Slice of life is a genre that can give so much variety and beauty that it could be deemed one of anime’s best. However, we also ask ourselves which is the best of the best? Questions like these are hard to answer, but we can at least give an opinion. In a year punctuated with amazing titles throughout, 2019 was a year for anime in ways that felt really different from other years during the 2010s. It can’t be all that surprising that slice of life came to the fore in that regard, giving us titles like the reboot of the ever-praised Fruits Basket, the quirky Misdemeanours of Girls in High School, the adventurous Sora Yori Tooi Basho (A Place Further Than the Universe) or even the high-angst puberty rollercoaster that is Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo (O Maidens in Your Savage Season), among many other titles last year. That being said, last year’s standout Slice of Life anime has to be the the Fall season’s BEASTARS.

BEASTARS is an anime that has anthropomorphic characters cast in a setting where society thrives on the premise of peaceful relations between herbivores and carnivores. This is especially true of Cherryton Academy; however, this is but a mirage as Cherryton is rocked when Tem, an alpaca who was in the drama club. Legosi the grey wolf works in the stage crew for the drama club and battles with his carnivore identity. Using most of his energy to appear less threatening, Legosi appears to be a timid teenager; however, a serious of events and a fateful encounter with Haru, the white dwarf rabbit, leads Legosi into a path where his own feelings grow ever more complicated.