I’ve got a lot of death on my list, so while I’m at it, I might as well tackle Another, lighter spin on the subject as well.

With Another and Blood-C as his first steps outside the comedy genre, I’m pretty sure Tsutomu Mizushima has some kind of Midas touch of comedy. He is just such a funny person that everything he touches, no matter how serious he wants to be, turns into comedic gold.

These pie gifs are pretty much the greatest thing.

It’s time to start my trio of Super Shounen moments of 2012, which has been probably the best year for shounen since… well, in a really long time. These next three entries are the shows that I’m so swept up in that I still can’t really form a coherent thought about them, so bear with me if I stumble over words a bit.I’ve already written at length about Kuroko’s Basketball as a whole, and even briefly touched on this scene, but I’d like to give some more attention to this one big game.

By the second half-or-so of the series, I was getting super-pumped for the new episode each week, but it wasn’t until the last three or four episodes that Kurobas really stole my heart. Not only did it have the balls (pun intended) to literally put its main character in the bleachers for the final, most climactic game of the season, but that game ended up being the best in the series so far.

Let’s look at some of the things this game did for Kurobas:

It further expanded upon the idea of “Kuroko’s Basketball,” and established Aomine as a kind of “anti-Kuroko.” Where Kuroko is terrible at basketball and his play style relies heavily on his teammates, Aomine is so good and so arrogant that he is essentially a one-man team. This contrast – between Aomine’s one-man street ball style and Kuroko’s emphasis on teamwork – is the central ideological conflict of the series, and while it was brought up in the previous game between Kuroko and Aomine, it ironically was given more focus in this final showdown, which doesn’t even involve Kuroko. That this is the case demonstrates how losing to Seirin has taught the Miracles – namely Kise in this case – the value of Kuroko’s Basketball and being able to rely on one’s teammates.

Kise has started to adopt the idea of Kuroko’s Basketball to take on Aomine’s one-man play style.

It pushed the Generation of Miracles to their limits. We got to see Kise, who was the first Miracle that Kuroko’s team faced and the easiest to overcome, seriously improve his game and show that he’s capable of much more. By the end of the game, he was on par with the Aomine that had so utterly dominated Kuroko’s team in the game before. Similarly, Aomine was essentially forced to play against the only player who can beat him – himself. He got frequently pushed into dangerous situations and had to continually pull out more and more ridiculous tricks to get out of them – we saw more and more of what this beastly player was capable of when he pulled out the stops.

During this game, we see how Kise became interested in basketball because of his respect for Aomine’s skill.

It revealed and played on the the past of the Generation of Miracles. We got to see the rivalry and interesting relationship between Aomine and Kise, and gain insight into their specific skills and motivations on the court. This look into their history built up the tension between them on the court even higher than it was before, as Kise fought to equal the teammate he had always looked up to. Most sports shows won’t bother to look this deeply into the opponent characters, and that Kurobas gives the Miracles such attention is one of the things that makes it stand out.

Watching two non-Seirin teams play against each other showed a different side of the players that we normally would only have seen as opponents. In addition to the Miracle players themselves, this game showcased the team dynamics that each side has going on outside of their Miracles’ abilities. Some of the lesser players on each side got their chances in the spotlight, and part of the reason that the teamwork theme of Kuroko’s Basketball came in so strongly here was that there was a clear contrast between the respect Kise’s team had for him and the disdain that Aomine’s had for him.

The emphasis that this show gives even minor characters on the “enemy” teams is something you don’t see in many other sports series.

And of course, it was just a really freaking exciting game. It had some of the series’ best animation and most interesting camera moves, a killer matchup between two very strong teams, and a whole barrelfull of the crazy stunts that earn Kurobas’s not-quite-basketball sport the name “BS-Ball.”

In a game with so many things going for it, the pivotal moment occurs as Kise finally unleashes his copy of Aomine’s inimitable style. The cheesy guitar music gives way to a wailing chorus of violins to build the tension, until, for an instant, both the music and Kise are gone. When the camera finds him, he’s breaking past Aomine and making a dash for the basket. Aomine tries to chase him down, ultimately ending in the double whammy of earning his fourth foul and watching as Kise nails the three-point play with his own signature behind-the-back shot. The game has changed, and Kise has turned up the heat. This is where all of those things I listed above came together in one scene and let it be known that this show means business.

With the whole threat letter fiasco revolving around this show, I really hope we can still get a second season. If that crazy guy somehow gets it cancelled, I’ll… I’ll… well, I’ll probably go and be sad in a corner for a while.

Since Shinmaru over at the Cart Driver already took my Hunter x Hunter moment of the year for the first of his 12 days and wrote about it far better than I ever could have done (except that he forgot to include a picture of Hisoka’s glowing crotch), it’s time to move on to Plan B. Spoilers for Hunter x Hunter (2011) episode 47.

The battle between Kurapika and Uvogin is essentially the trigger for everything that happens in Hunter x Hunter’s amazing Yorkshin arc. Kurapika wants revenge on the Spiders for killing his fellow Kurta, and the Spiders want revenge on Kurapika for killing Uvogin. This is the fight where it all starts, and this is the fight where Kurapika is finally able to let loose his emotions and pain on one of the people who wronged him.

It is fitting, then, that for so crucial a moment in the series, Madhouse let their animators loose as well, and this episode is up there with the above-referenced Gon vs. Hisoka fight in terms of animation quality. Every blow contains an insane amount of visible power to match the emotional power of the battle between the hardened killer who thinks nothing of having helped to wipe out an entire clan, and the one whose otherwise caring heart overflows with rage enough to kill despite the pain it causes him to do so. You can truly get a feel for how terrifyingly powerful these characters are, and the intensity of the conflict between them.

The detailed animation and switch to black and white made the final blow to Uvo an extra-devastating sucker-punch to the gut, so Kurapika’s pain at having to kill is made even more real to the audience.

This is perhaps the defining moment for Kurapika’s character. Kurapika’s chains represent both his desire to bring the Spiders to justice and the enormous burden that revenge has put on his shoulders. These are the chains – both literal and metaphorical – that weigh down his heart. And Madhouse gives them the treatment they deserve. The chains look beautiful yet deadly in motion, as we are served up an extended action scene containing perhaps the best animation Hunters has demonstrated to date.

It was the episode that set the tone for the entire rest of the arc to follow, and what a tone did it set.

Joseph Joestar, tears streaming from his eyes, empties a Tommy gun into the vampire who took his Great-Uncle and Narrator away from him, and towers over the smoking body. As the camera pans over Straits’ bullet-riddled form, a chord slowly fades in. Just as it reaches its peak, Joseph slams his foot down onto the shattered windowsill, and a sharp, deliberate guitar pluck cuts off the wall of sound, as if summoned by his dramatic footfall. The sudden drop in the music holds the tension of the scene within the guitar’s very strings; the distance between each strum becomes unbearable. All the while, Joesph delivers a passionate speech through his tears of rage, and as he finally makes his declaration of war against the immortal foe before him, the tension suddenly drops – as if to mimic Joseph’s powerful feeling of release, the guitar falls from its sparse, punctuating tone into a downward spiral of notes, and leads us, as choked-up and fired-up as JoJo, into the roaring bass of the Roundabout.

I think I’ve sufficiently explained the Roundabout part. But what about the Midnight?

Watching anime has always been, for me, a social experience. From watching with friends, to frequenting forums, to going to conventions, to attending clubs, to running clubs, to starting a blog, my entire history as an anime fan has been defined by the people I watched anime with. Heck, a large part of the reason I started this blog in the first place was to overcome the CRUSHING LONELINESS of graduating from school and moving away from all my regular anime buddies by reaching out to fellow anime lovers in the blogosphere. Even with my newfound ability to discuss anime through my blog and through Twitter, watching the actual shows by myself simply wasn’t the same. So you can bet that when I received an invitation to join a group of fellow bloggers in watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Hunter x Hunter every weekend at midnight-ish Saturday night, I had to go upstairs and apologize to my neighbors for the hole I made jumping through their floor.

