“Valar Dohaeris” The longest off-season in television – at least it feels like it – is finally over. With the premiere of Season 3 of Game of Thrones came the interesting tidbit that GoT is the most illegally downloaded series ever. That’s fascinating in its own right, but I especially […] Read more
This is just between us, but that was a great finale to a great season. It seems fitting that the two best comedies airing this season should end with a full cast O-hanami – it’s hard to overstate just how much this annual ritual means to the Japanese. This finale […] Read more
It seems to me that we’ve had an unusual number of girls with eyepatches in anime lately… I think in terms strictly of narrative execution, this may very well be the best episode of Little Busters! to date. As a self-contained story with internal drama and humor, it worked pretty […] Read more
The hits just keep on coming – in every way. You and I have met here before, Dear Reader, and danced this dance. Incredible suspense, spectacular character modeling and combat animation, perfect pacing – blah, blah, blah. But my not saying it again wouldn’t make it any less true. Madhouse […] Read more
Space Brothers says farewell to Winter – and its morning time-slot – with a satisfying conclusion to the Nitta arc. I think the groundwork of this episode had been laid out to the point where there were never likely to be many surprises. We’re in very familiar territory here – […] Read more
I was a guest at Australian anime distributor Siren Visual’s podcast this month – it’s online at the Capsule Computers website, check it out! Read more
Hey, I can’t help myself – they’re pretty. Two more rounds of cherry blossom shots. The daytime ones are from Shinjuku Gyoen, a large former Imperial garden just steps away from the madness of central Shinjuku. It was a drizzly and overcast day, which never lends itself to getting good […] Read more
It’s not hard to see a pretty big difference between Kanto’s two rival anime industry conventions. This was my first visit to Anime Contents Expo – it’s only the second that’s ever been held – so I didn’t really know what to expect. As I mentioned in my TAF post, […] Read more
OK, I confess I’m starting to get a little worried. A couple of weeks ago someone might have joked about this entire season taking place at Omi Jingu with the national high school championships, and I would have gotten a good laugh about it. But now I’m not so sure. […] Read more
At the rate things are going, this season is in danger of doing a little damage to anime’s reputation for utterly crap endings. I’ve seen it remarked that it’s sad how underappreciated Zetsuen no Tempest has been, and how quickly it’s going to be forgotten. I certainly don’t disagree with […] Read more