Winter 2015, Week 4: Highlights of the Week

February 4, 2015February 4, 2015iblessall 16 Comments

Cuts are finally complete at 11 shows for the season. With the end of the week bearing the bulk of the season’s weight, this is a manageable schedule for me with everything that’s going in real life and with all the project I’m hoping to do in the coming months with the blog.

It’s been a tough week-ish for the blog in terms of page views as it looks like my SEO ranking were pretty much reset with the new domain fully taking over. That’s…kind of a disappointment after it took literal months to build up my rankings to what they were before the crash, but I’m trying to look at this as a new challenge for me as I continue to hone my content creation and digital marketing skills. I’ve got a plan to work my way back up the list and a big part of it is continuing to create new, interesting content! Hope you guys enjoy!

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Winter 2015, Week 2: Highlights of the Week

January 21, 2015January 20, 2015iblessall 21 Comments

I wasn’t sure about this after the first week, but now…I’m sure. I have too many shows on this schedule, especially in the later half of the week. What’s killing me are the five ongoing shows, but none of them are even close to drop territory. Here’s what did bite the bullet this week:

Koufuku Graffiti fell victim to both “not really feeling inspired to go back to this one” syndrome and the “schedule too full” curse despite a warm premiere.
Military! basically sucked for three whole minutes.
Junketsu no Maria was sadly dropped—best wishes to Maria!
Assassination Classroom is getting close to drop territory, but isn’t quite there yet.

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Winter 2015, Week 1: Highlights of the Week (Ongoing Shows)

January 14, 2015iblessall 11 Comments

With the premieres of new shows taking up most of my writing time lately, the five ongoing shows I’ve carried over from the fall have taken something of a back seat. Which, you know, is kind of a shame considering how good these five shows are. I didn’t want to let a whole week go by without talking about them at all, so we’ll have a short Highlights of the Week this week to chat about Garo, Shirobako, Your Lie in April, Log Horizon, and Akatsuki no Yona.

My schedule for this season is still coming together, but I’m hoping to aim for ~4 posts/week: Yona and KimiUso episodics, Highlights of the Week, and some kind of craft/editorial piece over the weekends. We’ll see how that goes. But, for now, on to this week!

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Fall 2014, Week 10: Highlights of the Week

December 10, 2014December 10, 2014iblessall 19 Comments

The end of the season is nigh, with Chaika being the first show to finish up this week. The crazy time of ending reviews and first impressions (and wow I need to get moving on those Toradora! posts) is almost here.

So have some Chaika while you anticipate!

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Fall 2014, Week 9: Highlights of the Week

December 3, 2014December 3, 2014iblessall 5 Comments

Best week of anime this season? Yup, best week of anime this season. It was the mid-tier shows (YuYuYu, Garo, Argevollen) that really stepped up this week, while Yona, Your Lie in April, and Shirobako continue to be one of the best season top tiers since I’ve started watching simulcasts. And, on top of that, Chaika dove into bombastic crazy weirdness with its second-to-last episode. What more could an anime fan want?

Oh, I know. How about a smokin’ hot Lucifer?

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Fall 2014, Week 8: Highlights of the Week

November 26, 2014November 26, 2014iblessall 3 Comments

Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Day, but there will still be a post coming out (bless you, WordPress post scheduling). As for this week, as I look back on it now, it was a pretty darn good one. The strong shows continue to do their thing, but a few of the mid-tier shows really showed up with some quality anime entertainment.

PSA: Akatsuki no Yona might be one of the best written shows of the entire season.

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Fall 2014, Week 7: Highlights of the Week

November 19, 2014iblessall 6 Comments

This is going to be one of the shorter highlights posts I’ve ever done because I wound up dropping one show this week, but compensated by writing episodic posts for three shows. So this is what it’s like when you get to the level of being an ANN reviewer…yikes.

Oh, and on Friday I finally discovered what WIXOSS is really all about.

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Fall 2014, Week 6: Highlights of the Week

November 13, 2014November 12, 2014iblessall 9 Comments

Another long week, except somehow this week I was caught up early in the weekend and got behind again at the beginning of the week. But, overall, it was a really good week! Two shows (Shirobako and Akatsuki no Yona) impressed me enough to merit their own episodic posts, Your Lie in April pulled me back in and everything else pretty much held steady. Twintails and YuYuYu are the shows that I’m still not sure about.

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Shirobako, Episode 5

November 6, 2014iblessall 2 Comments

Subtitle: On the Importance of Workplace Communication

Shirobako‘s a pretty sneaky show—it gives us an episode titled “Those Who Blame Others Should Just Quit!” and then proceeds to give us an entire episode of one guy who probably really does deserve to be blamed (although not entirely). It’s pretty eye-opening to watch Tarou’s exhibition of his absolutely abysmal communication skills (and lack of common sense), and as fun as it is to just blast him over sucking at his job, I think there’s a pretty impressive opportunity for self-reflection here. Even if you don’t have a job right now, Shirobako‘s highlighting a pretty important message here: communication is key.

And, along with all that, Shirobako managed to squeeze in a whole bunch of jokes, commentary on the 2D-3D debate, parallel that debate with Aoi’s struggles with her future, and lead us into the “one person’s problem is everyone’s problem” episode.