Top Summer 2015 Anime: Final Ratings

September 30, 2015September 29, 2015iblessall 33 Comments

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?

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Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 12

September 23, 2015September 29, 2015iblessall 32 Comments

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…

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Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 11

September 16, 2015September 16, 2015iblessall 25 Comments

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.

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Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 10

September 9, 2015September 7, 2015iblessall 29 Comments

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?

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Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 6

August 12, 2015August 12, 2015iblessall 14 Comments

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!

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Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 5

August 5, 2015August 4, 2015iblessall 20 Comments

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.

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Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 4

July 29, 2015July 28, 2015iblessall 24 Comments

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!

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Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 3

July 22, 2015July 23, 2015iblessall 19 Comments

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.

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Summer 2015 Anime: First Impressions (Part 3)

July 11, 2015iblessall 29 Comments

By this point, I was pretty burned out with watching new series, but some shows managed to pull through pretty well! It’s both a nice surprise and also kind of bad because I’m at the point where I’m trying to cut shows, not add them.

In any case, here’s the final installment of my first impressions on Summer 2015’s anime offerings! Hope you enjoy!

Lookie all the new animes, onii-chan~!

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Summer 2015 Anime: First Impressions (Part 2)

July 9, 2015July 10, 2015iblessall 21 Comments

This is the good batch. The eight shows I was most looking forward to out of the whole season. As I begin this post, I’ve not watched a single episode of any of them—and I’ve avoided most reactions to them as well. Come the end of this post, I’ll either be joyful…or miserable, depending on how it all shakes out.

And, for fun, I’m trying something new: live blogging. For the rest of the night, I’m just going to be watching anime and blogging my thoughts on them—one at a time. That rounds out to something like an update every 30 minutes. Strap in—it’s gonna be a fun ride (I hope…)!

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