It is almost certainly because of all the delays with the COVID 2020 outbreak, but this season was a season of significant girth. It felt as though there was almost double the amount of anime this season, which is a great thing for people who don’t feel the need to watch it all like me.
That said, this season was also one of niches. A lot of the shows appealed to people with rather specific tastes in anime. It was a big season for non-combat isekai, romance anime, and gender-benders.
As was is a season of significant size, quite a bit probably got drowned out. So here’s what I believe was really worth watching in the winter 2023 anime season.
Best Winter 2023 Season Anime
Buddy Daddies
Kazuki and Rei are roommates that also work as professional mercenaries while they each flee from their grim memories through the dangerous work.
However, while carrying out an assassination on Christmas Eve, their paths cross with four-year-old Miri who traveled to Tokyo by herself, told by her mother who abandoned her to go find her father. Unfortunately for everyone involved, her father was their mark whom they successfully took out.
Now saddled with a small child, this pair of grown men struggle to adjust to being new parents while also balancing it with their dangerous job.
Why It Is Worth Watching
It is very clear that Buddy Daddies was trying to scrape off some of that Spy X Family hype, but it is a different thing with different charms.
While Spy X Family can be wild and over-the-top, Buddy Daddies is a lot more grounded and often more realistic in the wholesomeness that it offers you. Furthermore, it is also lauded as a strong case in support of LGBT parenting, despite the main character being roommates rather than a romantic couple.
One thing that Buddy Daddies does best compared to other found family/parenting anime is it absolutely nails how obnoxious very young children can be. They really showcase how annoying young kids are, but also balance it with how rewarding it is to raise one. Parenting anime can often sugar-coat the experience of dealing with a child, but not Buddy Daddies.
Tomo-chan is a Girl
As childhood friends and neighbors, Tomo and Jun are best friends and hang out constantly. There is just one problem.
Tomo is a girl, and Jun often forgets that.
She wants Jun to see her as a girl so she can move their friendship into something more. When she is a tomboy and Jun is as dense as can be, can Tomo escape the bro zone in order to get a start on her youthful romance?
Why It Is Worth Watching
This series got a bit of hype before the season began since it was a long-running and long-beloved manga. Reading the manga, I didn’t see the appeal, but the anime definitely makes it a lot more cohesive.
In this romance anime, the charm isn’t really the “romance” since there isn’t a ton of “romance” in this romantic comedy anime.
The charm here is in the characters. In fact, some of the most enjoyable moments were between the titular Tomo and her two girl friends rather than between her and her oblivious, confused love interest.
So this is perhaps not a choice for the diehard romantic, but it has some fantastic jokes and an endless array of lovable characters.
The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague
Himuro and his family are descended from a snow yokai which resulted in his family having a strange power. Whenever he is excited or deep in concentration, it produces a Arctic winds and snow around him.
Finally starting a new job, he meets his cool co-worker Fuyutsuki. She is a calm woman with a stoic personality that always provides him simple solutions to the problems his powers create.
Himuro finds her absolutely adorable and vows to do whatever it takes to win her affections.
Why It Is Worth Watching
Adult romance anime is a rarity, but a growing sub-genre these days. While The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague is notable for putting a rather relaxed supernatural twist on the standard office romance, more notable should be how profoundly drama-free this romance is.
There are no love rivals, no huge misunderstandings that cause a fight, and few of the usual romance anime tropes. It is just two people who work together, growing closer, spending time togehter outside of work, and growing closer still.
The one romance anime thing it can be faulted for is progression being blocked by a lack of communication, but it is a nice relaxing adult romance anime none-the-less.
Farming Life in Another World
After dying of an illness, Machio Hiraku is given the opportunity to reincarnate into another world.
The god grants him a healthy body and his wish to live peacefully. Machio also asks if he can have a talent for agriculture in hopes that he can live a more fulfilling life.
The god grants him all this as well as the ability to summon a farming tool that can turn into any agricultural tool he needs, including one that makes any seeds he can think of.
Machio is sent in the middle of a forest full of dangerous creatures. Without any civilization in sight, he makes his own small farm that slowly accumulates residents that wander the woods.
Why It Is Worth Watching
I don’t like harem anime. I don’t particularly love isekai anime. So, this isekai anime where a guy starts a farm that turns into a village of almost exclusively female fantasy girls that love him shouldn’t appeal to me much.