It’s like my Saturday-afternoon anime club has come back to me. I get to kick back with some blogger bros and talk for hours on end about anime, Taco Bell, firing food out of guns, and other sweet nothings, and occasionally force ourselves to watch the two best shows of the season. This is the social anime watching I’ve always loved, even if it takes us about two hours to actually get around to pressing the play button, and even if I do end up staying awake until ungodly hours of the morning to do so.

And as though that wasn’t enough, within the next few weeks I joined a Sword Art Online watch/support group (“Hello, my name is Satchii, and I watch Sword Art Online”). There I got to chill with some more cool cats and bond over the shared trauma of each new episode as we made our way through the Alfheim Online arc, and laughing our way through the pain made it all so much more survivable. Through watching the show together, SAO managed to inadvertently spread to all of us its message of THE POWER OF INTERNET FRIENDSHIP.

But I promised myself I wouldn’t write about SAO anymore on this blog, so back to JoJos.

Watching JoJos by itself is a great enough experience on its own, but being able to watch it with a Skype chat full of friends amplifies it tenfold. The goofy comments we drop out of our love for the show. The occasional impromptu karaoke session with Roundabout. The unanimous “Oooooo”s and “YEAH”s and “OH NO”s and “DID THAT JUST HAPPEN”s. The moments of stunned silence that say more than any of us ever could.

To me, this is a huge part of what watching anime is all about. Get a bunch of crazy goofballs together, put them in front of some cartoons, and have a blast sharing the highs and lows of an activity we all love. The show itself is only half the fun, and when half the fun is as awesome as JoJos, you know you’re in for a good time. No matter how tough the rest of the week has been, I know that every Saturday, ’round about midnight, there will be a Skype chat full of great guys who are there to join me in refusing to grow up and enjoying some amazing anime together.

It’s been a great few months watching cartoons with you guys; here’s to a new year of sleep-deprived anime madness.

Merry Christmas!

It’s that time of the season. You know, the time when it’s over. So what better time to look back and check up on all those shows I’ve been watching? I can’t think of one.

Much to my surprise, I didn’t end up dropping anything after that last post, and actually picked a few shows back up instead.

I’ve decided to do this in a merits/demerits format for organization’s and speed’s sake. I hope you appreciate the convenience. Also, for ongoing shows, I am only taking into account the part of the show that aired during this season.

Why Did I Watch This:

18. Sword Art Online

This was the best thing Kirito did all season.

Merits:
-Accidentally conveyed its message of THE POWER OF INTERNET FRIENDSHIP by being so bad it convinced us to start a weekly group watch to laugh at it together.
-Many scenes are well-structured and competently-produced and would have been very good had they occurred in a different context.
-Kirito gets his butt kicked once, and it is wonderful.
-The best characters get a happy end.

Demerits:
-Kirito is even more of a black hole than before – he has become more efficient at bending the universe of the show and soaking up any semblance of quality to feed his magical Gary Stu powers.
-The new MMO this season explores is far less interesting and the danger of permadeath is gone. In addition, it introduces a number of new gaps in the show’s logic – for example, the ability to log out is ignored in many places where it would have been practical, and the use of admin rights is nonsensical. The fact that the show takes place in a video game continues to work against many of its own plot points.
-Asuna is reduced to a useless trophy for Kirito to win, the new villain is a laughable step down from the last arc’s, and the subplot with Kirito’s sister is largely unnecessary.
-After a relatively tame first half, the show has suddenly taken a bizarre and poorly-handled leap into unsavory territory, clumsily inserting incest themes, rape scenes, increased glorification of violence, and a growing abundance of gratuitous cleavage shots, among other things, into its story.

17. BTOOOM

Taira, lost in Madhouse Studios, trying to find his way to the set of Kaiji.

Merits:
-Several of the side characters are quite good. Of particular note is Taira, a character who appears to have gotten lost in Madhouse Studios on his way to the set of Kaiji.
-The variety of the bombs is interesting, as they all have their own advantages and disadvantages.
-It has Monitor Lizards, which I find unusually funny for some reason.

Demerits:
-The premise and story are all over the place, and it tries to get by on shock value alone – it doesn’t have the charisma or appeal of a show like Future Diary to back up the crazy logic.
-The main characters are simply unlikable. The female lead in particular is brain-hemorrhagingly stupid and the only thing she manages to accomplish in the show is crank its misogynistic streak up to 12 with her utterly degrading and at-times offensive representation of the female gender.
-The title is so dumb I am actually including it in this list.
-I seriously couldn’t think of anything better to say about the show than “lol it has monitor lizards.”

16. Little Busters

Little Busters’ varied cast of female characters.

Merits:
-All of the main characters (note: this does not include Riki, because he is a girl) are good, and some of the girls’ personalities are not-terrible, which is a feat given that this is Key we’re talking about. Kud, Book Girl, and Klepto Girl come to mind.
-When the Busters are goofing around, the show can occasionally be pretty funny. For example, the fight scenes are continually amusing and the test of courage episode managed to both be fun and a decent vehicle for character development.
-There has only been one drama arc so far.

Demerits:
-The voice acting is awful. All of it. Even the characters I kind of like have the most ear-piercingly terrible voices and it completely ruins them for me.
-There has been a drama arc. And it was, in true Key style, really dumb. And it was the worst girl’s arc.
-With a few exceptions, Little Busters is pretty boring. Most of the jokes aren’t all that funny, and not much has really happened. And the baseball stuff is painful.
-It is only halfway done. Or rather, it is already halfway done and I have found precious little to latch onto.

15. Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

The best character tries to flee to a better show before Haru catches him.

Merits:
-The comedy is solid. Each episode has consistently had a few moments that are quite funny.
-Haru and Shizuku have a lot of interesting problems for the series to solve, and it does address several of them before the end. The romance is fast-paced and there are a lot of genuinely good moments where they characters are refreshingly forward with each other.
-Production values are high, and the character designs are very appealing.
-I really like the OP. It’s catchy and energetic and colorful and has lots of brass. I like brass in my music.
-It has a chicken.

Demerits:
-Literally every time one of those genuinely good moments happens, the show destroys it immediately with an unfunny and tactless “joke” which usually ends up revealing another way that Haru is a very worrying character to have as the male lead in a romance story.
-Haru is extremely skeevy and violent, and Kaibutsu-kun seems to be presenting his behavior as acceptable. Sure he doesn’t have friends and gets scolded in the moment, but his actions and pushiness ultimately have no lasting negative impact on Shizuku’s feelings for him.
-Neither of these characters, especially Haru, are in any way ready for a relationship, so it baffles me that the story is so intent on pushing the romance angle when there are so many other worthy character conflicts to resolve.
-The will-they-won’t-they approaches unbearable levels, as never do both characters have feelings for each other at the same time. On top of that, it is not only incredibly frustrating but sometimes angering to watch them keep hurting each other yet continue to come back for more. In the end, even if it wasn’t the worst, Kaibutsu-kun is the fall 2012 show that I most truly regret watching.

A Resounding “That Wasn’t Bad, I Suppose”:

14. Robotics;Notes

This is perhaps the most realistic portrayal of future technology I have ever seen.

Merits:
-Lots of references to mecha shows make good fanservice for a robot fan like me. The gadgets they use, like the PokeCom, are also really cool.
-It has a unique setup with the robotics club, and I enjoyed seeing the work they put into the robot, even if it didn’t work. Actually, I even appreciate that the robot didn’t work.
-The robot tournament was very exciting, and Pleiades was a good character during that time.
-The plot is slowly emerging from the shadows in the form of some cryptic conspiracy hints and there is a lot of potential built up for the second half. Hopefully the mystery we get will live up to the buildup.
-I really like Aki’s dad.

Demerits:
-Much of this half of the show has felt pretty useless. It drags a lot, and it was really uninspiring overall. I have trouble seeing how the hopefully-more-exciting second half will use enough of this half’s material to make its excessive length worthwhile.
-Apart from Aki’s dad (and Pleiades before his dad made him go full drama queen), I do not like a single one of the characters. Comparing R;N to Steins;Gate, the latter also had a slow start, but it was made more tolerable by its great cast of characters.
-Robotics;Notes has done so little of interest that I would have dropped it long ago were it not for Steins;Gate’s precedent of following up a slow start with an exciting second half.

