Annual Anime Favorites: 2000 Onwards!
Jan. 1st, 2024 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trace_by_echo Long time no see, Dreamwidth! I suppose I liked the tidy nature of having a non-fandom post at the top so much, I avoided making any new posts at all... In an effort to get back in shape for logging my fandoms, I'm starting off 2024 with another aggregate post - namely, if I look back at the rest of this millennium, which anime would be my favorites for each year?
Caveats include the following: I didn't actively watch anime in a furlough between 2008 and 2016, and was slow to get into seasonal anime until 2018, so many of these were not watched in the season they aired; it will become very obvious when I started to get more into anime. Furthermore, my tastes run towards slice of life and adult conflicts rather than the most popular battle shounen of the day, so there are many shows I didn't even give a chance to that are near the top of the popularity lists. I'm not planning to write too much about the shows or movies I select, although I might tally up common genres and themes near the end; I'll provide a little description for the less-well-known ones. ***Perpetual WIP***
2000: I'm seeing a problem immediately. I barely watched anything from this end of the century, even to catch up on recommendations. Of the 3(!) anime from this year I have watched, by far the most enjoyable is Carried By The Wind. An episodic historical comedy of a samurai and a martial artist who tend to bump into each other in Edo Japan, it's notable due to both of those lead characters being women.
2001: Ooh, I doubled my total input to 6 shows/movies. Best show: Fruits Basket (no I haven't bothered to watch the more manga-faithful remake yet, and I'm not convinced I'll do so anytime soon). Runner-Up: Hikaru no Go. Best Movie: Spirited Away. Runner-Up: Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
2002: Looks like it's linear growth for now, with a total of 9 anime. Best Show: Twelve Kingdoms. Runner-Up: Princess Tutu. Best Movie: Millennium Actress. Best OVA/ONA: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (a very velvet apocalypse with robots living amongst humans in what's left of Japan, just enjoying the scenery).
2003: Oh no, a relapse down to 6. Best Show: Fullmetal Alchemist (see the above note regarding Fruits Basket). Runner-up: Planetes (someone in our near-future sci-fi space colonies era will have to clean up space trash, after all). Best Movie: Tokyo Godfathers.
2004: Holding steady at 6! Best Show: objectively I have to say Paranoia Agent, which gives Satoshi Kon three wins in a row. Runner-Up: Kyou Kara Maoh (I know the correct answer is Samurai Champloo, but there's something about this wacky fantasy isekai BL that works for me - although on no account will I watch the sequel season which is called season 3 for some reason).
2005: Trending back up, reaching 10 this year. Best Show: once again I know objectively the correct answer is Mushi-shi, although my heart says Eyeshield 21 (the former being a classy historical supernatural drama, and the latter being wacky football). I'll call it a tie and skip the runner-up. Best Movie: the Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa sequel/wrap-up film, even if it's not anywhere as good as the show.
2006: Holding serve at 9. Best Show: Ouran High School Host Club. Runner-Up: The Story of Saiunkoku (a faux-historical-China court drama with a spunky and smart female lead). Best Movie: Paprika (and welcome back, Satoshi Kon).
2007: Wow, an embarrassment of riches with 15 anime. Now to be clear, my viewing habits are so different today, that it would not be impossible for me to watch 15 anime every season (I tend toward around 10 seasonals). So it's been strange looking back and realizing I have really no exposure to the majority of shows from the early 2000s! Anyways... Best Show: oh no, there's too many good ones! New procedure: dividing the year into seasons is a go. Winter 2007: Nodame Cantabile (ridiculous slob woman meets uptight man since they share a love of music, and they spend college together). Spring 2007: Moribito Guardian of the Spirit (excellent fantasy regarding a warrior woman who needs to protect a young prince from monsters and humans alike). Summer 2007: Baccano! (what if anyone could become immortal from a potion made and distributed by a devil on a ship several hundred years ago? What if there's more bottles of it? What if - hear me out - we randomly supplied some of it to mafia men in the 1930s?) Fall 2007: Moyashimon (a college kid who can see anthropomorphic microbes gets a warm welcome from the fermentation labs). Best Movie: Genius Party (let's let a bunch of famous directors make whatever short films they want!).
