Steel's Top 10 Animations of 2018

[Steel Sponge]

Here's my early Christmas gift to all of you, and I'm going to get the ball rolling with this simple announcement. Yes, after three years worth of delaying this project, chipping away until I got most of everything on my watchlist for this year crossed out, I am now in the process of finalizing my list and eventually getting a written review out of the way. Sure, I could've brought this news to the Entertainment 2018 thread, but of course, it's three years long gone, and I couldn't bring this to the 2021 thread either because it just didn't make sense for me to do that, and considering the wait for this, I thought giving this project a thread of its own could compensate for that (My original plan was to make it exclusive to my Wordpress blog like most of my other reviews after its inception). Expect the review to be out any day between the 26th and the 31st of this month.

[Steel Sponge]

So, it’s 2022, which means that we’ve now entered the year where my old spin-off, Guru Gakuto takes place in. One question that remains is…where is my long awaited top 10 animations list….for the year 2018? In addition, those past few years have been absolute crap for the so-called cartoon community, so I am needed more than ever to spread some goodwill about the medium by writing up at least one best of the year list. Well, I’ve been making slow progress to catch up. I have several reasons as to why it’s taken me this long. 1) Family matters that also bled into 2019, which was back when I didn’t have the easy access or finances that I have now that I needed to watch a lot of the things that I’ve meant to watch to form my list. 2) 2020 taking a toll on my mental health, as I’m sure has happened to everyone else. 3) With the end-of-decade retrospective type of reviews coming around the corner, I decided that I wanted to take myself more seriously with my yearly lists and broaden my scope. 4) I went into this year not expecting what I was going to really like right way. If I was going to form a solid top 10 list, then I needed to give myself as much to work with as I can allow. This also meant waiting a while for certain long-form or short-form animated works to be released to the public. Of course, even when you see just how much I’ve given myself to work with, I still feel like I’ve missed some things, although that’s normal for any reviewer. As an example, there’s the anime film that I’ve heard good things about, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (and yes, that is a real title), which has no Region 1 release as of this writing, so if you want to know my thoughts on it, I’ll have to give you my thoughts on the manga. Just to show you what I mean, here’s a longlist of everything that I watched prior to finalizing my list, and in chronological order because that’s how I’ve decided to set it up:

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1. SpongeBob SquarePants (Yeah, as a long-time fan, this has been my gold standard for completing in any given year)           
2. Star Vs. the Forces of Evil
3. Steven Universe
4. Ralph Breaks the Internet
5. Bao
6. The Incredibles 2
7. Aggretsuko
8. The Dragon Prince
9. The Grinch
10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
11. Hilda
12. Watership Down
13. Early Man
14. DuckTales
15. Castlevania
16. Happy!
17. Mirai
18. Digimon Adventure tri. Future
19. Smallfoot
20. We Bare Bears
21. Teen Titans Go!: To the Movies
22. Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
23. Watermelon: A Cautionary Tale
24. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
25. Next Gen
26. BoJack Horseman
27. The Hollow
28. Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia
29. Modest Heroes
30. White Fang
31. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
32. My Hero Academia
33. Ruben Brandt, Collector
34. Isle of Dogs
35. Final Space
36. OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
37. The Amazing World of Gumball
38. Mike Tyson Mysteries
39. The Wolf House
40. Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure
41. Age of Sail
42. Agua Viva
43. Animal Behaviour
44. Bilby
45. Bird Karma
46. Cat Days
47. Coyote
48. Crow: The Legend
49. Daisy
50. Emily
51. Ian
52. Icebergs
53. La Noria
54. Lost & Found
55. One Small Step
56. Pour 585
57. Raccoon and the Light
58. Sonder
59. Tweet-Tweet
60. Untravel
61. Blind Mice
62. Cazatalentos
63. Egg
64. Five Minutes to Sea
65. Grand Bassin
66. Guaxuma
67. Je sors acheter des cigarettes
68. Las del Diente
69. Le Mans 1955       
70. My Little Goat
71. My Moon
72. My Mother's Eyes
73. Ostrich Politic
74. Plankton
75. Primos
76. Purl
77. Raymonde or the Vertical Escape
78. Reneepoptosis
79. Roughhouse
80. Shalva (=Tranquility)        
81. The Bird & The Whale     
82. Sister
83. Flowing Through Wonder
84. Reruns
85. Hors Piste
86. Solar Walk
87. Funan
88. Pop Team Epic