13. Eureka Seven AO

Renton, like Eureka, has only improved with age.

Merits:
-Plenty of throwbacks to the original series, in the form of Renton, Eureka, and soccer.
-BONES really did some gorgeous stuff here with their animation.
-AO is still better than that horrendous excuse for a movie, even if it had no chance of living up to the original.

Demerits:
-Pretty typical BONES ending. Not much was really wrapped up or explained.
-It ultimately felt like the conclusion to a show we didn’t watch, instead of the one we did.

12. Hayate the Combat Butler

A picture of me every time Rightstuf has a sale on things I want.

Merits:
-Still able to get a chuckle or two out of me every episode with some relatively low-key humor.
-Seems to be leading into an ongoing plot that has potential.
-References Blazing Transfer Student. I am probably prouder than I should be that I knew what they were talking about.

Demerits:
-The reason I said “seems” above is because I forgot to watch the episode one week and decided it wasn’t worth it to finish this season, so I put the rest on hold until a less busy season.
-As has always been the case with Hayate, jokes miss as often as they hit.
-There is no Norio Wakamoto narration.
-Their hair looks strange.

11. K

Yep, K is still blue.

Merits:
-Picked it back up and watched it to the end, despite dropping it earlier in the season. This was primarily due to Mira’s posts about it, but also because it was only 13 episodes.
-Once the story gets rolling there’s some decent inter-gang intrigue and things start to make more sense. The mystery revolving around what really happened with Shiro is a highlight of the series.
-The fight scenes are really good.
-It’s dumb and it’s silly and it knows it, but it doesn’t fall apart like BTOOOM did. It has a solid grasp on what it wants to do with itself.
-Kuro and his tape recorder husbando.

Demerits:
-I just… really didn’t care. About anything.
-I don’t think I’d be willing to watch the second season to see how it ends. I don’t have enough invested in it and half the reason I was watching it was because it was short.
-Neko is a character. That exists.

10. Jormungand

I’m not even going to put a joke here. Just go watch Wilee’s episode. I’ll wait.

Merits:
-Koko and Jonah have a fascinating relationship. To quote a comment I left over on JoshSpeagle’s blog, “They share a powerful bond of some rare form of love that is neither familial nor sexual, but rather the result of each being a perfect representation of what the other does not understand about the world, and at the same time most strongly wishes to understand. They are perfect complements to fill the voids that war has torn in each others’ hearts.”
-When Jormungand focuses on the individual characters doing their own crazy thing, it is outstanding. Wilee’s episode (19) is a perfect example of this.
-Best catfight of the year.
-”Her name is Koko she is loco I say oh no” still cracks me up every time. Actually, the music in general is pretty darn good.

Demerits:
-The show drags its feet too much. It has always been really hard for me to follow because of this, and this season was no exception. Much of the first half of the season was completely lost on me, except for the stuff revolving around R.
-It didn’t spend as much time on the characters as I would have liked, and the story still lacks the punch to make up for it, even if the second half was one of the stronger continuous arcs. I just want to see Koko and Co. goofing around and blowing things up.

9. Magi

Ugo’s battle has easily been the best part of the show so far.

Merits:
-Unique setting that is starting to show the potential for some unconventional conflicts, such as the largely economic story that’s started around the end of the season.
-Ugo is a real wild card in the show, and the way the show uses his bond with Aladdin did wonders for spicing up the otherwise rather generic, by-the-books battle with Judal.
-Magi seems to be slowly finding its stride after a somewhat rocky mid-season. I’m hoping that arc was just a slight misstep on the road to something bigger.
-The show does large-scale battles well, and if that’s the main kind of fight we’re going to see, I’ll be looking forward to that.
-Smurf boobs with nipple rings.
Demerits:
-It doesn’t seem like Magi is making the most of its premise. It’s missing some kind of oomph, some degree of epic scale and grandiosity that could elevate it into something truly good, instead of just something that has potential.
-Apart from Ugo, the magic system is pretty bland and a little too vaguely-defined for my liking. If the fights mostly end up being one-on-one, that’ll be a strike against it for me.
-Smurf boobs with nipple rings.

This Here Is Some Good Stuff:

8. Space Bros.

Dude. Akihiko Hoshide dubbed his part from the ISS. He is literally talking to us FROM SPACE.

Merits:
-Keeps up its long spree of excellent character development
-When it hits, it hits strong. The rocket launch and each character’s phone call gave us some extremely powerful moments.
-Its close attention to all the little details, especially with regards to the workings of the space agencies, is interesting and continues to give the show that subtle realism that has long been one of its hallmarks.
-One of the scenes features a real astronaut dubbing the show from space! How cool is that?

Demerits:
-The rocket launch arc in particular is extremely slow and drags on for longer than it probably should. All the tension and excitement from the astronaut exam arc is gone.
-Not much happens. The slow, deliberate pacing is good for the mood of the series, but it comes at the expense of actual content, and I think it errs a bit too much on the “expense of content” side.

7. Kamisama Kiss

Tomoe is too moe.

Merits:
-Charming sense of humor – silly without being too shoujo-y.
-Nanami and Tomoe are likable leads topping off a well-rounded cast.
-The show realizes early on that the romance was never meant to work out and keeps it very low-key. This is especially refreshing while watching Kaibutsu-kun.
-Overall, a very pleasant show that avoids many of shoujo’s biggest pitfalls and accomplishes everything it sets out to do.

Demerits:
-What it sets out to do is not very much, and while it’s a pleasant show, it’s not a very memorable one.
-There is one point in the series where the romantic tension between Nanami and Tomoe gets a little out of hand for an episode or two before correcting itself.

6. From the New World

I am always happy for some more Yamauchi animation.

Merits:
-Excellent, fleshed-out setting. There’s a lot to this world, and we’ve barely scratched the surface at the halfway point.
-This show knows how to infodump. The times when the action grinds to a halt and the characters just sit back and describe the world are some of the best parts of the series.
-Some parts in the last few episodes are demonstrating that Shinsekai knows/is learning how to build tension without withholding information, which is what it did for much of this first half.
-There is a lot of potential going forward. These last few episodes especially have gotten me really excited for what’s to come.
-Several episodes (especially Shigeyasu Yamauchi’s episode 10) are aesthetically gorgeous.
-I really dig the music. Especially the ending theme and that one chorus/guitar track they like to play a lot.
-Squealer is moe.

Demerits:
-The characters are severely lacking. I completely forgot that one of them even existed at all. Again, it seems to be getting better during the latter part of the season, but there was very little meaningful development before episode 9 or 10.
-The animation is inconsistent. While some episodes look great, some have wonky off-model characters or are lacking in detail compared to others.

5. Chuunibyou

Chuunibutts.

Merits:
-Expertly portrays the titular “ailment” of chuunibyou – that part of yourself from childhood to junior high that you look back on with utter humiliation.
-I was surprised at how well Chuunibutts was able to mix its messages of the importance of growing up and the importance of keeping your inner child intact. It ended up striking a good balance between the two by the end of its run.
-Being from KyoAni, the animation is, of course, superb.
-During the “fight scenes,” half the fun is in trying to figure out what was going on in the real world based on the portrayal of the fight shown from the perspective of the characters’ imaginations. The other half is gawking at the animation quality.
-The two leads have strong chemistry, and Nibutani is a great catalyst to push them together. The other characters serve their roles nicely, as well.

Demerits:
-As is common amongst KyoAni titles, there is this sense of engineered, almost mathematical cuteness present throughout the show, and I find it really offputting.
-The sudden shift from lighthearted comedy to heavyhanded drama towards the late-middle of the series is abrupt not-very-well-handled.

4. Girls und Panzer

Katyusha’s in her Panzer. All’s right with the world.

