Valentine’s Day Anime Binge List

‘Tis Valentine’s season once again, otherwise known to the unattached as Singles Awareness Day.  For singles, or the lucky ones who have partners who also enjoy anime as much as they do, here we have a compilation of titles of some of the currently running, or recently completed titles, series or movies, which you can binge-watch this season.  Great for staying in and just enjoying time alone, or alone time with your significant other, and avoiding the noise and crowds of every conceivable Valentine’s date hangout, without having to go out of town.

Titles consist of a mix of genres…action, drama, fantasy, comedy, and even adaptations of classics.  From stories of thrilling epic potential, to simple but warm stories.  Your discretion of what to view, but do read the descriptions so you can watch or avoid the feels of your choosing.

VIOLET EVERGARDEN

(Drama) – Currently running, Violet Evergarden is a dramatic series with beautiful artwork and design, set in a European-like setting, near the beginning of the 20th century.  The story follows a young girl named Violet, a former child soldier who lost her arms at the end of a great war, who wakes up in a hospital bed, recovering from her injuries, with new prosthetic arms.  The final words of Violet’s former commander, a man she holds dear more than anyone, resonating within her.  Words that with her doll-like personality, she simply did not understand.

Violet starts a new life outside the military, ghostwriting at CH Postal Service, where she is deeply moved by the work of “Auto Memories Dolls” who convey people’s thoughts and feelings through Ghost-written letters, in an effort to better understand other people, herself, her Major’s final words, and her own feelings.

OVERLORD

(Fantasy/Isekai) – With season 1 completed and season 2 currently running, Overlord follows the new life of a high-level MMORPG player of the VR online game Yggdrasil, who remained logged on until the server shuts down at the end of its service, only to discover that not only did the environment keep running, but he couldn’t log out at all, and he had actually become his own character…a max level Elder Lich!

A high-fantasy isekai (other-world) story, of the chronicles of a gamer turned supreme ruler of The Great Tomb of Nazarick, and its collection of NPC characters, who are now his servants, guardians, and Generals, as he tries to make the best of the situation as their dark Overlord.

DARLING IN THE FRANXX

(Science Fiction) – In a post-apocalyptic world aboard the mobile fortress city #13, “Cerasus”, Darling In The FranXX centers on the children chosen to fight as symbiotic pairs aboard giant mecha called FranXX, against giant biomechanical creatures known as the Kyouryuu, which have laid waste to the world.

Raised in the enclosed plantation environment of Mistilteinn, aka “The Birdcage”, the children making up the main characters knew nothing else about life or the world outside.  Brought up only to be pilots to fight against the Kyouryuu, the story centers on pilot code 016, “Hiro”, a one-time prodigy who could no longer interface with his assigned partner, or a FranXX, and has fallen behind.  Wallowing in the depression of losing his purpose in life, Hiro begins to surrender to the idea of being useless and unnecessary, until he meets a visitor to the Birdcage….a girl from Special Forces known as “the partner killer”, code 02.

NANATSU NO TAIZAI (SEVEN DEADLY SINS)

(Fantasy) – Season 1 of Nanatsu no Taizai is the tale of a group of Elite warriors, known as “The Seven Deadly Sins”.  Branded as traitors to the Kingdom, the members of the Sins have scattered across the landscape.  Ten years after the alleged betrayal of the Seven Deadly Sins, Leones’ own Holy Knights stage a coup, seizing power, imprisoning the King, their rule spreading pain and suffering across the land.  Princess Elizabeth sets out to find all the legendary members and reform the Seven Deadly Sins, to save her father, Leones, and end the brutal rule of the Holy Knights.

With season 2 now in release, and the Kingdom of Leones reclaimed, the Seven Deadly Sins enjoy their hard-earned victory.  But the respite doesn’t last, as Demonic forces stir again, unleashing a powerful group of Demons called the Ten Commandments and threatening to plunge the entire continent into a great war not seen in 3000 years.

DEATH MARCH TO THE PARALLEL WORLD RHAPSODY

(Fantasy/Isekai) – Also known as Death March to The Parallel World Rhapsody, the story starts off with the life of an overworked and under-appreciated game developer, who after a long night of overtime to debug 2 projects, gets run over while crossing the street on his way home, and dies. When he opens his eyes again, he is on a plateau in the middle of nowhere, with a game HUD in his line of sight. And what’s more, is a teenager again! Going over what he can do through his new game-like menus, he discovers that he can recognize and relate to pretty much everything around him like a player would in a game, including his own skills and abilities, and evidently with a number of administrator cheat options in the form of a ridiculous amount of skill points for allocation, and 3 active spells at the beginning, which he recognized as a feature which was never implemented in the game he was working on.  Our intrepid hero inadvertently triggers a meteor shower and annihilates a nearby Lizardman army, catapulting him from level 1 to 310, gaining him a tremendous amount of loot, money, and quite a few titles.