2008: Back down to 11. I'm going to keep doing seasonal favorites, though, now that I've started; I'll just skip dud seasons, and I will avoid using the same franchise for multiple entries even if that means leaving a season blank. Winter 2008: Spice and Wolf (medieval economics + wolf girl = profit). Spring 2008: Chi's Sweet Home (a kitten finds a human family that will love it even when it is acting out). Summer 2008: Natsume's Book of Friends (a boy who sees spirits learns love and acceptance from his adoptive parents as well as friendly spirits). Fall 2008: Michiko and Hatchin (a woman and a girl go on a road trip through the crime-riddled areas of South America).
2009: Moving back up to 13. Winter 2009: Hetalia Axis Powers (anthropomorphic countries acting foolishly). Spring 2009: Eden of the East (a handful of people are given money and the task to fix modern Japan or die in the attempt). Summer 2009: N/A. Fall 2009: N/A.
2010: Pretty steady at 12. Winter 2010: N/A. Spring 2010: The Tatami Galaxy (a college student gets frustrated at his lack of personal fulfillment and goes back in time - either literally or by comparing alternate universes, your choice - repeatedly to re-do his college years). Summer 2010: N/A. Fall 2010: Bakuman. (two friends decide to make manga together, through thick and thin). Best Movie: Time of Eve (a near-future society that discriminates against androids has very few safe spaces for them to hang out).
2011: Ballooning up to 20 - although this also coincides with a production boom in the anime industry, that has continued through today with detrimental effects on the health of the animators. Winter 2011: Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Spring 2011: Hanasaku Iroha (a girl goes to stay in and work at her grandmother's old-fashioned inn). Summer 2011: Croisee in a Foreign Labyrinth (a Japanese girl goes to Paris during the height of imperialism, and lives with an ironmonger family). Fall 2011: Chihayafuru (Card games, but it's a competitive sport and the cards are based on classic poetry).
2012: Mushrooming to 32! Winter 2012: Daily Lives of High School Boys (just boys being doofuses). Spring 2012: Hyouka (sometimes kids join their school literature club and turn it into a mystery-solving club). Summer 2012: Humanity Has Declined (another velvet apocalypse, but with unnerving fairies as the inevitable successors to mankind). Fall 2012: Psycho-Pass. Best Movie: Fuse: Memoirs of a Huntress (high action historical drama, with some shape-shifting involved).
2013: Holding at 34. Winter 2013: Problem Children Are Coming From Another World, Aren't They? (What if a bunch of kids from different timelines agreed to isekai to the same world because they're so darn bored of their realities?) Spring 2013: Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. (thousands of years from now, Earth is a water world and there are humans sailing across it - and two other groups of intelligent life in space, only one of which looks like a descendant of humanity, will disturb their peace). Summer 2013: Free! Fall 2013: Kyousougiga (Kyoto, but make it the Alice in Wonderland version). Best Movie: Hal (Androids as therapeutic tools, which only works if you know who's the human and who's the robot).
2014: Inching up to 38! Winter 2014: Noragami. Spring 2014: N/A. Summer 2014: Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. Fall 2014: Shirobako.
2015: Slipping down to 28. Winter 2015: Death Parade. Spring 2015: MY Love Story!!! Summer 2015: Wakako-zake (a woman likes to relax after work by hitting up food stalls). Fall 2015: N/A.
2016: Shooting up to 47! Again, this makes sense, as this was the year I started watching anime actively again. Winter 2016: Erased. Spring 2016: Tanaka-kun is Always Listless (high schoolers hang out in an oddly-architecturally sophisticated school, and try to keep the listless one awake). Summer 2016: Sweetness and Lightning (a widower tries to learn how to cook for his kindergartener daughter). Fall 2016: Yuuri!!! On Ice. Best Movie: Your Name.
2017: Slipping a little to 40. Winter 2017: Saga of Tanya the Evil (if the first thing someone does when isekai'd by a god is declare their atheism, they can't be surprised that they ended up as a child soldier in fantasy WWI). Spring 2017: The King's Avatar (a Chinese production, about professional gamers). Summer 2017: Princess Principal (steampunk Britain where London is divided like Cold War Berlin, and teenage girls are spies and secret agents). Fall 2017: Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond. Best Movie: Night is Young, Walk On Girl.
