime shows, starting from what I dubbed were the best and traveling all the way down to the ones that left me angry and/or stupefied. The rules of the list are the same: The overall quality of the show and my personal response to it are the major factors towards their rank. However, other additional factors such as replayability, voice talent, and lasting impact can help sway their placing. Only new shows/new viewings count; rewatches are immediately disqualified and if I watch a show that I already started, only the continuing unwatched episodes will be reviewed. I treat and grade all series fairly, even ones that I haven't actually finished or may not choose to finish. If you see a * next to the title, that means I had a limited sampling of the show or didn't complete the series/franchise fully.

1. My Dress-Up Darling

2. Komi Can't Communicate (Season 2)

3. How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom (Part 2)

4. Kotaro Lives Alone* [eps. 1-2]

5. Knight's & Magic* [eps. 1-5]

6. Absolute Duo* [eps. 1-6]

7. Trinity Seven* [eps. 1-3]

So, where do I go from here? Well, my number one thing to do in 2023 is definitely watch Spy x Family. Regardless if my anime fever remains low, I just have to watch that show. I definitely also want to watch Season 3 of Iruma-kun, maybe after rewatching Season 2 with the English dub. I do want to turn things around and watch more anime but I don't want to force it. On other hand, I don't want to watch something just when I happen to have a sudden interest in it, as that was my strategy in the second half of 2022. I'll certainly figure something out and not lose sleep on it. Besides, even if I don't watch anything in the first three months of this year, I'm not losing any money for it plus there are several titles I'm looking forward to come April. Hopefully you get to hear my thoughts on those and more next January.