Every year, tons of new Anime series starts airing. Often they disappoint, and sometimes we’re surprised where we least expect it. I thought about making a top 10 list of what I’m looking forward to, that is coming out this spring and summer in Japan. These are the shows/movies/ovas that grabbed my attention browsing through the airing lists. Of course, there’s no way to know if they’ll be good or not and odds are that my favorites series by the end of the year won’t be any of the ones listed here.

But enough chit-chat, read on for my top 10 upcoming Anime Series I’m looking forward to list.

#10 Dragon Ball Kai

- What’s this Vegeta? What does the scouter say about Dragon Ball Kai?
- It’s over 1079P!!!!

Ok enough running this joke through the ground. Dragon Ball Z is being re-aired starting this month in glorious HD. Does this mean completely new animation or just the old ones remastered? I was hoping for the former. The DBZ anime wasn’t too great. It was well-known for dragging out fights because it was following closely the manga which was still being serialized at the time. But the manga version was nothing short of epic back in the days. And Toei confirmed that Kai would be edited to follow more closely the manga. It’s still remastering old animations though. Nostalgia puts this at #10.

#9 Evangelion 2.0 (Fracture?)

I’m not too sure about that one. I saw this mentioned on only one site, which referred to the official Japanese website. There you can see the date June 27th 2009 mentioned and an image labeled Evangelion 2.0. What is this? A movie, a new series? It could simply be a new novel or something, so I won’t get too hyped up on this one, but curiosity and hype kept as low as possible puts this on #9. Note: After a bit more research, this is the sequel to the first part of the remake that was made in 2007. I’m still going to take a look at it when it comes out.

#8 Hatsukoi Limited

The latest work from Ichigo 100%’s author is getting animated. I read all of Ichigo 100%, but have yet to touch Hatsukoi Limited. The TV series sucked, the OVAs were of good quality though. Curiosity more then anything here again, #8.  Let’s just hope it isn’t half as repetitive as Ichigo 100% was.  But outside the fact that the setup is in middle or high school, it’s bound to be mostly different, being that the protagonist is a female character.

#7 K-ON!

A story about 4 girls who wants to save the light music club, but don’t know how to play any instruments too well and can’t read music sheets. The art style of the manga’s cover is actually what grabbed my attention at first.  It’s based on a 4-koma. Did I mention Kyoto Animation is behind this?

#6 Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu reruns

The whole world rejoiced a few weeks ago with the seeming confirmation of a second season of Suzumiya Haruhi’s adventures from an ad for a magazine on TV. Then people gets their hand on said magazine and realize that it’s a re-run of the first season. Good Trolling, Kadokawa, good trolling. While for now, we’re treated with Haruhi-chan webisodes (and the too cute Nyoron Churuya-san), which you should all watch, –well that is only if you’re a Suzumiya fan, otherwise, stay away– but in a month or so, they’ll start airing the reruns. Now three theories spawned from this. The first one is that it’ll actually be the second season of Haruhi that would start in April. Odds of this? No chances in hell,  in my opinion. Second one wants us to believe that the second season would start after the first one. While possible, I doubt this one would come true either. Kyoto Animation is currently working on Munto, wrapping up Clannad After Story and about to start on K-On!. Last possibility would be a new Haruhi season on December 18, a very important date for Haruhi. But none of this will happen and we’ll see KyoAni announce that the team working on Clannad will start working on Little Busters, another Key visual novel.

#5 Lupin III vs. Detective Conan

I know these two from name only, but an anime putting the greatest detective against the world’s most wanted thief got me wondering how this will turn out. I’ll make sure to tune in on that.

#4 Senjou no Valkyria -Gallian Chronicles
(Valkyria Chronicles)

We reviewed the game a few weeks ago. Now the long time announced anime version is about to air in Japan. How will this turn out? Will it stay in the shadow of the game, or come out on top, and actually get those that passed on the game at first glance to take a second look?

#3 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

Hagane no renkinjutsushi came out as one of the best anime series of 2004. It ended prematurely since it had caught up to the manga too quickly, and went around with an alternate development that led to the Conqueror of Shamballa movie. Five years later, BONES takes the series for a second ride, with a full reboot, keeping at the very least Ed and Al’s seiyuu. I’m really looking forward to this, though it’ll be somewhat of a pain waiting on the new content.

#2 Hayate no Gotoku 2

Nagi’s butler Hayate is back, after more or less of a year’s break. Watch this if you want a good laugh, that’s all I have to say, except that butlers are badass.

#1 Spice and Wolf II

Coming at number 1 is my favorite wolf-girl. Horo! Spice and Wolf is about a merchant and a wolf goddess who came to travel together after quite an interesting encounter. A bittersweet story with a somewhat slow pace, but not too much which had me waiting for more for almost a year now. Horo is my goddess, what about you?

So that’s my top 10 list of upcoming anime for now.   In retrospective, it made for quite a weird list, but my favorite shows are often those I didn’t know anything about before watching them.

David A. Anime, Preview, Top 10