Merits:
-Exciting tank battles with well-thought-out tactics in a wide variety of locales.
-AWESOME music and sound effects. Like, seriously.
-A strong (if largely unmemorable) cast of characters. It’s impressive how well such a short series is able to juggle such a large group of girls.
-Excellent delivery on a wacky premise – that the show focuses on the Panzer as much as the Girls is key, and after an initial hump it largely steers clear of the “cute girls doing boring things” stigma.
-Katyusha. Both the song and the girl.

Demerits:
-Girls und Panzer is slow out of the gate. The first two episodes are not particularly impressive on their own; it’s not until the tank battles start that it gets good.
-While the tank animation is largely serviceable, occasionally the CG looks pretty bad.

3. Psycho Pass

All those people who say Psycho Pass isn’t moe are clearly lying. Just look at this guy!

Merits:
-Slick futuristic setting offers ample space for exploration of sci-fi themes such as transhumanism and criminality, as well as space for some cool gadgets.
-A varied cast that plays off each other very well. The investigator/enforcer dynamic lends itself to some strong bonds between the police force, and the criminals they’re hunting have interesting and at times haunting ways of expressing themselves.
-Brisk pacing keeps the tension high and enhances the impact when it does slow down for an important moment.
-Great animation and excellent OP and ED themes.
-TOTALLY NOT MOE YOU GUYS.

Demerits:
-The ideas it presents, even if they are good food for thought, are not the most original, nor are they put forward with much subtlety.
-Sometimes comes across as silly when it tries to take itself too seriously, or when some aspects of the setting cross into the realm of straining believability.

THIS IS AMAZING HOLY CRAP:

2. Hunter x Hunter

This has got to be one of the most metal things I have ever seen.

Merits:
-The Phantom Troupe is one of the best evil organizations in any anime, especially shounen. You know you’ve got a well-developed cast of bad guys when you would be equally willing to watch a show in which they are the protagonists.
-Nen powers feel very natural and fair. Their strengths and limitations are well-defined, and with each power being specific to its own user, each character’s power affects and is affected by that character’s personality. Couple that with the incredible variety of powers presented, and Nen is an amazing superpower system.
-The Yorkshin arc is absolutely fantastic, and Madhouse brought forth their A-game to show it off. Production values are much improved over the earlier arcs, both in terms of animation and sound.
-Greed Island is a video game arc that looks ready to kick the pants off of SAO and BTOOOM in the coming year.
-Hunter x Hunter is pretty much just an awesome show in general. It’s pretty telling that it is actually able to make our usually-chatty watch group shut up and watch it in stunned silence.

Demerits:
-Umm… Hunterpedia is kind of dumb sometimes? I got nothin’.

1. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

How could they see through his clever disguise?

Merits:
-I already wrote over 2000 words on why JoJos is awesome, and it is far and away the most popular post on this site, with over 3.5 times as many views as the next most popular post (Girls und Panzer). I don’t think I need to repeat myself.
-Dio Brando and Joseph Joestar are among the greatest villains and heroes (respectively) in all of anime.
-Stunning use of visual effects and great BGM (especially in Battle Tendency).
-SONO CHI NO SADAME! JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO JO!
-Roundabout ED of the year all years.
-Part 1 is overflowing with gentlemanly honor, and Part 2 oozes stylish bodacity (take note, Mini-Skirt Space Pirates).

Demerits:
-Some of the middle episodes of Part 1 are less awesome than the rest of the episodes, I guess. They’re still awesome, though, so that’s not really much of a demerit.

In Conclusion:

It’s been a while since I posted my thoughts on the anime of the Fall 2012 season, so it’s high time I took a step back and reflected on the last year as a whole. It was a strong year overall, and while there weren’t too many standout hits, there were certainly a lot of shows that I really enjoyed. Since I just started my blog at the end of the year, and didn’t get to cover a lot of earlier shows, I decided to make my list a top 20 instead of a top 10 to let me recognize some of my favorites that I would otherwise not have gotten a chance to write about.

As with my Fall 2012 post, I want to recognize shows that did not necessarily start or end in 2012, but that aired partially during the last year. So similarly, this list will take into account specifically the episodes of such shows that aired during 2012.

Additionally, I hesitate to call the list complete, as there are still a few notable series that I have yet to finish – such as the likes of Aquarion EVOL, Milky Holmes, Hyouka, Joshiraku, and of course, Guilty Crown. But putting that aside, I now present… my top 20 anime of 2012:

20. Kamisama Kiss

Dancin’ the blight away

Of all the shoujo series that aired last year, only Kamisama Kiss was able to break through my wall of “I can see why people would like Shoujo Series A, but it’s just not really my thing.” This is largely due to the fact that – except for one hiccup towards the middle – it keeps the contrived drama and tacky romance to a minimum, and instead relies more on its supernatural side for its entertainment. With that, KamiKiss was really able to win me over with its likable characters and charming sense of humor.

19. Nise/Nekomonogatari

It’s just sweat.

The Monogatari series is a series that prides itself on its sharp dialogue and even sharper directing. While the lack of much of anything happening most of the time can make the show drag a bit, it’s got absolutely stellar presentation. It’s also a rarity in that, where there are a lot of ecchi anime, the Monogataris are among the few anime series that succeed in actually being sexy, rather than just raunchy.

18. From the New World

How to make kids interested in the library.

It’s right there in the title: From the New World is all about its setting. The world in this show is rich with history, mystery, and culture, and holds a lot of potential for further story developments as it continues into next year. Along with its amazing soundtrack, one of the series’ biggest strengths is its ability to effectively infodump. While this may sound like a dubious honor, it really is amazing how Shinsekai can take what is basically one character explaining the plot to another and make it genuinely interesting and exciting.

17. Sankarea

Zombies: because not even death can do them part.

Sankarea was one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. It seemed to be just some romcom about a guy and his zombie girlfriend – you know, typical anime fare – but, especially in its first three episodes, it continually wowed me with its strong character drama and impressive visuals. Unfortunately, Sankarea did fall back on its fanservice/romcom roots at just the wrong times and ruined a few key scenes, without which it could easily have been a top-ten 2012 series for me. If this is what first-time director Shinichi Omata can do with what I understand is less-than-stellar source material, I eagerly await seeing where he goes next. Also, the OVAs that came out at the end of the year strongly hint at a sequel, which I would very much like to see.

16. Tsuritama

Dancing is far and away the most effective method I have found to catch fish.

Tsuritama is a shockingly normal series for Kenji Nakamura, which is to say, it’s a very strange series. If I had to sum it up in a word, it would be “obnoxious,” which I mean in a more positive way than I thought was possible. Everything, from the socially-confused characters to the cacophonous music to the harshly-bright visuals, is incredibly obnoxious, but they all come together with the power of fishing to form a whole that is not only palatable, but a lot of fun.

15. Chuunibyou

I love how Yuuta hates his chuuni self for basically being Kirito.

Where Tsuritama is obnoxious, if I had to sum up Chuunibyou in a word, it would be “embarrassing.” It’s a bizarre mix of nostalgia for and humiliation by the past, as it is a show simultaneously about growing up and refusing to do so, and it strikes just the right balance between them. And of course, being produced by Kyoto Animation, it looks absolutely fantastic as well.

14. Future Diary

Yuno sits on her throne as the queen of yanderes.

Future Diary is a show where logic does not apply. Leave your brain in the bin to your left, and strap in for the ride. This series is absolutely freaking insane, and whenever you think it can’t get any crazier, you can prepare to be proven utterly wrong. Yuno is the obvious star of the show here with her dangerously fanatic love for Yukki, but plenty of the other diary holders have just as much to offer.

13. Kuroko’s Basketball

THIS IS JAPANESE LUNCHTIME RUSH

Along with Sankarea, Kuroko’s Basketball was a huge surprise for me this year. I expected to go in and see a few games and that would be all the show had to offer, but the more I watched, the better it got, and the more it pulled me in, and now here I am getting all hyped for the recently-announced second season. Once it hit its stride somewhere in the second half, it surpassed even Hunter x Hunter as my most-anticipated show from week to week, thanks to the exciting sport of BS-ball and the excellent cast of characters as varied in personality as they are in hair color.

