Tomoya has never been motivated to try his hardest in school, finding the whole process a waste. A chance meeting with Nagisa, a quiet girl with a few quirks, on his way to school one day creates a subtle bond between the delinquent and the wallflower. He finds himself searching for her in the hallways at school as he notices her more and more. Tomoya eventually warms up to the strange girl and becomes her friend. Nagisa, on the other hand, had considered Tomoya her friend since the first day they met. Nagisa, who was held back a year in school because of missing most of the previous year due to illness, desperately wants to revive the drama club. Tomoya decides to join Nagisa and four other girls in their quest. He finds himself involved in the girls’ lives, helping each of them overcome their problems as his romance with Nagisa blooms.

KyoAni does an excellent job at creating a character-driven anime. You won’t find any supernatural battles or sinister plans by the student council. You’ll simply find a story filled with subtlety. The episodes at times feel like a slice-of-life but they’re all connected in a narrative of young people overcoming real-world obstacles in the latter days of their youth. The love story between Nagisa and Tomoya is also rated one of the best in anime.

What would you do if you opened your door and the large green face of a dragon was filling up your home’s entranceway? The first instinct might be to close the door and hide in your bathtub. You, however, might just freeze and stand there long enough to see that dragon go poof and transform into a cute girl dressed as a maid. Miss Kobayashi had that exact encounter, chose the second option and that dragon maid introduced herself as Tooru. The previous night Miss Kobayashi got drunk after work and wandered into the woods where she came across a wounded dragon. She, in her drunken state, pulled a sword out of the large dragon Tooru and offered her a place to stay. Tooru decided the best way to repay the kindness was to become her personal maid. We get a bit of slice of comedic life as Tooru attempts to adapt to the human way of doing things, like washing the laundry in the washer and not in her mouth. Tooru’s presence attracts several other human-shaped dragons and one child dragon named Kanna. Miss Kobayashi takes in the younger dragon and becomes her foster parent. She and Tooru do their best to raise the small dragon including registering her for school as Kobayashi’s child. The story continues from there as a slice-of-life with mystical and truly comedic twists as they navigate their daily lives.

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is a story of love, acceptance, and the meaning of family in a truly modern sense. KyoAni manages to take this quirky slice-of-life comedy and make it a lesson about love. We get that Tooru is a dragon. She has horns on her head and a tail sticking out from under her maid’s skirt as a constant reminder of her otherworldliness. Tooru is also accepted by the community around her as just a girl that likes to dress oddly. Miss Kobayashi’s life before Tooru and Kanna revolved around work and not much more. Tooru, who on several occasions expresses her feelings for the human, is completely in love with her savior. Miss Kobayashi quickly realizes that her life without Tooru and Kanna would be incomplete. We find one of the best episodes is when they take Kanna school shopping and it feels like two moms shopping with their daughter. The greatest statement KyoAni makes is at the end of the season when Miss Kobayashi takes Tooru and Kanna to visit her parents and we are led to believe she introduces them as her family.

Akihito Kanbara is a high school student, a rare half human half youmu, and immortal. Yet aside from that he tends to live a relatively normal life. He spends his days in class and hanging out with friends enjoying life until he is stabbed through the chest by a classmate. He didn’t die, he’s immortal remember. His classmate Mirai Kuriyama is the last surviving member of a clan of Spirit World Warriors that can manifest their blood into weapons. Mirai’s people believe that Youmu are the manifestation of people’s negative emotions and need to be cleansed. The two gradually for a relationship though she keeps attempting to kill him in an attempt to become a stronger warrior. Akihito convinces Mirai to join the literature club which is already home to his friends, two-spirit warriors from a separate clan different than hers. The literature club does spend more time confronting the paranormal than reading, but the bonds they build battling boogiemen prepare them for an uncertain and dangerous future.

Kyoto Animation combines fantasy, action, slice-of-life and romance in Kyoukai no Kanata. You get to watch people that should be mortal enemies, Mirai and Akihito, find a friendship and love. The story’s pace is pretty well-regulated, too, by starting out slow and exponentially ramping up to the conclusion. You know from the first couple of episodes despite the slice-of-life feel that the story is building to something big. The character design of the heroine is different than the ordinary in the fact that Mirai is ordinary. She is a bit of a wallflower that doesn’t stand out at all. Mirai is a bespectacled heroine and she doesn’t even look like she’d be good in combat wearing a pink sweater, but she’s quite effective. We find it refreshing that the heroine isn’t the prettiest girl in school or some super-cute loli. Mirai and her truly ordinary character design along with her inventive blood-based power is the reason Beyond the Boundary belongs on this list.

