* Not objective
** Not comprehensive
Lists
A Story of Reasons: My 2019 Anime Year in Review
There will be a few confessions made, and some resolutions declared. It’s the end of the year after all! It’s time to look forward, even as we reflect on the past.
The Top Anime of 2018
There’s something to be said for putting down a more permanent record of your favorite anime of the year. I didn’t do it last year and I realized I regretted it—so this year, although I said I wouldn’t and the list will be shorter than normal—I won’t make the same mistake.
These are my picks for the top anime of 2018.
12 Anime Things that Made Me Happy in 2018
2018 was yet another year of evolution in my journey as an anime fan. Throughout the year, I spent less time watching anime and less time engaging in anime-related activities like doing freelance writing, blogging, and livetweeting shows. So as I started to consider “my year in anime,” I wondered if I would have much to say.
I needn’t have worried. The year is 2018 and anime is still good, so in the spirit of the 12 days of anime project (that I didn’t do this year)—here are twelve anime things that brought me some joy this year.
The Best Scenes of TV Anime 2016
I’ll be publishing my list of my favorite TV anime of the year after I finish up with a couple of final shows, but while we wait for that to happen, I thought I’d share some of the great individual scenes that stayed with me this year. Some of these are from shows that will inevitably be on my year-end list; some are not. Regardless, they all made an impression on me for various reasons, and I wanted to share them with you!
TV Anime 2015’s Best Of…
With the end of the year come year-end lists, talk about favorite anime, favorite seasons, and the like. But, in all the flurry of closing out the old year and moving into the new, it can be easy to forget some of the smaller things that made the previous year what is was.
This post is dedicated to those small things. The individual efforts, the little pieces of goodness, the solitary shining spots.
These are TV Anime 2015’s best moments…
The 5 Worst Anime of 2014
You know, I’m usually pretty positive on my blog, but I saw a lot of crap go down this year in anime and I’m feeling a bit cranky tonight, so I think it’s time to really let loose and talk about the worst anime I watched this year. I’m not big into hate-watching, nor have I ever felt compelled to finish a show I wasn’t enjoying, so I finished very few of the shows on this list. Thus, you may find yourself choking back, “But you didn’t get to the best part!”
Too bad. If it was unenjoyable enough for me to drop it before it “got good” and found its way onto this list, it deserves to be here. So, quit your whining and suck it up. Someday you’ll learn to like better bad stuff.
I don’t want to indulge my worser instincts too much, so you only get my top (bottom?) five worst anime of 2014 here. Just know that I mean most of this in good fun, even if I did think these shows were bad. I also find it important to note that this is not an exhaustive list of all the bad anime that aired in 2014, nor was I particularly judicious in picking (or ranking) the series for this list. I just went with whatever earned my ire this evening. Let us begin with the Worst Girl of 2014.
A faceless image of a boring character.
The Top 15 Female Characters in Anime
As with many of my posts, the idea for this one game from a currently trending thread on the forums over at Crunchyroll. Furthermore, I sort of felt that it was only fair that I made a post featuring the ladies of anime, considering my most recent post was pretty much all about guys.
In deciding what makes a character a “top character,” there are a number of different criteria that could be used to judge a character: how much they develop, how good of a person they are, how rounded they are, etc, etc. To make a true top character list, you would have to take a conglomerate of all those factors and add in two other factors.
These factors, to my mind the most important, are how enjoyable they are to watch and how much I personally like them. That being said, you have been warned of the extremely personal nature of this list. If you are looking for an objective list, sorry to disappoint, but it is what it is. And here it is.
For further explanation, read on: Continue reading
The Top 5 Most Fun Anime
We all watch anime for different purposes, but probably the most prominent reason is for entertainment. Not every anime is a 10/10 or even a 9/10. But if we tried to watch only anime in the 8/10 to 10/10 range, we’d miss out on a whole host of other wonderful shows and we’d miss out on a lot of fun.
I’ve been wanting to a post on this subject for a while. The title may say “The Top 10 Most Fun Anime,” but it could maybe also say “Lower Tier Anime with High Entertainment Value” or even “Guilty Pleasure Anime.” Guilty pleasure isn’t the right name for all the anime on this list, but it certainly appropriate for at least a few. Probably the most appropriate title would be, “Anime I Really Like That Aren’t Substantial Enough to Really Be Considered Excellent,” but that’s a mouthful. So, without further audieu: the top 5 most fun anime.
1. Medaka Box & Medaka Box Abnormal
Boasting one of the most overpowered heroines ever, Medaka Kurokami,
Medaka Box takes the high school fantasy genre and inflates it with absurd characters and even stranger powers. Medaka, the newly elected freshman student council president, sets up a suggestion box for students of the school. None of this should be unfamiliar, but when Medaka decides to tackle a request, it’s go big or go home. And Medaka doesn’t go home. She just goes big. While the supporting characters, even the male tsundere Zenkichi, are fun to watch as a cast, Medaka is the undisputed star of this show. She’s pretty clearly a Mary Sue type, but it’s completely intentional and it works. Like another strong female character in different show on this list, Medaka dominates the show when she’s on screen. At the end of the day, Medaka Box is just fun shounen action with an incredibly earnest and idealistic protagonist. Sure, there’s a lot of ecchi stuff going on, but Medaka Box is fun enough that it’s (sometimes) not totally in your face.
Read on to see the other 4 shows on the list! Continue reading
5 (Now 6) Reasons Hummingbird is Better than MAL
So, I recently decided to boot up a MAL account for various reasons, the foremost of which being that I was bored one day. While adding shows, an admittedly somewhat troublesome process, I got a little impatient and a little bummed that the only results of my typing were titles in a bland script. But I finished it, after rating most of the shows and even plugging in my drops.
But by the time I finished inputting show after show and rating after rating, I didn’t even have enough energy to start on my currently watching or backlog lists…and what did I have to show for it? Just this…
How plain looking! How boring! And, for whatever reason, it just didn’t feel like my anime list. It was just so bland and boring. But I knew there were other website that did the same thing, so, guided by a Crunchyroll buddy’s profile, I made my way over to Hummingbird. And what did I find? Read on to see!
Here’s a link to my Hummingbird account, if you’re curious to see first hand!
Mage in a Barrel 