Anime

My rating of Vivy is 9, and thought Takopi is much, much better overall. I may agree with you that in terms of twist endings, Vivy (and also 86) could be better. As to why? Perhaps it's better explained there. Certainly, in terms of the plot twist, Death Note and Steins;Gate did it better than both of them.

As to why I would rate it a 10 (not just that, but the best anime, period), I took into account the totality of the work. Long story short, once all factors are considered, the conclusion is that Takopi's just built better.

• Format: It didn't force itself to last a whole season. The staff deliberately chose to adapt a whole story in six episodes. Remember how we wish Death Note ended sooner?

• Consistency in storytelling quality. Partly why I thought this work outranked my previous #1 Violet Evergarden is because its episodes 12 and 13 are relatively weak, dragging the "quality average" down somewhat.

• Consistency in art style and quality. Even more impressive is the studio choosing to stick to 2D. Their 3DCG in Spice and Wolf (2024) is ass. They made the right decision to keep that to a minimum. I may be biased on hand-drawn animation styles since upon retrospect, I tend to rate those works highly (Frieren, Ghibli and Shinkai's works, the WMT series, etc.).

• Amazing episode direction, all of them

• Amazing music direction. Very few times do discordant music (the mood of the scene does not match the music) work. They did it. Very well.

• Comparing the manga and anime ratings, I don't recall another animation that stayed faithful to the source material AND elevating the experience at the same time—except music anime, which should be straightforward why.

• Takopi made me feel emotions that I'll remember long after I watched it. Vivy didn't evoke the same. Perhaps a lot of those who rated Takopi that highly thought likewise. I cried hard twice in the most recent rewatch of Violet Evergarden the Movie. Takopi's total length is similar if you combine all episodes. I cried hard in 5 out of 6.