This finale was neither spectacular or especially emotional, but it succeeds in terms of the modest expectations it laid out for itself. I don’t think there’s any question Uchouten Kazoku is one of the finest anime of 2013, and when I consider the Fall season it clearly belongs in the […] Read more
This finale left pretty much everything hanging, but one thing I can say for certain: for a change, this is an anime on my watching list for which a second season isn’t remotely in doubt. One of the complaints I heard about Attack on Titan before this series even started […] Read more
Of all the 2013 series that end up on my year-end Top 10 list, it’s very possible that Watamote will be the one I least expected to find there. It’s not an exaggeration to say that shows like Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dou Kangaete mo Omaera ga Warui! (I […] Read more
Kaminai was true to itself to the very end, for better or worse – and gave us a finale that had a whole lot of both. I guess it’s fitting for a series that had a dead-ringer (pun intended) for a finale after three episodes to have an actual finale […] Read more
There can be many reasons why a series is difficult to talk about, but sometimes it just boils down to the fact that it’s so good at speaking for itself. Gin no Saji is a lot of things, but one of them, certainly, is a testament to one of the […] Read more
That ending was definitely a pain-in-the-ass dumpling. It feels strange to be writing a series review after an episode 10 – definitely a first for me – not to mention doing one on the 9th of September. I’m certainly conflicted because while this was yet another excellent episode, it ended […] Read more
“Barrage” This is certainly uncharted territory for Mori Kaoru in Otoyomegatari, and maybe ever. Our sweet little domestic period piece has become an action thriller, and in far more serious terms than the little skirmish when Amir’s family came to wrest her back from her child groom. We knew this […] Read more
“My Rose-Colored Life/For You” “There were two children. One of them wanted to be a boy. One of them wanted to be a girl. One of them stopped wanting to be a boy. That’s all there is to it.” Since Takako-sensei has chosen to sum up Hourou Musuko herself in […] Read more
Well, that was a shame, really. It’s hard to find too much to say about Arata Kangatari, really, because the whole enterprise speaks more to the potential it left untapped than to anything that appeared on screen. The finale, like the rest of the series, was perfectly fine for what […] Read more
Chalk this one up as another ending that wasn’t. I’ll always have a real affection for Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, because it was the first series that really went at Ishihara Shintaro head on, and the only one that’s savaged him the way he deserves to be savaged. That episode in the […] Read more