12. Lupin III: The Woman Named Fujiko Mine

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that this is a Lupin series.

The Woman Named Fujiko Mine is a powerhouse of atmosphere and style. The bold shadows, the slick character designs, the jazzy music – bring in the Lupin gang and a touch of noir and it all pulls together to form a whole that is gritty, sexy, and just plain cool. This show had a lot of big names attached to it, and they all leave their mark – while they sometimes clash a little bit in the process, that’s all just part of the dirt and grit that make it what it is.

11. Humanity Has Declined

Bread is best when it bleeds. That’s how you know it’s fresh!

Humanity Has Declined probably would have been higher on the list if it had aired in chronological order. It is only in retrospect that I am able to look back and see the show for the genuinely funny, albeit a bit brutal, dark comedy that it is. But once I managed to string all the necessary context together, the misadventures of our nameless narrator and her fairy friends was able to make me grin that :D grin that is eternally plastered across their faces. From suicidal carrot bread to time paradogs to short-lived impromptu island civilizations, Jinrui has a lot to love.

10. Space Brothers

Feels moon, man. Feels so moon.

Space Bros hit a real peak with its astronaut exam arc, but the entire series has been a refreshing break from some of the faster-paced, more action-packed series this year. It’s a series that can take its time to kick back and focus on the details and the characters rather than rushing through its story, and while this can occasionally backfire and be a little boring, it’s hard to dislike. Space Bros is all about introducing you to as many lovably quirky yet realistic characters as it can, and letting them bounce off each other in the must entertaining way possible, and it’s good enough at it that there are times you’d prefer the plot to stay still a bit longer to see the characters interact some more.

9. Girls und Panzer

Only the greatest of commanders would take a nap on the battlefield.

Girls und Panzer joins Sankarea and Kuroko’s Basketball on my list of big surprises of the year whose likely sequels I impatiently await. Girls und Panzer bucks the cute-girls-doing-boring-things tradition of typical high-school-club comedies and, once it gets its treads moving around episode 3, becomes all about inter-school tank warfare. Couple that with a sense of authenticity to the tanks and one of the best soundtracks of the year, and you’ve got a show that is able to deliver week after week and I will never get sick of it.

8. Psycho Pass

SYMBOLISM

Psycho Pass is the thoughtful, futuristic police procedural that people have been clamoring for since the last Ghost in the Shell. While any direct comparison to GitS would probably be unfavorable, Psycho Pass still stands well on its own, and being “not as good as GitS” is hardly a negative point. It’s got some great animation and a cool setting filled with interesting ideas and gadgets, and the Sybil System at the center of it all is an intriguing point of moral ambiguity that I look forward to seeing the second half of the show address. And it’s absolutely NOT moe.

7. Fate/Zero

So why wasn’t SHE Rider?

The second season of Fate/Zero started with a bang, and managed to keep up both the high standards of animation and intense inter-character moral conflicts of the first season. Rider and Waver stole the show as always, but the show was also able to entertain by putting the slimy and underhanded tactics of the Holy Grail War out there in full force. The clashes between Master and Master, Servant and Servant, and especially Servant and Master, reached their peak this season, and with unforgettable scenes like the entire first episode, the Rider/Saber motorcycle chase, and the conclusion to the tale of Rider and Waver, Fate/Zero continued to stand out despite its occasional descent into lengthy monologue.

6. Mysterious Girlfriend X

I got hit with a severe case of Urabe Fascination.

Mysterious Girlfriend X is a weird series. I mean, it’s about two kids who get into a relationship because they share a bond through their spit. But this show caught hold of me with a strong dose of Urabe Fascination. The spit was a clever, if gross, way to represent many important parts of their relationship, which itself was refreshingly different from the kind we usually get in anime. The two main couples both have really good chemistry, and Urabe is possibly my favorite female character of the year. Due in no small part to her voice – I would love to see Ayako Yoshitani get some more roles.

5. The Daily Lives of High School Boys

The wind is troubled today.

The winter 2012 season was a great season for comedy (intentional or not), and Daily Lives of High School Boys led it strongly and confidently all the way along. Nichibros was able to consistently get a belly laugh out of me in a way no anime had done since Astro Fighter Sunred, with its genius perhaps most evident in parts like the Literature Girl segment. It is an incredibly effective lampoon of the entire breadth of high school-based anime, and it doesn’t stop there – where Chuunibyou reminds us fondly of the more embarrassing moments of our childhood, Nichibros points at them and laughs and laughs and laughs.

4. Thermae Romae

UMAI!

There’s something so magical, so sincere, so profound about Thermae Romae, that it’s hard not to love. Part of the reason the show’s one joke was so effective is that there was clearly a lot more beneath the silly outer coating. The show has a genuine love for the bathing culture it portrays, and Lucius is a fascinating character – through him and his simultaneous awe, despair, and guilt upon literally stumbling into the future of his craft, Thermae Romae has a lot to say about not just bathing culture, but culture as a whole. The best comedy is that which can make you think while you laugh, and Thermae Romae excels at this where many other anime fail.

3. Kids on the Slope

The minute this scene happened, I knew I would love this show.

From the moment the drums started playing in the trailer, I knew I was going to love Kids on the Slope. Having been in the jazz band in high school, the show holds a special significance to me, and every scene with the playing of instruments was absolute magic. The music was great, the animation was gorgeous – especially during the jazz-playing scenes, and the drama moved along fast enough that it never really wore on me too much. There was one point near the end where it got laid on a little thick, but there was so much about the show that was so spectacular and wonderful that I could never stay mad at it for long. Not to mention that the concert in episode 7 was hands-down my favorite moment in any anime of the year.

2. Hunter x Hunter

God this show is awesome.

Hunter x Hunter is the shounen adventure series that every shounen adventure series should aspire to be. That’s really all there is to it. The world, its rules, and the superpowers therein are all well-thought out and well-balanced. There’s a genuine cleverness to the series all the way through, and it’s helped along by a charismatic crew of both heroes and villains. It can put together an amazingly tight plot, too, and every little thing is important and happens for a reason. It has all the elements that a good adventure needs, and it puts them all together in just the right way.

1. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Expect nothing less from JOSEPH JOESTAR.

Was there really any doubt that JoJo would top my list this year? JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is as perfect an adaptation as the source material could ask for, and given how awesome the source material is, that’s saying a lot in JoJo’s favor. The pulpy melodrama that goes over the top and keeps on going while miraculously never seeming forced. The delicious, delicious style the show lovingly applies to every episode. The unforgettably zany cast of characters with their fabulous poses and explosive personalities. The insanely hotblooded opening themes: the first a fist-pumping brass-blaster and the second possessing a suave smoothness reminiscent of a James Bond theme. And of course, Roundabout.

I’ll just come right out and say that this has been a pretty unremarkable season. None of the shows this season have really inspired me to write anything, and there are only a few that I’m even enjoying all that much. I’ve still got plenty to watch thanks to the large number of carry-overs from last season – namely JoJo, Hunter x Hunter, Space Bros, Psycho Pass, Shinsekai, and Little Busters (which has somehow managed to pull off three decent episodes in a row before falling back into groan-worthy territory), but the new shows just aren’t doing much for me.It’s not that there are a lot of bad shows this season, it’s just that they’re all some degree of mediocre. The majority of what I’m watching falls into the “I don’t hate it” category rather than the “I like it” category. Also, there are a lot of 3-minute shorts, which makes this list kinda hard because even after three or four episodes, there isn’t a lot of content to judge them on. So yeah, basically, if this post seems like I’m phoning it in, it’s because I am. You can pretend it’s symbolic of how the season is phoning it in or something like that. Anyway, the list:

Dropped With Extreme Apathy:

DEM TEEF.

Apart from the admittedly pretty-all-right OP song, the first episode of Ishida and Asakura was pretty much a mess. It might have benefited from a longer runtime if it had gotten one, but the two minutes we got were pretty poorly stitched together. I have zero clue what this show is going for, and I don’t care to learn either. Dropped at episode 1.

