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…
Classroom Crisis
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 11
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.
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 10
As a counterpoint to last week’s gushing praise about watching only a handful of shows, and having them all be shows you like, this week’s anime seemed (especially early on) determined to remind me that the other side of this is that the week can seem kind of drab if a bunch of your shows decide to take an unfortunate week off all at the same time. Of course, it wasn’t everything that this happened to—it just seems like a lot more when you’ve only got eight show that you’re keeping up with.
Translation: Oh geez we have to wait another week before we can become canon?
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 9
Man, it sure is a good feeling when you get to the end of your anime week and not a single episode you watched let you down! Once again, it seems I’m experiencing the power of whittling down things to just what I’m really loving—and it’s exciting, fun, and refreshing. I swear I’m going to do this every season from here on out! And I know I said that after last season, but I mean it this time (spoilers: probably not ever going to happen because I’m too much of a sucker for shiny new things).
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 8
Hiatus: Over.
Yeah, that’s right—I’m back, and I’m going to make this all work, one way or another! Getting away from my normal routine for a solid 10 days and just doing something different than the regular grind was hugely beneficial, and I came up with some ideas about how I can keep things headed in a positive direction from here on out. So, yeah, let’s talk about some anime! The order they crop up in the post is most likely the order in which I caught up to them, so there’s a secret there about which shows I’ve heard the most good things about and became a high priority for me.
Good things: exhibit 1.
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 6
I can’t really figure out how to say this well, so I’ll just go for blunt: this is probably going to be my last post on here for a while. The lead-off is that I’m leaving tomorrow on a 10-day business trip. I’ll be staffing a big conference put on by my workplace, and I’m not anticipating much free time to watch anime—let alone write about it. The second part is that I’m feeling kind of burned out these days. As seriously as I take this blog as something I’ve made a commitment to (primarily because of my readers), continuing on like I have been for the past month or so seems like a surefire way to entirely sap the joy out of writing. To a large extent, the pressure I’ve been putting on myself to continue churning out content is probably mostly to blame—and the only way I can see to purge myself of that mentality is to put myself in a blogging time-out of sorts; that is, a hiatus.
I don’t expect it’ll last forever (and maybe even that long). If I continue to watch anime, I’m going to have things to say. And if I have things to say, you can be darn sure I’ll start writing again! But, for now, forcing myself to write stuff I’m not excited to write is making me feel like I’m not putting out stuff that’ll make people excited to read it. When I can do that again, I’ll be back!
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 5
It’s week five, and things are just trucking along now. Pretty much all of my shows are away from the potential drop bubble at this point, leaving me with a bunch of stuff I’m really enjoying watching each week. Some shows are getting better by the week, others hitting some rough patches, but overall there’s nary a one among them that I’m not excited to watch each week. And that’s the way a weekly schedule should be.
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 4
This was the week the charms of newness started to wear off for a lot of shows. I always feel like early on in seasons, I’m kind of breezing through shows and liking them just because they’re new, but by the time they’re started to kick into their real stories in the fourth episode (note, the fourth, not the stupid third) is when they start to show their cracks or I start to tire of them. How much those two things are related…I’m not sure and I’m not enthused enough to think it through. Anyways!
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 3
I suppose I should be thinking up something insightful to say at this point, but I’ve really got nothing for you guys in terms of summing up the past week of anime. The season’s off to a good start and I’m enjoying pretty much everything that I’m watching, but as a season I’m not overly impressed or disappointed. Everything just kind of is, and if your kind of anime is airing (like it is for me) it’s a pleasant time to be keeping up with the shows that we’ve got.
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 2
The weekly roundup or rundown or highlights (or whatever you want to call them) are back! As it happens, I’m going back to the normal Wednesday release schedule for this season…and you’ll also notice that I’ve navigated away from the clunky “Highlights of the Week” to something a bit snappier (and maybe a bit more SEO friendly): “Anime Weekly.” In the end, nothing’s really changing—this is still going to be the catch-all post for the week that compiles my thoughts on everything I’ve been watching. It’s just easier to type out the title now.
And a good thing, too, because despite my best efforts to cull my watchlist for this season, I’m still carrying 15 shows—5 more than the target set for myself at the beginning of the season.
Mage in a Barrel 