Another year down, another GLORIO year to look back on… I spent a lot of 2025 subconsciously retreating from The Internet, probably because everything is, you might say, “bad”. So I feel more out of touch with what the kids are saying about anime these days than I have in a very long time. Nevertheless, I still watched about the same out of anime as I always do, and there are definitely some moments I want highlight. Here are some of my favorites:

Dunking on Influencers

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty Episode 13

Dunking on talentless influencers and content creators is low hanging fruit, but it’s still fun. Watching the Rock Lady girls destroy these poseurs by turning their female followers gay was indeed quite fun. In general, I hope more people besides Paul Reed Smith watched this, it was a pretty refreshing take on a band anime that wasn’t just the group ganbare-ing their way to the top.

Gray Phantom

Umamusume: Cinderella Gray Season 2 Episode 13

I’m not always the biggest Sports anime fan so I have a fairly limited frame of reference, but Cinderella Gray is the best Sports anime I’ve watched in a long time. And of course, any self respecting Sports anime will have some kind of power up, there’s even a good chance it will be called “The Zone”. Watching Oguri Cap falling behind her rivals and then finally breaking through was a great, get out of your chair and cheer moment, one that the series did a great job building up to over the course of two seasons.

Anko’s Flashback

Call of the Night Season 2 Episode 8

World building, in-universe lore, and info dumping are all useless unless they serve the plot and characters. When used effectively though, they can lead to moments like this. I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s a split second in Anko’s flashback where her dad drops his lighter, something that should be perfectly normal if not for all the context around it. Up to now we’ve learned so much about how this world with vampires works that I instantly knew what was happening, and all I could do was watch things unfold. This is what I imagine good horror is like, I don’t even normally like horror but if it was like this I would be much more into it. On top of that, it was just a really good character building moment in a great story arc, something that elevated Call of the Night above my expectations.

The Greatest (Worst?) Love Story Ever Told

Apocalypse Hotel Episode 6

There are SO many moments I could have chosen to talk about from Apocaplyse Hotel, but the end of the world literally arriving in episode 6 is probably my favorite. It’s hard to explain all the context, but what if Thanos was a weird cat Digimon and showed up on Earth to destroy it, only to stop because he goes on a date with a nice robot lady? The entire episode is a great example of the series’ dark but not too dark humor, culminating in a very sweet, twisted climax that I don’t want to spoil. Keep an eye on Cygames Pictures, they’re doing really good work lately.

The Hospitality Towers

CITY The Animation Episode 5

It was a tough choice between this and The Race in episode 9, but as much as I love a wacky race I had to give the edge to the Hospitality Towers for its creativity. Basically, there are so many plotlines leading up this episode that they have to divide the screen up into multiple parts to show everything, and somehow it works. Writing about it doesn’t do it justice. From a technical perspective, it might be the coolest, most impressive thing I’ve ever witnessed in a television anime. But on top of that, it all leads to a lovely moment of community when all the characters come together, really driving home the celebration of ordinary life that CITY is.