We all, even the loneliest among us, have a couple of good friends from childhood. Nichijou is a slice-of-life story about a group of childhood friends lucky enough to stick together all the way through high school. The story follows high school girls Mio, Yuuko, Mai and a genius named Hakase. A collection of the normal and the absurd mark the daily occurrences in this group of friends.

The slice-of-life adventure comedy has classic appeal. The artwork isn’t nearly what you anticipate from KyoAni with its simplistic style. The whimsical appearance seems appropriate for the light-hearted genre. A series of themes appear throughout the school-based series that appeal to the adults in us, too. The first episode is titled “Motivation” and is all about Yuuko and Mio being unmotivated and how to motivate yourself when you’re struggling. We see many of the episodes are simply about finding the interesting and entertaining things in our boring everyday lives.

The first time most of us in the west heard the term “Chuunibyou” was in the title of this particular anime. We were shocked to find that what we simply call an overactive imagination is called a disease. Yet chuunibyou, or second year syndrome, is viewed as one of the most embarrassing afflictions you can have. A teenager, especially one that has moved on to high school, that still believes that he or she has special powers or believes they’re originally from a fantasy realm are looked at as simply crazy. Yuuta Togashi was able to leave his chuunibyou behind as he started his first day at a new high school -- or so he thought. In a moment of stress, he exorcises himself and refers to himself as “Dark Flame Master” and is overheard by a 1st-year girl by the name of Rikka Yakanashi. The eccentric Rikka, still living in her own chuunibyou world, attaches herself to Yuuta. A collection of delusional and not-so-delusional characters quickly enter Yuuta’s life and bring down the normal high school life in a fire of dark flames.

The appeal of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! is the characters. Rikka is adorable and her eccentricity only makes her more so. She lives in her own world and is harmless but has trouble fitting in with traditional society. The truly endearing part of the story is Yuuta. He is determined to leave his nonconforming ways behind him and wants to help Rikka adjust to the real world. We find out that Rikka’s chuunibyou is trauma-related and that only makes Yuuta want to help her more. The story progresses and Yuuta realizes that he doesn’t have to leave the world of make-believe completely behind; having an imagination isn’t a bad thing. He, Rikka, and their assortment of friends simply should focus that imagination into something productive. Fantasy and science fiction writers have overactive imaginations and have harnessed their chuunibyou to entertain us. We love this story because it reminds us that this story and most of the anime we watch wouldn’t exist if its creators didn’t have a little chuunibyou left in each of them.

The Whispered are individuals that possess amazing skill and ability to create powerful machinery and technology. Because of that ability, once they’re identified they are considered highly valuable and many government and non-governmental organizations will do anything to secure their talents. Sgt. Souske Sagara, a former child soldier working for Mithril, a paramilitary organization that combats terrorism, has been placed undercover to protect Kaname Chidori, a high school student that may be a Whispered. The adjustments he’ll have to make from the battlefield to high school are nearly as challenging as protecting the high-strung, independent-minded Chidori from being abducted by sinister forces. The Full Metal Panic? Fummoffu season becomes even more challenging as his superior officer Teletha Testarossa decides to take some time off and go undercover herself as Chidori’s classmate.

Kyoto Animation took over the Full Metal Panic Universe and breathed some new life into the show. The Fummoffu season was action-packed. Chidori, Souske, and Teletha find all sorts of trouble inside and outside of school. KyoAni seems to do a good job clinging to the chaotic school life setting while filling the story with adventure. The animation of the action scenes is great and when mechanical devices are involved, good attention to detail grounds even the large robots in plausible reality. The ability for Kyoto Animation to take over a franchise and successfully carry it on is one of the reasons this Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu is one of their best.

Haruhi Suzumiya is on the hunt for time travelers, aliens, and espers (people with ESP). She creates a club at school and declares herself its president with the sole purpose of uncovering those interesting people. She enlists Kyon, a boy at her school, to join the club and gains other members like Nagato, an alien; Koizumi, an esper; and Asahina, a time traveler. The most important thing is that she doesn’t have a freaking clue about their actual identities. The more fascinating part is that she herself is a god, she just doesn’t know that, either. The story follows a multitude of crazy adventures as their club, the S.O.S. Brigade, indulges the whims of their leader.

You never know what to expect with this series. Haruhi is easily bored and has no idea that she can remake the universe with an errant thought, leaving the people residing in the universe to be weary of constant unexplained change. The creativeness of the story is one of the key elements that draws in viewers. An expressiveness in characters’ faces, even Nagato who is nearly expressionless, is a credit to the artists. You are guaranteed to have a fun trip and feel like dancing along with the opening and ending music when you watch this modern classic.

