The Anime You Should Have Watched in Spring 2013

When you're captive to the eternal churn of seasonal anime, it's hard to fit every show you want to watch into your busy life. I have a full-time job and a family, yet somehow have twenty-seven newly-streaming anime shows on my Spring 2023 to-watch list. This isn't sustainable, so why not take a break (hide) from all those enticingly new and shiny things and look back to what the big anime shows were ten years ago? Have they stood the test of time? Are they still even available to watch?

The Unremitting Void of Shonen Misery: Filler Report

Most current shonen shows follow a more sensible one-or-two-cour-per-year schedule. This hopefully helps prevent animation staff exhaustion and allows the source manga to keep ahead of its anime, reducing studios' reliance on the dreaded curse of filler episodes. 2013 was a different world, with new shonen anime episodes produced week-in-week-out throughout the year.

One Piece, of course, is still around in 2023, but it's a special case. Spring 2013 saw it continue its Punk Hazard Arc with episodes 12–24 (590–602), mercifully all canon except for an improbable crossover with Toriko and Dragonball Z that wasn't available in the U.S. until March 2023 due to licensing restrictions. The dub for the rest of these episodes only recently premiered on Toonami between November 2022 and January 2023. (One Piece streams on Crunchyroll in the U.S./UK, but no dub for the UK!)

Hunter x Hunter completed its Greed Island arc with episodes 16–17 (74–75), and began the Chimera Ant arc with episodes 1–11 (76–86), with all canon episodes. (Hunter x Hunter streams on Crunchyroll in the U.S./UK.) Likewise, Toriko season 3 episodes 0–12 (99–11) were all canon except for another installment of the aforementioned One Piece and Dragonball Z crossover. (Toriko is unavailable to stream in the UK; it streams on Hulu in the U.S. No physical media is available.)

Leave it to the infamously filler-packed Naruto Shippuden to hang its head in shame with the ENTIRELY FILLER season 14 episodes 12–25 (307–320). (Why you'd want to watch this drivel escapes me, but should you want to, Naruto Shippuden still streams on Crunchyroll in the U.S./UK. Even the sequel anime series Boruto finally gave up and went on indefinite hiatus recently, while its manga also takes a break until August 2023.)

Finally, good old Detective Conan, not content to leave Naruto languishing alone in his filler dungeon of pain, joins him with the MOSTLY FILLER season 22 episodes 14–20 (694–700). (These Detective Conan episodes aren't currently streaming on Crunchyroll. There's a huge chunk of missing episodes — between 123–754 — at least in the UK.)

Notable seasonal anime that aren't endless shonen

Does Attack on Titan even need an introduction? Spring 2013 saw the first thirteen episodes of this world-conquering animated phenomenon that would become an addictive gateway drug for new anime fans. It's only now, ten years later, that the final episode is due for release in fall 2023. That's ten whole years that the enormous, deformed, naked people-monsters have terrorized protagonist Eren Yeager's world, chasing, catching, chewing, and devouring the screaming populace.

Attack on Titan was IG Port offshoot Wit Studio's first anime series, and suffice it to say; it didn't put them on the map so much as spray their name over it in blood-splattered viscera. A fantastically high-quality production filled with breathless action sequences, brutal horror, cruel cliffhangers, and mind-bending plot twists, Attack on Titan remains appointment viewing (at least for me) to this day. Somewhat muddled historical allusions aside, it's an excellent example of single-minded story planning, with late-game twists and turns foreshadowed expertly well in advance.

To live in Eren's world is to suffer, and author Hajime Isayama pulls no punches when killing off beloved characters and torturing the survivors. No other mainstream anime so cruelly delights in depicting its characters' anguished faces with as much glee as Attack on Titan. I love this show. (Attack on Titan Season One streams in the U.S./UK on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Funimation. Available on Funimation UK/U.S. Blu-ray/DVD.)

I was not ready for Flowers of Evil. This is despite the fact I only watched it for the first time very recently in preparation for this article. At the time of release, I was put off by the negative press around its unusual aesthetic, dark subject matter, and languid pace. Reactions among anime fans to this day remain polarized, so I approached the show with trepidation.