It’s… probably better not to ask.

I don’t have anything interesting to say about Hakkenden, because there wasn’t anything interesting about it. Dropped at episode 1 and a half.

Sage advice from OreShura: If you want to be popular, read JoJo’s Bizarre Advenure.

Four episodes into OreShura and the only reason I’m still watching is because there are more than three characters in the OP and I’m waiting to see if any of them are any good. One of them will be introduced in the next episode, so that is its last chance. Like most light novel adaptations, this one completely lost me once it finished the initial setup and only got worse from there, to the point where I skimmed over about 75% of episode 4. JoJo references are literally all this show has going for it now, besides maybe the OP. Soon-to-be-dropped at episode 5.

She is so getting sent to work in the Teiai underground.

Problem Children Are Coming From Another World, Aren’t They? had me vaguely curious where it would go after the first episode. It seemed like a show about the characters using superpowers to compete in some kind of Kaiji-like gaming tournament with games of skill and chance where creative use of your ability can give you an edge to winning some Big Prize (or avoiding some Big Punishment). The second and third episodes have decisively shown that this will not be the case, and that it will instead be about our heroes (of which only one is really all that much of a “problem child”) getting into relatively straightforward fights with generic Demon Monsters who are doing generic Evil Things. It’s not a bad show, but it does absolutely nothing to stand out and I don’t care enough to keep going. Dropped at episode 3.

In Sasami’s Japan, chocolate eats you!

Sasami-san@Ganbaranai is a show that lives up to its name, in that I am not at all motivated to watch it. Sasami-san has some neat visual quirks, as expected from SHAFT, and I enjoy how Sasami refuses to sing the ending theme each week while her brother futilely tries to egg her on, but any appeal the source material might have is so alien to me that even SHAFT’s stylish presentation is not enough to save it. The only investment I have had in this show thus far was empathy for Sasami’s plight in episode two when the other girls were all touching her stuff. Dropped at episode 3.

FFFFFFFF NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM THERE

I’m honestly surprised at how long GJ-bu held my attention. Despite my typical apathy toward shows like this I somehow didn’t start getting bored of it until around episode 3 – it’s an inoffensive, by-the-books 4-koma adaptation, but it’s pretty capably-handled and occasionally hits the mark with its humor. If this was one of the many short shows this season I’d be all over it, but I don’t really feel up to watching 12 24-minute episodes, especially since it’s somewhat hit and miss and the buildup-to-payoff ratio it puts forward is a bit too high. I got some mild amusement out of the first few episodes, though, and if you’re a bigger fan of inconsequential 4-koma stuff than I am then I’d recommend giving it a shot. Dropped at episode 3.

Not-Dropped(-Yet) With Extreme Apathy:

I can see what you were going for with that title, Mangirl, but…

Sadly, Mangirl is neither a show about girls who are actually men, nor a show about men who are actually girls. The “man” is actually for “manga.” In the end, the hilariously unfortunate title is the funniest part of the show, in which the only joke is that the editor-in-chief of the manga company is a terrible person and a terrible editor-in-chief and that she should be fired because without her the show might actually be interesting, if still not very funny. What’s kept me watching (aside from the three-minute episode length) is that – funny or not – I would happily watch a series of shorts about manga creators running a manga magazine, and until the editor-in-chief opens her mouth, it does that decently well.

One scene of these guys bickering is worth a whole episode of the rest of the show.

Tamako Market is a big, steaming pile of unnecessarily-well-animated nothing. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep watching it, because 90% of each episode consists of cute girls doing boring things that make me feel like I’m wasting my time sitting through it. Kyoto Animation’s obsession with mathematically precise cuteness is becoming so grating that the stellar animation they use to generate it has almost become a negative point to their shows for me. Despite such a massive majority of the series being too dependent on empty moe for my stony heart to enjoy, there are a few things keeping me going. There have been a few moments where the girls’ cute quirks have actually worked – in episode three, for example, the scene with megane-chan practicing her “it was fun” speech in front of a mirror and the scene where the girl fixed the locker both got a smile out of me. Though I don’t like the bird as much as some other people, I do admit that he adds a unique element to the show and is effective at making things actually happen, which saves Tamako Market from being completely empty of content. The OP and ED are both pretty catchy. But the saving grace of the show is really the townspeople. The random adults who run the market. It’s a group of people you don’t often see getting attention in anime, and there’s a talented voice cast behind many of them, and just seeing them do what they do is far more interesting than anything our boring high-school-girl heroines have done all series, especially the FLORIST PRINCESS and the two dads who are always bickering about this or that. I would be much more enthusiastic about this show (read “enthusiastic at all about this show”) if it was more about the shop owners than about Tamako and her moe-moe entourage. Just for them, I will give Tamako Market another episode or two to prove that it can be more than these few episodes have shown.

Eh, Why Not:

This girl is the savior that anime desperately needs.

Cuticle Detective Inaba has a strong cast of wacky characters and the occasional funny joke, but it has zero sense of comedic timing. As in, I think the first episode may be legitimately one of the most poorly-timed pieces of comedy I have ever seen, throwing gag after gag so fast you can’t even tell that a joke happened, and loudly explaining every one of them before the punchline was halfway done. The jokes were literally pushing and shoving each other out of the way in an attempt to be heard. To be fair, though, this is the director’s first time at the helm, and he seems to be significantly improving as he learns the ropes; most importantly, he seems to have realized that he needs to SLOW DOWN. Villains Don and Lorenzo, along with Ogino’s awesome daughter, are definitely the highlights of the show – they are quite a hoot whenever they’re on screen. Admittedly, beyond that, most of my enjoyment comes from laughing at how shamelessly it panders to the fujoshi crowd (lots of jokes about the characters being gay for each other and a little overboard on the SD/chibi stuff and sparkles/roses/etc) – in other words, not at the jokes themselves. Still, it’s enough to make the episodes fly by, it seems to be steadily finding a pace that works for it as the director finds his footing, and it hits the humor mark frequently enough to keep me going.

I suppose that’s one way to put it.

Senyuu seems like it should be funny, but I’m often not sure what I’m supposed to be laughing at. There are a few goofy moments in each episode, but never anything worth more than a slight “heh heh”. Really the reason this is so high on the list is because the fact that it’s three minutes long means that about half of each episode’s runtime consists of the JAM Project OP and ED, the former of which especially is incredibly awesome (though for some reason is cut from Crunchyroll’s stream).

BUTTS

Vividred Operation is a show about BUTTS. One of the biggest reasons I enjoyed Girls und Panzer but have never cared to pick up Strike Witches is that the latter is filmed almost exclusively from between little girls’ legs, while the former’s director pushed a strict no-pantyshot policy. Vividred takes the Strike Witches approach, and not only is it really distracting to have little-girl-butts filling the screen, and detrimental to the direction to try and shoehorn them in instead of using a more effective shot, but I prefer being able to not feel like a total creep when I’m watching stuff. Beyond its sleazy side, Vividred is a decent mechanical magical-girl-ish show in the vein of Nanoha, and it’s very bright, colorful, and energetic to boot (or should I say “to butt”?). It has the potential to be a decent amount of silly fun if you don’t think about it too much, provided it keeps its indecent side down to a minimum.

Mangirl confirmed for being a show about incompetent serial killers.

While Ishida and Asakura was all-over-the-place in a bad way, Ai Mai Mi is all-over-the-place in a good way. There’s really no telling where each episode is going to go, but it starts off strange and just keeps building momentum for its entire three-minute run until it reaches its even stranger conclusion, usually with some amount of ridiculous violence thrown in for good measure. The art style is decidedly 90s, and combined with its 8-bit ED theme it gives the show a very retro aesthetic. While a good deal of what goes on is pretty dumb, there’s enough logic to the insanity and just enough cleverness in each episode to bring it together into something solidly above-average.

This show is about moe mountain climbing. Look at how moe that lizard is climbing that mountain.

