We continue in Espinof with our review of the best that this 2019 has left us, this time with the anime.
And it is that this has been a year in which the Japanese animation industry has been filled with resounding returns of some of the most popular series of recent times, such as 'One-Punch Man' or 'Attack on Titan', and also for the search for new sap in adaptations of popular manga like 'Dr. Stone', 'The Promised Neverland' or 'Kimetsu no Yaiba' or in superb originals like 'Carole & Tuesday'
Also 2019 has been a year in the anime has been seen on the big screen, with premieres as famous as 'Time with you', the new Makoto Shinkai film (which you will not see in this list), the return of Keiichi Hara with 'The Wonderland' or the excellent reflection of maturity that is 'Mirai, my little sister'.
Below, and on a personal basis, the 11 best anime series and movies that have seen the light of 2019. Although they are not all that they are, they are all that are:
'Beastars'
Set in a peculiar world of anthropomorphic animals, 'Beastars' mixes high school drama - one of the most common anime genres on television - and science fiction for, similar to 'Raw' but on a much more lax level, relate the harshness of adolescence.
Thus, puberty finds its most explicit symbol in the distinction between carnivores and herbivores and the consequent need for the animals of this particular world to control their most primary instincts.
'Carole & Tuesday'
Shin'ichiro Watanabe returns to the old days with an anime in which one of his most prominent obsessions, music, is the true protagonist.
And it is that 'Carole & Tuesday' not only pays tribute to some of the most important musical milestones of the second half of the 20th century, as 'Cowboy Bebop' already did, but also reflects on the robotization of creation or hermeticism and complexity in today's cultural sphere through a Martian dystopia with two charming protagonists.
'Dr. Stone'
Science fiction serves' Dr. Stone 'as an excuse for his peculiar vocation: scientific learning.
It all starts with all of humanity suddenly petrified until Senku, a brilliant young man, awakens several thousand years later determined to rebuild civilization through scientific and technical knowledge.
Something that does not cause the absence of tension in this particular anime halfway between survival and didactics.
'Dororo'
The new adaptation of one of Osamu Tezuka's classics recovers the spirit of the original work but updating and stylizing the character design in a similar way to Rintaro's peculiar 'Metropolis'.
With the Tezuka label but a differentiating style in which fluid and dynamic animation stands out in the action scenes, 'Dororo' remembers the validity of its original postulates more than 50 years after its publication.
'Her blue sky'
With Tatsuyuki Nagai and Mari Okada at the helm, duo responsible for 'Anohana' or 'The Hymn of the Heart', 'Her Blue Sky' tells the story of Akane, a young orphan who cares for her sister and who is at the same time.
With traces that could remind you of 'Your Name', the film moves away from the most festive tone of Shinkai's work to narrate a slice of life full of tenderness and broken characters seeking to find their place.
'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind'
What is the fifth season 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure' delves into a sacred ground in the cinematographic: the mafia.
With the particular treatment of Araki when it comes to addressing genres, this new saga takes place in Italy and continues to clarify the workings of the particular tools of the 'Jojo' characters while at the same time reviewing and reinventing the usual solemnity of cinema gangsters in search of the unique tone of the series.
'Mirai, my little sister'
Mamoru Hosoda's work of maturity is a film in search of conciliation: between family, time, fatherhood, domestic work, care, the rural, the city, the past or the recent history of Japan.
But stewardship is not the only highlight of 'Mirai, my little sister', with different styles of animation - traditional, CGI, or cutout animation - that, like children's imaginations, teem throughout the film.
'Mob Psycho 100 II'
The second season of the anime based on the ONE manga is a proposal with an impeccable visual invoice where the nervous line and the sudden coarseness in an animation that loses fluidity are revealed as aesthetic decisions that favor action with a very personal stamp.
All this under the comedy tone of a series that already stood out for its particular comedy and the ironic distance against the usual codes of anime and its particular arcs of evolution.
'The children of the sea'
After his stint in the 'Doraemon' franchise, Ayumu Watanabe directs the adaptation of Daisuke Igarashi's namesake manga, 'The Children of the Sea', also counting on Joe Hisaishi at the baton.
A film, that of Watanabe, in which its delicious visual invoice and its delicate and daring animation - which could well recall, at times, such particular experiments as 'Belladonna of Sadness' - is the indisputable protagonist.
'One Piece'
It is true that 'One Piece' has been broadcasting a whopping 20 years.
Of course, on the occasion of the anniversary of one of the great works of Japanese popular culture and coinciding with the arrival of the characters in Wano, one of the final arches of the story raised by Eichiro Oda, there has been a significant modernization of the franchise In the visual section, by reducing the use of still image animation, further increasing the color palette and blurring the backgrounds and designs and characters of second and third shots.
All of them decisions that have ended up being resounding successes for a story that cried out for something new and that had to wait until 2019 to receive it.
'The Promised Neverland'
'The Promised Neverland' has, since its inception, a certain biblical connotation regarding the flight and search for freedom in a promised land.
This is the case of its protagonists, several young people with great physical and intellectual capacities who will discover a horrible secret of the place where they live and decide to plan an impossible escape that will become a frantic game of chess.
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