The title for this series is a pun on the Japanese word for “dumbass.”
“Back Arrow,” “baka-yaro.” I feel that this one joke gives a great idea of what this show is shaping up to be: extremely clever idiocy. The highest form of dumb fun. Something you know is stupid, and yet has so much thought and effort put into it that it doesn’t annoy you, instead leaving you amazed (or at the very least puts a massive smile on your face).
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, what is this show? Well, we can’t say for sure right off the bat, because this is a brand new, wholly original production from Studio VOLN, a smaller studio that has made something of a name for itself over the past couple of years with well-produced (if albeit a bit hit-and-miss at times) adaptations of Ushio and Tora, Karakuri Circus, and I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. Aside from the studio, Back Arrow also has some legit heavy hitters on its staff, featuring writer Kazuki Nakashima (known for Kill la Kill, Gurren Lagann, and Promare), and director Gorō Taniguchi, a modern legend known for Planetes, Maria the Virgin Witch, and Code Geass. Back Arrow has a creative team chock full of talent, despite looking on a surface level like it’s in danger of becoming a disorganized mess, given just how diverse the aforementioned talent is. …
Okay, from the top of the entries that were ties, to the stuff that just missed out on the top ten!
Previous List:
Tied for 26th Place (11 points each):
Well… we’re still here.
2020 took a lot from us, including our original site. But enough of this community has survived for us to do our annual end of year survey, where the AniTAY community lists what their favorite anime shows and movies of the year were. And even though this is only my second time doing the survey, this proved to be a more interesting go-around than last time, with some people bowing out, some new blood coming in to diversify the results, and old faces returning to take part as well. …
Well… never thought we’d end up in a place where 2019 feels nostalgic, but here we are. 2019 for me personally was not a great year due to some shitty family issues, but it was the one year where I declined to do a “best of what I missed” list because I somehow managed to stay up to date with enough stuff in 2018 that I just couldn’t find enough stuff to fill it out. So, in terms of engaging with the culture(s), a decent year. 2020, on the other hand… the family stuff’s still there, but that was completely dwarfed by the real-life sci-fi film we’re all now living through (but hey, at least it made my personal issues calm down for a bit… silver linings and all that). In this regard, bringing back the “BoWIM”s this year makes a lot of sense, since I and many other people had a lot more time on our hands to get caught up on stuff. I didn’t make a whole lot of progress through my various backlogs, but by the last week of the year, I realized I had enough material to work with to make something I’m kind of proud of. …
Trends come and go, and anime genres are no exception. Tracking the rise and fall of various subgenres over the years can be enlightening in a cultural sense, such as the fall of the mecha genre during the 2010s, or how magical-girl shows have arguably seen a similar (if not greater) decline within the same decade. The biggest success in the 2010s though was probably the isekai genre, which was a genre that was extremely fortuitous to explode in popularity at the same time when streaming revolutionized the entire industry and fandom, and has gone strong until just very recently. Now it’s regarded with an almost comical level of disgust (to the point where hating isekai feels almost as tired a joke as the genre itself), even though I’ll agree that the genre has started to run low on not just material, but what also feels like basic creativity. …
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