How are you? I hope this a peaceful and happy Sunday for you. This week’s Sunday Select features my 7 favorite anime of 2002, listed in order from least to greatest personal enjoyment. Films and OVAs are not included, nor series that carried over from previous year(s).
Personal Enjoyment Score: 7/10
Pros: sexual humor, cute art-style, nice music, and fairly interesting story and characters.
Cons: a very slow-moving plot, very goofy, no human main female characters, and IDK, seeing androids as cute and sexy might be weird for some?
Personal Enjoyment Score: 7/10
Pros: a classic shoujo series, surprisingly profound with its themes, surprisingly dark with some of the content, memorable and likable characters, great songs, interesting take on the shinigami myth, goofy humor.
Cons: It’s 52 episodes long and doesn’t truly need to be, a lot of irritating drama, too much silliness, but also very sad scenes and very sad thematic elements.
Personal Enjoyment score: 7/10
Pros: amazing music, strikingly well-done art with unusual art-style, mystery elements, some romance, good fantasy/sci-fi content.
Cons: Robin looks 20 but is only fucking 15, the mystery is predictable, it’s less of a thriller and more of a character piece, and the characters are so subdued that they would be boring for people who only watch shounen with colorful, loud protagonists.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Personal Enjoyment Score: 7/10
Pros: Almost more of a philosophical show than an action one, expansion of the GITS universe, thought-provoking discussions, character elements, and sci-fi content, bad-ass characters, a female lead, a beautiful OP, and for its time, amazing animation.
Cons: Almost more of a philosophical show than an action one. If you’re not in the mood to think, you’ll be bored and/or confused. Definitely one to watch when sober and when you’re alert with ample mental energy.
Personal Enjoyment Score: 8/10
Pros: adorable characters and art-style, hilarious comedic momets, good VA, an engaging enough story that gets truly interesting in the second half, romance, discussions of the meaning of story and myth, and whether or not people have free will.
Cons: Repetitive and predictable at times, especially in the first half, cutesy/girly at times, and if the characters don’t immediately interest you, there’s nothing tying you to stay along enough for the story to get interesting.
Personal Enjoyment Score: 9/10
Pros: 9 years before Nichijou, this was the funniest slice-of-life and school comedy in existence. Humor has a lot of repeated gags, absurdist comedy, situational humor, and just funny interactions and reactions of characters. It has adorable, memorable, and hilarious characters, good VA, and catchy, funny OP and ED.
Cons: The story feels a little rushed. I guess the low-budget, simple art-style might get to some people. There are a lot of school anime tropes, repeated gags that may lose their impact over time, and absurd/random humor that’s always hit-or-miss.
Personal Enjoyment Score: 9/10
Pros: It’s a psychological, thought-provoking fantasy anime with goregeous music, excellent voice-acting, an art-style I love with pretty good animation overall, and a compelling story full of “the feels,” and interesting world lore.
Cons: None that immediately stick out at me. Let’s see, if you’re looking for the disturbing type of pyschological anime, this one isn’t. It’s very emotional but contains little violence and no frightening plot twists. That gif is the only “graphic” thing you’ll see. Also it’s not an action show, but very laidback, like a slice-of-life.
Thank you for checking out this list today! It means a lot to me! Take care now!
(Images were found by searching the web and I don’t own any of them.)
Anime Rants 
I love Haibane Renmei! I definitely agree that it’s one of the best shows to come out that year!
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Yay another Haibane Renmei fan! Thanks for the comment 😀
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So GitS:SAC is one of my favorite shows of all time. Arguably it’s Kamiyama at his height (depending on how you feel about East of Eden). But I agree it can get a little talky.
Witch Hunter Robin really feels like a show that could come out in the stretch between 1998 and 2006. I like it, but I’m a sucker for trenchcoats and urban fantasy.
And Haibane Renmei is one of those shows I’ve always meant to go back and watch.
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YES TO HAIBANE FREAKING RENMEI! That anime still holds up after all those years and it’s easily Yoshitoshi ABe’s best work to date. I bought both soundtracks and I even have a T-shirt which has the logo from that show.
The only anime I haven’t seen in some form on this list is Princess Tutu. Man, 2002 really was a good year for anime even though I wasn’t knee deep into Japanese animation (at least not series like those) at the time when I was a kid.
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