Rotoscoping as a tool for realism is hardly new in animation — initially developed by Max Fleischer for his Out of the Inkwell series in 1918, Walt Disney used it to enhance the fluidity of movement in 1937's Snow White, and Ralph Bakshi used it to somewhat infamous effect in his 1978 Lord of the Rings. Rotoscoping's use in anime is much less prominent (though 2015's The Case of Hana & Alice is an excellent theatrical anime example), and Flowers of Evil was the first time an entire anime series was produced using the technique. Due to the laborious process of painting over live-action frames, production on Flowers of Evil took twice as long as other anime shows.

The unusual rotoscoped appearance lends the show a deeply unsettling uncanny valley-esque effect where the characters move like real human beings, rather than the static limited animation most commonly used to save money and labor in most anime. Faces seen at a distance are mere pink blobs — only as they move closer to the screen are the lines of their facial features filled in, with expressions that are both weirdly blank but also disconcertingly expressive — certainly in the case of main female character Sawa Nakamura and her creepy grin.

Flowers of Evil takes all the elements of stereotypical anime high school slice-of-life shows, piles them up in a heap, and sets them on fire. It's hard to see how a story predicated upon emotional abuse, dark mind games, sexual awakening, and existential pain could have been well-served by a conventional anime presentation. Lonely intellectual 14-year-old boy Takao Kasuga finds himself inexorably drawn into the orbit of misanthropic classmate Sawa Nakamura, who blackmails him into performing increasingly degrading acts for her amusement. They develop a twisted co-dependence that poisons Takao's relationship with his friends, parents, and the girl he crushes on.

Nothing is comforting about Flowers of Evil, and the deliberate, measured pace, aided and abetted by the oppressive, discordant score, conjures a hypnotic atmosphere of pure dread sustained throughout the entire run. I've never seen anything like it, nor do I wish to experience it ever again. I can appreciate it as a piece of transgressive art that will stay with me for a long time. It's a shame a second season was never produced — the later chapters of the manga (that I just finished binge-reading because this franchise is like a car crash I can't rip my eyes away from) would have been phenomenally powerful if filmed in this manner. (Flowers of Evil is unavailable to stream in the UK; the MVM UK DVD is out of print, it streams in the U.S. HIDIVE, and the U.S. Sentai Blu-ray is available.)

Although widely credited to writer Gen Urobuchi (Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass, Fate/Zero), he only wrote the first and last episodes of Production I.G's Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, a fun sci-fi/mecha adventure series. Protagonist Ensign Ledo is a mech pilot for the dystopian Galactic Alliance, drafted into the eternal war against their squid-like enemy, the “Hideauze.” Accidentally knocked into a wormhole, he finds himself flung far from the Alliance, shipwrecked on an ocean planet, and rescued by the people living on a hastily lashed-together fleet of ships they call the “Gargantia.”

Free of the militaristic oppression of the Galactic Alliance, Ledo makes friends and begins to experience elements of human culture lost or suppressed by his government. I enjoyed this colorful and entertaining show when it first aired, though I've never seen the four OVAs that follow the final episode. A planned second season was unfortunately canceled. The proposed story was then adapted into two sequel novels that appear to have yet to be officially localized into English. (Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet streams on Hulu and Crunchyroll in the U.S., is available on Amazon Prime to stream in the UK, and both U.S. and UK Funimation Blu-ray/DVDs are out of print.)

Next, a show I have decidedly mixed feelings about. My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU streamed its first Brain's Base-produced season in spring 2013, though the second and third seasons acquired an extra visual glow-up from studio Feel. Commonly referred to as Oregairu (a shortening of full Japanese title Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatteiru), the title is something of a misnomer. Oregairu is more of an introspective high school relationship drama than a comedy, focusing deeply on complex character motivations and interactions that may initially come across as terminally dull and navel-gazing. I made the mistake of recently introducing the show to my teenage daughter, and she absolutely hated it. She now calls it “that boring torture anime you made me watch.”

Whether you can tolerate Oregairu will depend on your ability to enjoy nuance-drenched multiple-level conversations that extend through lengthy scenes and how much you can empathize with protagonist Hachiman, who, while not nearly as misanthropic as Flower of Evil's Sawa, isn't exactly the warmest and fluffiest of leading men. I find this first season insufferably dull and only stuck with it at the urging of my rabid fan friends. Season two improves a lot, and then everything falls into place with the third season when it becomes a genuinely insightful and fascinating character study. I understand why it puts people to sleep, though. (My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Season One is unavailable to stream in the UK. The UK Blu-rays are out of print, but seasons 1 and 3 stream in the U.S. on HIDIVE. Season 3 is also available on Crunchyroll, while Season 2 is unavailable to stream in the U.S. A U.S. Sentai Blu-ray is available.)

