The town of Yomiyama has been living under a cloud for more than 26 years. There’s an oppressive atmosphere and the town is full of secrets after the death of a middle school girl in 1972. A 15-year-old boy named Kouichi Sakakibara transfers into the class the dead girl was in 26 years later and can’t shake an eerie feeling about the whole school. He also keeps finding himself crossing paths with Mei Misaki, a mysterious girl wearing an eye patch. Driven by his curiosity, Kouichi gets closer and closer to the girl despite Mei’s warning to keep his distance. He also begins to slowly reveal the truth behind the macabre goings-on in the small town.

The art is stellar. The use of light and tone from the schoolyard to the creepy doll shop really sets the mood. Tsutomu Mizushima, the director, keeps you guessing and trying to anticipate the next method, moment and victim of death. We’ve watched a lot of anime over the years and this one is like watching a Hitchcock classic. Another is a twisted tale that makes you watch, despite your instinct to look away, and that is one of the main reasons it’s on the list.

Tracen Academy is the school you want to attend if you want to win in a derby. The school doesn’t teach you how to ride, though, it teaches you how to run. The world we witness is a world similar to our own with one exception: horse girls. They’re girls born with two legs, two pointy, furry ears and a tail that love to run, run, run. The girls train and race around tracks of turf and dirt covering miles of distance all for the chance of winning prize money, trophies, and the chance to sing and dance [record scratch]. Yes, we said sing and dance. The top three winners in each race give an idol-like performance. Why? Because this is anime and just being a horse girl isn’t enough, you’ve got to sing and dance, too. The story focuses on Special Week, a horse girl from the countryside trying to become the best horse girl in Japan. We watch the girls train and compete in a fun slice of life/sports anime.

Pretty Derby just started airing in April but has already gained quite a following. The colorful character design is one of the most attractive parts of this program. You also get clever characters who are cute as can be, even when they spend half the show in tracksuits. We also see some attention to detail in the design since all of the girls are based on real racehorses and many take the coloring of their hair from their namesake. In Silent Suzuka’s case it’s in the green ear covers she wears. A classic slice of life ensemble surrounds Special Week with characters ranging from hyper, to calm, to tsundere. A message of sportsmanship also pervades in the series. The girls work night and day to be the fastest and the best yet if they lose they don’t sulk, they congratulate the other girl and are ready to work harder to beat them next time. We think that sportsmanship is just what we need in our hyper-competitive society. The fine fillies of Pretty Derby are definitely worth checking out.

We all have issues with our families and Yasaburou Shimgamo is no different. He is also a tanuki and so is his family. The beautiful and imperial city of Kyoto has been home to tanuki and tengu for centuries and the humans of Kyoto have no idea. Yasaburou is one of three sons of an influential tanuki family. He spends his days using the tanuki shape-shifting ability to look human and move among humans much like his mother who spends her days hustling pool. The family is also mourning the death of the family patriarch, Yasaburou’s father, who was eaten by a group of humans. The story is part drama, part slice of life, and part mystery as they live their lives and come ever closer to understanding the real reason behind their fathers' demise.

The artistic style of the series reminds you a bit of Kyoto Animation with its soft color tones and soft edges in the character design. If you’re reading this, P.A. Works, that's meant as a compliment. We find the story realistic to the point we can easily think the tanuki walk among us. The attention to detail is also noteworthy. You can tell without a doubt that from the osen to the ice cream shop that many locations are artistic renderings of real places. We love the creativity of storytelling in this tale of tanuki and recommend it to all ages.

Ancient artifact? Check. Alien invasion? Check. Reserved high school girl? Check. We are go for a mecha battle anime. The excavation of the Kurobe Dam in western Japan revealed a massive ancient artifact that seemed to defy human understanding. The United Nations sets up a lab for the top scientist in the world to research the monolithic structure. A school is established for the children of the scientists and among the students we find Yukine Shirahane, the daughter of the facility’s head. Yukine manages to set a young samurai free from the object; he’s from the Sengoku era and named Kennosuke Tokisada Ouma. We find at the same time an alien race determined to expand its empire has had its eyes set on Earth. It isn’t the first time they tried to invade, either. We watch Kennosuke, Yukina and a cast of school kids, scientists and soldiers attempt to live their lives and defend the planet against overwhelming odds.

