Yomu at the Umai Yomu Anime Blog asked readers to answer the following question:  What anime did you start the new year with? The first anime I watched in 2024 was actually a 2023 series: BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!! Two factors came together to make that 2023 musical melodrama my first anime of the new year.

First, I had started working on my long 2023 anime year-in-review article for The New Leaf Journal in late December. My year-in-review features a list of my top-six series of the previous year. I had considered publishing it in late December, but I had multiple projects in the works so I delayed it until the first week of January. I then became sick in late December and my ill health trickled into the first few days of 2024. Being sick and not having work assignments, I had little to do. I had read some positive reviews of BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!! and, after confirming that familiarity with the BanG Dream! franchise was not a prerequisite to entry (I had no prior familiarity), I decided to spend some of my sick hours watching the series to see what the fuss was about and make sure that I covered all the bases I wanted to cover for my 2023 anime review article. While it is far from perfect, it impressed me enough  to earn the fourth spot on my final anime of the year ranking, which made me delete a section that I had written for (former) sixth place The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten (that one still has its full-length review, however).