In recent years, Japanese culture has become more prominent in America, with anime and manga becoming widely popular. This brings a lot of new shows and comics, spreading across a wide range of genres. I have compiled a ranking of my top three favorites.

The number three show is a Netflix series called Komi Can’t Communicate. In the show, a high-school boy befriends a girl in his class who has trouble talking to people, and helps her with her goal of making friends and becoming more confident. There aren’t too many big things that happen in the show, but that’s sort of the charm of it. You can just watch this group of friends do normal things together, while the two main characters realize that they’re falling for each other. It’s a nice slice-of-life story that’s perfect for boosting happiness.

My second-favorite anime is titled Rascal Does Not Dream Of Bunny Girl Senpai. The show seems like a cliched fan service anime at the beginning, which throws off a lot of people, but hidden under this exterior is a very complex and intriguing romance. The story deals with a group of high-schoolers who have to stop each other from experiencing the effects of a fictional effect dubbed “adolescence syndrome.” This syndrome causes inexplicable events to occur to the victim, but can usually be visualized and understood by using scientific phenomena such as Schrodinger’s Cat and Laplace’s Demon as allegories. This was the first anime I watched, too, so I’m grateful I started out with such a great show. This plot makes for a very interesting show, and it would have been in the top spot of this list. If not for a new anime that came out about a year ago.

In the winter of 2021, a new anime was released, titled My Dress-Up Darling. Admittedly, I thought it would be one of those shows that you watch one time, and then just randomly recall, but I was grinning from ear to ear for most of the show. An extremely simple version of the story is that this introverted guy goes to high school, and runs into an extremely extroverted girl. They quickly realize that they share similar hobbies, and end up making cosplays together. The show has a very realistic take on how these characters would react to each other and their worlds, which leads to a very wholesome message about accepting who you are and what you’re interested in. It also has a lot of information about cosplay, which gives a lot of extra flavor to the duo’s encounters with each other. Seeing them interact with each other will make anybody who watches it giddy. This is my favorite show, and I really recommend it.