Yama no Susume is another of those short series, and manages to set itself apart in that it is about mountain climbing. The first two episodes were pretty lackluster, and the pacing starts out pretty slow given the three-minutes-a-week runtime, but three and four have started to introduce the actual mountain-climbing aspect of the show, with some hill climbing, cooking practice, and supply shopping. Even if the show isn’t the most enthralling thing out there, moe mountain climbing is still mountain climbing, which is a fairly unique subject within anime, and that alone gives it some leverage. It also means there’s a clear goal for the story, and each episode has been climbing a little higher toward that final peak of actually hiking up a mountain. It gives the show some flow that a lot of the other shorts this season lack.

Vague Enjoyment:

YOSHI YOSHI YOSHI

Kotoura-san is nothing like what I would have expected it to be. It’s equal parts pervy romcom and overwrought melodrama – two genres I am normally quite averse to – but here it somehow works. I still haven’t quite figured out what this show does so differently than all the others to make these things work as well as they do, but they seem to cancel each other out into a whole that is surprisingly palatable. I think much of it is due to the two leads, Kotoura and Manabe. Kotoura has an unusual mix of innocence and jadedness about her due to the circumstances surrounding her ESP. Manabe is a departure from the usual anime male lead, in that he’s not shy about his feelings for Kotoura in the slightest and is willing to stand up for her when he needs to. He’s a refreshingly straightforward and earnest male lead in a genre full of personality-devoid wallflowers. They’re also a pretty good match for each other – Kotoura’s ESP isn’t a problem for someone who wears his heart so readily on his sleeve. So far, maintaining the balance between the heavyhanded and lighthearted sides of the story has been key to Kotoura-san’s enjoyability. If it can keep it up for the remainder of its length, it will end up a far better show than it seems to have any right to be.

ECONOMICS

Right down to the director and voice cast, comparisons between Maoyuu and Spice and Wolf are seemingly inevitable. In particular, the dual focus on economics and romance is a key similarity, and both shows manage to keep the former surprisingly interesting. However, Maoyuu has some work to do on its romance side – its characters are not very interesting and their relationship is iffy at best. Maoyuu also likes to swing its leading lady’s boobs around a bit too much, both literally and verbally. Right now the economics alone, while not as engaging as Spice and Wolf’s, are enough to keep the show going, but if it can do a better job than it has been of developing its characters along the way, it can go places. Maoyuu is either going to be a show about boobs or about economics, and I’m not sure which it is yet. And I’m not sure that it knows either.

YES This Is Pretty Good:

Henshin-Superhero-Japanese-Robin-Hood.

Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman started out as the best new TV anime of the season, and has gotten better with every episode. It’s essentially Lupin III meets Gintama with a superhero twist, and each episode has added more awesome stuff to the table. How can you not enjoy a show about Henshin-Superhero-Japanese-Robin-Hood having a thief-battle with Catwoman in Ye Olde Japan with a wacky, Lupin-esque Gintama oddjobs gang and a brass-tacular OP/OST? And the latest episode even featured a golden castle in an underwater cave that transforms into a giant robot! And a tiny, old-man version of Sanada Yukimura fighting off a gang of pirates with three arrows in his chest! And when it wants to, it can have a nicely-handled serious side as well. This show is seriously the most overlooked gem of the season and it is a lot of fun to watch. With the rate at which its been topping itself every week, I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

FBI!

Though it’s not technically a TV anime, INFERNO COP started coming out at around the same time as the other winter shows, and this is such a dry season and this show is so awesome that it deserves a mention. INFERNO COP, like Roman, has continually topped itself every week, with its titular hero battling everything from street thugs to crab monsters to the legal system to evil organizations to the zombie apocalypse to robots to dinosaurs all the way up until the latest episode where he has challenged GOD HIMSELF. And also he has for some reason turned into a hot rod. The cardboard-cutout animation, randomly-German ending theme, and at-times-questionably-translated official Youtube subs all add to the fun, and it’s always a riot to see where the next episode will lead. INFERNO COP is the hero that will save this season from drowning in a sea of its own mediocrity.

This entire arc of Space Bros has been fantastic about building suspense in all the right ways. After a long, drawn out string of episodes this fall, waiting for Hibito’s rocket to launch and for Mutta to get his phone call, the show has turned up the stakes considerably. This isn’t training anymore. This is the real deal. This is the moon. This is space. And space is cruel. It is unforgiving. Our bodies are not meant to function in space, but space does not care. For the past few episodes, we’ve seen Hibito and Damian fight against these extreme conditions, and with this week’s episode it has hit its peak.

This episode was all about Brian Jay. It was a brilliant choice of a theme, because it works on so many levels. Brian has been the series’ symbol for the astronaut’s risk and acceptance of death, and thus his prevalence throughout the episode constantly points towards Hibito’s impending doom, while at the same time giving him a vehicle through which to accept it.

We get a glimpse into Hibito’s past, and how important Brian was to his growth as an astronaut. This serves a couple purposes. Most directly, it helps to develop both Hibito and Brian as characters, as well as the relationship between them. Finding the spot where Brian left his mark on the moon completes the image of Brian as the veteran astronaut he claimed to be and gives Hibito further reason to look up to him. In addition to the development, the flashback works on an extradiegetic level as well, as a flashback in fiction is a common death flag. The very fact that Hibito is flashing back to his time with Brian is reminiscent of other series that try to give their characters some last-minute development to give their deaths more impact, and it paints the picture of his life flashing before his eyes.

The back of Brian’s astronaut figure contained a picture of him with his brother, and Hibito remarks that Brian and Eddie had thought they would walk on the moon together, but they never got the chance. Brian and Eddie serve as a parallel for Hibito and Mutta, pushing the idea that Hibito would meet the same fate as the Brian, the younger brother who walked on the moon.

Hibito spent his final minutes of oxygen in the spot where Brian had once walked, and in the spot where Brian had left his personal mark on the moon in the form of an astronaut figure. He stood in the spot marked by the symbol of death, with his own only minutes away, and as he looked down he saw that he had all but followed in Brian’s own footsteps (and indeed, it was Brian himself who suggested Hibito be the one to go to the moon before Azuma).

As he runs out of air, he begins to hallucinate Brian walking towards him, as if to escort him from the world of the living, as if inviting Hibito to join him.

Everything about Brian’s inclusion in the episode seemed to point to Hibito running out of air and dying there on the moon. Except at that point, yet another layer of Brian’s significance is brought to the fore. Brian is Hibito’s teacher, his helper, and his leader down the path of an astronaut. When Hibito needed help, Brian was there.

At the moment when Hibito is most in need of help, Brian comes to bring it to him, in the form of the oxygen pod that bears his name. Brian was there to give Hibito the push he needed to survive, and it becomes clear that, in the end, that was the purpose of the flashback. All the Brian imagery throughout the episode had been an allusion not to Hibito’s impending death, but to the pod on the way to rescue him. It was a very clever twist of the series’ symbolism, and it was very well-played by both the original creator and the staff to have the same character simultaneously represent and foreshadow two completely opposite outcomes.

Well done, Space Bros. Well done.

“He’s a scoundrel at heart, but he dreams of being the good guy. So he watches at least two films a week with heroic things in them.”

Riding Bean is an action OVA from 1989, chuck full of blazing guns, souped-up cars, and delightful implausibility. It’s a pretty standard courier setup: we’ve got Bean Bandit, our hotheaded driver-for-hire with his custom car The Roadbuster and his gunslinging partner Irene Vincent, a pair who’ll take on any job for the right price. We’ve got Percy and Dick in their Shelby Cobra, the crazy cops who’ll stop at nothing to get Bean behind bars. We’ve got Carrie and Semmer, the double-crossing criminal duo who’ll stop at nothing to catch them all in their criminal scheme. Kidnappings, firefights, car chases, and thrills abound as everyone races for the 2-million-dollar ransom. For those familiar with Gunsmith Cats, this is essentially a prequel, and while I was not familiar with Gunsmith Cats before this, I am certainly going to give it a look now.

If this is what Gunsmith Cats is like, I have got to check it out.

The character designs are very 80s, in that style of 80s character designs that I very much enjoy. Bean in particular stands out for his ridiculously enormous chin, which would not surprise me if it could be removed and used as an effective bludgeoning weapon.

