12 Moments in Anime #10: A screenshot tells a thousand words

It’s a cliché phrase I know. But sometimes all you need is a picture, possibly toss in a caption for good measure. So this moment in anime is this awesome scene from Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood episode 19, the single greatest scene of the year.

I SEALED IT WITH FIRE!!!

November Roundup

I thought that this would be the year that everyone remembers as the year Crunchyroll got their hands on about half of the anime airing. But Crunchyroll appears to have a far less impression on the anime world than I originally thought they would. Is it because of the rather suspect quality of their streams and subtitles? As a subscriber myself I can certainly vouch for some very dodgy work on Book of Bantorra. Is it because they could only get their hands on the lower-quality anime airing? If you go to the tag cloud on Animenano, how many of the bigger tags are on Crunchyroll? Or is it because anime fans really are the biggest bunch of cheap-ass dickheads that the ANNfags claim they are? Ah well, at least Crunchyroll have Gintama and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Source for Gintama image

October Roundup

There’s no way around a the fact that this season is just not very good. Thankfully we have plenty of anime still continuing on, and in the case of Cross Game and Umineko, two anime that are not only continuing on but also improving dramatically. The thing is, even with all these anime I’ve been dropping, I still haven’t had time to get back to Gintama. I watched the Jump Festa OVA, which is fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s wondering if they should start watching Gintama, so I’ve really got to get back into it ASAP. I’m about 100 episodes behind at this stage.

A note about my ratings: The rating that’s given is a reflection of how that anime has performed this month alone. For example, while Hetalia is a better anime than  Umineko overall, this month of Umineko has been better than Hetalia.

Those moments that remind you exactly why you love anime

In my last post I talked about the rather depressing side of anime with not being afraid to drop series. So now I’m going to talk about the greatest moments I’ve experienced while watching anime. Sometimes it’s just a single scene combined with your own over-the-top reaction to it. Sometimes it’s because you’ve just watched an episode so perfect you couldn’t imagine that you’d ever watch anything as good as that ever again. Or sometimes it’s something on a more personal level. I’m sure you have those moments and I dare say you can probably already pick a few off the top of your own head. So for now, I’m going to list out my top 10 moments that reminded me exactly why I love anime so much.

Since I cut it down to 10, theres a few I left out. The delight while re-watching Cromartie to realise that’s it’s exactly as funny as a remembered it to be. Those weird dreams I would have after watching Haibane Remnei. The ‘Alleujah Beam’ in Evangelion episode 22ish that resulted in one of the most surreal sequences I’ve ever seen. But I had to cut it down to 10. This post has almost 2000 words as it is.

August Roundup

One anime you won’t see in this list is Gintama. It’s not because it’s a bad show, oh far from it. Gintama is one of the greatest and most consistent anime comedies in existence. The problem is I’m stalled at episode 70 and I haven’t gotten a Crunchyroll membership yet. What’s stopping me is the fact that, thanks to region restrictions, I get only a fraction of the anime an American would get for exactly the same price! But I’m starting to give in. I really want to watch Gintama again.

Source

Predictions for the inevitable ‘best anime of the 00’s’

Neither of these are going to win but it's the best header image I could find

Are you ready for the inevitable? The newest and largest pub argument amongst anime fans for the next year or so is on it’s way. While others can argue how anime has changed over the decade, most notably in the internet explosion, the average folk will slam their glass on the table and proclaim that ‘Code Geass will be forgotten in a few years’ or that ‘Monster is the most under-rated anime of them all’. So I’m going to try to shed some light upon this topic. Now I won’t be saying what my picks are, oh no. I’m going to be acting like a bookie, weighing up the odds for what will be voted top of the charts. For this I’m going to assume that the winners will be decided by a poll, much like the Animesource polls, where each voter gets 5 votes. Place your bets folks. What was the best anime of the 00’s?

July Roundup

I’ve been wanting to do these monthly roundup posts for a while now but I wanted to wait until I had a loyal following who genuinely cared about what I had to say. However after realising that I would never achieve that level of internet stardom I decided I would post them anyway.

I’m going to use my letter-grade system for these because I’ve found that this system works the best for me.

First Impressions: Saki, Full Metal Alchemist 2, Basquash, Valkyria Chronicles

The second batch of first impressions and I should say that I won’t be covering everything this season. For example I’ve decided that I don’t have a fetish for acidic breast milk and therefore won’t be watching Queen’s Blade.

My Rating System Explained!

A = If you watch anything this season, watch this

B = Very good, sometimes surprisingly so.

C = If you have the time, you should check this out

D = Not my kind of thing, I won’t be watching this

E = Bad. Very bad, ignore this show

F = Frustratingly awful