Another show I missed the first time around, I caught up with The Devil is a Part-timer!'s first season from Spring 2013 in time for 2022's second season, and a third is on the way for later in 2023. The first season is undoubtedly better than the second, with humorous slice-of-life shenanigans interspersed with surprisingly intense action sequences. Unfortunately, the second season can't hold a candle to the first in terms of animation quality.

Demon Lord Satan (also known as Sadao Maou, not the actual Biblical Satan), who rules the fantasy world of Ente Isla, is reverse-isekai'd (Via a magic portal. He doesn't die or get run over by a demon-truck-kun or get reincarnated or anything) to modern Tokyo where he discovers magic isn't a thing and he's as powerless as a human. He gains part-time employment at the suspiciously-named fast food restaurant “MgRonalds” to survive and put bread on the table. We follow him navigating modern life, making friends, and generally attempting to stay under the radar while increasing numbers of oddballs from his previous world keep turning up to complicate his life. At times the fish-out-of-water humor is hilarious, and the extended cast is a colorful collection of goofballs with bizarre personality quirks. It's a delightful and good-natured show with a semi-serious back plot that only sometimes reminds viewers of its existence. (The Devil is a Part-timer! streams on Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Funimation in the U.S. and on Crunchyroll in the UK. A Funimation UK/U.S. DVD/Blu-ray is available.)

Movies/Shorts:

Kick-Heart is a surreal 12-minute short directed by Masaaki Yuasa (Devilman Crybaby, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken) that was the first crowdsourced commercial anime funded on Kickstarter. A multicolored fever dream featuring a spectacular climactic BDSM-flavored wrestling match between muscle-bound “Masked Man M” and the leather-clad “Lady S,” Kick-Heart isn't your grandmother's sedate anime. An orgy of throbbing rainbows, improbable bodily contortions, erect nipples, and ecstatic groans of pain (or is that pleasure?), watch it and realize that several Anime News Network associates (past and present) are especially thanked in the credits for helping bring this bizarre short screaming (and panting, and sweating) to life… (Kick-Heart is available as part of the UK's Anime Limited Pigtails and Other Shorts Blu-ray. Previously streaming on Amazon Prime and Vimeo but has since been removed.)

Steins;Gate the Movie: Load Region of Deja Vu is a sequel to the fantastic 2011 TV show. Whether you accept it as canon is up to you (and in a world-line-hopping, time-traveling franchise like the Science Adventure series, what does a word like “canon” even mean?), but it's another welcome chance to spend time with mad scientist duo Rintaro Okabe, Makise Kurisu, and their eccentric friends as they navigate another thorny temporal conundrum with the usual mix of off-color humor and existential angst. I love everything Steins;Gate, and although the movie can't hope to measure up to the intense highs and ratcheting tension of the TV show's second half, I like it well enough. It's inessential, by which I mean it's a Shonen Jump-style Steins;Gate movie with no effect on the rest of the series. (Steins;Gate the Movie: Load Region of Deja Vu streams on UK/U.S. Funimation NOW, Funimation U.S./UK Blu-ray available.)

The Garden of Words is one of my favorite Makoto Shinkai films, and at only 45 minutes duration ensures not to wear out its welcome. Often reductively referred to as “that feet anime,” it's instead a tender and bittersweet meditation on the mutually beneficial age-gap friendship/chaste romance between a high school student and a troubled adult woman. Like everything Shinkai produces, its visuals are immaculate, and its melancholy vibes are masterfully evocative. Seek out Shinkai's novelization if you enjoy the film — it's a wonderful expansion of the story and characters that provide a more definitive and hopeful ending. (The Garden of Words streams on UK Netflix and is available to purchase on U.S. Apple TV. Also available on UK Anime Limited Blu-ray/DVD and U.S. Sentai Blu-ray.)

