Hello Ikebukuro, my old friend.
There’s a flipping mountain of sequels and carryovers this season, so I won’t spend a ton of time on them all, but I did want to touch base with the shows that came back, and let everyone know what I will and won’t be watching (at least for the time being – if the new winter shows prove disappointing, it’s not impossible that I’ll finally get around to trying out Log Horizon or Fafner, but I wouldn’t put any bets on it).
Familiar faces below the jump!
So scratch my last comment about there being no “middle-of-the-road” series this season.
Because this season is so heavy on sequels and carryovers, we’re actually pretty close to the end of the (licensed) new premieres, and I was finding myself with a lot of shows that were pretty much locks and very few that were hanging out in limbo. I’d still say that’s mostly true, but we do have one hard “maybe” this time around, worthy of a meet ‘n’ greet but definitely a series I’ll be playing by ear in the coming weeks. Past that there’s a big N-O and much smaller one, as we quietly close the curtain on the first week of the winter season.
Now that’s more like it!
This season is shaping up to have very little in the middle-of-the-pack range, as it seems that I either like a premiere a whole lot or pretty much hate it, with very little middle ground. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you: It makes it easier to know what to keep and what to drop, without having to give a bunch of series 2-3 episode trials run beforehand.
The good news is that this batch has a pair of premieres I really enjoyed, which is about the only thing they share – well, that and their own unique sense of style, I suppose. They’re a breath of fresh air from all the cookie-cutter series out there, and I can’t wait to tell you all about ‘em.
Well, one of out of four ain’t… okay, actually, yeah. It’s pretty bad.
I’m watching Death Parade as soon as I add this post to my queue because I suspect (hope!) it will warrant a full meet ‘n’ greet, too, but since that first day of Magical Boy and Bear excitement, the trickle of new winter shows has been pretty uninspiring. Fortunately we’ve got some good sequels and carryovers, or I’d be getting downright depressed.
In this post, we’ve got one ball of strangeness with some potential to at least be pretty fun (and possibly more than that), and past that a whole bunch of generic, fanservice-y bores. But let’s start with the potential, so we don’t all feel too depressed going into our weekend.
In which it turns out that some episodes are even sadder the more times you watch them.
Click here for an explanation of the watch party, and an invitation to chime in with your own thoughts (Tumblr tag: #Utena Watch Party).
For Returning Viewers, Vrai’s episode analysis is here for your reading pleasure:
And my own newbie-friendly commentary is below the jump.
Panning the anime stream to bring you the year’s shiniest gold nuggets.
Did you miss out on Part 1? Fear not! You can click here for the year in review and the bottom half of the Top 10, including honorable mention(s). Or, if you’re ready to check out the cream of the crop, you can hit that jump and read on for more.
As a reminder, all shows that ended in 2014 are eligible for this list, including sequels, even if they began their run in 2013 or earlier. Ongoing series (like Parasyte or Aldnoah.Zero) will be eligible in 2015.
So here we go, my picks for the best shows of the year! Drums rolled? Fingers crossed? Angry comments about the series I didn’t include typed and at the ready? Perfect. Let’s do this thing.
Because no anime blog is complete without a proper Top 10 list.
I’ve seen some people calling this a weak year for anime, but I’m not sure it’s that so much as it’s just a very top-heavy year—the upper tier was a massive cut above the pack, making the rest of the shows seem a little lackluster in comparison. It also featured some disappointing adaptations and originals, and any time you get excited for a series and it doesn’t live up to those expectations, it can make the whole year feel weaker. Fortunately, off-the-radar “sleeper” series had a very good year, particularly when it came to comedies and sports shows, and a few strong sequels and long-running series helped give 2014 a much-needed boost in terms of quality.
It’s a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey kind of day in the Mooniverse.
Okay, so I take back my earlier rant about how we’d have to wait 20 episodes to find out what’s going on with Chibiusa. The creative team didn’t string us along for very long at all, and we pretty much have all the gaps filled in at this point. Now all that’s left is for Usagi to take down the baddies, save the future, and rescue the Queen. Who is, um… herself. This probably won’t cause any gaping rifts in the space-time continuum. Probably.
But first: Dinosaurs?
Fall is at an end, but that doesn’t mean its best shows have to be.
We saw two forms of storytelling make a welcome comeback this season: The high fantasy and (perhaps even more importantly) the long-form anime series. As anyone who’s been watching simulcast anime over the past few years will know, one-cour shows have become the norm, and anything longer a happy exception. This season, though, a whopping nine of the 13 shows on my watchlist ran longer than that, and seven of them will be continuing into the coming seasons. So there are a ton of “midseries” reviews in this bunch – and hey, what better time to catch up on some great shows than over the holiday break?
Overall it wasn’t the best of anime seasons, full of shows that fluctuated dramatically in tone and quality (Fate/stay night, Gugure! Kokkuri-san, Your Lie in April), one that shot itself in the foot (Yuki Yuna is a Hero), and a few that suffered to varying degrees from not getting more episodes to tell their extensive stories (Rage of Bahamut, Laughing Under the Clouds). But hey, no season with Mushishi will ever be a total failure, and there were two incredibly consistent, solid, just good old-fashioned well-told stories to round out the Top Three. So let’s focus on those first, starting with one of the great masterpieces of anime, back for its (sniffle) final round of episodes.
In which everyone gets trolled, even the elevator.
Click here for an explanation of the watch party, and an invitation to chime in with your own thoughts (Tumblr tag: #Utena Watch Party).
For Returning Viewers, Vrai’s episode analysis is here for your reading pleasure:
And my own newbie-friendly commentary is below the jump.
The Josei Next Door 