That is a grand total of 88 different animated works, and of all those that you see on that list, there are only ten in my list proper. I don’t have the time to provide my honorable mentions with commentary, so I’m moving right to the point…

 

Steel’s Top 10 Animations of 2018

 

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This doesn’t have to do with animation, but it has to do with the first thing that you’ll see from my list. If you’ve been made aware of my music reviewing side, you should already know that I have my limits when it comes to music that tackles past relationship drama. I’ve still never been in a relationship before, so I should be in no position to critique them, but listening to a lot of music over the years has given me the comfort to muster up what defines a bad or good breakup song, and I’ve grown to have an allergic reaction to the type of post-breakup blues where the singer just wallows in their shortcomings, the kind of songs that just make me feel like saying get over it and move on, right? Now, that does sound very short-sighted of me, so I should point out that I am also aware that moving on from a failed relationship IS not as easy as anyone without the experience would think, and that’s when I came to realize that one of the best ways to sell a breakup story is to augment the difficulty of moving on…

10. Sonder

 

Sonder is an animated short film about a couple named Finn and Natalie. As implicit as it should already be, they have broken up. Finn, meanwhile, seems to be deserted in a strange world that is made up from his feelings of grief from the end of the relationship and he is trying to protect what symbolizes his lingering will: an exotic plant with bright blue petals. Of course, I cannot explain any more about the story of Sonder at this point, as it would spoil the potency of the storytelling, but I do guarantee that this is a breakup story that is well-written. The overlapping narrative between Finn’s illusions and the real world don’t feel out of place, nor does it feel pretentious or moralistic, and some of the small details like the futuristic setting don’t hinder the story either and, therefore, enrich the world that these two characters are a part of. The longer that the short drags out, I make more sense out of the theme and storyline. Go right ahead and find out for yourself if you want to know why I think Sonder works so well on an emotional and narrative level.

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9. Roughhouse

 

Here is yet another rather niche animated short film making an appearance on my list. This one has more of an autobiographical tone compared to the previous, and its narrative focuses on the troubled youth of a group of adolescences in Britain as they each share a roof together while they then watch their lives deteriorate from a financial crisis caused by Shirley’s cash flow habits, leading for them to single him out and make him feel unwelcome until realizing that they’ve gone too far in belittling someone that they’ve considered a mate before then. It’s a brutally honest account on being young and dumb, but it’s very effective in what it does and the further it goes on, the more I appreciate the autobiographical tone. The climax is where the story really strikes a chord with me. Besides having an intriguing story to tell, one other prominent factor of Roughhouse is its rotoscope animation and as well as the color schemes for each scene to set the proper mood and the transitional techniques that Jonathan Hodgson uses to help make the story flow so smoothly. All in all, it’s a moving story on loyalty and friendship, as it’s also a marvelous work of animation to boot.

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...

DuckTales.

 

8. DuckTales

 

Best episodes: The Shadow War!, The Ballad of Duke Baloney!, The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!, The Most Dangerous Game...Night!, Last Christmas!, The Missing Links of Moorshire!

Even taking into consideration of the show’s flaws, I couldn’t bring myself to cut this series from my top ten. After making a very good first impression with me, the quality of Season 1 has mostly stayed consistent, giving itself some more room to shine in the process (hence why it’s gotten a couple spots higher compared to my 2017 list. As a little spoiler for my inevitable 2019 list, expect it to show up again), by going deeper into the show’s main story focus at its point, which is the mysteries of Della Duck and the Spear of Selene, capping off the first season with a drama bomb, along with a subsequent exciting and satisfying finale, along with a small batch of S2 episodes to give us a good idea of how the quality and pacing is going to turn out in the long run, and for just being an all-around fun ride with its interesting adventure-driven and character-driven storylines.

