A-to-J Connections' Favorite Visual Media of 2024!

1/7/2025

This is only the second year that the A-to-J team shared our favorite visual media of the year, but that didn't stop us from coming up with some awesome selections! Though the focus will largely be on anime (Which was the original idea for this grouping by the way!), we also decided to expand the scope of our picks to movies, TV, or just about any other visual media we could think of. Second go at it or not, this article is still something of a work in progress, so pardon the dust. As usual, our picks are all over the place, so you just might find something new to watch here. If not... well, we tried our best! Anyhow, check out our picks for Favorite Visual Media of 2024, and maybe tell us about some of your favorites from the past year too!

Ivan: Photographer / Correspondent

My 2024 anime of the year is Dandadan (ダンダダン) by Yukinobu Tatsu. The anime began airing in October 2024, and follows the story of two teens who battle yōkai and aliens with the assistance of the best granny ever Seiko Ayas. The show has a very artistic and cool style which reminded me of something studio Trigger would do. Science Saru did a great job with the adaptation.

The main characters Ken Takakura is a shy Otaku nerd and Momo Ayase a popular cute girl are two polar opposite characters that team up to fight the supernatural. They begin to develop a romantic tension as the series progresses. The show varies from comedy, to ecchi, to very sad (and tear jerking), drama.

The opening by Creepy Nuts can be found HERE!

J.D.: Moderator / Contributor

I feel like I took on a lot of new responsibilities at A-to-J in 2024 like editing episodes of our D&D live stream Drink Talk Roll for YouTube, joining Manuel and Bea for our new manga of the month podcast Reading the Wrong Way which I also edit, and joining Hao for our Golden Sunday stream…which I also edit. Maybe this is why I don’t have as much time for anime this year as I did in previous years.

Despite all that, I still did get to watch some great new anime. Spice & Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf was an excellent remake of what was already one of my favorite anime. Delicious in Dungeon was a great, comedic fantasy adventure mixed with a cooking show but one anime stood above the rest for me.

Shangri-La Frontier. Technically, the series started in 2023 but the second half of season 1 aired earlier this year and season 2 is currently airing so I’m counting it.

I will admit I’ve been able to really get into MMOs. I’ve tried multiple and still need to try the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, with an expanded free trial that includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward and Stormblood expansions up to level 70 with no restrictions on playtime. Despite this, I tend to like anime that are based around MMOs. My favorite anime of last year, My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv. 999 had the characters all playing an MMO together. Recovery of an MMO Junkie is another great series about people’s interactions over MMOs. Overlord has an MMO player transported to a fantasy world and using the things he and his guildmates created. So, add this to the list of great MMO anime.

Here’s the basic premise: In an age of full-dive VR games, Rakurou Hizutome known by his online handle “Sunraku” is a connoisseur of terrible games. One day, he decides to play a good game for once and picks the titular game. Using his skills learned in trash games, he moves quickly through the starting areas missing some of the things he was supposed to do and encountering Lycagon, one of the unique and super powerful Colossi that inhabit the game’s world. While he’s not able to defeat Lycagon, he is able to put up a good enough fight to get marked by the Colossus’s curse. He also unlocks a hidden quest and becomes famous among the player population which sets him on the path to unlock the rest of the game’s secrets.

I think one of the things I really appreciate about the series is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It understands that at the end of the day, this is still just a bunch of people playing video games. It’s not like the world is on the line. If they die, they just respawn and try again. There are still awesome action scenes and tense moments but they come more from the characters’ own connections to the games they play along with their competitive spirits than any kind of life-or-death stakes. I also like the character interactions between Sunraku and his companions. They’re just a great group of loveable goofballs with their own eccentricities.

So yeah, that’s my take on my favorite anime of 2024. I can’t wait to see what new MMO anime comes out next year to make this a threepeat.

Manuel: General Manager / Editor-In-Chief

Hentai Matsuri was one of the strangest cons I've ever been to. I've been to 18+ only cons, but Matsuri was quite the unique one. I won't go into the actual events that went on that made it unique, I'll just tell you about something that happened in our hotel room... WE WATCHED ANIME! Did you think I was going to say something else?

We're no strangers to putting on random stuff in the background that we end up watching, but Hentai Matsuri was a bit different. I won't name names for a few reasons, but we had a roommate at that con who we've never roomed with before. They brought a totally different vibe to the weekend, and suggested we watch Delicious In Dungeon during one of the slow mornings when we were waiting for the con to kick into gear. He mentioned that he was planning on cosplaying it soon (Which he did at Anime Expo.), and that we should watch it because it was good. Long story short, it was.

