Month: September 2015

Top Summer 2015 Anime: Final Ratings

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Another season has passed. Despite being a rather slow season and mostly lacking in shows I would consider worthy of serious superlatives, I was generally amused, entertained, and engaged by the stuff I ended up watching all the way to the end. As always, there were some up weeks and some down weeks, but on the whole I’m pretty happy with the way this season ended up. It certainly won’t go down as one of the best in anime history—but when you come away from a season with an episode of a bubble dropping on Lelei’s head, how can you really complain?

GATE

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Aniwords – Anime. You. ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

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Alright, this week’s Aniwords is live! Sorry, I’m late posting it over here—I was busy watching the pile of crap that was Charlotte. Anyways, this week I used a sparkly title to talk about getting mad at people’s opinions. This honestly isn’t really even about anime that much, but more about the things that happen around anime watching (or engaging with any kind of media, really).

I’m not sure how much I actually like this post, but it came to me pretty easily, so that’s good, I guess?

Here’s the link~

Classroom Crisis

Hyouka, Episode 5

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In which all of my irritation with Oreki melts away—even if Oreki is constantly putting on an act for his friends, he can’t fool the camera. Unsurprisingly, the sincerity offered therein has given me a whole lot more appreciation (dare I say affection?) for this character and the particular circumstances of the life he’s living.

Hyouka Continue reading →

Anime Artwork Adventures #10 – Fanart Friday Edition

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Those of you who have been following me for a while might remember that a while back I tried to do a weekly feature where I compiled cool fanart pictures I found on Pixiv. It fizzled out after nine weeks because it turned out that finding fanart and writing little blurbs about each picture took a lot more time than I was expecting, so I eventually gave it up in accordance my honeymoon period with Pixiv ending.

Well, now I’m temporarily back doing a fanart piece—although this time I’m doing it for Crunchyroll’s long-running Fanart Friday column. As one might expect, I decided my theme for the week would be idols…”Lessons in Idolatry” was the subtitle I decided to go with. So, yeah, check it out and enjoy all the idols!

Here’s the link~

Locodol

Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 12

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The season is ending, the thrillingly nice weather of autumn is starting to hit the Midwest with consistency, I’ve moved back over to MAL, and it’s time to talk about this week’s anime. A couple of my shows have already ended, with the rest of them set to conclude between now and Saturday—then we get a shockingly short break and the new season will be upon us. But let’s not think about that yet. We’re still in summer…at least if you live by seasonal anime…

Miss Monochrome S2 Continue reading →

I Went Through the GATE…

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I’m sure you’re all familiar with the closing lines of the oft-quoted, oft-anthologized, oft-ridiculed poem by Robert Frost: 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | I took the one less traveled by, | And that has made all the difference.

GATE, much like writers who choose to use “The Road Not Taken” as openings to their columns, takes the more-traveled road as a matter of course—yet, in doing so, it makes way for the discovery of a few rare mushrooms along the path and one big one with a bad smell that covers the whole forest. Now, I don’t mean to be coy here; I enjoyed GATE a whole heckuva lot. It’s a fascinating blend of things I found engaging and off-putting, likable and awful. At the end of the day, though, I’ll always give three cheers for a show that manages to succeed in spite of a fundamentally misguided base premise. There’s something awfully human about a show like that—even if you might not want to emulate it.

GATE Continue reading →

Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 11

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Okay, so if last week being down was the requisite condition for this week, I am so very okay with that—because these week was an absolute stunner. Three episodes of genuinely amazing romance, one triumphant episode of super heroes, one bleak and finely executed thriller, and a smattering of fun. This may sounds silly to some, but it’s weeks like these that make me feel I’m not wasting my life away watching a bunch of foreign cartoons. There’s beauty and meaning and goodness and truth in all of this.

Akagami no Shirayuki-hime Continue reading →

Aniwords – What’s the Best Anime of the Season?

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Oh, I hear your voices already. “Bless, you’ve already sold out to straight-up lazy clickbait titles and topics?” “So you only really care about views after all—I thought you were different!” “Umm…you do remember that you do end of season rankings, right?”

To which I say, “Ha! Fooled ya!”

I’ll admit this is a title straight up designed to get people to click, but I promise you it’s not for my own affirmation—it’s for something bigger. Namely, the Animator Expo. Now, I’m not a exactly a sakuga buff or a huge industry nerd, but I am invested in this industry and the places it’s going. And I think that path is set out before in the shape of this project. And I honestly think it’s important people take notice. So I went for the hot sell; the easy-in; the rope ’em up strategy. All to get people to watch a weird 7-minute short about a pair of dorky sisters.

Here’s the link~

GIRL Continue reading →