Of course, as the rest of Season 1 would exhibit, it does give quite a disproportionate amount of focus towards Dewey, the second-oldest duck triplet, over Huey, Louie, and Scrooge McDuck, the latter in which who is THE basis for the original comics by Carl Barks that this incarnation and the original TV series is based on, but regardless, there is a good balance of character development for everyone else ranging from the aforementioned and as well as Webby, Lena, Bleakley, Donald, and Glomgold, the very last one in which I feel just carries most of the show whenever he’s around. If you haven’t gotten into this series yet, go and check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

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As you guys may judge from looking at that long list of animated works that I’ve had myself watch, there isn’t a lot of Japanese animation. It’s not there wasn’t a lot of stuff from them that interested me, there was only few I could muster my own time with and even if I broaden that scope, my top Japanese-animated work is only going to be about a 25-year old red panda navigating though the workplace as a long-suffering accountant, under the iron thumb of her disrespectful boss before releasing her suppressed emotions on her one true (and secret) passion: singing death metal karaoke. Oh, and it’s from Sanrio, the same company best known for its Hello Kitty brand. Yeah, it’s that kind of show…

7. Aggretsuko

 

Best episodes: A Day in the Life of Retsuko, The Duel, Exposed, The Dream Ends, A Good Hard-working Girl

For a lot of people, myself included, Aggretsuko is a surprisingly mature social commentary that tackles subject matter like misogyny, workplace abuse and harassment, anxiety, and the subtle repercussions of looking at independent lifestyle through rose-colored glasses by not minding the obstacles to be expected until you are made aware of them, which is something that I appreciate the series for, speaking as someone who aims to make a start in independent living later on. On top of the subject matter it tackles, Aggretsuko is an enjoyable workplace comedy drama with a memorable cast of unique characters, including the main character herself, Retsuko, a character that viewers can easily resonate with and root for as she learns to push through these obstacles that life and her work throw at her over the course of the season, and the not-so-hidden depth of her in which she sustains herself by using death metal karaoke as her one method of alleviating her constant stress is what enriches her character and makes us feel connected to her in a unique way.

Of course, the last portion of the season pivots into a romantic plot, which is the point where the season is at its weakest, but I still liked it for what it was since it still plays into the season’s theme about how we shouldn’t push ourselves to be on the path of fulfilling our heart's desires…or you know, something along the lines of that. At the end of the day though, it’s an engaging and entertaining animated series, and for a variety of reasons, it’s one of very few animated shows that I’ve been keeping up with recently.

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For this year, I had seen quite a lot French representation in the animation medium, so I figured that I was going to make room for at least one opus. Amongst the French-animated works that I have seen, this is the one that impressed me most…

6. Reruns

 

Okay, so the spotlight is also on Belgium and Netherlands for this particular animated short film, but the point is that Reruns is impressive for what it is. It’s an interesting near-15 minutes worth of experimentation that blends computer generated imagery with live-action recordings. The themes of this short film here are set up on memories, life, death, and the concept of dreams and its characteristics – lucid dreaming, fever dreaming, and of course, good old fashioned nightmares. The narrative and world are indeed complex, but those complexities are what make this short film so engaging. As the title suggests, we get glimpses of the central character’s past life being replayed within their very own mindscape, and it’s so interesting to see how this character interacts with all the things around them, and how it gives us ideas of what their life is or was like. The animation techniques and special effects make this multidimensional world so exquisite to look at in its own unique way. The music, provided by a project named Thee Wreckers, is also great and gives this short film its distinctive charm. Overall, it is an entertaining piece of experimental art all the way through.