2018: Exploding to 64. I wonder if any season will surpass this one - I have a faint conviction that 2018 was the best anime year for me in terms of enjoyment of seasonals. Winter 2018: Idolish7. Spring 2018: Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori (young men run a soothing cafe together). Summer 2018: Cells at Work! (Anthropomorphic cells). Fall 2018: Run With The Wind (college men decide to put a track team together and run the Hakone relay marathon). Best Movie: Penguin Highway.
2019: As suspected, gliding down to 47. Winter 2019: My Roommate is a Cat(a man deals with grief and loneliness by becoming a pet owner). Spring 2019: Bungo Stray Dogs S3. Summer 2019: Given (high school boys becoming boyfriends after dealing with grief and forming a band together). Fall 2019: Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! (scum parents sell a boy to a demon, who turned out to want a grandson). Best Movie: Ride Your Wave.
2020: Covid-19 hit the West in March, although it impacted the anime production studios quietly much earlier, and continues to do so today to a lesser degree. With so much free time, I inched back up to 59. Winter 2020: Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun(a school is plagued by spirits, and some people are enabling this while others are trying to keep everything under control). Spring 2020: Princess Connect! Re: Dive (a video game isekai, but everyone's lost their memories, so it's about a group of friends forming a guild and fighting monsters & eating good meals together). Summer 2020: Deca-Dence (corporate robots own the Earth, and humans are corralled into a preserve where they're regularly attacked by monsters to convince them that the world is too dangerous to explore). Fall 2020: Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. (the princess isn't trapped in a castle of demons - they're trapped in a castle with a real gremlin of a princess). Best Movie: A Whisker Away (a girl accepts a magical shapeshifting contract to get closer to her crush).
2021: Oh-ho, this squeaked past 2018 to 67 total. Winter 2021: Heaven's Design Team (beings work together to design the animals of Earth). Spring 2021: Let's Make a Mug Too! (a girl gets closer to her deceased mom by joining the pottery club she used to be in). Summer 2021: Case Study of Vanitas (stylish steampunk vampires). Fall 2021: Blue Period (becoming an artist is about having blocks and breakdowns). Best Movie: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (kids are searching for a particular vinyl record one summer).
2022: The advent of full-time employment sharply reduced anime time, so I dipped back to 49. Winter 2022: Ryman's Club. (a sports anime, but they're adult men playing for their company's team - a thing apparently in Japan!) Spring 2022: Ya Boy Kongming! (the historic strategist wakes up in modern Japan and decides to help a nightclub singer make it big). Summer 2022: Phantom of the Idol. (it's ghostly possession, by a perky female idol of a lazy male idol). Fall 2022: Golden Kamuy S4. Best Movie: Suzume.
2023: Wow, a retrospective a whole day after :) I apparently watched ~40 shows last year (4 are still airing into 2024), and I'll be adding more shortly as I catch up on shows that were exclusive to Hidive. So this list is definitely subject to revision! Winter 2023: Vinland Saga S2. Spring 2023: Skip & Loafer. Summer 2023: My Happy Marriage. Fall 2023: My New Boss is Goofy (a man moves on from an abusive supervisor into a new company with a charmingly ditzy supervisor). Best Movie: The Boy and the Heron.
UPDATE: Time to begin 2024! Winter 2024: I'll give this to Delicious in Dungeon, although I am conflicted about not recognizing The Apothecary Diaries. Spring 2024: again, recognizing a 2-cour show is troubling. I'll say Yatagarasu (fantasy world of crow-people doing court intrigue), but it hurts to overlook Train to the End of the World (teen girls trying to reverse a velvet apocalypse caused by switching to 7G internet). Summer 2024: I'll say Twilight Out of Focus (3 different gay couples at a boarding school, who meet in the film club). Fall 2024: even though I know the correct answer is Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, I haven't been keeping up with it, so my honest guilty-pleasure answer is The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor. I haven't seen many films from this year yet, but I expect the new Mononoke film (first in a trilogy; sequels to a show about a man who handles unquiet spirits) to win once I see it. As of December 2024, I have watched or planned to watch ~40 shows & movies again.