Violet Evergarden is a soldier. She had been trained since childhood to be a tool of battle. Her life revolved simply around receiving orders and carrying them out during a four-year war. She was placed under the command of a young officer near the end of the war and for the first time in her life she wasn’t treated like a tool. She is nearly killed in a decisive battle near the end of the war and awakes in a hospital maimed, her arms gone and replaced with mechanical prosthetics. The war ended and with it her purpose. The only guidepost she had was the final order from her commander: to live, and some words she didn’t understand: “because I love you.” Violet is taken in and given a job by a former military officer and a friend of her CO who had started a postal company. In an effort to understand her dear commander’s last words, the confused girl becomes an Auto Memory Doll, a typist and transcriber, a popular service in a world with a high rate of illiteracy. Violet begins her journey of human understanding as she puts the feelings of others into words even as she tries to understand her own emotions.

We can’t say enough about Violet Evergarden and Kyoto Animation’s brilliant work at bringing a work so complex to the screen. The artwork is worthy of hanging in the finest galleries in the world. You find such attention to detail it seems that each individual strand of Violet’s blonde hair was animated individually. The director’s ability to make each episode about a character Violet meets rather than about Violet’s self-discovery without losing the heroines arc is masterful. You easily put yourself in Violet’s place meeting, caring, and in many cases grieving for the people she encounters. We also get some amazing character development as Violet is wracked with PTSD and survivor’s guilt. She asks several times if after all the families she destroyed by the killing she’s done as a soldier is it okay for her to be happy, to live a quiet, and good life. You don’t often find a show, drama or anime, that truly creates a cathartic response in the viewer but this one does and that is the reason for it landing near the top of this list.

Kumiko Oumae, a euphonist, is a member of her high school brass band. She had once considered leaving music behind in middle school but was drawn into the club by the new friends she made in high school. Kumiko and the band set their eyes on winning the prefectural competition with the hope of being invited to nationals. The quiet and serious Kumiko is the window through which we watch the members of the band, like Hazuki Katou, tubist; Sapphire Kawashima, contrabassist; and Reina Kousaka, trumpeter deal with their lives, romance, and dreams. We witness their dedication to practice, practice, practice to achieve their goal.

Music is the star of this story. You can ignore the plot, you can try and forget Kumiko’s irresistible poufy curls, or any of the drama that goes on between the girls and guy in the band, and just listen to the music and you’ll be taken to a place of awe. Kyoto Animation makes the music a character. You hear the conversations between the instruments as the members play in different areas across the schools; the sounds blend together as the notes echo off the walls and create something special. If you want to narrow the reasons to watch Sound! Euphonium just watch episode 13 “Goodbye Competition” watch the performance 14min 20sec into the episode. The animation is filled with incredible detail. We see each breath, key strike, and slide of the trombone match the notes of the music. The brass of the instruments reflects the light and offers a clear yet realistically distorted view of the people around them. You get six full minutes of music in that scene, which stands as a testament to the talent of the artists and directors of Kyoto Animation.

Shouya was an active child, getting into all sorts of mischief with his friends. He felt like a king getting away with all sorts of trouble in his small neighborhood. His world is changed when girl named Shouko Nishimiya transfers to his elementary school class. Shouko is deaf. The school and the class resist changing anything that would help integrate Shouko into the school. The class as a whole makes her life difficult and Shouya becomes the ringleader of her bullying. The whole conflict comes to a head when Shouko and Shouya get into a punches-thrown, hair-pulling, rolling around on the classroom floor fight. Shouko transfers out of the school and Shouya takes all the blame. He is the one suspended and stigmatized as a bully and then takes the brunt of open hostility as he is ostracized by the other students. Shouya’s life turns into one of loneliness and depression. He grows up and comes to identify who he was and how he acted and understand the ill-mannered nature of his behavior; he begins a quest to redeem himself. Shouya, now in his third year of high school, works part-time to save money. He plans to give the money to his mother to repay her for all the trouble he caused in the past. He learns sign language in the hopes that he can finally speak to Shouko and ask for and receive forgiveness in her silent voice.

The source material is a seven-volume-long manga. We were surprised when it was announced that it was becoming an anime, it was only to be a feature film and not a series. The idea of taking such powerful source material and boiling it down to a single feature worried us. We were wrong to worry. Kyoto Animation treated the source material respectfully and carefully, not changing the truly meaningful message of the manga and not changing it into some shonen or shojo mass-market tale. The story covers topics like depression, death, bullying, redemption, and suicide and makes them accessible, especially to younger audiences, without feeling stripped of its seriousness or emotional weight. You need an exceptional team of directors and writers as well as a studio that will back them up to make such important film. And in this case Kyoto Animation created a film worthy of the highest praise we can offer; thank you Kyoto Animation for making this film.