Oe Kanade, Chihayafuru
She’s the geek of an already geeky karuta team. While the others focus on speed alone, Kana-chan reveres every poem that makes up this complex memory game. Her adoration and understanding of the poetry behind karuta grounds the other players.
Merei Yajima, Genshiken Second Season
She picks her own way to be a woman. Even though her friends—boys and girls—love fashionable clothes and makeup, she isn’t swayed from what makes her comfortable. She’s the only one unafraid to ask Hato about his crossdressing, and while her approach is clumsy and inconsiderate, she soon becomes the most respectful of his wishes out of everyone when he declines to share.
Nadeko Sengoku, Monogatari
Shy and quiet, a supernatural new hairdo changed her whole personality. I first fell for Nadeko’s barely concealed affection for senpai (not to mention an awesome OP) in the first season. This time, the gloves are off and she speaks her mind to everyone. She thinks it’s the side effect of supernatural possession, but (spoiler alert!) it was Nadeko all along.
Sawa Nakamura, Flowers of Evil
I hated her at first. Her abuse of Takao struck me as nothing short of sociopathic. But as the anime progresses, and we are privileged with increasingly vulnerable glimpses of Sawa’s psyche, it becomes clear that she’s the most complex and understandable character of the show.
Benten, The Eccentric Family
Effortlessly cool and subtly dangerous, this femme fatale disrupts the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope with the agency to live her own life instead of becoming somebody else’s muse.
This post is the seventh installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.