Happy New Year! Welcome to Anime Rants with Mono! For the third year in a row, I decided to put together a post celebrating the anime I watched in 2024. There were a total of 30 new seasonal anime series that I watched over the course of the year. I chose ten of those series and gave them special unofficial “awards” highlighting something I love from each show. Let’s see where the pieces fall this year!

(Note: This list only includes the thirty series from 2024 that I have personally watched so far. Since I haven’t watched shows like Dandadan or Delicious in Dungeon, they will not appear in this article. I typically have little interest in the big hits, since so many of them have overused story concepts that fail to appeal to me. Maybe I’ll get around to them eventually, but there are many lower-budget anime that interest me more.)

Article Contents

1. List of New Anime Series Watched
2. The Brain Rot Anime Award
3. The Unusual Anime Award
4. Favorite Song Award
5. The Anime Plot Twist Award
6. LGBT+ Representation Award
7. Fiery Shounen Anime Award
8. Favorite Animation Style Award
9. Best Remake Ever Anime Award
10. Overall Best Anime: Runner Up
11. Overall Best Anime: First Place

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List of New Anime Series Watched

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1) A Sign of Affection

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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2) Blue Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati Saga

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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3) Metallic Rouge

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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4) Solo Leveling

Personal Enjoyment Level: 6/10

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5) Bartender: Glass of God

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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6) Black Butler – Public School Arc

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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7) Demon Slayer: Hashira Training Arc

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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8) Kaiju No. 8

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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9) Mysterious Disappearances

Personal Enjoyment Level: 6/10

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10) That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 3

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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11) Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf

Personal Enjoyment Level: 9/10

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12) Tadaima, Okaeri

Personal Enoyment Level: 7/10

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13) Train to the End of the World

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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14) Whisper Me A Love Song

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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15) Yatagarasu: The Raven Doesn’t Choose Its Master

Personal Enjoyment Level: 9/10

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16) Bye Bye Earth

Personal Enjoyment: 5/10

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17) Delico’s Nursery

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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18) Isekai Suicide Squad

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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19) My Deer Friend Nokotan

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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20) Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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21) Senpai is an Otokonoko

Personal Enjoyment Level: 9/10

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22) Tower of God Season 2

Personal Enjoyment Level: 6/10

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23) Twilight Out of Focus

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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24) Beastars Final Season

Personal Enjoyment Level: 9/10

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25) Blue Exorcist: Beyond the Snow Saga

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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26) I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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27) Natsume’s Book of Friends Season 7

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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28) Orb: On the movements of the Earth (first cour)

Personal Enjoyment Level: 10/10

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29) Re: Zero Season 3 (first 8 episodes)

Personal Enjoyment Level: 8/10

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30) Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror

Personal Enjoyment Level: 7/10

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The Brain Rot Anime Award

Winner: My Deer Friend Nokotan
(Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshi Tantan!)

I thoroughly enjoyed Nokotan, but let’s be honest. It’s not any kind of comedy gold. It’s weird as fuck, only really suited for those who love asburd humor. Some of the repeated character gags were also tiresome. So, Nokotan undoubtedly wins the Brainrot Award. This Award is for anime that takes away your brain cells in fun ways.

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The Unusual Anime Award

Winner: Mysterious Disappearances

Mysterious Disappearances is a strange anime in several ways. The art style is unusual, for one thing. For another, the opening song is almost entirely fan-service, but the actual show contains some thought-provoking content, too. Most anime main characters are not 30-year-old single women, but that’s true of protagonist Sumireko from Mysterious Disappearances. There were parts of this anime that I enjoyed immensely, but also some problematic elements. One thing is for sure: this anime is not normal.

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Favorite Song Award

Winner: “Eureka” by Rokudenashi
(Ending song from Train to the End of the World)

This is a beautiful song that serves as the ending theme for the strange and fun anime, Train to the End of the World. This anime is special to me despite being far from the best of this year. The fact that it has great music is a huge plus. I haven’t fully analyzed the lyrics yet, but this song seems to be about not giving up on each other even when it’s hard. That, and that it’s okay to admit you’re not okay. The chorus is inspiring.

Note: Other contenders included the ending song for Metallic Rouge (“Scarlet” by Dazbee), the opening song of Kaiju No. 8 (“Abyss” by Yungblud), and the ending song for Senpai is an Otokonoko (“Are ga Koi Datta no ka na” by Kujira).

