What a year 2015 ended up being. There’s so many fantastic titles that came out in this year and so many anime that I have watched and rewatched again and again. Anime 2015 is a year worth remembering.
With so many great titles to choose from even Death Parade, My Love Story and GATE, all of which I love, couldn’t manage to land a place. The first season of Food Wars also deserves a mention because it was actually a fantastic season and it is more the later seasons that wore thin however it also didn’t make the final list. So let’s get into the anime that did make the cut.
The Rules:
No. 1: No sequels of any kind.
No. 2: Only one anime from each season which gave me 4 picks from each year.
No. 3: Other than 2019 anime, no matter how brilliant an anime was if I hadn’t rewatched it since it aired then it didn’t make the list. If I don’t like it enough to watch it more than once then it doesn’t deserve to be on an anime of the decade list.
Incidentally these anime are not the technical best anime of their seasons but are the ones I would pick if I could only watch one anime from that season. They are anime I loved, for whatever reason, and felt deserved to be remembered.
What were my favourite anime 2015?
Assassination Classroom
2015 opened with a bang as it brought us the story of the yellow octopus teacher threatening to destroy the world unless one of the students in the E Class at a certain school managed to assassinate him before the year end. Yes, that glorious insanity is Assassination Classroom and it is an anime I fell in love with. The comedy works as does the high energy. The teacher mentoring the students and helping them find themselves and their confidence is a little trite and fits the overall story.
Not to mention watching the kids wracking their brains to come up with increasingly complex assassination plots is pretty entertaining and it is great when they very nearly pull them off (actually it is pretty fun even when nothing works).
I will admit, I have more merchandise from this anime in the form of stickers, keyrings and the like then I should and honestly I just really enjoy it. While I’m not the biggest comedy fan the mix of action and comedy here tempered with a bit of drama just hit the spot and I absolutely loved watching this anime. Just letting you know though that if you continue on to the second season, be prepared to cry before the end.
Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon
If you don’t already know about my undying love for this series then you clearly have not been following my blog for long. And while the long awaited season 2 was a little bit on the flat side it doesn’t diminish just how much I loved watching Bell growing stronger and exploring the dungeon in season one. DanMachi gave us one of the best one on one fights ever when we watched Bell take on the Minotaur and honestly this series is just all manner of fun.
This is also a series I’ve now seriously gotten into the light novels of which if why I’m desperately hoping for a third season. I love Lily, Welf, Hestia, Bell and really all the characters in this story and I love seeing them overcoming the odds even if it is at great cost. What I also like is that the series manages to put the characters in some pretty tight spots and build tension but it always remembers to have fun.
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Snow White With The Red Hair
This is a glorious fairy-tale style anime about Shirayuki who runs away from her own kingdom to avoid being made a concubine to a prince and ends up… well falling in love with a prince. Still she gets to make it on her terms and works hard to earn a place as a healer in the castle so that she can be near him. Snow White With The Red Hair is just beautiful to watch and is full of fantastic characters who surround the central duo who are both great to watch. Zen and Shirayuki are awesome together and they really sell the fairy-tale.
In this case season two is every bit as solid as season one was so be sure to watch on and then, like the rest of us, you can be sad that there is no season 3 yet even though it feels like there really needs to be at least one more season. Then again, spending even a second longer with this cast would be great so we’ll take whatever we can get.
One Punch Man
This is one of a very small number of anime included on this list that I’ve only watched the twice. Largely because the nature of the anime doesn’t really lend itself to multiple viewings. That said, One Punch Man is worth watching once so if you’ve never given it a go you definitely should. From the hard hitting OP to the hilarious central character as well as some pretty amazing animation, One Punch Man is an anime that really leaves an impact.
I will definitely give a shout out to Genos as one of my favourite supporting characters. Sure he ends up the butt of a lot of jokes, and in pieces a lot of the time, but you have to admit he’s pretty cool and if Saitama wasn’t around, Genos would probably have stepped up as an awesome hero.
That was 2015 but now it is over to you. What would your picks from the year have been? Also, remember to join us tomorrow to check out 2016.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
This is probably the year I streamed the most heavily, going as high as 8-10 shows a season a couple of times. Looking back I’m not sure how I did that.
Seasonal favorites – Saekano (winter), Hibike! Euphonium (spring), Overlord (summer), and Chivalry of a Failed Knight (fall). If we weren’t excluding sequels then Non Non Biyori Repeat would be the landslide winner of the summer, though.
Other shows I liked from that year: Beautiful Bones, Hacka Doll, Food Wars, Danmachi (definitely agree with you there), and Wish Upon the Pleiades. I liked the first season of Assassination Classroom, but I never went back and finished the rest of the series. And while I watched One Punch Man I didn’t really get that into it. The animation was great, and that was about it for me.
I totally recommend season 2 of Assassination Classroom.
Ah, 2015 – that’s the year my taste was most out of touch with the animefandom in the whole decade:
Junketsu no Maria, Rolling Girls, Saekano, Yurikuma Arashi, Hibike! Euphonium, Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyou, Re-Kan, School Live!, Monster Musume, Concrete Revolutio
Only 10 shows this time.
School Live was pretty awesome though.
I really enjoy following along with this and picking out my own series in conjunction. This year was especially hard (while abiding by your rules), because with some seasons I ended up having to pick out series I didn’t even like because all else were sequels, lol.
The no sequels rules ended up being the hardest one to follow (and not just because I would have included all of the Natsume seasons).