Anime Yearbook: 2006

One of the better Shounen Jump anime titles that year, Death Note's charm stems from the the "cat and mouse game" between a bright high school student in possession a notebook that kills any person whose name is written in it and unique detective whose on the trail of him.

(placeholder until the 2006 version gets a proper entry)

After Xebec dropped the ball with the original Negima anime, SHAFT took over the title and easily made up for the mess that was the Xebec version. While the show does go downhill during the second half, my focus here is more on the episodes that aired in 2006, and when it came to these episodes, not only did SHAFT avoid Xebec's mistake by keeping in mind the Pactio system (and remembering to give Nodoka, Setsuna, and Konoka proper Pactios), but also maintained a good balance between the main story at hand (which involves Negi and his Ministra Magi) and SHAFT's attempt to utilize the other students in Pani Poni Dash style humor.

To those who've only seen pictures of the characters, it may be one of those shows that girls will go nuts over due to amount of cute boys in the cast. However, once you watch the show, it actually turns out to be a fun "social class" comedy involving a lower class high school student who ends up becoming the latest member of a fancy school's host club after she inadvertently breaks a vase (and is a mistaken for a male student).