Winter 2010 Anime Season Preview

With Japans aging society and falling birthrate they’re going to start making more anime for senior citizens

This grim prediction was made by Gintama and this season proves it. OK, maybe not. But enough of that, welcome to Bokutachi no Blog’s season preview! Since Bokutachi is a proper team blog again, I’m  joined by my fellow writers. Yup, all 4 of the other writers have joined me to share their thoughts on the relatively small selection of anime airing next season. Now sit back and relax while you scroll through our lengthy preview and enjoy. And you better enjoy it. It took a bloody long time to make.

The info on here was taken from a load of places, including but not limited to ANN, MAL, Moetron, Chartfag’s amazing chart, Mangafox, Animesuki forums and a load of other places I can’t remember. Also a lot of info was taken from each respective anime’s website. If you click on the title of each anime it will take you to their website.

I completely encourage anyone to link this preview on a forum or wherever but for gods sake do NOT copy and paste the entire thing onto a forum or your own website. I swear, this happens more often than you might think.

I’m in your blog, talking about Honey and Clover

Using my l33t hacking skills, I have worked my way into THAT Anime Blog and started to deface their blog by rambling on about Honey and Clover. OK, not strictly true. I was invited by one of the authors to join him in a joint, ani-blogging project to discuss our alternate opinions on this widely praised Josei series. Though I’m a bit disappointed you can’t see some of the behind the scenes discussion what occurred while writing the post. Honey and Clover to PlantetES to Code Geass to the IRA to punk rock to Darfur to Kannagi and so on. I’ve turned off comments on this post in order to encourage you to go comment on the post in question over on THAT instead.

Two non-Japanese animation shorts: Because we all love animation here

One thing you eventually develop from watching mountains of Japanese anime is an eye for eye-catching animation, no matter what the origin or style. Before you may have known that one piece of animation looks better than another but with years of training the eye to recognise quality animation you can now pick out what makes a certain piece of animation so great. I’m not saying that we are all turning into animation gurus but it’s the same principle that applies to spotting young talent on football. While we may not all be scouts for football clubs, anyone who had watched any amount of soccer could spot the great talent that lay in players like Lionel Messi, Cesc Fabregas and Wayne Rooney when they first strode onto the pitch as raw 16 year olds. That overly long introductory paragraph is simply there to introduce you to two wonderful animation shorts. I went on a bit of an animation short binge recently and these two were the cream of the crop. The first is a Bafta winning Polish short called ‘Falling Art’ and the second is one of those Pixar shorts called ‘Lifted’. One about moving up, the other about moving down. Neither have any speaking in them and tell their story through their actions (Fallen Art) or through their facial expressions (Lifted). Trust me when I say these are the best. I watched a lot of stupid artsy ones that made no attempt to make any sense.

Asura Cryin’ Season 2 Ep 6

Unfortunately, time has become a big factor in my study life now. And studying is about all I do for life these days so as you can see time becomes even shorter, *sob*. I’m ok though, in case any of you cared, (probably not). But with that, I would like all of you who read and follow my weekly review of Asura Cryin’ Season 2 to please leave me a comment letting me know that you follow. I don’t want to sound bossy and I don’t want to force anyone, but I’m just saying that if I get no manifestations then I will have to stop reviewing this anime.

"Mona Lisa" got NOTHIN on this chick!

 

And if there’s even one person, then I promise that I will keep giving my best reviews for Asura Cryin’.

Nyan Koi Episode 5

Maybe I’m pushing it too far, but this show is by far one of the funniest I’ve ever seen. Some people recommended me to watch FLCL some time ago, but I still haven’t finished watching it only because it didn’t exactly catch my attention. But Nyan Koi did. OK, maybe I’m a sucker for these non-original comedies with super funny and sexy characters, but I do prefer to watch something with a good story-line such as DTB. So just keep in mind that even though I have expectations for this show my standard for quality is still high.

This is not a season preview, this is just a rant

Chartfags amazing chart came out the other day as I’m sure most of you know by now. My thoughts while looking at it were ’quality over quantity’, which is totally the opposite approach to the current season. Instead of the usual sequel laden nonsense that often appears, we have a season full of original ideas and recognised talents taken the helm. And yet, as fucking usual, we get everyone saying ‘god this looks crap, all moe-fanservice rubbish’. Now there is nothing in anime fandom I hate more than oldfags complaining that everything was better back in the good old days. This proclaiming that the latest season is rubbish is just a tangent from this thought-process. This year will obviously be crap because it’s further away from those years when I was wearing rose-tinted specs. So now, for your convenience and viewing pleasure, I’m going to explain why this upcoming season is not a failure. I stress, this is not a season preview. That will come at the end of this month. This is an angry Irish otaku person who likes anime. Enjoy.