UPDATE 2: While I intend to keep watching anime, I plan to begin moving away from anime challenges, so the amount of anime I watch annually will probably decrease significantly. I don't think I'll reach the heights of the pandemic again. That said, I may end up trying more classics, or digging into higher-episode-count series, so this may alter prior years' favorites.
Caveats include the following: I didn't actively watch anime in a furlough between 2008 and 2016, and was slow to get into seasonal anime until 2018, so many of these were not watched in the season they aired; it will become very obvious when I started to get more into anime. Furthermore, my tastes run towards slice of life and adult conflicts rather than the most popular battle shounen of the day, so there are many shows I didn't even give a chance to that are near the top of the popularity lists. I'm not planning to write too much about the shows or movies I select, although I might tally up common genres and themes near the end; I'll provide a little description for the less-well-known ones. ***Perpetual WIP***
2000: I'm seeing a problem immediately. I barely watched anything from this end of the century, even to catch up on recommendations. Of the 3(!) anime from this year I have watched, by far the most enjoyable is Carried By The Wind. An episodic historical comedy of a samurai and a martial artist who tend to bump into each other in Edo Japan, it's notable due to both of those lead characters being women.
2001: Ooh, I doubled my total input to 6 shows/movies. Best show: Fruits Basket (no I haven't bothered to watch the more manga-faithful remake yet, and I'm not convinced I'll do so anytime soon). Runner-Up: Hikaru no Go. Best Movie: Spirited Away. Runner-Up: Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
2002: Looks like it's linear growth for now, with a total of 9 anime. Best Show: Twelve Kingdoms. Runner-Up: Princess Tutu. Best Movie: Millennium Actress. Best OVA/ONA: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (a very velvet apocalypse with robots living amongst humans in what's left of Japan, just enjoying the scenery).
2003: Oh no, a relapse down to 6. Best Show: Fullmetal Alchemist (see the above note regarding Fruits Basket). Runner-up: Planetes (someone in our near-future sci-fi space colonies era will have to clean up space trash, after all). Best Movie: Tokyo Godfathers.
2004: Holding steady at 6! Best Show: objectively I have to say Paranoia Agent, which gives Satoshi Kon three wins in a row. Runner-Up: Kyou Kara Maoh (I know the correct answer is Samurai Champloo, but there's something about this wacky fantasy isekai BL that works for me - although on no account will I watch the sequel season which is called season 3 for some reason).
2005: Trending back up, reaching 10 this year. Best Show: once again I know objectively the correct answer is Mushi-shi, although my heart says Eyeshield 21 (the former being a classy historical supernatural drama, and the latter being wacky football). I'll call it a tie and skip the runner-up. Best Movie: the Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa sequel/wrap-up film, even if it's not anywhere as good as the show.
2006: Holding serve at 9. Best Show: Ouran High School Host Club. Runner-Up: The Story of Saiunkoku (a faux-historical-China court drama with a spunky and smart female lead). Best Movie: Paprika (and welcome back, Satoshi Kon).
2007: Wow, an embarrassment of riches with 15 anime. Now to be clear, my viewing habits are so different today, that it would not be impossible for me to watch 15 anime every season (I tend toward around 10 seasonals). So it's been strange looking back and realizing I have really no exposure to the majority of shows from the early 2000s! Anyways... Best Show: oh no, there's too many good ones! New procedure: dividing the year into seasons is a go. Winter 2007: Nodame Cantabile (ridiculous slob woman meets uptight man since they share a love of music, and they spend college together). Spring 2007: Moribito Guardian of the Spirit (excellent fantasy regarding a warrior woman who needs to protect a young prince from monsters and humans alike). Summer 2007: Baccano! (what if anyone could become immortal from a potion made and distributed by a devil on a ship several hundred years ago? What if there's more bottles of it? What if - hear me out - we randomly supplied some of it to mafia men in the 1930s?) Fall 2007: Moyashimon (a college kid who can see anthropomorphic microbes gets a warm welcome from the fermentation labs). Best Movie: Genius Party (let's let a bunch of famous directors make whatever short films they want!).
