Anime season never ends. Many new shows come out every month and while platforms like Crunchyroll and Funimation make it easier than ever to stay up to date with anime, the number of shows coming out any given season means it can be hard to catch everything of interest. Many shows fail to make a big splash whether that be because of competing shows airing at the time or a simple lack of advertising. With so many shows coming out every year, it’s inevitable that quite a number of them won’t get the attention they deserve.
2021 was a great year for anime.Demon Slayercontinued to dominate the market alongside other current trendsetters likeAttack on TitanandMy Hero Academia. New shows likeTokyo RevengersandSk8: The Infinityalso made a big splash. All of these fantastic shows earned rightful acclaim from their audiences. But they are far from the only great animes to have come out in 2021. While there are countless anime that went underappreciated this last year, this article aims to highlight five in particular that deserved to be seen by more people. With a variety of genres represented here, anime fans from across a spectrum of tastes will be able to find something new to appreciate.
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1. Otherside Picnic
Premiering in the winter of 2021,Otherside Picnicis a science fiction horror story about two women, Sorawo and Toriko, who find themselves pulled into an eerie alternate dimension. This world is filled with strange creatures with mind-warping, reality-bending powers beyond most people’s comprehension. Sorawo originally came to this world accidentally as a means of escape from her dreary everyday life until she meets Toriko in the Otherside. Toriko has been coming to the Otherside to look for her missing friend and after Sorawo and Toriko gain mysterious powers from an Otherside artifact they decide to continue Toriko’s search together. As they continue to look for Toriko’s friend the two women grow closer and uncover more secrets about the Otherside and work to stop its evils from slipping out into the real world.
This anime contains some great unique creature designs and uses its blend of horror and sci-fi to construct a chilling alternate world living just beyond our own. The cast is also female-dominated which is not very common in horror anime. While not the darkest horror out there,Otherside Picnicprovides its own take on horror that has its own retro-futuristic twist.
2. The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window
Towards the end of 2021, a supernatural BL (Boys’ Love) series titledThe Night Beyond the Tricornered Windowreleased its first season. The show is based on a manga series by the same name. Kosuke Mikado has been afraid of the supernatural his whole life due to his strong psychic powers that allow him to see ghosts. He’s gone out of his way for most of his life to avoid them and was doing a pretty good job until a man named Rihito Hiyakawa runs into him while Mikado is working at a bookshop. Hiyakawa immediately declares that his meeting Mikado is destiny and insists on dragging him along with him on the odd jobs he does. Hayakawa’s odd jobs? Exorcisms. While scared at first, Hiyakawa assures Mikado that he will keep him safe and after completing a few jobs together the two start to see connections between the different cases they encounter. Particularly, the way the name Erika Hiura keeps appearing around different murder cases.
While the crux of this show centers around the tenuous relationship between Mikado and Hiyakawa, a variety of other characters make up the support beams that make this show strong. Erika Hiura and another psychic named Keita. The show is labeled as a BL, but that ultimately ends up being a more minor element in the first season with the supernatural mystery and revelation of Mikado’s past taking center stage. This show is ultimately a message about trauma and one’s ability to overcome it with the help of others wrapped up in some grizzly murders and violent curses.
3. Kageki Shoujo!!
Sarase Watanabe dreams of one day portraying Oscar in a production ofRose of Versaillesby the Kouka troupe, a renowned all-female acting company.Kageki Shoujo!!begins with Watanabe’s enrollment at Kouka School, a highly competitive academy designed to produce the Kouka troupe’s next stars. There she meets Ai Narata, a former idol struggling to find passion in performance again, and Watanabe drags her along with the force of her enthusiasm for acting. The girls become fast friends and along with their classmates train in the hopes to become the best of the best and earn their place on the stage. The first season follows Watanabe, Narata, and the rest of the first-year class as they embark on the first major challenge of their Kouka journey: acting class. With rivals abound, Watanabe’s natural talent is for the first time faced with its natural adversary: an abundance of other talented girls. But despite the obstacles, Watanabe is willing to do whatever it takes to make herself into a top star. And she hopes she’ll be able to one day stand center stage with Narata.
If you’ve ever wondered whatRevue Starlightwould be like as a slice-of-life, this anime is for you. The show is energetic and full of life while not being afraid to confront some harsher truths of this kind of ruthlessly competitive setting and the steep price that dreams like this often come with. The show is a love letter to stage performance, both traditional and contemporary, that aims to invoke that same love within viewers.
4. I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slimemight be the most popular isekai with “slime” in the title, but it’s certainly not the only one.I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Levelhas a title that’s even more of a mouthful with a similar premise of a fantasy isekai. But whileThat Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slimeis quite action-packed,I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Levelis decidedly more mellow. Azusa lived the painful life of an office worker where she was under so much stress that at age 27 she died right at her desk. Luckily for her, this wasn’t the end. She awoke with a new body in a new world and when asked what she wanted to do with this second chance at life Azusa already knew: live a peaceful life, free of stress. With this wish granted, Azusa started the mundane life of her dreams killing a few slimes and tending to her garden. Without her even noticing, 300 years passed in her new life and with her daily routine of killing slimes for so long, she finds she’s accidentally become level 99, and word of her great power is spreading. Powerful people start to seek out Azusa to challenge her but she simply wants to maintain her peaceful life. Instead of making enemies of those who seek her out, Azusa instead extends friendship and 300 years into her new life she begins to build a family out of the people who try and fail to overpower her. How many immensely powerful beings can Azusa adopt into her ever-growing family?
This anime is the definition of wholesome. Every episode provides a new opportunity where a normal fantasy adventure would take off into an epic quest, but Azusa doesn’t care for glory and only hopes to keep living the simple life that she loves. While the aesthetics and general plotline are steeped in isekai and fantasy tropes, the show feels very slice of life. For those seeking a break from high stakes and stress in their anime, this is the show for you. If comfort food was an anime, it would look likeI’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level.
5. The Aquatope on White Sand
Magical realism is a fascinating genre that not many anime attempt to tackle butThe Aquatope on White Sandtakes the challenge in a visually stunning direction. A relatively lighthearted drama,The Aquatope on White Sandfollows two girls on the edge of adulthood struggling with their goals in life. Kukuru dreams of taking over the aquarium her grandfather has lovingly watched over all of his life but with declining profits, the future of the aquarium is in jeopardy. One of the few visitors the aquarium receives during these times is Fuuka, an ex-idol, on the run and trying to find herself after her dreams of stardom are burnt out. After experiencing a wild and comforting vision in the aquarium, Fuuka becomes friends with Kukuru and the two try to understand the magic of the aquarium while working desperately to keep the place afloat.
This anime speaks to the young adult anxiety of struggling to find a place in the world. With the gorgeous oceanic scenery and magical realism twist, it manages to capture the melancholy nostalgia of longing to go back to the summers of one’s childhood.The Aquatope on White Sandis a character drama through and through, concerning itself with confronting troublesome emotions like grief and helplessness using the veneer of magical realism to elevate those emotions and give them life. It’s a show about growing up and learning that though your dreams may turn out differently than you expect, there are still many wonderful things to be experienced on these new paths.
