January - March • 141 anime
Winter 2018 landed with a weird mix of theater-sized spectacles and bold streaming originals. Devilman: Crybaby shocked viewers with its style, and Dragon Ball Super: Broly brought big-screen muscle back to the franchise.
My take was that winter 2018 felt like a season where films and daring originals took center stage. Devilman: Crybaby rewrote Go Nagai through Masaaki Yuasa’s frantic direction and an unforgettable soundtrack — it pushed the story into a modern, abrasive space that kept people talking. Dragon Ball Super: Broly made Broly canon and leaned hard on cinematic fight staging, so it hit differently in theaters. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms worked as the season’s quiet emotional core, Mari Okada’s script turning a fantasy premise into a frank story about time and parenthood.
On the TV side, Attack on Titan: Roar of Awakening compressed season-two intensity into a movie-sized punch and reminded viewers why the series gripped them. Pop Team Epic leaned into absurdist sketches and alternating production choices, which made it a weirdly consistent experiment. With notable studios like Kyoto Animation, Madhouse, J.C.Staff and A-1 Pictures involved and dozens of films that quarter, winter 2018 left a clear impression: it was a moment when theatrical anime and streaming originals both tried to push boundaries!
