Top Winter 2015 Anime: Final Ratings

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015iblessall 51 Comments

It was a good season of anime. I realize I’m closing the season on a pretty small selection of shows and that a number of those shows are leftovers from the Fall 2014 season, but even so…this was a good season of anime. I don’t actually know what more to say beyond that. It was good, I really enjoyed it and felt blessed to be watching what I was watching quite a lot, and I’m sad many of these shows are over. And that’s that. Here are the best anime of Winter 2015. Are you ready, Koharu-chan?

[Management: I’ve decided to rename the “Best Animation” category the “Best Visual Aesthetic” category. The idea here is to condense character designs, background art, and general visual appearance into a single category. I’m not really qualified at this point to discuss the actual technical merits of animation, but I can at least tell you what I thought looked good. Additionally, the caption awards have morphed into something a bit different than “the was the best action” show; rather, they’re now more along the lines of “this show had the best romance/action/etc.”]

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Your Lie in April Review

March 20, 2015March 24, 2015iblessall 12 Comments

1+1=2, but you don’t have much of an equation if the plus sign is missing and you certainly can’t get to a sum greater than the two addends that way. So it is with Your Lie in April [A-1 Pictures, 2014-2015], without question the most persistently frustrating, yet fascinating, show I have ever watched. Equally capable of presenting an etheral, emotional episode or an outright maddening one, KimiUso (an abbreviation for the show’s Japanese title, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso) is a show of brilliant gems sadly lacking the links necessary to completely finish the equation. But, in the final review, those jewels are still worth something on their own, even if their settings can’t quite match their brilliance. So, my final verdict for Your Lie in April is a 7/10 (Ongoing Rankings). Continue reading →

Your Lie in April, Episode 22 [End]

March 19, 2015March 19, 2015iblessall 26 Comments

Well, it’s been one heck of a wild, emotional, sometimes frustrating ride, but we’ve come to the end of Your Lie in April. Somethings have ended, but others stretch out for as long as we remember them. It took this episode a few minutes to get going, but when it kicked into high gear, it really kicked into high gear. As expected, the aesthetics truly took charge in this episode and, even if there was a little more digital work than I would’ve liked, the end results was something pretty special. So, now it’s time for one last look at Your Lie in April.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 21

March 12, 2015March 12, 2015iblessall 11 Comments

There were too many small visual details going on here for me to go with my normal essay format, so it’s time-stamps this week! As far as KimiUso episodes go, this one was pretty darn good, although I preferred the first half to the second half. Still, it’s nice to see everyone that’s shown up along Kousei’s journey—Nagi, Takeshi, Emi, Watari, Tsubaki—get small moments as we plunge towards the finale of this adventure.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 20

March 5, 2015iblessall 6 Comments

Man, we are just racing through things at this point—and with only two episodes, for good reason. We have to deal with the fallout of Tsubaki’s confession, confront Kaori’s impending death, and get in one more concert for Kousei before we’re done. And, frankly, that’s like the minimum of what KimiUso needs to accomplish. Let me just say that I do not envy the task of whoever’s writing this thing.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 19

February 26, 2015iblessall 10 Comments

Well, at this point you can pretty much safely assume that my issues with any given episode of KimiUso are the same ones I’ve had with past episodes. It’s certainly true this week, as I still don’t feel like the disparate stories we’re getting with Kaori, Tsubaki, and Takeshi really have anything to do with each other. Sure, they’re all connected to Kousei, but most of the time I feel like these scenes exist in entirely different worlds from each other. But whatever. I’ve spent enough time ranting about KimiUso‘s issues in past weeks. I’ll try not to do it again here.

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Winter 2015 Midseason Report (Week 7)

February 25, 2015February 25, 2015iblessall 16 Comments

But iblessall, you’re a week late! Hush, hush, I can do my midseason report whenever I feel like it! Also, shows are all over the place in terms of episode count this season, so this is as good a time as any (plus 13 doesn’t divide in half evenly anyways). Anyways, there are the anime I’m watching and what I think about them so far. Scores are a projected range for the final score of the show.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 18

February 19, 2015iblessall 6 Comments

And so concludes Nagi’s arc—complete with some truly touching revelations for her and her brother. To be entirely honest, I feel somewhat vindicated by the excellence of the emotional poignancy of the performance. I’ve been claiming all along that KimiUso is best when focused in on a single story, not splitting its attention in cursory reviews of each of its major characters. The stories still feel oddly disconnected from each other to me (Tsubaki at this particular performance is a great example), but everything we got from Nagi this episode was wonderful.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 17

February 12, 2015iblessall 6 Comments

Yup, so that’s it. It’s finally confirmed (shocking…truth…) that Kaori doesn’t have much time before she dies. Yet, in true KimiUso fashion, we get a few really great scenes dealing with this new reality and then we breeze on back to the tried-and-~~true~~ nope still bad tonal whiplash techniques that we’ve been dealing with for 17 whole episodes. Frankly, I have to admire how consistently frustrating this show is to watch as it insists on horrid juxtapositions of great scenes and bad ones. Such is the KimiUso way.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 16

February 5, 2015iblessall 14 Comments

If you’ve come this far with Your Lie in April, now might be your last chance to turn back. That’s the feeling I get. We’re standing on the edge of the precipice of the deepest valley this show has yet looked into and, well, it looks to be pretty dark there at the bottom. And I’m really not just talking about Kaori’s frightening final line of the episode, but about the whole direction of the show.

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