2008: Back down to 11. I'm going to keep doing seasonal favorites, though, now that I've started; I'll just skip dud seasons, and I will avoid using the same franchise for multiple entries even if that means leaving a season blank. Winter 2008: Spice and Wolf (medieval economics + wolf girl = profit). Spring 2008: Chi's Sweet Home (a kitten finds a human family that will love it even when it is acting out). Summer 2008: Natsume's Book of Friends (a boy who sees spirits learns love and acceptance from his adoptive parents as well as friendly spirits). Fall 2008: Michiko and Hatchin (a woman and a girl go on a road trip through the crime-riddled areas of South America).
2009: Moving back up to 13. Winter 2009: Hetalia Axis Powers (anthropomorphic countries acting foolishly). Spring 2009: Eden of the East (a handful of people are given money and the task to fix modern Japan or die in the attempt). Summer 2009: N/A. Fall 2009: N/A.
2010: Pretty steady at 12. Winter 2010: N/A. Spring 2010: The Tatami Galaxy (a college student gets frustrated at his lack of personal fulfillment and goes back in time - either literally or by comparing alternate universes, your choice - repeatedly to re-do his college years). Summer 2010: N/A. Fall 2010: Bakuman. (two friends decide to make manga together, through thick and thin). Best Movie: Time of Eve (a near-future society that discriminates against androids has very few safe spaces for them to hang out).
2011: Ballooning up to 20 - although this also coincides with a production boom in the anime industry, that has continued through today with detrimental effects on the health of the animators. Winter 2011: Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Spring 2011: Hanasaku Iroha (a girl goes to stay in and work at her grandmother's old-fashioned inn). Summer 2011: Croisee in a Foreign Labyrinth (a Japanese girl goes to Paris during the height of imperialism, and lives with an ironmonger family). Fall 2011: Chihayafuru (Card games, but it's a competitive sport and the cards are based on classic poetry).
2012: Mushrooming to 32! Winter 2012: Daily Lives of High School Boys (just boys being doofuses). Spring 2012: Hyouka (sometimes kids join their school literature club and turn it into a mystery-solving club). Summer 2012: Humanity Has Declined (another velvet apocalypse, but with unnerving fairies as the inevitable successors to mankind). Fall 2012: Psycho-Pass. Best Movie: Fuse: Memoirs of a Huntress (high action historical drama, with some shape-shifting involved).
2013: Holding at 34. Winter 2013: Problem Children Are Coming From Another World, Aren't They? (What if a bunch of kids from different timelines agreed to isekai to the same world because they're so darn bored of their realities?) Spring 2013: Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. (thousands of years from now, Earth is a water world and there are humans sailing across it - and two other groups of intelligent life in space, only one of which looks like a descendant of humanity, will disturb their peace). Summer 2013: Free! Fall 2013: Kyousougiga (Kyoto, but make it the Alice in Wonderland version). Best Movie: Hal (Androids as therapeutic tools, which only works if you know who's the human and who's the robot).
2014: Inching up to 38! Winter 2014: Noragami. Spring 2014: N/A. Summer 2014: Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. Fall 2014: Shirobako.
2015: Slipping down to 28. Winter 2015: Death Parade. Spring 2015: MY Love Story!!! Summer 2015: Wakako-zake (a woman likes to relax after work by hitting up food stalls). Fall 2015: N/A.
2016: Shooting up to 47! Again, this makes sense, as this was the year I started watching anime actively again. Winter 2016: Erased. Spring 2016: Tanaka-kun is Always Listless (high schoolers hang out in an oddly-architecturally sophisticated school, and try to keep the listless one awake). Summer 2016: Sweetness and Lightning (a widower tries to learn how to cook for his kindergartener daughter). Fall 2016: Yuuri!!! On Ice. Best Movie: Your Name.
2017: Slipping a little to 40. Winter 2017: Saga of Tanya the Evil (if the first thing someone does when isekai'd by a god is declare their atheism, they can't be surprised that they ended up as a child soldier in fantasy WWI). Spring 2017: The King's Avatar (a Chinese production, about professional gamers). Summer 2017: Princess Principal (steampunk Britain where London is divided like Cold War Berlin, and teenage girls are spies and secret agents). Fall 2017: Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond. Best Movie: Night is Young, Walk On Girl.