Kuromukuro is a great story told in two arcs. The first arc, 12 episodes, establishes the characters, their relationships, and our reasons for caring about them. The second arc is the battle. The end of the series leaves the potential for a third arc, one that couldn’t come soon enough for some of us. A big reason to like this story is the details in the grounded nature of the human-made mecha. You don't see the human-made mecha fly or defy the laws of physics. The characters talk about mass and energy consumption and you feel like these machines could exist. We will admit the alien-made mecha is a bit fantastical but it’s from an interstellar species so we can let that slide. The story is a fun slice of life and adventure. If you like mecha anime this should absolutely be on your list.

Otonashi awakes to find himself outside a school he doesn’t recognize and in a gun battle. A bossy, armed school girl quickly informs him he’s already dead and that he is currently in the afterlife. Yuri, the aforementioned school girl, inducts him into the SSS or the Afterlife Battlefront. The SSS is a school organization determined to fight their way out of the afterlife. The enemy is none other than a girl they refer to as Angel because she can make wings appear on her back. Despite believing that Angel is evil, Otonashi is inexplicably drawn to her. He finds that not all the assumptions they have been making about the afterlife are correct and a greater mystery is yet to be uncovered.

Angel Beats! has two really important things going for it: music and characters. We find the music for the open is remarkable, the notes cascading off the piano make you feel as though you are floating to some ethereal place. The music by the band Girls Dead Monster is awesome. The song “Last Song” is sung with such deep passion and angst it feels as though you’re listening to someone’s soul being torn from their body. The singing voice for the lead singer Masami Iwasawa is vocalist Marina. The second song is “My Soul, Your Beats” sung by no other than anime songstress LiSA. The other outstanding part of Angel Beats! is the characters, or more so the backstories of the characters. We take moments to look into the lives of the members of the SSS and what led to their deaths to send them to the afterlife. The stories are gut-wrenching. A what-if story about two members meeting before they died is even more so. You should check it out Angel Beats! for the music, emotion, and some fun moments too.

Chika has never been considered a girly girl. She was an all-star volleyball player and spent more time in sweats than skirts. Chika comes to the conclusion at the beginning of her high school life to become a “cute girl.” She decides that she should leave the athletic life behind and join the Wind Instrument Club and play the flute. She develops a crush on her teacher and quickly discovers she has a romantic rival in her class. Haruta, Chika’s best male friend is also crushing pretty hard on his teacher. Haruta Kamijou is also everything that Chika aspires to be, feminine and filled with grace. The best friends attempt to live their perfect high school lives and get the attention of their instructor. Unfortunately, mysteries just keep getting in the way as Haruta and Chika prove to be the Holmes and Watson of their school, constantly drawn into solving some of the biggest puzzles plaguing the pupils.

HaruChika is a great slice of life. You have the mystery angle and the club setting but basically, it is a slice of life. We watch these two characters with good chemistry tease and support each other. A big reason that this story is on the list is Haruta; he is gay, he is out, he is unembarrassed, and no one cares. The fact that he has a crush on a male teacher isn’t any more significant than Chika’s crush. We applaud P.A. Works for simply creating a character that isn’t a stereotype or odd. He is just Haruta and he happens to like boys. The choice to go with a progressive character is enough reason to place HaruChika on the list.

Yuu Otosaka is a charming and smart high school student, except that he isn’t. He is actually a con-man and a cheat. Yuu has a secret power that allows him to hop in someone’s body and control it for five seconds. He uses his power to get into a prestigious high school where he meets Nao Tomori, a mystery of a girl that seems to have a lot of power in the school as the student council president. Nao catches Yuu in the act and basically blackmails him into joining the student council. He finds that the student council has a secret mission to seek out, find, and bring in adolescents who have powers and protect them from a mysterious organization.

P.A. Works does a great job with this show. Of course, we get stellar character design, voice acting, and artwork, but we also get a great story. You start out watching a program that feels like a lot of supernatural high school shows. You feel like they may be going down the route of Yamada-kun and the 7 Witches or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya then they throw you a curve ball at the beginning of the second arc and it becomes something epic. The school story becomes something far greater than finding kids with powers, it becomes a tale of sacrifice to ensure a generation of children isn't enslaved by powers with malicious intent. The transformation Yuu makes from self-centered jerk to savior is truly great and a key reason to watch.

