Winter 2016 – First Impressions (Part 2)

This post reviews: Tabi Machi Late Show, Koukaku no Pandora, Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, Dagashi Kashi, Bubuki Buranki, and Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R.

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12 Days of Anime (2015) – Day 3 – Favorite Openings and Endings of 2015

Every year, I recall my favorite anime openings and endings in my Final Review, selecting my very favorites from each of the four Season Reviews that settle at the end of each season. But, seeing as I haven’t published a Season Review since 2013 and given that there is no other time to document my favorite OPs/EDs of the year, I have reserved Day 3 of my 12 Days of Anime for 2015 for this lacking quality of mine. Of course, I won’t reveal my favorite OP and ED of the year just yet (that will be reserved for the Final Review of 2015), but here are some of my favorites that I would love to share with you. Now, please enjoy 8 of my Top 10 Openings and Endings for 2015.

12 Days of Anime (2015) – Day 11 – D’Arby the Gambler

I first stumbled across JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure many, many years ago, in the mid-2000s, when I kept coming across references to Jotaro, Dio, and Stardust Crusaders around the internet. At the time, I did limited research into the series, but quickly discovered the appeal and charm of the franchise. It was at that time that I watched bits and pieces of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA (1993), including what became my favorite moment in the series thus far: the “fight” with D’Arby the Gambler.

12 Days of Anime (2015) – Day 12 – Watching “Uncensored” Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works

**Warning: spoilers below**

Although I wasn’t able to spend much time at this year’s Sakura-Con, I am grateful that I was able to attend the Pacific Northwest’s largest anime convention for my fourth consecutive year. One of my lasting memories from this convention, as well as for 2015 as a whole, was watching the first three episodes of the second half of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (TV) before it even premiered in Japan. How awesome is that, getting to watch three episodes of one of the best anime of the year before anyone else? But… that’s not exactly the point of this post. Instead, one scene in particular from the fifteenth episode of FSN: UBW really stunned me… and it stunned me again when I realized it was omitted from TV broadcasts in Japan three weeks later. In fact, the event that’s reserved for the beginning of my 12 Days of Anime for 2015 is a rather strange tale of censorship, and of how the most emotional scene, to me, in all of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works went unseen to a majority of its anime fans.

Spring 2015 – Week 5 Anime Review

Back during Week 5: the indecisiveness of Plastic Memories and why it doesn’t know what it wants to be as an anime, how changing the powers in Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo changes the series dynamic, background characters beginning to differentiate themselves in Hibike! Euphonium, and cute girls being immune to still-image “animation” in Ninja Slayer from Animation.

Winter 2015 – First Impressions (Part 2)

This post reviews: Death Parade, The iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls, Assassination Classroom, The Rolling Girls, Soukyuu no Fafner – Dead Aggressor: Exodus, and Yoru no Yatterman.

12 Days of Anime (2014) – Day 9 – Nagi no Asukara’s Timeskip

Timeskips are among my favorite narrative devices in anime. In fact, if I were ever to write an anime myself, I’d definitely have a timeskip in there somewhere. Hell, maybe even two. Timeskips are a brilliant means to advance a continuous story between two periods of time, allowing the plot or characters or setting to transform radically without showing the unrelated events in-between. And that’s exactly what happened in Nagi no Asukara. At the midpoint in the anime, following a climax at the end of the Autumn 2013 season, Nagi no Asukara experienced a timeskip where everything changed. The characters, setting, and plot were all different between the first-half and second-half of Nagi no Asukara. However, there is one significant detail about this unique timeskip that makes it one of my most favorite timeskips ever.