Very likely due to COVID delays, there ended up being a huge lineup of anime this season. Unfortunately, because that lineup also included subsequent seasons of hugely popular anime (Attack on Titan, Dr. Stone, Promised Neverland, ect) a lot of the original stuff is getting drown out. It’s not such a huge loss, if I’m being honest. There were a lot of shows, but only a fraction we even slightly intriguing.
Best Winter 2021 Anime
Horimiya
Although lauded for being likable and intelligent, Kyouko Hori hides the fact that she has to take care of her brother and the housework because her parents are always working. Izumi Miyamura, on the other hand, is seen as a brooding, bespectacled otaku. Outside of school, he sports tattoos and nine piercings. By happenstance, the two outside school personalities of these two classmates meet and they get to know a side of each other they don’t show their peers
Why It’s Worth Watching? – I am perhaps biased because I’ve been a follower of the manga for years, even as it got lost in the weeds with side character stories. However, I seen them score, too. Horimiya tells a romance story that, honestly, has been told before. Yet, its characters, all of them, are lovable in their vulnerabilities.
Wonder Egg Priority
After the death of her best and only friend, Ai Ohto became a shut in. One night while on a walk, she is convinced by a mysterious entity to buy an egg. In a world that only materializes in her dreams, she breaks the egg. This summons a person haunted by fears, regrets, or otherwise some trauma. There Ai is tasked with saving them, and by saving them from their trauma, she can perhaps save her friend, too.
Why It’s Worth Watching? – With the endless barrage of generic fantasy and bad isekai this season, Wonder Egg is perhaps what I needed. It was something weird as fuck, creative as hell, and unexpectedly deep. It’s got great animation, a wonderfully likable main character, and was all-around refreshing considering the profound lack of creativity you sometimes see in anime seasons.
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation
After being chased out of his NEET nest, a man instinctively saves some teens from an oncoming car and is killed. He is reborn as Rudeus Greyrat, a baby and new firstborn son of a local knight. Finding he has great potential for magic, Rudy vows to make the most of his new life even if he is still a perverted otaku on the inside.
Why It’s Worth Watching? – This… Hasn’t happened in awhile. It’s an isekai I actually wanted to watch more of each week. It is lightly ecchi in comical and not necessarily annoying ways. It has isekai protagonist parents that are involved in their child’s life and actual parents. Even the harem isn’t as annoying as usual because I legitimately like their characters. It isn’t abundant on action, which also means the main character, while he is OP, doesn’t need to be.
Heaven’s Design Team
In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. Next came the long job of creating creatures to populate the earth. However, by then, god was tired so he outsourced it to a small team. This Heaven’s Design Team features a mediator that speaks to god as well as creative individuals to help create creatures to fill the Earth.
Why It’s Worth Watching? – I like educational anime a lot, to be honest. It’s not for everyone, but I’ll always recommend it. Heaven’s Design Team, despite the odd intersection of christian heaven and Roman gods as angels, is pretty great if you have any interest in animals or their biology. It essentially walks you through why some animals were “created” in certain ways and mythical animals couldn’t have existed. It does gloss right of evolution for the most part, but its an educational comedy, it doesn’t need to be textbook perfect.
Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki
Fumiya Tomozaki is the top player in Japan at a fighting game called TackFam. Despite holding such a title, he is a failure at everything else, blaming it on the unfair rules and mechanics of life. One day, the second best TackFam player asks to meet up. Tomozaki discovers that they are actually Aoi, one of the most popular girls at school. She, however, is disappointing that someone she respected is a failure at life. Now, she aims to teach him how to succeed at the glorious game of life.
Why It’s Worth Watching? – I perhaps like this series more for what it is trying to do rather than just as entertainment. Essentially, it is a show about trying to reform an awkward nerd, and a lot of the things they try are actually quite transferable to real social interaction. One can only gleam so much from anime, but gleaming a little from this won’t hurt. Plus the girls in it are pretty likable as characters.
Did you enjoy anything else from the Winter 2021 anime season that you would recommend? Let fans know in the comments section below.
Can any studio please make an anime adaptation of twisted wonderland like how you did it with danganronpa and P4 and P5.
the thing is with tomazaki, the mc gets reformed into a normal person in like 3 episodes; the character development is just weird.