Continuing my year-end retrospective (because I like taking stock of what I've appreciated each year), I watched a fair amount of anime across 2022. However, most of it was either catching up on older favorites or crossing titles off my backlog. I didn't make as much time as I would've liked for newer shows. That said, the ones I did watch were all pretty memorable, for one reason or another.
Here is every new anime I watched from this year, alongside some things I liked about them, all ordered by start date.
Life with an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout

Naturally, I would have to start with my guilty pleasure show. Turns out, I am an absolute sucker for generic isekai fantasy anime. On that front, Total Fantasy Knockout does deliver, even if it is also another entry in the long-held entertainment industry tradition of "no homo."
I admit, I started watching it because I expected it to be a bit of a trainwreck, but it tuned out to be at least passably funny and entertaining, all while deftly avoiding any blatant textual transphobia. It was a pretty unremarkable series if I'm honest, but considering how bad it could have been, that's not an insignificant achievement.
I don't regret watching it, but I don't necessarily recommend it unless you want some junk food TV with moderate gender feels. You can guess exactly what this show is like, and while it will not surpass those expectations, it won't fall short of them, either.
Birdie Wing: Golf Girls' Story

This show confounds me. I am not particularly familiar with the tropes of sports anime, so the pacing, characters, and setting of Birdie Wing all struck me as wildly erratic at first. But by the time the final arc aired, I was completely on board with the girl taking on the European golf mafia with nothing but a dream and what must be absolutely jacked shoulders.
If watching teenage golf lesbians talk about the importance of "getting on the green in two" while staring wistfully at each other from across the green sounds like fun to you, then give this show a try. Just don't say I didn't warn you about how strange it is.
Spy x Family and Spy x Family Part 2

I adore this anime. I know the word "wholesome" has lost a lot of currency recently, but it really is the precise word needed to describe this show's vibe. While yes, it does take place against the back drop of a cold-war style conflict, rife with tales of espionage and torture, there's something genuinely sweet about seeing the Forger household develop from Twilight's necessary mission cover into a true found family.
Naturally, the raging queer in me is a sucker for these kinds of narratives, but even beyond that, Spy x Family is an enjoyable experience completely on its own. It's funny and endearing week after week, but also full of just enough drama and intrigue to keep you hooked--all without overplaying its hand and getting bogged down in angst.
If I had one complaint, it's that's Yor's character isn't quite as effectively utilized as she could be. Most episodes involve Twilight and Anya taking up the A and B plots, with Yor getting a few throwaway scenes if she's lucky. She does get occasional episodes in the spotlight, but it often feels like the show is carried by a duo, rather than a trio. That's rather unfortunate, given how much her character has to offer, and I hope she gets more of a chance to shine in future seasons.
In more general notes, the first half definitely felt stronger than the second, but it's not as if Part 2 is bad. It's just more of the same, without much growth--and that's just fine by me. I'm also not a huge fan of Yuri's whole, you know, deal, but I found him easy enough to ignore after a while.
If you want something fun and silly to watch, centered around an emotional and compelling core cast, then Spy x Family will scratch that itch. It won't be a groundbreaking experience, but it will be a solidly enjoyable one without fail.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury

I'll be perfectly honest with you: I started watching this show for the lesbians.
Despite my love of giant robot anime, my only experience with Gundam was when my wife convinced me to watch 1989's War in the Pocket. And while I was suitably impressed with that series, it didn't bring me quite the same satisfaction or sense of awe that I got from, say, Gunbuster. I always knew in the back of my head that the Gundam franchise had some top-shelf anime under its incredibly expansive banner, but I never really saw what made others get so excited about it.
But after watching Witch from Mercury, I think I finally get it.
This show ostensibly centers around a young girl who's transferred from a backwater planet to attend a school for those who want to work with mobile suits as a career--from pilots, to mechanics, to even business specialists. And it's entirely possible to follow this anime as a cutesy, school-based series, following one girl's misadventures in a new environment with a cast of diverse classmates. That was the lens through which I viewed it for the first few episodes (especially while it was still cosplaying as Utena).
But when I started paying attention to the stuff in the background, shit started getting weird.
The side plots with the adult cast surrounding the use of GUND technology started to become more and more centered in the main story, and I started having more questions about how GUND actually worked. What on earth is a Permet score? Why does it affect humans the way it does? Why are people in general so viscerally frightened of the idea of a GUND-arm?
Then I started seeing the ways in which the timeline just didn't add up. Assumptions I made about the relationship between the prologue and the main series started to fall apart, and I had to radically shift how I viewed the characters and series. The Tempest allusions began to feel almost overbearing, and I finally started glimpsing the skeins of the true plot happening just beneath the surface.
And then I learned that there are multiple tie-in web novels that expound on different parts of the anime not explicitly stated, and at that point, I had to go lie down and reconsider my relationship to this show.
I'm still not sure I've gone far enough down the rabbit hole here to understand everything about it, but Witch from Mercurcy has captured my fascination far beyond my original motive for watching it. I'm eagerly waiting for Part 2 to drop in the spring, and if any of these inane ramblings caught your fancy, I suggest giving it a watch.
Pop Team Epic Season 2

Nobody asked for it, but you'd better believe we got another season of the weirdest gag anime ever committed to film. If you haven't watched this show before, Pop Team Epic is a 10-minute gag anime based on a 4-koma about two girls, Popuko and Pipimi. Half of the anime is short, vignette-sized adaptations of gags from the comic, generally about video games or Internet humor. Those segments can be hit or miss, but they're usually good for a chortle or two.
But the other half of Pop Team Epic is where it really shines. Each week features a longer animated segment, usually about half the length of each episode, focused around some silly idea that is completely original to the anime. It's always enjoyable tuning in week after week to see these two shitty high school girls in, I don't know, an extended parody of old-style bancho anime, or an episode-length live-action tokusatsu short, or a mecha segment supervised by Masami Obari himself. My personal favorite was the reprisal of the "Hellshake Yano" gag from season 1 in what became my single favorite episode of anime this year.
Is Pop Team Epic the best comedy anime? God no, not by a long shot. But I have nothing but respect for the teams behind this show, and it's always a treat to turn in each week to see what expectations will be blown out of the water next.
Akiba Maid War

I'm glad I went out on a limb for Akiba Maid War. I wouldn't have watched this show if I hadn't seen some screenshots for it out of context, and I just happened to be in the right frame of mind for the particular brand of silly it was offering.
It's not hard to figure out this show's deal from the cover--"what if yakuza films, but with maids?" But what initially seems like a deconstruction or parody of crime film and blood opera tropes actually turns out to play them entirely straight. Akiba Maid War really is just a mafia series featuring maids as the main cast, and while that contrast is played for humor, it's never used to subvert the drama on screen. The show is funny, but not in a way that's constantly winking at the audience for acknowledgement; it's funny in that, after you watch a 35-year old woman with a deep voice and combat training gun down a room full of people while wearing pig ears and a maid's dress, the only way you really can react is with laughter.
I mentioned this before, but I also appreciate the way the show recreates the duller, more washed-out colors of pre-aughts anime to remain true to the show's time period. It was completely unnecessary, but as a fan of that particular aesthetic, I appreciate them going the extra mile.
Don't get me wrong--Akiba Maid War is not some great prestige drama dressed in a silly package. As far as anime goes, it's thoroughly middle of the road. But I didn't regret my time with this show, and if the core concept sounds appealing to you, then you should give the first few episodes a try.
Bocchi the Rock!

