Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy(?) new year

2014 already? My gosh. Before I get into the personal crap, please take a gander and enjoy the new category up top, Studio Profiles. Also I bought myself the Utena movie and a Samurai Champloo DVD for cheap. Good stuff.



LOWS

Monday, December 30, 2013

Winter Anime 2014 Genius Compendium

The Winter Anime Season Has Arrived. This Pretty Much Means Me Ranking A Ton Of New Anime And Pretty Much Being Dead Wrong By The Time February Rolls Around. Let's Get This Started!



Now, for those of you who don't know how my Compendiums work, it's simple: I only rank all of the new TV anime that's making their debut this Winter. No Sequels (*looks at Silver Spoon and Chuu2Koi2*). No already existing franchises, or I guess long running franchises (*Looks at Saki, Seitokai Yakuindomo*). No Shorts (*looks at Pupipo, Strange +*). And of course, no films or OVAs. It just makes everything easy for me/I get to shine all the new faces in anime. For better or for worse. So, you get how things work? Then I better get started!

Advanced Dungeons and 2014 Winter Season Preview

I miss snow.



Belated Edit:

Day Three Hundred and Sixty-three

Samurai Champloo was an intriguing experiment. I mentioned, way back when I , that it was a tremendously good mix of style, music, and action... and its English dub was fairly superior to most other anime. That recommendation still holds most of its water, I think, though it's a little shaky this time around.



I say that because this particular episode, Bogus Booty, has a sing-song intro that doesn't translate well in the English dub. The style that they try and emulate from the original just can't be done with our sentence structure and pronunciation, so it ends up being a somewhat sad and definitely pale imitation. Luckily, it's only the first minute or so of the episode, so its quickly dismissed, but I can see where someone just randomly coming to it might be turned off from the whole thing. Not high odds that it would happen that way as Bogus Booty is the fifteenth episode of the series, but it might happen.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Winter 2013/4 Season Expectations and Write-ups

A new season is coming up, so once more I look at the incoming listing of pain and suffer anime and choose what to watch next. The list will cover how likely and what form of write-up I'll give each show, and how interested I am in it currently. I mostly went by random internet chatter, , and the , I don't really watch previews, which bit me in the ass with NouCome/Yuushibu last season, so let's hope we don't get a repeat this season.



I'll give my current opinion on the shows that carry over. Show-names with a strike-through means I don't plan to pick the show up, but wanted to discuss it. Interest scale is out of 3 stars.

Friday, December 27, 2013

12 Days of Anime Day 12: Ayakashi (Japanese Classic Horror) and Mononoke

This post is part of theproject over atthat also doubles as the last 12 Days of Anime post.



First off, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and that the holidays have been good to you so far :).

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

12 Days of Anime #2

Tomorrow I'm going to post the anime moment that had left the deepest impression upon me this past year. I've already written of 10 moments, but here are nine more moments that I thought merited a paragraph each, of an exciting, impactful or "other" moment in my anime-related life from the past year. Why nine? Because tomorrow is the tenth, the big one (Order of following moments is arbitrary).

Moments will be included for: Sword Art Online, Samurai Champloo, Oreimo, Little Witch Academia, Suisei no Gargantia, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, Valvrave the Liberator, ToraDora!, and Kyoukai no Kanata.


The Midseason is Almost Here

It used to be that the start of the TV midseason in January was for the premieres of the second-stringers, new shows that weren't good enough to premiere in the fall, and the return of existing ones that were solid but unspectacular performers. A few familiar titles might be held back to plug in expected holes in a network's schedule, and a few shows might be switched to different time slots, but there was nothing really big to look forward to.



