Returning to Anime? The Best Anime Series of 2011 That You Missed

Been away from anime for awhile? We understand. You go out and have your life, anime will always be waiting for you when you come back. They always come back. If you are finally coming back and stopped watching sometime in or before 2011, here are all the best anime series that you missed and definitely should go back and watch.

Madoka Magica

Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki are your typical middle school girls, but one day they encounter a cute creature named Kyuubey that offers to grant them one wish. In exchange for their wish, they must become magical girls and protect humanity from witches. While Sayaka accepts right away, Madoka is more hesitant, not knowing what she would wish for. However, her decision is even further delayed when the mysterious Homura Akemi, a transfer student, begs her not to accept.

Madoka Magica turned the anime world on its head when it came out. Magical girls? But they die horribly? The very idea! In this typically bright and cheerful genre, Madoka Magica was what we didn’t know we wanted.

AnoHana

After the death of childhood friend Meiko “Menma” Honma, Jinta Yadomi and his group of friends grew apart, each trying to deal with grief and guilt in their own way. However, when Jinta starts seeing what he believes to be Menma’s ghost, the group of friends are drawn together to help grant her long-desired wish.

You in the mood to cry? AnoHana is one of those series that just likes to throw a lot of emotions and tragedy at you until your eyes well up. Although, perhaps it can be so hard hitting because you relate to at least one character in the group.

Steins; Gate

In a rickety old building in Akihabara, mad scientist Rintarou Okabe and his lab assistants work on so-called future gadgets. However, their most successful contraption to date, the Phone Microwave, a machine that can turn bananas into gel, also has the added function of sending emails into the past, thus altering the flow of history.

A smart anime about time travel is interesting enough, but the fact that they kept it from being boring is an achievement. What Steins;Gate does really well is balancing out the heavy plot with some much needed moments of levity without taking away from the seriousness of the situation.

Nichijou

Nichijou is about the daily lives of a trio of three friends who soon find their fate intertwined with a young genius, her robot maid, and talking cat. Needless to say, the normal does not ensue.

Nichijou is a absurd comedy that is thrown at you with a frenetic energy. It can be hard to keep up with and some of the jokes go over our Western heads, but when other jokes land – they land hard.

Usagi Drop

Daikichi Kawachi is a 30-year-old bachelor with a decent job, but no purpose in his life. When he returns to his family home for his grandfather’s funeral, he finds out that the old man had an illegitimate daughter. With his other relatives not wanting to take in such a child, Daikichi steps up and takes her home. From that day onwards, his hard new life as a parent begins.

Even if you don’t have or even want kids, Usagi Drop can warm your heart. It is full of kindness and nice moments that sometimes you just need in your life. However, it isn’t as twee as some other cute series as it deals with the darker subjects of children dealing with death and an overall theme of treating loneliness.

Future Diary

Yukiteru Amano likes to imagine himself as an observer. He spends his days keeping a diary on his cell phone, but not about himself, about everything that goes on around him. At home, he spends his time conversing with his two imaginary friends, Deus Ex Machina, the God of space and time, and Murmur, his assistant. However, one day he discovers his friends are not so imaginary when they imbue him with the power of a diary that tells the future and forces him into a bloody survival game with godhood on the line.

Future Dairy is home to the most famous yandere in anime and likely introduced many people to it. It is a survival game full of betrayal and bloodshed as well as one very obsessive romance. While that is not for every viewer, it can be so enchanting.

Tiger and Bunny

In Stern Bild City, those who use their special powers for either good or evil are called NEXT, and heroes are regularly featured on TV catching the bad guys, getting paid for their entertainment. The hero known as Wild Tiger has been putting on less thrilling performances lately due to his inability to cooperate with other heroes, but when he teams up with his by-the-books new partner he nicknames Bunny, his luck might just turn around.

The idea of superheroes with corporate sponsorship is an interesting one and adds a touch of sad realism to the fiction of superheroes. Alongside that, this series benefits from strong main characters that have different ideals but make them work together.

Blue Exorcist

Humans and demons have always been separated by two different worlds, humans in Assiah and demons in Gehenna. The only way to travel between the worlds is by possession, which is how Satan, the ruler of Gehenna, wages his war. Blue Exorcist follows Rin Okumura, a somewhat trouble teen and son of Satan. However, while his father wants him to help conquer the human world, Rin decides to become an exorcist to fight him instead.

There are shounen battle anime series that fizzle out and there are those that have the staying power to become staples. While Blue Exorcist doesn’t necessarily get there in the first season, the second ensures that it is a shounen series that people can fall in love with.

Hanasaku Iroha

Ohana Matsumae is an energetic teenager that lives with her mother in Tokyo. However, when her mother decides to run off with a man, she is sent to the country to live with a grandmother she has never met. As it turns out, her grandmother is not only cold to her, but runs an inn. Eager to earn her keep and grandmother’s affection, Ohana begins the hard work that makes sure an inn runs smoothly.

Hanasaku Iroha is P.A. Works flexing their animation muscles. It is not only a visually beautiful show, but also a poignant coming of age story surrounding a girl sent to live with her cold grandmother in the country and help her run an inn.

Haganai

Kodaka Hasegawa is anything but a delinquent. However, because of his blonde hair and bad boy face, he has been labeled as such. When classmates shiver in your presence, it makes it difficult to make friends. Yet, when Kodaka meets Yozora, a girl that is perhaps a bigger outcast than him, the pair start the Neighbors’ Club. In the Neighbors’ Club, those without any friends are invited to join, but not all personalities may mesh well.

While it markets itself as a club about lonely, dysfunctional people, Haganai is a harem show full of cute, occasionally interesting pretty girls. It is not overly ecchi and has more of a feel-good vibe rather than a perverted one.

Guilty Crown

After being ravaged by the Apocalypse Virus, Japan has fallen under control of the GHQ, an independent military force dedicated to the restoration of order. However, a guerrilla group called Funeral Parlor seeks to put an end to their despotism. After a fateful run in with a key member of Funeral Parlor, weak and anti-social Shuu Ouma finds himself with a powerful new weapon, the ability to pull out manifestations of a person’s personality to wield as weapons. Now he must make use of it in order to free Japan once and for all.

While it has a problem with cliches and perhaps introducing too many characters too quickly, Guilty Crown does has some great visuals going for it. Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned problems, it is typically a show that you either really love or really hate.

You and Me

To four high school boys, school life is nothing but repetitive classes, arguments, and orientations that are constantly preparing them for careers too distant in the future. However, after realizing the right group of friends can help brighten things up, they seek to bring excitement to their dull school days.

Friendship anime tends to focus on either a mixed or female group. However, You and Me is about a group of boys going through the struggles and silliness that groups of young boys go through. It is soothing and comical as well as a rare all-male focus in this sort of genre.

Gosick

Kujou Kazuya is a transfer student to the elite Saint Marguerite Academy in the Southern European country of Sauville. However, because of his Japanese descent, he is shunned by the other students. One day in the library of the school, he ends up following a long blonde hair to a beautiful doll-like girl call Victorque de Blois who can predict the future, including their own currently entwined one. Together, the pair begin to solve the mysteries that are beginning to plague their surroundings.

A good mystery show is always welcome, but anime is in a constant state of trying to find some hook to make it innovative. In Gosick, that hook is that the detective is a French loli. Regardless of how you feel about that, it has some nice little mysteries in a non-Japanese setting as well as an unexpectedly good romance subplot.

Do you have more good anime series from 2011 that returning fans may have missed? Let them know in the comment section below.