However, I enjoy Stardew Valley, and that is kind of what this anime is. He lives his best farming life and he increasingly unlocks more goods to produce and expands his village.
Furthermore, the show handles harem in a way that isn’t repulsive to people that aren’t all about harem anime. It’s not ridiculously ecchi, and the main character sees the obvious feelings of these ladies, and promptly ignores them because he has farm work to do.
So instead of a ecchi harem isekai appealing to only horny teens, Farming Life in Another World gives you a pretty relaxing and wholesome experience that I actually really looked forward to every week.
Kaina of the Great Snow Sea
With the world covered by a great snow sea, drinking water becoming scare, and livable land located at the feet of a few deteriorating orbital trees that extend into the sky, humanity has dwindled down to a few thousand.
According to legend, there is a sage that knows the secret to producing unlimited amounts of water, and Princess of Atland, Liliha, sets out from her war-threatened kingdom to find this sage in hopes of fostering peace.
She ends up floating to the top of an orbital tree where she finds Kaina, a young man part of a small village of elderly.
Although she couldn’t find the sage, Liliha takes Kaina with her back to her home where she hopes to find another route to peace or victory with the aggressive and technologically advanced mobile nation of Valghan that plagues the snow sea.
Why It Is Worth Watching
Polygon Pictures anime always gets the disapproving glare for still being well and truly stuck in the jank ages of CGI animation, but they have consistently proven with each major anime series they adapted that they can bring strong stories to life.
Kaina of the Great Snow Sea isn’t an especially strong story, but it brings to life a wonderfully intriguing and interesting world. So interesting that sometimes you wish a studio known for visually appealing animation had been the one to do it.
But, we get what we get, and Kaina of the Great Snow Sea is a wonderful adventure anime for those who can look past the style of animation and want a world they can really watch unravel before their eyes.
Handyman Saitou in Another World
Handyman Saitou has always been a kind of unremarkable man. He worked a thankless handyman job where the company prioritized profits and clients often dismissed his work as too simple to be worth paying for.
One day, Saitou is transported to a fantasy land where he takes up with a group of adventurers who, despite having some slight dysfunction of their their own, make his skills feel valuable!
Why It Is Worth Watching
Not to throw shade here, but it is anime series like Handyman Saitou in Another World that makes it seem rediculious that people write anime recommendations for a series after only like one episode. This is because the way Handyman Saitou started is not the kind of anime it stayed.
What was wonderfully fun about it is that it started off seeming like a skit-based comedy following a somewhat dysfunctional adventuring party with a main character who is a handyman and not even remotely skilled in combat. You would also see little comedic side skits about other, seemingly unrelated adventurers in the same area.
Then all those funny little threads were woven together into an actual serious conclusion to the arc that made everything make perfect sense. It was a major tonal shift, to be sure, but this was the rare case where that actually wasn’t a bad thing.
This definitely wasn’t the light-hearted comedy that it seemed at first. It has its small moments of action, it dipped toes into being effectively emotional, and it enjoys a certain dance with dark humor.
Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible
Junta Shiraishi has a special, if not sometimes inconvenient skill of being difficult for people to notice due to his lack of presence. However, while even the teacher fails to notice him, his desk neighbor Nagisa Kubo seems to never miss him.
Unfortunately, Kubo likes to tease him on a daily basis and put his near-invisibility to the test in nerve-wracking situations. However, her playful antics begin to evolve into what normal people would easy see as clear feelings for him.
Why It Is Worth Watching
I hemmed and hawed about including this one. It isn’t that it wasn’t good, but rather it was paused after episode 6 due to Covid at the studio and was deemed to be re-aired in the spring season. This would make it a Spring 2023 anime now.
However, it will lose that shiny “New” label in the Spring 2023 season and likely won’t get as much attention, so I want to make sure it is on your radar now.
Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible is one of those romance anime where the charm isn’t in those big sweeping romantic moments, but rather is the constant barrage of small cute moments between the couple. It doesn’t hit really any of the “relationship milestones” that you expect in romance anime, nor does it need to since they are middle school. And yet, with their interactions, you don’t really miss them either.
It is a very cute, wholesome romance that is a must for the romance anime fan to tuck under their belt.
What were your favorite anime series from the Winter 2023 season? Let everyone know in the comments section below.
