Cameroon timber
Suffice it to say that 2024 has been a banner year for animation, with next year looking to do the impossible by raising the bar to blisteringly new heights. As with any year, there are peaks, valleys, and a healthy supply of scenic views to be had in between. With that frame of mind, here’s a progress report on the highlights, lowlights, and trends from animated shows and movies in 2024.
Highlights Inarguably, animated projects that seemingly set the year ablaze (affectionate) were the herculean efforts of Arcane, Dan Da Dan, and Look Back. The final season of Arcane, Riot Games and Fortiche’s Emmy-winning League of Legends series, underscored Netflix’s exclusive animated output and proved once again that video game adaptations are far from a dead-on-arrival creative venture. Despite the frenzy around Arcane‘s budget being vastly overstated, the fruits of its animators’ labor spit in the face of any bigwig executive touting AI as the future of animation.
Likewise, the meteoric rise of Science Saru’s Dan Da Dan was so hard to deny that Netflix, Crunchyroll, and Hulu jointly simulcast the anime throughout the fall season—a rare phenomenon that’s only happened a handful of times before with anime like Chainsaw Man and Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead. Despite the orange streamer’s reservations about promoting the show, the shared broadcast of the anime proved to be a big-brained move, considering Dan Da Dan was consistently the de facto anime to watch this fall, adapting creator Yukinobu Tatsu’s ongoing manga with unprecedented levels of artistry.
Whether you’re creative or not, Studio Durian’s feature anime film of Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one-shot, Look Back, was a much-needed reminder of why art and the pursuit of it are as painful as they are inspiring. Moreover, the film was so highly sought after, given fears it would never come to North American cinema, that it went on to overperform, get an extended release, and stream on Prime Video in quick succession. If that’s not a testament to the power of animation in 2024, we don’t know what is.
©Gkids / Science Saru Consistent bangers Like the final leg in a relay race, ongoing anime has been holding down the fort for anime fans worldwide. Key among them are series like One Piece, Bleach: Thousand-Year War, and the newest series in the late Akira Toriyama‘s long-running shonen anime series, Dragon Ball Daima.
While the aforementioned shonen shows have tenure in the anime community, new-age anime like Oshi no Ko and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End have become a staple in the zeitgeist as an exciting new direction for the genre. Their explorations of the entertainment industry’s dark side and how life presses on after a sprawling adventure have been remarkable to see continue into 2024; we’ll be looking for them to keep raising the bar in the coming years.
Likewise, the output in the West with Disney and Pixar films like Moana 2 and Inside Out 2 has proven that even sequels that might seem rote upon first blush can still astound audiences. DreamWorks also came to play in a big way with a surprise: the emotional rollercoaster, The Wild Robot.
© Crunchyroll / Madhouse Lowlights Despite the hype, 2024 also had its fair share of stinkers. Key among them were Adult Swim’s adaptation of Junji Ito’s magnum opus, Uzumaki, and the second season of the ultra-competitive Blue Lock anime. While 2024 had its fair share of forgettable projects, their own petard hoisted the hype for these titles above, to borrow a phrase from Bill Shakespeare.
While it is easy for fans to blame shows for being poor in quality, it is essential to acknowledge that the actual reason behind the shortcomings of highly anticipated shows is the unrealistic timetables imposed on animators by higher-ups. These conditions force animators to complete a show under immense pressure, leading to disappointing results for fans and crunch for workers. Hopefully, next year will see more animators receiving the respect they deserve and fewer ceiling-less monopolies of the space.
It would also be remiss not to mention the massive anime leaks this fall as another glaring lowlight of the year. Thankfully, the online community banded together to help cease the spread of hotly anticipated shows, trying to prevent ruining the fun for their fellow fans and animators who poured all their talent into their official release.
@ Adult Swim A big year for fantasy In a refreshing change of pace, this year saw animation return to form, putting out stellar fantasy anime that wasn’t the derivative isekai and reborn series that have oversaturated the space for the past decade. Leading the charge in the renaissance of fantasy anime were studio Madhouse’s Frieren and Trigger’s Delicious in Dungeon. Returning fantasy series like Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, Re:Zero, and Konosuba concluded the year by reminding fans of the high quality that the best of the genre still has to offer.
© Netflix / Trigger Remakes galore Hollywood isn’t the only industry that discovered the novelty in making something that was once old new again to a new generation of fans. Globally, animation has been riding that wave for quite some time. However, no group of remakes has come quite close to the level of acclaim that mangaka Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2 have. Aside from continuing the long-held belief that female mangaka has the sauce, these particular remakes have demonstrated the versatility of animation studios like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure‘s David Production and Jujutsu Kaisen‘s Mappa whenever they’re not tasked with adapting shonen that takes itself too seriously. They’re funny and cute, and I want more remakes of Takahashi’s works now.
© Netflix / Mappa The end is nigh The elephant in the room of 2024 was the reality that many of anime’s marquee shonen series, such as My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, and Jujutsu Kaisen, are winding down to their final curtain call. While JJK will have more time on the clock before it reaches the final page of its manga that concluded in September, My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer‘s ends are closer in view. In typical Utotable fashion, Demon Slayer‘s finale will be a film trilogy, while My Hero Academia‘s final season is set to premiere sometime next year. These shows coming to an end is notable not only for its undeniable influence on the anime community as the new wave of shonen—their end also comes with the excitement of what new shows will define the next generation of anime.
© Crunchyroll / Mappa Testing the waters As mentioned above, this year saw a new wave of animated projects that boldly enriched the medium with unique tales that innovated beyond cliches and trends from past generations. To not double this already lengthy report card’s length, here’s a short list of more shows we felt brought something new and worthwhile to 2024:
Go Go Loser Ranger Kaiju No. 8 The Elusive Samurai Shangri-la Frontier Orb: On the Movements of Earth Yakuza Fiance Blue Box Solo Leveling Apothecary Diaries My Happy Marriage Yatagarasu: A Crow Does Not Choose Its Master Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld Invincible Fight Girl Ultraman Rising Mars Express Robot Dreams Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft If you passed any of these up, be sure to give them a watch over the holiday break and nod in approval of our artistic taste and the thrilling artistry on display from the media above.
© Crunchyroll / Production I.G All this to say, 2024 was an exciting year for animation, and 2025 looks to raise the stakes even higher with exciting new TV shows, continuations, and films. If we were remiss in not mentioning an animated show or movie that you think deserves to be acknowledged, we encourage you to enroll—as it were—and put your fellow animation connoisseurs on to some good shit before we feast on even more animation in 2025.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.