5-toubun no Hanayome (The Quintessential Quintuplets) follows the daily life of Uesugi Futarou, an unfriendly loner who only has time and energy for one thing in his life: school. Coming from a not-so-well-off background, Futarou prioritizes academics in order to ensure a life of smooth sailing in the future. As a result, he is one of the top-ranked high schoolers in Japan! His life changes when he is hired by the father of a set of quintuplets who are, for lack of better words, stupid, and need a tutor to help them get through school.

Six years ago, when Futarou and his family went on holiday in Kyoto, he befriended a girl his age. Now in his teenage years, he can barely remember the details, but he has an old photo with her that he keeps as one of the few mementos from that short friendship. All we learn about her by the end of the first season is that she looks just like the Nakano sisters, leading to speculation about her identity as a phantom sixth Nakano! Futarou himself begins to suspect that it could be one of the quintuplets; however, he is thrown for a loop when the girl he hasn’t seen in six years appears! Rena’s appearance was a shocking development early on into the season that set up a wacky reveal arc that nobody expected!

Isekai fans will know all about this intense series about a teenager getting whisked away to a fantasy world that seems totally committed to making him suffer. The second season of Re:ZERO – Starting Life in Another World – has been a masterpiece. It gave us lore, incredibly high stakes, insight into the pasts of the main characters, but for the sake of this list, we’re going to zoom in on one of the craziest revelations: the link between our elven princess Emilia and one of the most memorable antagonists in this show, Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti!

Emilia’s past places us in Elior Forest, otherwise known as “the Freezing Forest”, the home of an elven village. Within Elior Forest lies The Seal, a large double door that was protected by the elves who live there 100 years ago. Young Emilia lived in the forest with her aunt, Fortuna, who was head of the village and Guardian of the Seal. Fortuna had a relationship with Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti (affectionately referred to as “Geuse”) that spanned several centuries but their feelings for each other never changed. Things take a really bad turn when Pandora, the Witch of Pride appears in Elior Forest with her underling, Regulus Corneas, her Bishop of Pride. Their objective was The Seal. Knowing that Emilia is the key, Fortuna arranges for her to escape while she fights a losing battle against her overpowered opponents.

Petelgeuse assists Fortuna in the battle, but even together their powers aren’t enough, prompting Petelgeuse to use a trump card that would change everything forever: the Witch Factor of Sloth. This ominous power puts immense strain on Petelgeuse’s already injured body, but even so, it isn’t enough to beat Pandora. She uses manipulation and illusion to trick Petelgeuse and when the magic fades, he finds Pandora fatally injured by his own hand. Pandora tells him that it happened because he did it for love, which causes the grief, anger and the effects of the Sloth Witch Factor to drive poor Petelgeuse to madness.

That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime Season 2 came in hot in Winter 2021 bringing us more of the feel-good isekai adventure, but things took a darker turn in the latter stages of the season when Rimuru’s goal to create alliances with neighbouring countries brought full-blown war to his doorstep. When the human kingdoms of Falmuth and Ruberios conspire to deem Tempest a threat and justify their thirst for blood, the results are devastating. Rimuru, who had been away, was held up in battle against Ruberios’s finest—Hinata Sakaguchi! After slipping away from the dangerous encounter, Rimuru arrives to find Tempest in flames and leagues of his loyal followers dead—the most surprising of all being his loyal secretary Shion.

Wonder Egg Priority established itself very early on as a really weird show; however, the sequence regarding the character known as Frill was a rollercoaster nobody was ready for. The enigmatic Acca and Ura-Acca’s joint backstory is explored, a story from a time when they had their flesh and blood bodies. The two geniuses worked on a passion project together, the result being their daughter Frill, an AI given a physical body. Acca and Ura-Acca live happily together with Frill, but things change when Acca meets a woman, falls in love, and marries her.

Everything is happy and peaceful at first, but when Acca’s wife, Azusa, falls pregnant, Frill tries to get rid of her and the baby by tossing a hairdryer into Azusa’s bath. Azusa dies but the child survives the ordeal, but Acca and Ura-Acca’s attitude towards their creation changes forever and they seal her away to prevent something so insane from ever happening again.

Down to the single most heartbreaking thing that happened in anime in Winter 2021. Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan) The Final Season had one of the best runs of any title in the past season, especially the first half. With the slightly confusing time skip in the very beginning, eventually seeing the main cast we have been with since the beginning of the series was one of the high moments of the series. However, that excitement turns into complete and utter grief when Eren’s laying waste of the Liberio Internment Camp leads to the death of our favourite potato girl, Sasha Blouse.

Gabi, one of Marley’s Titan Candidates, witnesses the deaths of many of her friends at the hands of Eren, but she also witnesses Sasha killing some of the adult officers in the military, people whom she looked up to. When one of the Paradis Island invaders is killed after hooking his 3D maneuver gear to the escape airship, Gabi ignores all of Falco’s misgivings, grabs a gun from the nearby corpse, tightly grips the 3D gear, and pulls the trigger, sending both of them flying through the air towards the vessel. Sasha hears a noise coming from the open entrance of their airship but she ignores it to enjoy the festivities of an invasion well done. Gabi and Falco climb aboard, to the shock and surprise of everybody on board. Gabi’s gaze sets upon Sasha for a moment and she flies into a rage remembering the face of the female soldier who shot her comrades. Click, click… bang.

We will never recover from this loss. Goodbye, Potato Girl.