Episode of the Year: Flowers of Evil Episode 7
Runners-up: Genshiken Second Season Episode 11, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Episode 1
This was one of the most difficult categories to decide. Our staff’s personal picks for the top Episode of the Year ranged all over the place, from the powerful spectacle of space warfare that opened Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet to the heartfelt ending to a long story of unrequited love in Genshiken Second Season Episode 11 to the sheer terror of being trapped in a spooky hospital in Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World) Episode 19 “Darkness” to the final episode of Gintama. The ranked lists of other memorable episodes also varied greatly in the sheer number of shows and episodes that were put forward for consideration, a testament to the wealth of choices viewers had last year. Three episodes, however, appeared on multiple lists and the one most highly regarded was the climactic explosion of teen angst driven by desperation that was the seventh episode of Flowers of Evil.
Overall, the show stood out as one that had strong individual episodes. Chris Kirby’s list of best episodes of the year consisted almost entirely of different installments of this show. While that might seem to be a lot of focus on a single show, “…the show is all about moments with each episode constructed around a moment. No show had more standout episodes than FoE because of this and they are simply some of the best individual episodes of any show ever.” Of those, there was also quite a bit of support from the staff for Episode 10, where the love triangle between Nakamura, Saeki, and Kasuga falls apart on a rainy mountainside, with Nakamura wishing to escape and Kasuga showing his inability to break free completely of his bounds to normal, mundane society. In the end, though, it couldn’t quite compete with the seventh installment, where Kasuga and Nakamura work out all of their frustrations in an orgy of vandalism, ending with that unforgettable image created by the final frames of the episode, all of it accompanied by a hauntingly beautiful version of the ending theme to the show.