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After years of being quiet about it, I can now talk about how why Hilda is so great…

5. Hilda

 

Best episodes: The Midnight Giant, The Hidden People, The Black Hound, The House in the Woods, The Storm, The Nightmare Spirit, The Troll Rock

I could sum things up by saying that Hilda, pretty much like DuckTales 2017, is another mystery and adventure-driven animated show in the similar vein as Gravity Falls, but I already know how crass it feels to have to attach one particular work to another familiar one, and while that sense of familiarity is there, Hilda clearly has its own distinct characters and as well as its own stories to tell. Hilda is a series that’s based on the British graphic novels of the same name that have been published since 2010, and it follows a blue-haired girl, her pet deerfox, and her mother moving into the populous city of Trolberg from their original, isolated cabin home out in the wild. Over the course of the series, she makes friends and they come across a variety of anomalies that inhabit Trolberg

With that little synopsis out of the way, it should be already clear on why I’m impressed by Hilda, and simply put, it’s a competent continuity-driven animated show. The animation and visuals are spectacular, the characters are interesting and likeable, the writing is sharp, the episodes themselves provide a fair amount of thrills, worldbuilding, and character development with very little filler in-between, and it has a flexible tone – mature in terms of subject matter while overlapping well with its wholesome approach without relying too much on the former or on raising the stakes. So, there you have it, Hilda, one of the best kid-aimed animated shows as of recent.

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So…the company that brought us the much-reviled The Emoji Movie came out with something exceptional a year after, but I, for one, don’t feel so surprised by this glow-up. It’s happened quite often before as not every film that a studio comes out with is guaranteed to be a hit, commercially or critically, and Sony Pictures is not an exception to having their own mixed bag of hits and misses. For sure, you can’t call WBFA bad just because they made Quest for Camelot, and you can’t call them actually good just because they also made Iron Giant. One really bad movie does not define the level of quality for a studio as a whole, nor does one really good movie alone. When Sony Pictures disappoints, they disappoint. On the other hand, when Sony Pictures delivers…they deliver:

4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

 

Into the Spider-Verse is and was the quintessential unanimously praised animated film of 2018...and yeah, I get the hype. I don’t have such a huge attachment towards the Spider-Man franchise, which I feel is where most of the love is coming from, but I can still appreciate all the hurdles that it took to make itself out to be this devoted tribute to the iconic superhero. While I couldn’t recognize all of these small details and affectionate nods as a self-proclaimed outsider, I still found myself enjoying this film regardless because it succeeds in multiple other aspects.

For starters, the animation is, of course, outstanding, and it’s backed by a distinctive art style as that also takes some cues from Spider-Man. The action scenes are effortlessly good and exciting to watch as well, a lot of the film’s emotional moments manage to strike a chord on me, and while I would’ve like to see more the other half of the alternate universe Spider-people and more on Kingpin’s backstory, the characters are story are well-written nonetheless.

To be fair though, the film does have every reason to put the spotlight on Miles Morales rather than the usual Peter Parker, as his character arc is my favorite aspect of it. Him gaining Spider-Man’s powers, him trying to take the torch of the Peter Parker in his own world by taking the responsibility of succeeding him as the new Spider-Man after the latter ends up getting killed, him discovering his abilities and learning to adjust to him alongside his interactions with Peter B. Parker, and his final confrontation with Kingpin…what can else can I say? Miles’s character development was satisfying all the way through. I don’t even have to tell you to watch and it and see for yourself that it is as good as everyone else says it is. They can’t be any wrong.

 

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 https://www.nintendoenthusiast.com/the-video-game-movie-curse-how-amazing-games-become-awful-movies/

Ah…the so-called Hollywood video game movie curse. It is an attitude that persists to this day, and because of that, headlines about people putting blind faith in one particular upcoming video game adaptation, saying that it’s “going to break the video game movie curse,” only to be disappointed months later, persist as well, and it’s the same song and dance. It’s not hard to see why: we just keep getting them wrong. Now, while the video game movie has been seeing some success stories as of recent, effectively proving that a good video game movie can be accomplished, 2018 would give us, not the first good video game adaptation, but what could be considered the first excellent video game adaptation that shouldn’t be overlooked…

3. Castlevania

 

Best episodes: Old Homes, The River, For Love, Last Spells, Broken Mast

(also inb4 “But what about that one Animal Crossing movie???”) And we can thank Frederator of all studios for making this possible. Now, while I can’t shy away from the notion that my experience with the Castlevania video game franchise is only limited to the unrelated Lament of Innocence and not the particular game that the Netflix series is based on, I guarantee you that you don’t have to know a lot about Castlevania beforehand to enjoy this series. If the short 4-episode first season is a prologue to what the best possible Castlevania adaptation could look like, then the second season is the payoff, and while it’s certainly not perfect, the payoff is still great.

