2021 brought us a lot of anime, over 100 to be a little more precise. One of the things that I appreciated the most, was the strong female characters that it gave us. They didn’t follow the traditional harem tropes nor were they painted as weak, delicate, or irrational, but instead it highlighted real issues that girls/ women go through and how they push to overcome their current situations. The 2021 animes that I want to highlight in this article are Wonder Egg Priority, Otherside Picnic, Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song, High Rise Invasion, Shadows House, and Jouran Princess of Blood and Snow. Each anime had a different type of main characters put in different situations and it was breath of fresh air and uniquely fantastic anime away from the popular or norm.
Wonder Egg Priority is an action pack anime with good story building, but the story behind the series is sad. The series highlights suicide in young girls and delves into the dark ways that it affects people on so many levels and how it affects them differently. The girls go to this hidden place where they can purchase Wonder Eggs, which contains the souls of girls that have committed suicide. Once they open them, they must face off against the hate and the Boss, which is the monsterfied version of the person that caused them to commit suicide to save their souls. All to revive the person they care about most that have committed suicide. It’s amazing and the 4 main characters are all different and rely on each other for moral and emotional support.
Otherside Picnic aka Stranger Things the anime follows Sorawo and Toriko as they traverse between the real world and the Otherside, trying to unfold the mysteries of it. Toriko goes to look for her best friend and old traveling companion, to bring her back. Sorawo has traversed there for a while by mistake but helps her new friend. Sorawo deals with self-doubt, being shy, and fears that sometimes cripple her. While Toriko is outgoing and a military brat with weapons experience. The duo works together to not die in the Otherside. This sci-fi anime is amazing and brings a different insight and feel to the genre.
The opening scene to Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song was a shocking one, depicting machines and robots indiscriminately slaughtering humans all over the place. Vivy the first singer/ performer robot is recruited to be the world’s savior. Vivy waits until certain points in time where she works with an AI to change key points in history to prevent a future where humans are eradicated and machines run the world. Vivy can be considered a new age Pinocchio story as Vivy strives to become more human and fight for the human condition. The fight scenes are some of the best you’ll see in anime, with a great story, a good handle on time skips, and fantastic character development.
High Rise Invasion was one of the grittiest anime of 2021. Yuri wakes up on a random rooftop and comes under attack by a weird man in a mask. Yuri maneuvers this weird rooftop world full of masked murderers in hopes of finding her brother and escaping this skyscraper hell. Yuri with her partner Mayuko is a good balance of I do this because I have to and bitch I’m killing every op, and it makes the anime interesting. One of my boys gave the perfect description of Yuri when talking to me about the anime before I watched it; Yuri isn’t that great of a main character but the anime wouldn’t be great without her, she’s the perfect character for the setting and situation. The world is set up to find out who will become the next God and Yuri is on that shortlist of candidates.
Jouran: Princess of Snow and Blood follows Sawa, an assassin that works for a government organization. What makes this anime so great is that Sawa seems like such a cold-hearted killer, but she has a home life with a young girl that she’s adopted as a sister and she takes care of. Sawa’s background is shrouded in mystery as she is the Uchiha of the series, where she has a bloodline from her clan known as blueblood and her clan was completely slaughtered when she was a child. Her special blood gives her a form of beast speak with her ally bird and also allows her to transform using the bird to increase her combat prowess. This anime used such a cold character and showed what she hide behind her public face, and how much she’s wrought with emotions and issues that pains her. The animation is beautiful and the cast is very intriguing.
Shadows House is a deep and dark anime with a bright spot. That bright spot is main character and house doll Emilico. Emilico is bubbly, clumsy, and learning her way in the world and in the house of shadows where she serves as the maid and face of Shadows House resident Kate. All the shadows have a human doll that serves as their face, meaning as the shadow talks, the doll’s job is to mimic their body gestures while expressing their facial expressions. The world is well laid out and the politics and rules of shadow house make it hard for a doll like Emilico to prosper and stay alive. Emilico’s try hard and desire to do well and represent Kate properly makes her such a loving character and her naivety creates a suspenseful and good watch.
2021 gave us some of the most dynamic and preeminent releases of anime. On top of the uniqueness, it gave us a mass amount of them too. The aforementioned animes show us the different faces of the female protagonists that we normally don’t see. They are either the super badass or they are the love interest of the main character, but these characters were all so novel and were a breath of fresh air.