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The Anime Plot Twist Award

Winner: Yatagarasu: The Raven Doesn’t Choose Its Master

Yatagarasu was easily one of my top 10 favorite anime of the year due to the creative world in which it is set. Personally, I enjoyed the second half of it as much as the first, but the first half in particular had some truly excellent plot and character writing. There were a few excellent plot twists in this series, so I felt this award was well suited to Yatagarasu. The other main contender would probably be the last episode of Demon Slayer: Hashira Training Arc, since that also surprised me with its plot twists.

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LGBT+ Representation Award

Winner: Senpai is an Otokonoko

Makoto is an Otokonoko and the main character of this LGBT+ affirming anime that’s about rejecting binary models. Otokonoko literally means male child, but in some contexts, it refers to AMAB characters who present femininely but may or may not be transgender. Characters of this type are also often called cross-dressers, though this term certainly isn’t appropriate for everyone. Anyway, Makoto and his friends all find their queer awakenings in this amazingly real anime.

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Fiery Shounen Anime Award

Winner: Blue Exorcist: Beyond the Snow Saga

I wanted some kind of award for favorite “standard shounen” of the year, even though I don’t partake of many examples of this genre. There were only two major candidates. You may be surprised that I didn’t pick Demon Slayer, but I’ve never been that crazy about the story or the characters. In comparison, I’ve loved Blue Exorcist for over a decade and have written fanfiction about its interesting characters and concepts.

The winner of the Fiery Shounen Award is Blue Exorcist – but specifically Beyond the Snow Saga, since so many important things happened with Yukio and then Rin in these 12 episodes. Yukio’s pain and desperation were deeply sad but understandable. Rin’s true awakening to his demon power was epic to behold.

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Favorite Animation Style Award

Winner: Metallic Rouge

My favorite animation style from this year came down to a choice between Metallic Rouge, Kaiju No. 8, Bye Bye Earth, and Re: Zero Season 3. Metallic Rouge was the dark horse winner. Although the anime is lacking significantly in good plot writing and structure, it had several strong points too – including the visuals. The animation for Metallic Rouge is insanely high-quality. The art style is so clean, classic, and pretty. There are several fun, bombastic action sequences. Rouge and the Immortal Nine have amazing gladiator designs. I also love that minimal 3D was used for the robot fights.

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Best Remake Ever Anime Award

Winner: Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf

The 2008 Spice and Wolf is dear to my heart, so while I can’t say the new one is “better” per se, I will say that it’s really damn good. Best of all, this new adaptation covers more of the source material for Spice and Wolf, allowing the story to continue past the point where the older version left off. Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf is probably the best anime remake/reboot I’ve ever seen!

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Overall Best Anime: Runner Up

Winner: Beastars Final Season

It turned out that these twelve episodes were only the first half of the final season. Sometime in 2025 hopefully, the rest of the season will drop on Netflix. Despite not being the epic ending everyone anticipated, the “Final season part one” was still amazing. The writing and characters were great, and I think the story themes are leading up to something truly grand.

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Overall Best Anime: First Place

Winner: Orb: On the Movements of the Earth

Although Orb is a high-quality anime made by studio Madhouse, it may not look or even sound stunning right away. It’s not an action-battle shounen. It has no pretty shoujo sparkles either. The lighting is always bleak and the people look simple and plain. Moreover, only half the first season has aired, and it’s got a slower-moving plot than optimal. Nevertheless, not only is Orb my personal favorite anime of the year, but it is also probably the most important anime for its relevance to our lives.

Let me explain very briefly. Orb is about heretics who study Heliocentrism at a time when Catholic Church – which controlled academia – only accepted the Geocentric model. But as cool as that sounds by itself, the story is about so much more than that. It’s about freedom of thought and the forward march of human progress versus the oppressive forces that try to hold it back. Contrary to what some might assume, the anime is not anti-theistic. It does contain strong critiques of historical Catholicism and some aspects of modern Christianity, but it does not try to push atheism per se.

The point of Orb is to encourage critical thinking, which is extremely important for navigating our world, full as it is of misinformation and indoctrination. We must not allow our freethinking to fall to fascism, whether that fascism comes from religion or elsewhere. We must not return to how things were before the Enlightenment. I firmly believe this is anime’s most salient message to the world in 2024.

With that, we have completed Mono’s 2024 Anime Awards post.

Thank you for reading!

Happy New Year!!!

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