CREDIT: J.C.STAFF
Sōma’s journey to reopen his father’s restaurant means gaining acceptance to the most prestigious academy and becoming the best in Food Wars: Shokugeki no Sōma.

The anime industry is a behemoth that continues to grind out several dozen new series every quarter across a variety of genres, following idols, magical girls, mech pilots and regular teenagers. Because of this, it's also a fairly common reason that people give for not getting started into the popular medium.

A piece of advice? Just dive in. Pick a genre you like from anything else (movies, shows, games, books) and get into it. If you don't like a show, try another. There's been more anime released than is possible to watch in a lifetime.

The anime industry is so broad that ‘80s titles like Fist of the North Star and the Macross Saga hold up just as well as those from the 2000's like Serial Experiments Lain and Yukikaze. But we're here to talk about new anime, and these are a few series that stood out in the endless stream of animation being released in the last year.

All listed are easily available on Crunchyroll for free.

Wolf Girl and Black Prince

At first Wolf Girl feels like a comedy shōjo, like watching Sailor Moon's title character Usagi go through high school life. Erika, the protagonist, is extremely clumsy but really just wants to make friends at her new school. Then it starts getting weird. Through a series of unfortunate events, Erika begins dating class president Kyouya, a clean-cut, welcoming, nice guy that everyone falls in love with. Reality is quite different though as it turns out he's a total pervert, insisting on Erika acting like a dog. This is weird for multiple reasons, but because of this dynamic between the two there's also moments where Kyouya acts like a protector to her, throwing the watcher's impressions of this relationship. Wolf Girl and Black Prince could have been a typical shōjo high school comedy, and it is in some respects. It's about a girl who wants to fit in, trying to get out of a bunch of little white lies that keep getting bigger and bigger. But, it's also an interesting take on unconventional relationships. If you're tired of the typical girl-falls-for-boy shōjo, this might be the next pick for you.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

First impressions placed it in the same vein as Sword Art Online with the world being a fantasy MMORPG; levelling systems showing a holographic display giving you growth feedback, and characters being able to modify stats and skills. But nothing was ever actually mentioned, so viewers are left only with visuals looking vaguely super-tech. The main premise behind magic in Orario is the idea of cults, like ancient Greeks worshipping pantheistic gods. In fact, the gods are the ones being worshipped by these cults. In Is It Wrong, all of these deities gave up their powers to live as immortals in the human realm. By doing this they were able to grant superpowers to individuals deemed worthy enough to defeat monsters from the Dungeon. Bell Cranel is the only member of his cult for the goddess Hestia. Because of this he's placed himself on a mission to recruit more followers to worship her. With such an obvious title, it's funny to see that Bell isn't hitting on his female companions, but simply trying to survive, though he does fall in love with his saviour in the first episode. When watching Hestia interact with the rest of the pantheon, we see that politicking is a large part of navigating through this world. Throughout a few episodes there was a nagging feeling the gods might be aliens, but overall the series is a slightly comedic take on the standard magical fantasy genre.

Classroom Crisis

A young woman starts up her scooter and proceeds to bike through the beautiful mountain scenery. Using the nifty little moped like a racing bike, she bypasses traffic in a rather dangerous trick, eventually stopping in front of another young woman standing at the edge of a beautiful campus. The moped driver is Iris, and she's also a spaceship pilot. Her friend, Mizuki, is an engineer for the same spaceship. Welcome to Mars.

In the future, humans have colonized the entire solar system, from Mercury to Pluto. Because of this, corporations also dominate the system, setting up and being responsible for new colonies, making schoolchildren their employees. Classroom Crisis centres around a new transfer student coming to the Martian academy. Before the new student can arrive though, it's found out that he has been captured and is being held on a mining asteroid for a sizable ransom. Before official rescue plans can be made, Iris pilots a highly experimental spacecraft the class has been working on to trade a ransom for the student, who later belittles the A-TEC class for wasting so much money by coming to his rescue. The transfer student, Nagisa, also happens to be their boss. The series centres on his attempts to dismantle A-TEC, a highly expensive research project, which also happens to be his homeroom class.

Food Wars: Shokugeki no Sōma

This series follows the young man Sōma who believes he'll learn the best cooking practices in his father's restaurant. After using his skills to prepare the most savoury meat dish, and saving the restaurant from a group of shady-probably-yakuza members trying to buy the property for condos, he's immediately thrown through a hoop. His father tells him that he's leaving for a couple years to work with a friend, closing the restaurant in the process. From there we watch as Sōma cooks his way through Totsuki Academy, the most prestigious chef school in Japan with a survival rate to graduation of only 10 per cent. His surly demeanour is washed away quickly when he sees how tough it is to even get into the school. Some parents are willing to donate millions hoping their children will be accepted. He begins his rise through the culinary school, hoping to be good enough to finally beat his father in a cooking battle and reopen the restaurant.

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers

This is a bit of a shift for art style in fantasy animes, as the overall architecture in Piena is that of meso-American cultures like the Aztec. Spired castles are replaced with massive ziggurats, sprawling lush rainforests all sitting on the edge of mist-filled waterfalls. The series begins with Adlet Mayer declaring to be the strongest man in the world, interrupting a ceremonial battle. The battle is to decide who will be a Brave, a warrior chosen by the society's god who is needed to halt the demon king's fiends from destroying everyone. Mayer interrupts this, beats the crap out of the two opponents and promptly gets his ass tossed in jail. The series centres around the idea that the Goddess of Fate choose six Braves at a time to stop the demon king from overrunning Piena, and that for the first time in history, there are seven instead. Mayer receives his circular mark in prison, declaring him to be one of the Braves, and he, along with the rabbit-eared princess Nashetania, travel to meet the other Braves in order to save the world.

These are just a few of the countless anime series' currently out, and the amount of shows will only increase. Crunchyroll isn't the only place to look either. Netflix has dozens of new and old series, including Knights of Sydonia while YouTube has some weird stuff as well.