We watched the entire first half of the show in one big chunk, and I finished the rest of it later on the next week at home. It was fun, it was fantasy, and it wasn't an isekai. It was also centered around food. Not just eating meals mind you, but cooking elaborate dishes that were centered on whatever monster they were fighting in that week's episode. It's sort of hard to explain if you haven't seen it, but it's such a unique premise that I found myself wondering if the recipes could be adjusted into something one could make in real life. There were still plenty of tropes scattered throughout, but they were presented in a way that I could appreciate. This could've just been a show about a party rescuing a friend left behind in a dungeon, but it grew into so much more than that. The characters are just perfect. It wasn't long before I wanted to rescue Falin along with everyone else, and I came to love the each and every character in the show. Marcille probably stands out the most as my personal favorite, and I'm not afraid to admit that I assumed that a friend cosplaying her at FanimeCon (which was two weeks or so before Hentai Matsuri), was cosplaying someone from Frieren. Senshi is another standout character that's hard not to like, and he's the one that the friend who suggested we watch the anime in the first place ended up cosplaying. Even the monsters and villains are presented in a way that is full of charm. It was a random con morning, and I suddenly had a new anime to add to my favorites list.

It probably was for the best that we only managed to watch the first half of the show at the con, since we ended on a pretty big cliffhanger of sorts. I won't spoil anything for those that haven't seen it, but things suddenly get more intense than just meals halfway in. Even though Delicious In Dungeon was the only new anime I watched this year, it easily would've taken my favorite spot even if I had seen dozens, it was just that good. I can't wait for the second season to come out, and it's one that I'll definitely watch as its released. If you haven't seen Delicious In Dungeon yet, then go watch it. You can thank me later.

Pleiades: Streaming Host / Contributor

I saw oomfies post manga panels months ago and already knew I’d love Dandadan.

A witchy gyaru and loser UFO dork fight for their lives against waves of probe-happy aliens to reclaim the dork’s dick+balls after a ghost steals them.

None of that should make ANY sense if you haven’t watched the first episode and to be fair I get if that’s where you check out, but hear me out. Some see its success as a miracle given how insane the plot is, but I’d argue the other way. I don’t love this show because I think it’s avant-garde or breaking boundaries—I love it because it reminds me of what made me fall in love with anime to begin with.

Stumbling into an episode of Sailor Moon fighting a monster that’s hypnotizing the HOA into an MLM scheme, of some dude named Goku getting rocked by King Kong till a fat samurai cuts the giga gorilla’s tail off turning him into a short guy with a sick widow’s peak, of some multi-colored samurai team doing god knows what I barely remember if not for my mom swearing years later that she used to get sucked into watching because it was on the TV in the mornings when I’d be getting ready for elementary school.

I fell in love with anime BECAUSE it was weird. I don’t know how the aliens and ghosts are connected, why bro’s dick+balls have McGuffin powers, or what the "endgame" will look like—partially because I want to be surprised but also because the character writing is so strong it doesn’t even matter.

Dandadan’s cast isn't out to change the world. They’re just some dumb kids who get exposed to a hell dimension, but instead of playing saviors they’re just trying to do what they can for the lives they meet—even if that just means being there to listen. Even outright enemy threats don’t get pigeonholed as ‘evil’. You can be horrified by a vicious phantom one episode then left sobbing the next after you’re shown its backstory. The closest thing I’ve felt to this was waaaaay back in the day with Naruto’s Haku and Zabuza arc.

TL;DR It’s an anime about:
- Aliens and ghosts.
- Popular girl + nerd boy romance.
- Fighting for your life against enemies you can’t even hate.
- Getting your nut back.

If all of that sounds like a mess but somehow just makes you want to watch it more: congrats, we can be friends now.

Teepu: Project Leader / Staff Writer

I’m sure there were plenty of good anime that released in 2024, but I’m going to go a little wild and pick something else instead. As a person of Indo-Paki Islamic decent, I always get excited the rare time true entertainment and art comes out of India or Pakistan. Usman Riaz, the Director of The Glassworker, hails from Pakistan and formed a full animation studio there in order to release not only his first film, but Pakistan’s first feature-length animated film. I am lucky my cousin introduced it to us while we were on vacation with the family. Why is this relevant to anime outside of it being an Asian product?

Usman Riaz trained under Studio Ghibli to gain his skillset to be used in The Glassworker. When you see pictures and clips from the film you’ll see the clear resemblance and inspiration taken from Studio Ghibli’s style and works. It takes place in a fictional country but talks about topics close to current Pakistan as well as inserting important cultural points to make it feel clearly Pakistani while still remaining relatively neutral. It’s not a perfect film, by far. The character work is a little shoddy at times, and the ending was a bit odd compared to the rest of the film, but overall it is a fantastic first foray and I hope it inspires more to come out of Pakistan. I watched it in its original language, Urdu, which was voiced pretty well. I’m told the English dub isn’t as good, but I wouldn’t know and have no interest to see it in English.

Anyway, if you are looking for something a little different that is 100% anime-inspired (arguably it is anime, since it was made by a Studio Ghibli trainee), The Glassworker is worth a watch. Fair warning, it’s mostly anti-war and slice of life, so it can be a bit slow, but if you are ok with that you will surely enjoy it as much as I did, whether you connect with the culture as much as I do or not.

We hope you enjoyed our picks from 2024, and we hope that we have an even more robust selection next year! Happy watching, and let's all have an amazing 2025 and beyond!

-Manuel & the rest of the A-to-J Team!

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