The human race didn’t always live on land. We, at least in this world, once lived beneath the sea. We lived and worked under the sea blessed with the power to breathe underwater. The story says that at some point some humans decided to leave mother ocean and because of that were stripped of their underwater abilities. A divide gradually developed between the two peoples despite their living side by side in many shore-side towns. A Lull in the Sea follows the story of Hikari Sakishima and Manaka Mukaido, along with their childhood friends Chisaki Hiradaira and Kaname Isaki, who are forced to leave the sea and attend a school on the surface when their school closes due to declining population. The children of the sea have to adapt to their new school and new ways of doing things in an attempt to live their lives as chaotic events beyond their control begin to gather around them.

A Lull in the Sea is simply beautiful. You can watch the whole story without the sound or translation and simply be awed by the masterpieces that serve as the background. You will notice the world beneath the waves appears to be inspired by the villages in the Greek islands. The story itself, despite the fantastical setting, is about children from the wrong side of the tracks showing up at a school where they face prejudice and mistrust not because of how they look but because of where they were from. You even get a nice star-crossed romance too. We wholly recommend this masterpiece of animation in art and storytelling.

Yoshino Koharu is a recent college graduate and she has been out on 30 job interviews and struck out 30 times. She grew up in a small town and wants nothing more than to leave that small-town life behind and live the exciting life in Tokyo. Her dream seems to be fading with each rejection. She finally gets a job with the tourism board in the town of Manoyama. She is to serve as their queen for a period of one year as the leader of the towns “mini-kingdom”—the kingdom of Chupacabra. The kingdom, by any other definition, would be called a tourist trap. Sakura Quest is about a town that is trying to find itself in the new economy, an economy where artisan woodworking and farming just aren’t the prosperous careers they once were. The spunky queen assembles a court of other young ladies–more than one of whom have had their big-city careers stall–and have looked to start over in the small town. The girls work hard and gain experience about the job, the town, life and themselves as they try to pull a town back from the brink of disappearing.

Sakura Quest is a fun slice of life about new beginnings. We watch five girls, Yoshino, Shiori, Maki, Sanae, and Ririko, trying figure out who they are when the lives they had planned didn't work out. The art and character design are top-notch as you would expect from P.A. Works but where this anime excels is in the storytelling. The scriptwriters and the director make believable characters that seem like people you'd meet every day, especially if you work in a small town. P.A. Works was able to take something as mundane as a small town struggling to attract tourists and turn it into a gripping drama without shoehorned melodramatic moments. The compelling characters will have you looking forward to each episode and, without any spoilers, the ending is the most perfect ending for a show like this you could imagine.

“We wanted to make an anime about the industry as it exists in the present,” were the words P.A. Works CEO Kenji Horikawa used when asked about this love letter to the anime industry. Shirobako, or the White Box, referring to the blank sheet of drawing paper animators use, focuses on several young women at the beginning of their careers in the industry. Aoi Miyamori is the lead in this story because as a production desk assistant she is involved in nearly every aspect of making anime. You follow her ups and downs as she stresses to the breaking point trying to wrangle artists, distributors, suppliers, actors, and directors to meet deadlines and get their anime on the air.

Do you want to know what the industry is like? Horikawa said this is it. The characters may be a bit eccentric and some of the situations push the envelope for comedic reasons, such as locking a director in a closet until he finishes his storyboards. Shirobako, in general, has a cast of real people. You simply need to search the net for “Shirobako in real life" and you'll see several of the characters are almost direct portraits of their real-life counterparts. The most obvious is of the fictitious company's president, Masato Marukawa, and Masao Maruyama, the founder of Madhouse productions. The story could easily have been a drama with living, breathing actors. The settings are realistic and the situations relatable, making them both connect with the audience on multiple levels. We, as lovers of anime, can’t recommend this anime enough. This anime about the process and passion of making anime makes it the obvious number one choice for this list of Top 10 Anime by P.A. Works.