2018: Exploding to 64. I wonder if any season will surpass this one - I have a faint conviction that 2018 was the best anime year for me in terms of enjoyment of seasonals. Winter 2018: Idolish7. Spring 2018: Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori (young men run a soothing cafe together). Summer 2018: Cells at Work! (Anthropomorphic cells). Fall 2018: Run With The Wind (college men decide to put a track team together and run the Hakone relay marathon). Best Movie: Penguin Highway.
2019: As suspected, gliding down to 47. Winter 2019: My Roommate is a Cat(a man deals with grief and loneliness by becoming a pet owner). Spring 2019: Bungo Stray Dogs S3. Summer 2019: Given (high school boys becoming boyfriends after dealing with grief and forming a band together). Fall 2019: Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! (scum parents sell a boy to a demon, who turned out to want a grandson). Best Movie: Ride Your Wave.
2020: Covid-19 hit the West in March, although it impacted the anime production studios quietly much earlier, and continues to do so today to a lesser degree. With so much free time, I inched back up to 59. Winter 2020: Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun(a school is plagued by spirits, and some people are enabling this while others are trying to keep everything under control). Spring 2020: Princess Connect! Re: Dive (a video game isekai, but everyone's lost their memories, so it's about a group of friends forming a guild and fighting monsters & eating good meals together). Summer 2020: Deca-Dence (corporate robots own the Earth, and humans are corralled into a preserve where they're regularly attacked by monsters to convince them that the world is too dangerous to explore). Fall 2020: Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. (the princess isn't trapped in a castle of demons - they're trapped in a castle with a real gremlin of a princess). Best Movie: A Whisker Away (a girl accepts a magical shapeshifting contract to get closer to her crush).
2021: Oh-ho, this squeaked past 2018 to 67 total. Winter 2021: Heaven's Design Team (beings work together to design the animals of Earth). Spring 2021: Let's Make a Mug Too! (a girl gets closer to her deceased mom by joining the pottery club she used to be in). Summer 2021: Case Study of Vanitas (stylish steampunk vampires). Fall 2021: Blue Period (becoming an artist is about having blocks and breakdowns). Best Movie: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (kids are searching for a particular vinyl record one summer).
2022: The advent of full-time employment sharply reduced anime time, so I dipped back to 49. Winter 2022: Ryman's Club. (a sports anime, but they're adult men playing for their company's team - a thing apparently in Japan!) Spring 2022: Ya Boy Kongming! (the historic strategist wakes up in modern Japan and decides to help a nightclub singer make it big). Summer 2022: Phantom of the Idol. (it's ghostly possession, by a perky female idol of a lazy male idol). Fall 2022: Golden Kamuy S4. Best Movie: Suzume.
2023: Wow, a retrospective a whole day after :) I apparently watched ~40 shows last year (4 are still airing into 2024), and I'll be adding more shortly as I catch up on shows that were exclusive to Hidive. So this list is definitely subject to revision! Winter 2023: Vinland Saga S2. Spring 2023: Skip & Loafer. Summer 2023: My Happy Marriage. Fall 2023: My New Boss is Goofy (a man moves on from an abusive supervisor into a new company with a charmingly ditzy supervisor). Best Movie: The Boy and the Heron.
UPDATE: Time to begin 2024! Winter 2024: I'll give this to Delicious in Dungeon, although I am conflicted about not recognizing The Apothecary Diaries. Spring 2024: again, recognizing a 2-cour show is troubling. I'll say Yatagarasu (fantasy world of crow-people doing court intrigue), but it hurts to overlook Train to the End of the World (teen girls trying to reverse a velvet apocalypse caused by switching to 7G internet). Summer 2024: I'll say Twilight Out of Focus (3 different gay couples at a boarding school, who meet in the film club). Fall 2024: even though I know the correct answer is Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, I haven't been keeping up with it, so my honest guilty-pleasure answer is The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor. I haven't seen many films from this year yet, but I expect the new Mononoke film (first in a trilogy; sequels to a show about a man who handles unquiet spirits) to win once I see it. As of December 2024, I have watched or planned to watch ~40 shows & movies again.
UPDATE 2: While I intend to keep watching anime, I plan to begin moving away from anime challenges, so the amount of anime I watch annually will probably decrease significantly. I don't think I'll reach the heights of the pandemic again. That said, I may end up trying more classics, or digging into higher-episode-count series, so this may alter prior years' favorites.