A Very GLORIO 2024: Gee’s Year in Review

If there’s a pervasive theme to 2024, I think it’s the constant sense of there never being enough time. This has been a noticeable trend for years, but this year it became impossible to ignore that a lot of anime were materially compromised, either in episode count or fidelity. The age of the 52 episode TV anime is dead, and I think the end of the 26 episode TV anime is not far off. We now live in the era of 13 episode seasons; a frankly inadequate number of episodes for many kinds of stories. Watching familiar stories try to fit themselves into this new format has been awkward to say the least. The shows I’ll be talking about are the ones I think are most significant, either good or ill, to my 2024 anime watching experience.

First Look: Dandadan

Momo Ayase, a high school girl descended from a family of spirit mediums, meets Okarun, an occult geek. Momo believes in ghosts but not aliens, while Okarun believes in aliens but not ghosts. To prove the other wrong, Momo agrees to investigate a UFO sighting while Okarun visits a tunnel rumored to be haunted. Turns out they’re both right. Momo gets abducted by aliens while Okarun gets possessed by a ghost. Together, they must fight the paranormal forces that threaten their everyday lives.