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10. Aggretsuko




8th in 2018 (if you’re keeping track, yes, I miscounted)

Genre: relatable workplace comedy

Tentacle Rating: 0/10 – It’s a mainstream Netflix property and it’s been HUGE. It doesn’t even necessarily look like anime. But it is, technically. It’s Sanrio. Still Japanese animation.

It really shows to me how good a year 2018 was for anime when I look at my top 10 and see 8 shows from 2018. Not even using my cheat of the last two years of 2017, all of these 8 (bar one of them which also includes a previous season) are fully from 2018. For comparison, my 2017 top 10 only had 5. There are so many good looking shows from 2018 I haven’t yet watched, I expect many to show up in future end of years. But let’s talk about a show I did not expect to make my top 10 this year, Aggretsuko.

Aggretsuko is Sanrio animation, from the same company known for Hello Kitty – their character design should be well known around the world. This is a lot more adult and interesting than you might expect anything Sanrio to be though. Mostly they’re a mascot company with an obsession with kawaii. Retsuko is a young (fox) Japanese salarywoman, who has a hard life as an accountant in a typical Japanese office environment, complete with hardass (pig) boss, suckups, and plenty of other familiar office characters, updated for the modern age. Her office friends include the (fennec fox) Fenneko who is a social media wizard/stalker and easily best girl, and (dog) Haida, who is a nice guy that keeps all his personality in his home life and never really shows much of himself at work – oh and he has a crush on Retsuko. The kicker is that Retsuko dislikes her job so much that after work she goes to a karaoke bar, locks herself in on her own, and then this unassuming young woman starts singing death metal as loud as she can.

Built as it is to advance the story, it’s not good death metal, but the rest of the music is good and the story is great. They’re fast, short episodes and they always make a point about some form of Japanese work culture that is problematic, whether it’s the overworking, or the forced friendships, or the annoying office workers, or even the compulsory drinking parties.

Overall, a very easy to watch, short, relatable comedy and one that had me go through it so quickly that I had to rank it highly.

Music: Some great metal instrumental soundtracks in the OP. Non-metal fans won’t be put off by the amount though, despite the premise, the metal is a bit incidental.

Best Episode: Hard to say, I think I’d just put down all of them as a cop-out. Any of them would be good for a laugh. In situations like this I often end up pointing out the first episode as a proof of concept, but also the Christmas episode, which makes some fun usage of Instagram.

Characters: Fenneko is fantastic to watch, I do enjoy Haida most of the time, as he goes through similar things to Retsuko but is more private about them, Director Ton, the boss, is increasingly ridiculous and it wouldn’t be the show it is without Retsuko and her inner thoughts.

9. Attack On Titan (Season 3)



7th in 2018
Genre: political thriller?

Tentacle Rating: 1/10 – it’s now set in stone as one of the most popular anime that’s crossed a few boundaries into the mainstream.

As is apparently becoming a pattern, the third season of Attack On Titan, at least, the first half that we got treated to this year, took a completely different direction to the previous two series. Season one was full of action as the heroes fought the Titans, and violence. Season two was full of thriller moments with some creepier aspects of the Titans brought to light, and some violence. Season three takes the action away from the Titans, and looks inwards, to bring out the political ramifications. And there’s still your usual expected violence.

Not so many titans though. The titular monsters are almost completely absent from the season for quite a while, as the action shifts to the corruption of the inner circle of humans, how our heroes in the Scouts end up facing up against the kings and lords and the Military Police as their arm. Historia/Krista ends up becoming more important than ever thought possible, and the whole season is loaded with a lot of intrigue. That alone makes it very enjoyable, about on par with the excellent season 2 but lacking a true jawstopping moment in my eyes. Hopefully the second half next year will deliver.

Music: Initially I was unenthused by Yoshiki – Red Swan (feat. HYDE), the slower ballady opening for Season 3, which is absolutely not what you would expect from an OP in general, let alone the Attack On Titan OPs, which normally roar hype given by Linked Horizon from the highest walls. However its more tender nature and the introspective look at all of the characters that came this season, and the OP advertises, eventually made it grow on me rather well, such that I ended up enjoying it nearly as much. Linked Horizon do return for the ending, which is also slower, but fills out the end with a fantastic reprise of the Sasegeyo theme, which is all a fan asks for.

Best Episode: Ruler of the Walls, a very satisfying climax to the season’s main conflicts.

Characters: Historia really shines here as a season that is structured around her, however Levi and new character Kenny also get a ton of backstory that makes their interactions and ability to play off each other wonderful to watch. This season is definitely about these three at its heart and they are wonderful.