Bocchi is probably my favorite anime of the year. I know that might be seen as sacrilege given the final anime on this list, but watching Bocchi week after week was truly an unforgettable experience, and one that I will treasure for a long time to come.
Not only is the anime a love letter to indie band culture and the (often thankless) art of starting a band professionally, Bocchi is an arresting depiction of social anxiety in the Internet era. While Hitroi's mannerisms are exaggerated for comedic effect, there's also a deeper level of understanding behind her anxiety that really makes it feel true to life. The way her panicked breakdowns are animated in increasingly strange, discordant, and esoteric ways, all against the backdrop of an otherwise grounded setting, really emphasizes how isolating it is to have intense social anxiety.
Hitori is someone who has grown up on the Internet, so while she finds it easy to generate a massive audience for her videos online, being handed a microphone in front of a large crowd without being told explicitly what to say beforehand is an apocalyptic event. She can play guitar at a truly impressive level for her age, but being expected to approach other people to sell tickets to her concerts is an impossible barrier. She can improvise an entirely new solo to get around a suddenly broken string, but even submitting the paperwork to make that performance happen in the first place was a grand feat.
And when her anxieties are depicted by slowly having the colors blur outside of her lines as her character drifts slowly off model, or a live-action doll of her head being hidden in a forest and tracked down on a hand camera like a wild animal, or reducing her to a low-poly t-posing model in Blender and crashing her against a pile of featureless white cubes, you get the feeling that the writers and animators really understood just how horrifying and out-of-place these moments feel for someone like her. It's a surprisingly human depiction of a character that could've been simply used for a joke without anyone batting an eye, and it's a touch I greatly appreciate.
Which isn't to say the rest of the show slacks off. Even outside that extra layer of empathy, Bocchi is rife with gags and references that will tickle your funny bone. The core plot is passable at best, but that's not what we're here for--we're here to see a manic teenage girl get so happy about her first photograph with other people that she prints out a hundred copies and wallpapers her room with them. We're here to see her get so excited to invite people over to her house for the first time that she posts a banner on the outside of her house to advertise it. We're here to see her get such stage from her first concert that she has to perform from inside a box of mangoes.
It would've been easy to make this show a low-effort knockoff of K-On! and call it a day, but the team behind Bocchi went the extra mile to make each and every episode feel like a true delight, and it's one I was grateful for each Saturday morning.
Chainsaw Man

I admit, I wasn't sold on Chainsaw Man at first. My wife absolutely loved the manga and had been encouraging me to read it, so the anime adaptation seemed like a good way to get a sense of what this story was about.
In a vacuum, the first episode wasn't that impressive. The animation was beautiful, but the story seemed more or less like a lot of other bland, actiony shonen titles where a kid gets super powers. Sure, it was a bit darker than usual, but this is the post-Madoka world--all super power shows have to be dark these days.
It wasn't until a few episodes in that I started to see the full picture of what Denji's story was about, and that's the point that I really started to appreciate the horror of Chainsaw Man. There's almost a sick amazement to be had at the stark depiction of a kid who has been nothing but a dog his whole life, used by every adult figure he's ever known and forever trapped by the systems around him that conspire to keep him that way. I can only be appalled at how despicably brazen Himero is, or how utterly bleak Aki's future seems to be, or how bone-chilling Makima's worldview truly is--and thinking about what it means for a kid like Denji to grow up with these people as role models only makes it all the more bitter.
That isn't to say Chainsaw Man is a dreary anime. Far from it--it's one of the funniest shows I've seen in a while. But all of the humor is very dry and understated; the kind of humor that comes from watching a kid who is effectively immortal be killed so many times over that he accidentally reforms with brain damage. (Don't worry; he just gets bashed in the head until he gets better.)
And that's the thing I love most about Chainsaw Man--just how damn real Denji feels. He's been jerked around and used by adults and the systems they created his entire life, but he doesn't have the language or worldview yet to see that. All he cares about is groping a girl's chest for the first time, or reading a new manga with his found sister-figure. His naive fascination with the passing interests of adolescence is almost sad, given that he can't see the true, banal horror that surrounds him.
I don't want to spoil more about it, but this show really is worth watching. Just give it a couple episodes before you judge it.
That's all of them
It wasn't until most of the way through this year that I really started being interested in watching current anime again, so I didn't wind up watching many new shows until the winter season. That said, I'm going to try to stay abreast of more anime in the coming seasons, so hopefully I'll have some better thoughts for you in the future.
I also wrote a retrospective on all the new video games I played from this year, if you're interested in that, and I will have one final year-end piece covering all of the albums I enjoyed from 2022 in the coming week.
Thanks again for reading!