First Impressions: Winter 2015 Anime (Part 1)

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Winter 2015 is here. It’s so here. So far, really, so good. There hasn’t been anything that’s compelled me to drop it outright (although a few shows have come close), and most of the shows I was truly excited for showed up well. Add a crop of decent premieres to five solid to excellent ongoing shows and you’ve got a pretty darn good start to the season. Either that or, after a fall season that failed to conclude with a show above 7/10, I’m just really happy to see some new anime.

Still to Watch: Kofuku Graffiti, Durarara!! x2, Isuca, The Rolling Girls, Aldnoah.Zero 2, Fafner of the Blue Sky, World Break, Death Parade

Ongoing: Shirobako, Garo, Your Lie in April, Akatsuki no Yona, Log Horizon

Shirobako

Just a reminder that Shirobako is ongoing, that you should be watching it, and that it’s hard being in anime world.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 12

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Man, this was a weird episode for KimiUso. For something like this to follow the beauty of episode 10 and the solidity of episode 11…it was like an entirely different show, even from what I felt were the weaker episodes at the beginning of the first cour. While KimiUso has always struggle with executing its comedy and doing so in a manner that didn’t interrupt the flow of the episode, this episode was an almost shocking departure from the general level of competency KimiUso typically exhibits—the flow, simply, was horrid.

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December Physical Media Reviews

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Hey, guys! So, a bit of an announcement today—I recently started writing for a news/review site called the Otaku Review. I’ve been doing a lot of writing for them in the last month, including both news articles and my very first reviews of physical media.

You’ve probably already read most of the news stories already, but if you’re interested in the reviews, I’m compiled links to all the stuff I covered in December. Hope you enjoy!

Level E

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Akatsuki no Yona, Episode 12

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Sorry for the delay in this post—Toradora! kind of took over and everything else went to the backburner. I also heard that this episode of Akatsuki no Yona was a good one, so I didn’t want to rush through the episode or the post.

Having seen this episode, that was a good choice. One’s of Yona‘s greatest strengths is its phenomenal ability to balance oppositional fundamental forces, pairing them, contrasting them, synchronizing them, and clashing them against each other. This episode, though, was much more personal in its choices—a bit of a shift from the more universal balances we’ve seen to this point. And, brilliantly, the focus was on the senses: on touch, sight, and sound. I don’t have any superlatives left for this episode after spending them all on Twitter, so let me simply say it. This episode was very, very good.

Akatsuki no Yona

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The Top Anime of 2014

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Well, it has been a year, hasn’t it? 2014, as a whole, was a pretty disappointing year in anime. This has been the first year that I’ve actually watched simulcasted seasons for the entire year, so perhaps there’s some of Sturgeon’s Law in effect, but overall I felt that 2014 was far inferior to 2013 in terms of top level quality, mid-tier depth, and low-tier hilarity. To be completely fair to 2014, I did end up watching a lot of 2013 shows this year, but, by way of comparison, shows like Chihayafuru 2 and Monogatari Series: Second Season only served to further expose the weakness of this year.

But it’s more fun to talk about the good things that happened this year, so that’s what I’m going to do. Unlike last year, I’m not going to do caption awards. I’ve already done that with each season, so if you want to see which shows were notable in certain areas, check out those posts:

Winter 2014 | Spring 2014 | Summer 2014 | Fall 2014

So, without further distraction, I present my top anime of 2014! Here’s the Best Girl of 2014 to kick things off!

Nisekoi

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The 5 Worst Anime of 2014

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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.

Nisekoi

A faceless image of a boring character.

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Top Fall 2014 Anime: Final Ratings

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The Fall 2014 anime season has come to a close, so it’s time to take a look at what was the best, what great, what was good, what was enjoyable, and what was none of those. It’s particularly important in this season to note that these rankings only cover shows that ended this season—if ongoing shows were counted, this list would look radically different.

I’ve also made a few changes to the awards to accommodate the decreasing number of shows I’m watching each season. All the genre awards have been reduced to a winner and an honorable mention, OST has been added as a category, and ongoing shows are eligible for the OP/ED categories. With that in mind, I’m happy to present the top shows of Fall 2014. Well, happy might not be the best word for a season as rough as this, but here’s the list anyways.

HItsugi no Chaika

Shoutout to @ZeroReq011 for giving me this gif!

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Toradora!, Episode 25

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So, we’ve come to the end of what has been an unexpectedly massive project for me. Before I dive into the final episode and my thoughts on it, here are some stats:

  • 46 pages of notes
  • 1,055 Screenshots
  • 35,271 Words
  • Over 40 hours total time spent watching, taking notes, and writing
  • Personal favorite posts: Episode 9, Episode 20

Believe me when I say this project was worth all of that. Re-watching things is always something of a scary experience, because you never know if the show is going to be able to meet the idealized version of it you hold in your head. For a re-watch to match the original experience is a rare thing, and while this particular watch of Toradora! didn’t match the sheer emotional heft of my first watch, it was an incredibly valuable experience on a number of levels. To see that this beloved show had the technical prowess to the beauty of its story was incredibly gratifying, and this project has also served as a phenomenal exercise in developing my own ability to critique cinematography and visual language. But enough about me, let’s finish this!

Toradora!

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Toradora!, Episode 24

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I think it’s kind of a good thing that I ended up marathoning this episode and episode 25 yesterday, because I was much more equipped to take notes when I wasn’t on the verge of tears the whole time I was watching. Of course, I teared up in places anyways, but that’s to be expected with all of the good stuff and painful stuff that happened in this episode. But the dam has finally broken on all of the pent up emotional suspension that’s been ongoing for almost twenty episodes, so the release is much easier to watch that some of the stuff that’s in between. We’re almost to the end, so let’s do this!

Toradora!

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