OVAs

2011–2012's unhinged death game Mirai Nikki ended on a downbeat note, so to the eternal joy of yandere-lovers everywhere, in June 2013, pink-haired psychopath Yuno Gasai returned for one further, 27th and final, episode with the Mirai Nikki: Redial OVA. Depending on your opinion, this either provides a happy ending for the central couple or curses hapless leading male Yukiteru to an eternity without escape from his crazed murder-frenzied girlfriend. (For Mirai Nikki: Redial, there are no UK streaming options. It is available for streaming via Funimation for viewers who own a digital copy of the series. If you want to see the true ending, you've no choice but to buy the UK Anime Limited or U.S. Funimation Blu-rays.)

Seven years after the last Stand Alone Complex (SAC) installment (Solid State Society, set in 2034), Production I.G. rebooted its evergreen Ghost in the Shell franchise with a prequel, Ghost in the Shell Arise Border 1: Ghost Pain, set in 2027. Confusingly, it's not a specific SAC prequel, but a separate timeline altogether. Gone was lead writer Kenji Kamiyama (who would return later in 2020 to write and direct CG-anime sequel SAC_2045), replaced with Tow Ubukata, whose past credits included Mardock Scramble and the poorly-regarded Psycho-Pass 2.

A series of four hour-long OVAs, released over the space of fifteen months, Arise was eventually re-cut into a ten-episode TV show (Alternative Architecture) in 2015, with pointless non-chronological reordering of its episodes and the addition of a fifth story. This iteration concludes in Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie. Unfortunately, Arise isn't a patch on the stunningly high-quality SAC, not only because they made the bizarre decision to recast almost every character's well-established (and loved) voice actor. As it's a prequel, gone is the easy camaraderie between characters. Instead of focusing on thought-provoking technological and ethical problems, Arise is more interested in action and spectacle.

As a huge fan of the franchise, I was disappointed, and so far, it's been the only Ghost in the Shell story I've been unable to finish, primarily due to boredom. (Ghost in the Shell Arise streams on UK/U.S. Crunchyroll, Funimation NOW. UK/U.S. Funimation Blu-ray available.)

The anime you should NOT have been watching in Spring 2013:

Like any season, spring 2013 contained its fair share of animated abominations like Karneval and Photo Kano, but the one still remembered behind twitching curtains and in the dankest recesses of the Dark Web is Oreimo Season 2, perhaps better known as that gross incest show. Look, anime's had this weird thing about implied brother-sister incest for a while now, and there's usually some mitigating factor. Like, they're not related, one is adopted, or they're step-siblings or something. That doesn't make it right, but there's less risk of hideously malformed children if they don't use condoms.

Oreimo goes places that no anime ever should. It turns its incest subtext into screamingly loud, luminescent pink, throbbing, ten-foot-tall neon letters on top of a skyscraper shouting, “Yeah, we do sister-screwing here!” It's a massive spoiler to say, but at this point, who cares? In the final few concluding OVA episodes, the male main character Kyosuke destroys all of his relationships with the other girls in this harem anime so that he can DATE HIS BIOLOGICAL SISTER. True, one of the girls punches his sister in the abdomen in retribution, but she's portrayed as the bad guy, while Kyosuke speaks about how society is bigoted. SOCIETY IS NOT BIGOTED ABOUT THIS, INCEST IS OBJECTIVELY BAD, AND IT'S HOW WE GET MUTANT INBRED BABIES. You know I'm medically qualified to state this, yeah?

Sorry. I'll stop shouting now. (Oreimo Season 2 streams on Crunchyroll/Funimation NOW in the U.S./UK. The concluding specials are unavailable to stream; perhaps that's for the best. The Aniplex USA Blu-rays are out of print, though the MVM UK DVDs (including the accursed specials) are still available, but why would you do that to yourself?)

Conclusion
Although only ten years have passed, a troublingly large number of these not-at-all-obscure shows are difficult to access now, especially in the UK, where many shows have disappeared from Crunchyroll and HIDIVE, and Blu-ray rights have lapsed, leaving scarce second-hand discs the only legal option. What lesson do we take from this? Um… maybe we should just go nuts with seasonal anime streaming and watch everything immediately because we never know when it will all disappear forever? Oh crap, that's a terrible lesson. Instead, let's all buy multitudinous Blu-rays, everyone! Physical media for the win! I'm sure there's no downside to that… (My wife and my bank balance beg to disagree.)

Kevin Cormack is a Scottish medical doctor, husband, father, and lifelong anime obsessive. He writes as Doctorkev at https://medium.com/anitay-official and appears regularly on The Official AniTAY podcast. You can also find him on Twitter @Herrdoktorkev. His accent is real.