12 Days of Anime (2015) – Day 2 – Speaking with Hiromi Katou, Character Design for Needless, at Sakuracon

Hiromi Katou is a gifted and experienced talent, having a successful career in the anime industry through a variety of roles. Among his notable accomplishments, he was the character designs for Guilty Crown, Kobato., and Hakkenden, the animation directors for Beck, Gunslinger Stratos, and Fantasia Doll, and a key animator for Death Note, Azumanga Daioh, Shingeki no Kyojin, and many more. However, his most distinguished achievement, to me at least, is that he was the character design for Needless, which you might guess from previous posts is my favorite anime. I was extremely fortunate that Hiromi Katou was invited as a guest for Sakuracon this year and made sure to visit his Q&A panel, so that I could ask him some questions regarding Needless. So, for Day 2 of my 12 Days of Anime, I’ll recall my time with Hiromi Katou and the answers he provided about his experience with Needless.

Summer 2014 – Season Preview

The Summer 2014 anime season is already upon us! With no time to spare due to all the thrilling and sensational anime that are already out or going to air soon, this Summer 2014 Season Preview will provide a glimpse of what I have planned for the season and some of my initial expectations for all the new shows and sequels this season. So what exactly am I looking forward to the most for the next three months? Let’s find out!

Winter 2012 – Season Review

Despite being months overdue and embarrassingly late, the review for the Winter 2012 anime season is at long last completed.  Though these anime have long since concluded and become a fragment of our cherished memories, there should be closure for these shows and that’s what this comprehensive review hopes to accomplish.  Come, let’s take a moment to reexamine, reanalyze, and reflect on the anime that composed the first anime season of 2012.

Guilty Crown – 22 (Finale)

Guilty Crown was a catastrophe.  From its clichéd and generic origins to its illogical, unsatisfying, and mismanaged conclusion, Guilty Crown was an anime without a structured plot, a direction in which to explore, or a team capable of saving it from its numerous faults.  What began as an uninspired and derivative work ended here in headache and disappointment.  That is Guilty Crown.  And yet, despite all that, I watched the entire anime.  Despite frequent storytelling confusion, irrational actions by its characters, poorly explained details, and countless other gaffes, I watched Guilty Crown in its entirely and actually enjoyed most of the series.  Rather than continue to berate the beleaguered anime in its last post, let’s recall for what reasons I watched this anime.

50 Questions for Avvesione

Now that I’ve arrived back home from Japan, I can resume blogging about random tangential posts on the various anime I watch.  But before we dive into the finales for Nisemonogatari, Guilty Crown, and Last Exile: Ginyoku no Fam is a post I intended to have published while I was on vacation but it wasn’t completed in time and left for when I returned.  Starting the trend of answering 50 questions was AceRailgun (I recommend you check out his blog) and quite a number of other anime bloggers have already done similar posts since.  I meant to have this up weeks ago but it kept getting delayed and was never completed until now.  So here are my answers to the 50 questions!

Guilty Crown – 21

Seeing as Guilty Crown will reach its grand finale in the next episode, this is about the last time I can bring up a subject that has been present throughout Guilty Crown and irritated me throughout, too.  The constant biological theme in Guilty Crown, from naming conventions to story points, has been employed to link the magic of voids to real world concepts.  The problem here is that they’re using biological terms and ideas to explain plot holes and do so in an elegant way or use nomenclature in a nonsensical way.  Though I can understand how someone may be fine with such usage, especially in a story such as this, it feels like its bastardizing a science that is significant to me.

Guilty Crown – 20

Episodes like these always provide a ton of information for the viewer.  Not only did we start from the beginning of the story with the discovery of the Apocalypse Virus and the events that initiated Lost Christmas and the current setting of the series but we also learned more about prominent characters, their relationships, and they are the way they are now.  But it doesn’t stop there.  The knowledge gained from episodes like these, ones that are primarily flashbacks brimming with facts and developments, is that we can apply this information to areas there weren’t covered to answer questions the anime never directly answered.  Episodes like these are always some of my favorites since they’re intently focused on doing what’s right in storytelling.