Best Anime Of The Fall 2023 Season: From Frieren To Scott Pilgrim
(Welcome to I Didn't Know What Seasonal Anime to Watch, So I Asked /Film for Help and They Gave Me a List, a regular column dedicated to helping choose what anime shows to watch each season.)
At last, we've come to the final anime season of 2023. This has been a tremendous year for animation — one that saw streaming produce some stone-cold masterpieces, some exquisite international collaborations, one of the greatest anime seasons of all time, the end to a cultural phenomenon, and also plenty of fresh discoveries and original stories. After the fall 2022 season saw an astonishing number of certified bangers (including many of that year's best shows), 2023 wasn't too far behind. It was hard to pick just five shows from this season, as there was something for every type of fan. In the end, however, there were five shows that simply stood above the rest.
So, before we welcome the next season and the start of 2024, let's take a look back at the very best the fall 2023 anime season had to offer.
Pluto
Naoki Urasawa is one of the greatest living manga authors, and the adaptation of his manga "Monster" remains a brilliantly plotted story and anime's answer to prestige TV drama. Now, Urasawa is getting a new adaptation, this time of his legendary manga "Pluto." Based on a story arc from Osamu Tezuka's legendary manga and anime "Astro Boy," the adaptation of "Pluto" is a masterclass in reimagining a popular franchise. Part "Blade Runner," and part "Silence of the Lambs," with a little "I, Robot" sprinkled on top, Toshio Kawaguchi and Studio M2's adaptation of "Pluto" is simply stunning.
This is a dark and gritty sci-fi crime drama that starts as a simple murder investigation and evolves into a fight to save humanity — and whether we even deserve saving. Along the way, "Pluto" explores some deep and complex subjects such as artificial intelligence, racism, hatred as intrinsically human, and the Iraq War. Indeed, by the time we finally meet the boy known as Atom, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that this is supposed to be an "Astro Boy" story. Each episode packs a gut punch of an emotional story, with a crescendo that builds up to an epic confrontation. This helps make this super-sized eight-episode miniseries feel like a proper event watch.
Beyond the poignant themes, this is also just a very good-looking show, keeping with Urasawa's aesthetics and penchant for realistic-looking characters (there are so many nose shapes and sizes!).
The Apothecary Diaries
"The Apothecary Diaries" boasts one of the best protagonists of the year, a scene-stealer in the vein of Bocchi from "Bocchi the Rock," and that's just the tip of this botanical iceberg. This is a show that's part "House, M.D.," part "Upstairs, Downstairs," and part "Sherlock Holmes." Set in a fictionalized version of Ming-dynasty China, "The Apothecary Diaries" follows Maomao, a dry-humored girl with a proficiency in medicines and poisons who inadvertently gets kidnapped and sold as a servant to one of the emperor's concubines. Inside the palace, Maomao becomes a prodigious apothecary and amateur detective. She reluctantly saves lives and solves cases when all she really wants is to be left alone and in peace, not become a superstar.
Toho Animation Studio and OLM deliver a visually stunning adaptation that is full of palace intrigue, with every character keeping secrets (including the murderous kind). There's also a big upstairs-downstairs aspect to the show that never lets you forget that, despite how lavish the palace and the characters may seem, they are all part of an oppressive system that treats women as property to be traded or executed at will. That makes Maomao a fascinating and endlessly entertaining character, as her dry humor is her way of coping with the knowledge that she is disposable.
Still, this is a detective show and a great one at that. The medieval setting makes for some intriguing yet tragic mysteries that mostly boil down to accidental deaths caused by a general lack of knowledge about bodily health. Add in an excellent score that includes work from "Made in Abyss" star composer Kevin Penkin and you've got one of the best shows of the entire year.
Dr. Stone Season 3 Part 2
I've written before about how "Dr. Stone" delivers a consistently great anime story and how it deserves a lot more attention. The second part of season 3, titled "Dr. Stone: New World," is no exception. After the first half of the season introduced a scary new villain, a big answer to the lore, and a new location, the second half of the season was almost entirely dedicated to the fight for the petrification device that sent the entire world back to the stone age.
This is arguably the best arc of the story to date, with a strong focus that lets the characters shine while greatly expanding the world of the show as we finally get some answers to its central mystery.
Even with the fast and to-the-point pacing, "Dr. Stone" doesn't forget about the love of science at the heart of its story. We get new incredible reinventions that verge on ludicrous, but it works because of its sheer earnestness. In a way, this is anime's answer to "For All Mankind," a show that never stops arguing for science being a force of good. It is in those moments of awe at Senku's latest ambitious plan to bring back technology that "Dr. Stone" shines brightest.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
Are you tired of seeing poorly made remakes, reboots, and sequels that do not understand their source material and that fail to do anything new or exciting? What if I told you there was one great show that took a beloved story (already adapted perfectly) and gave it a completely new makeover that expands on the larger cast of characters by rebuilding the source material? That show is "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" and it is one of the best anime of the year. What starts as a remake of the Bryan Lee O'Malley comic quickly evolves into something completely new, a story that lets Ramona take center stage and even lets her evil exes get some character arcs as the show explores self-acceptance and discovery.
"Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" doesn't rewrite its source material; rather, it interrogates and is in constant conversation with it. It relies a bit on audience familiarity with "Scott Pilgrim" (both the comic books and the live-action film "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World") and simply asks: after all these years, is Scott Pilgrim and its version of Toronto the same? More importantly, should it be? Science Saru delivers a visually stunning piece of animation, with vibrant colors, dynamic action, and a unique visual style that mixes Japanese and Western aesthetics. This is a phenomenal adaptation that shows you can do better than just remaking a popular story in another medium.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
A group of heroic adventurers return home after defeating the great evil and look forward to long and peaceful lives. But for the immortal and aloof elven mage Frieren, those lives can pass by rather quickly. 10 years together amounts to barely more than a thought in the life of an elf, so when Frieren realizes that she barely got to know her companions, she sets out to reforge memories and connections with them. "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" is a character-focused fantasy epic with an unparalleled sense of time and scale that prioritizes poignant character studies and heart-wrenching little moments over spectacle — though it features plenty of that too. "Bocchi the Rock" director Keiichiro Saito helms this adaptation of Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe's fantasy manga for legendary studio Madhouse, and the result is one of the best anime of the year (as well as an all-time great fantasy anime).
"Frieren" may feature plenty of demon hordes, but time is the anime's greatest villain. Time is used to create a sense of scale and worldbuilding, with montages and smash cuts used to show the passage of time as Frieren perceives it. In the blink of an eye, a small child becomes a teenager, a village becomes a town, and there is no getting that time back, building up a beautiful and profound meditation on grief and lost time. Each scene and each new setting is filled with memories, and the show does a great job of subtly paying off set-ups from Frieren's past as we realize how much she actually cared about her friends. What seems like a random spell she is excited to learn in one episode is revealed to be a gift for one of her friends several episodes later.