With no apparent way to return to Earth, thus begins the journey of our over-powered main character, Satou, through a new fantasy world of magic, magic beasts, and many races both human and non-human, as he explores and adjusts to his new home.

KARAKAI JOUZU NO TAKAGI-SAN

(Slice of Life/Comedy) – A sweet, fuzzy, comedy with romantic undertones set in modern-day Japan, this series features the relationship between a smart and mischievous middle-school girl, Takagi, and Nishikata, a boy seated next to her in class whom she loves to tease everyday.  Vowing to get back at her for all the times she’s picked on him, Nishikata can never catch a break, always having the tables turned right back at him with every attempt.  But is the teasing all there is to it?  Takagi seems to occasionally suggest otherwise…or is she just messing with him again?

BEATLESS

(Science Fiction) – With the introduction of ultra-advanced AI, humanoid androids known as a human Interface Element (hIE), have become a household word, and many functions of everyday life have been entrusted to these marvels of technology. Lacia, a highly advanced hIE equipped with a black coffin-shaped device, is one of a band of escapees from the Tokyo research facility of Memeframe, the world’s leading hIE behavior management cloud platform company. In boy-meets-girl fashion, 17-year-old Arato Endo has a fateful encounter with the artificial Lacia, who saves his life and enters into a contract with Arato, registering him as her new owner.

Resembling an attractive teenage girl, Lacia is impulsively entered into an hIE modeling competition by Arato’s younger sister, Yuka.  But her newfound modeling career as a new rising star begins to attract a lot of the wrong kinds of attention, from stalker fanboys, to anti-hIE terrorists, and even attacks from her sisters, resulting in displays by the hIE escapees of extraordinary combat and electronic warfare capabilities!  Just what are Lacia and her sisters?

GRANCREST SENKI

(Fantasy) – From the creator of Record of Lodoss Wars, on the continent Atlatan threatened by demons from the Chaos dimension, the nobility fought back using magic Crests, imparted by the great Hero, which gave them superhuman powers.  Centuries later, as the denizens of Chaos begin to reassert themselves in the world, rather than join forces to end Chaos, the nobles instead fought each other to increase their own Crest powers and lands.

Siluca Meletes, a graduating young mage from the Royal Academy who scorns the feuding lords for abandoning their people and Theo Cornaro, wandering Knight and Crest holder who is trying to liberate his hometown from its tyrant lord, band together to change the world.

On the day she was to enter into a contract with a Lord rumored to be of ill-repute, Siluca fatefully encounters Theo during her trip when he impulsively saves her from Brigands sent to assassinate her.  Seeing a good man in Theo with the good of the people at heart, Siluca enters into a contract with Theo instead.  The pair then set about gaining prestige, influence, and territories of their own, as well as additional crests to Theo’s own from the conquered lords. They and the allies they gain through their campaign fight together to end the wars between the nobility and end the threat of Chaos, as Siluca ambitiously engineers Theo’s rise to power in the nobility, recreate the Hero’s Master Crest, and make him into the new Hero.

HAKUMEI TO MIKOCHI

(Slice of Life) – Living a tiny little life in the woods, this is the day-to-day life of Hakumei and Mikochi, featuring 2 chibi main characters measuring 9cm. tall, and their daily interactions with their animal neighbors, tiny people, Gods, and nature.

ELEGANT YOKAI APARTMENT LIFE

(Supernatural/Coming-of-age) – Inaba Yuushi, suffered the loss of his parents and was orphaned in his first year of middle school, the pain of his loss developing into a wall of a cold personality that kept people at a distance, which only his best friend Hase Mizuki, could crack.  Taken in by his relatives, though they did care for him, he saw himself as an unwanted burden, and made plans to become independent as soon as possible.

After graduation from middle school, he happily prepared to move to a high school with a dormitory, unfortunately the dormitory burned to the ground before he could move in!  Resolving to not have to continue living with his relatives, Yuushi quickly discovers how rough finding lodging as an orphaned student with little money can be.  Finally, he finds a room in a nice old building which seems too good to be true.  The catch is that it is a Monster House, a place where humans, spirits, and other supernatural creatures, live together.  One other high schooler, a cute, friendly girl named Akine, also lives in the apartments as one of his neighbors, and she’s completely unfazed by the monsters.  In fact, she’s an accomplished exorcist!

As if growing up wasn’t challenging enough, Yuushi’s high school life just got much stranger than he ever bargained for!