Carrie came closest to guessing my 2013 Top 10, so congrats Carrie – here’s your prize! Carrie asked for a haiku on the general topic of what makes anime great, which stymied me for quite a while – even before this awful week of premieres played out. “Ganbare!” Yeah, this […] Read more
Turns out all series set in agricultural high schools are not created equal. The worst first week of any anime season since I’ve been a fan is winding down, and we can scratch another series off the list of possibilities to really impress. Truthfully I never expected Nourin to be […] Read more
Oh, well. No reason not to hope for a miracle right up to the last moment, but this isn’t working any better for me than it was the last few weeks, so I’m out. No need to rehash all the reasons why, as I’ve made them pretty plain by now […] Read more
Time heals all wounds, so the old saying goes. I only wish that were true. OP2: “The♡World’s♡End” by Yui Horie Two weeks ago I said that the long winter’s break with Golden Time was indeed a golden time for me – I needed a chance to refresh myself with this […] Read more
Some things never change. And thank goodness for that. OP: “Life” by Fujifabric I’ll be honest, that premiere came just in the nick of time. There have been some good moments among the first episodes, but so far no new series has been as good as several of the carry-overs […] Read more
In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld, this is going to be a shame. Pupa – 01 I can’t imagine this is what Mochzuki Tomomi had in mind when he signed on to direct Pupa for DEEN. We’re talking about one of the most respected directors in anime, doing what […] Read more
The oddest series of the season enters the fray… OP: “Jigoku no Sata mo Kimi Shidai (地獄の沙汰も君次第)” by Jigoku no Sata All Stars I had very high hopes for this series going in, for a number of reasons. It’s a seinen, the director has a very solid track record (Tonari […] Read more
Somewhere deep beneath the sea she sleeps, even now… OP2: “ebb and flow” by Ray Or Nagi no Asukara II – 01, if you prefer. Well, the timeskip I’ve been dreading has happened, and the game has officially been changed by Okada-sensei. We’ll see how it goes, but my first […] Read more
Whether it was necessary or not, the second season of Chuunibyou arrives with the same broadside that ushered in the first. I liked 2012’s Chunibyou pretty well – better than thought I would at the mid-point, anyway. It didn’t hit my Top 20 for the year, but it didn’t miss […] Read more
I won’t lie, this show erected some formidable hurdles for itself in the first five minutes. That I didn’t hate the first episode of Mikakunin de Shinkoukei probably speaks to the fact that it’s pretty good at what it does as much as anything could. When you have both an […] Read more