Like I said when I first talked about Netflix’s Castlevania, this series exhibits a lot of the key factors that make for a solid adaptation of the franchise: a mature and compelling story, blood and gore, riveting action scenes, well-written and developed characters, and of course, astounding animation and art, courtesy of Powerhouse Animation. Even with the climax that I’ve felt had one particular flaw that I can’t spoil, the thrills and animation work still manage to salvage it greatly and while the season caps off on a mostly soft note, it still leaves me wanting to see more. Considering how good of a first couple impressions this series left, I have faith that this series continues to deliver.

Spoiler

After years of being quiet about it, I can now express my feelings on the latter seasons of BoJack Horseman.

2. BoJack Horseman

 

Best episodes: Free Churro, Mr. Peanutbutter's Boos, The Showstopper, BoJack the Feminist, The Light Bulb Scene, The Amelia Earhart Story

The first time I gave a formal review of this series was for my very late 2014 animation review, and I expressed how the first season showcased that BoJack Horseman had the ambition of being an enduring classic in adult animation with its concept focusing on the modern life of a star actor from the 80s until becoming a long-suffering washout after his series came to an end. Of course, I didn’t have the chance to talk about it for my 2017 animation review, since I had a deadline set for it and I wasn’t all caught up with the show at that time. As it should already be made clear, by its placement on my list, BoJack manages to stay consistent every time. Just when I thought that the season after the last couldn’t attain the same level of investment that I’ve had for it, the series just keeps me on the edge of my seat.

In 2018, the show would reach its climax point with its fifth season, more specifically with its overarching Philbert storyline, continuing its formula of establishing the ups and downs that BoJack faces while shifting its focus on the other important characters every once in a while. Like with the previous seasons, BoJack still manages to surprise me with its character interactions, its storylines, and its experimentations, with one of my favorites of the season being an episode built around the concept of having four separate years’ worth of Mr. Peanutbutter’s relationships overlap into one story all taking place in a Halloween party that flows so well, and of course, the one episode that is beloved by many and it’s essentially a bottle episode in its purest form where BoJack delivers a eulogy to his deceased mother and not much else, but because it plays with that bottle episode concept in such an interesting way, I can begrudgingly accept it as one of the series’ strongest episodes (granted, I’ve died on a hill defending Truth or Square from what others alleged resulted into being a bottle episode and a disappointing one at that). Then of course, there are still moments where the series goes off the rails, like the penultimate episode of the season that leave me beckoning to see where BoJack’s life leads to now.

I could say more praise, but I’m going to have to save the rest of my thoughts for a later time, and besides, you’re all wondering what could have possibly beat this to the #1 spot on my list, right? Well, let’s get right to it…

Spoiler

Believe me when I say that BoJack was close to having a lock for the top spot. After I’ve had most of my watchlist for the year completed, I would discover this one particular work, and it was a good thing that I’ve heard of it and watched it before finalizing the list proper, because after I watched this for the first time…I knew it right away that it had to be my #1…

1. The Wolf House

 

As you can see, the top spot went to a rather niche stop motion animated indie film hailing from Chile, and if you folks haven’t heard of The Wolf House before up until this point…I don’t blame you. This is an animated film that is worth anyone’s attention, because it is a masterpiece in multiple aspects: the animation, the wide variety of visuals, the storytelling, the third-person perspective narrative style, the tone, the fairytale themes and aesthetics, and the political subtext. All in all it’s a very unforgettable experience. The film had kept me feeling intrigued and entertained from beginning to end, because of how stunning the stop motion animation and visuals were, and just how engaging its enigmatic tone was. If you haven’t seen this film yet, I highly recommend that you do because like the big bad wolf in the story, this film blew me away…yeah, that doesn’t sound right, but you still understand my point.

 

That wraps up my top 10 animations for 2018, so I can now shift my focus towards setting up my forthcoming top ten list for 2019 in animation. Will it take years or months for me finalize my next list? Stick around and you'll find out.