Well, cable content changed all that with its vastly different year-round scheduling, and the rise of foreign television and the web-content have only made the change more pronounced. Now there's a lot of new television to look forward to each January, and this year looks like it's going to get off to a big start. Lots of new shows and lots of returing ones will hit the airwaves soon, giving February's Sochi Winter Olympics some serious competition for eyeballs. Here's a quick rundown of some of the most anticipated shows coming (back) our way.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Serial expermental Lain and Michiko to Hatchin

During Thanksgiving i did promise that i was going to rewatch Lain because i did plan to review it.I watched it. I watch the Sub, I didn't watch it dub this time.Well I went in it thinking that it will give me the same philosophical impact that it did when i first watch the dub when i was 13 years old which it did but, somehow this time it left a void. A unexpected void that took me kinda two to three days to get over.Lain takes places in the future or the distance future butthe whole center around Lain is internet. When i first saw Lain it was when there was STILL a G4 and when G4 still showed anime. I usuallywould stay up late to watch it.Once it did in when i first saw it it left this Philosophical empact in me at the time that it stayed with me for fuck a decade. For this to be a show made back when the Cyber punk era was phasing out(1998-2005) in anime most of the dialog in this show is still paramount even today. "No matter where you go..Everyone is connected" from lain of the wired in episode 2 and when you think about it now. With all these smart phones, computers, apps, ect its like no mater where you go you are always connected.



Please for the love of god watch this show! you will know what i mean. I mean you might have a different view from me but please check this show out. To me this was Yoshitoshi ABe top work.

#27: ENDINGS

Endings are the hardest.



Some of my favorite endings are the ones that end in happy endings. Very cliche, I know, but it's just knowing that everything is going to be okay for these characters that I have attached myself to. Of the pieces we read in class, I think Purple Hibiscus had a decent ending. The person who had been causing all of the problems that the main characters faced was out of the picture, Kambili had grown into a mature young woman, and Jaja was going to be getting out of prison. All in all, it is a pretty good ending for the all the characters I liked, except for Aunty Ifeoma and her family who were rather unhappy in America. However, there was too much uncertainty in that ending for it to be perfect; moreover, I would have liked to have seen Jaja actually leave the prison with his family that day. There was too much that could happen in between where the book left off and until Jaja got out of prison; he could have been shanked in his sleep or died from starvation. I would have liked to know how that ended.

Winter 2014 Anime Preview

Hey all, it's season preview time again - doesn't time fly!?Anyway this upcoming Winter season is surprisingly decent looking, which is a good thing since it's cold and I don't want to go outside.These days it feels like the quality shows are being more evenly spread out over the year, rather than being clustered into the Spring & Autumn seasons - those seasons are still bigger, but Summer & Winter are definitely much more packed now than they were in the past.Hopefully the trend continues!



Right on to the preview then~!

Top 100 Characters in Anime

It's about that time.As you all know I am an anime fanatic.I think anime expresses some of the most creative and innovative characters and stories that can be overly exaggerated at times but highly entertaining.It is only natural that I find characters whom I find interesting.



This is my list of a hundred characters in anime.Note: this list will not reflect completely from my top ten of a certain anime and that this list will not be in any specific order.This list may be updated, changed, or add to in the future.

Top 100 Characters in Anime

It's about that time.As you all know I am an anime fanatic.I think anime expresses some of the most creative and innovative characters and stories that can be overly exaggerated at times but highly entertaining.It is only natural that I find characters whom I find interesting.



This is my list of a hundred characters in anime.Note: this list will not reflect completely from my top ten of a certain anime and that this list will not be in any specific order.This list may be updated, changed, or add to in the future.

Blast Off into 2014 at the Same Time as Japan with Space Dandy on Animax Asia

Animax, Asia's first channel specializing in anime programming, is set to usher in 2014 with the brand new blockbuster anime TV series Space Dandy in January! As Animax's latest simulcast title, the fun, tongue-in-cheek and over-the-top show will debut across Asia as it airs in Japan!



Space Dandy is set to premiere on 5 January, airing on Sundays at 10pm (SG, MY, HK, PH, TW) / 9pm (JKT, TH) in a same-time-as-Japan simulcast, first and exclusively on Animax. In addition, Space Dandy will debut in India on the same day, at local primetime 10pm (IST) also on Animax.