DAT CHIN, MAN. DAT CHIN.

There’s nothing particularly revolutionary story-wise, as it’s basically just a setup for the action, but it’s got plenty of twists and turns and never stops moving. As far as action movie plots go, Riding Bean delivers more than adequately, and it keeps the thrills coming from start to finish. There are a few raunchy moments in the middle that feel pretty out-of-place, but they’re brief and don’t get in the way too much. The ending also falls a little short, but again, it’s not really a deal-breaker.

Anyway, moving right along…

If you’re looking for a good car chase in your anime, look no further than here. Riding Bean features among the best chase scenes anime has to offer, with stunning car animation, clever choreography, a pumpin’ 80s soundtrack, and some deliciously satisfying tire squeals and engine roars. The Roadbuster has a number of cool tricks up its sleeve that I’ll leave as a surprise, because it’s really awesome to see Bean suddenly bust them out in the heat of the moment (let’s just say that he’ll never have a problem with parallel parking). The Chicago setting leads to some busy streets and detailed backgrounds, with of course the iconic bumper-buster under the El that is a staple of the Chicago movie car chase, and Riding Bean pulls it off with an insanity reminiscent of the Blues Brothers. And when that final high-speed pursuit kicks in, the animation lets loose with more speed, smoke, and car-nage than just about anywhere else in anime. You won’t find many better ones than this.

I can just hear the police cars tumbling over each other in the background.

All in all, if you’re looking for a high-speed, action-packed way to make 45 minutes breeze by, you’re can’t go wrong with Riding Bean.

This picture needs no caption.

This episode is a marvel of poor character art.

The first and most exciting thing I learned from the special features on my Mr. Stain on Junk Alley DVDs is that “Popee the Performer is the famous pop-culture hit that took Japan by storm in January of 2000.” The knowledge that Popee was a commercial success – a “smash hit” that established creator Ryuji Masuda as “a renowned 3D animation director” – has by itself justified the $15 I spent on a used copy. However, within the 110 minutes of bonus content that accompanies this 120-minute series, there was a much more interesting tidbit: an interview with Masuda himself, in which he discusses what his creations – Popee and Stain – mean to him, and answers some surprisingly dark questions about the shows. Two of his responses in particular were quite striking to me: his answers to questions about Stain’s tears and the meaning of the violence in each show. Like I said, some surprisingly dark questions.

An Introduction

For those unfamiliar with Masuda’s work, he deals in surreal, dialogue-free series of short 3D animations, and is most known for Popee the Performer and Mr. Stain on Junk Alley. I have already made clear in an earlier post that Popee is pretty much The Greatest Show On Earth. Mr. Stain, meanwhile, is to bittersweet melancholy what Popee is to terrifying hilarity. Both contain copious amounts of Looney-Tunes-esque cartoon violence and logic, but are presented with far more heart than a Bugs Bunny cartoon could regularly muster. It’s definitely an acquired taste – it takes some time to become accustomed to the rather rough CG and unrestrained cruelty of each show, but for those who can overcome those barriers, the rewards far exceed any early misgivings. If you’re willing to go into them bearing this in mind and embrace the strangeness, I would highly recommend them both.

Delicious Tears

“[A] sense of shock is common in eating scenes in Popee and Stain,” Masuda notes during the interview. “You don’t feel like they’re enjoying their food. Characters really love their food in Hayao Miyazaki’s movies, but not so much in my works.”

In the case of Mr. Stain, this is especially apparent. Stain is a homeless man living on the streets of the show’s unnamed city, so eating and searching for food is a very important part of his life. Around half the episodes center on some scene of Stain acquiring food. Donuts appear to be the go-to choice for sating his hunger, but donuts don’t grow on trees, and when you’re in Stain’s situation, sometimes you’ll have to make do with what you can. The food episodes are a very direct and harsh reflection of the show’s theme of sacrifice, as when he cannot find a donut to enjoy, Stain is forced to make a meal out of the “new friend” introduced earlier in the episode. Stain’s most substantial meals are ever-laced with guilt and loss, as his tears salt the now-delicious remains of his once-living companion.

“Stain’s tears are especially striking.”

“Stain’s tears are especially striking,” comments the interviewer, to which Masuda replies, “I was especially particular about his tears. I probably fashioned them after my own childhood feelings. I would always feel guilt about eating meals when I was little. I wonder if those are the same tears.”

Food has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was once a living thing. Stain pushes this point to its extreme by making that living thing an established character over the course of the episode – and on top of that a tragic figure, for whom becoming a meal is the inevitable peak of their character arc. But these scenes do not push the unrealistic and counterproductive idea that because something had to die for your meal, eating in itself is a source of guilt and shame. Rather, this device is used to convey a more positive, if bittersweet message – there is a sense of purpose and meaning to the eating scenes, as though by making a feast of his animal friends, Stain is acknowledging and honoring their sacrifice. It is less a reflection of Masuda’s childhood guilt towards eating, and more a reflection of what he identifies as his more present source of guilt: “When I don’t eat all my food, it makes me realize those vegetables and animals died for nothing.” It’s about appreciating the food we have and the sacrifice that was made such that we might have it.

Heavenly Fried Chicken

Possibly the most profound example of this is episode four, “Heavenly Bird”, in which Stain finds a caged bird and prepares to cook it. The bird frees itself, and when Stain tries to chase it down, he falls, only for the bird to come back and save his life. He cares for it through the harsh winter until it succumbs to the cold. Through his grief, Stain beheads and cooks the bird and enjoys the meal he had originally planned to have, shoving his face full of poultry as he mourns his great loss. It’s incredibly heartfelt, and an excellent showcase of Masuda’s claim that “[While] Popee’s violence is basically just for show, Stain’s violence happens more for a reason.”

He goes on to reveal that “The staff told me that having the bird’s head chopped off was cruel. When I was little I used to chop the heads off chickens. As a kid, I didn’t have the strength to cleanly cut them off, so blood would go flying everywhere. I felt bad, but at dinnertime, it was regular old fried chicken to me. So I included my experience of chopping off heads before dinner, after giving it some serious though. It may be cruel, but that’s just how the world is.” It would seem, then, that the power of this episode comes from Masuda coming to terms with his childhood, reconciling his childhood guilt of eating with his present feelings of obligation towards his meals’ sacrifice. It would be interesting to know if there were similar stories behind any of the other episodes, but even just this is a profound look at what makes the show work in the way it does.

In the interview, there was a little sidebar with extraneous Q+A related to the primary questions being asked. Before I go on to the next topic, I’d just like to leave with you this particularly haunting piece that appeared there as he described his fried chicken experience.

“How did you feel when you chopped chickens’ heads off?” “Terrified.”

Popee and Tangential Guilt

It’s pretty clear how the characters in Mr. Stain “don’t enjoy their food,” as Masuda describes, but what about Popee and company? With the exception of the excellent “Dark Side” episode, in which a vengeful Popee serves Kedamono and Papi slices of the trunk of Papi’s pet elephant, the characters seem to very much enjoy eating – Kedamono in particular loves his fried chicken (something he has in common with his creator).

As Masuda’s interview was primarily about Mr. Stain, he doesn’t go into any further detail regarding food and guilt in Popee. However, by going back and rewatching some episodes of Popee (always a pleasure) with this idea in mind, I think it’s become a little more clear.

In Popee, the lack of enjoyment of food comes from a different place. The characters in Popee enjoy the food itself, but there are frequently external circumstances that attach negative feelings to the food, including guilt. There is always some degree of remorse for eating, whether it be from the circumstances under which the food was obtained, or some horrific event that results from its consumption. In “Escape Show,” Kedamono subjects his friend Popee to alien probing in exchange for his fried chicken. In “Acrobatics,” when he eyes the chicken, he forgets about the deceased companion he had just been mourning and even steps on his body on the way to his meal. “Karate Show,” sees Popee become possessed by a frog as a result of trying to eat it. Popee’s quest for cake in the episode “In The Mind” drives him to pummel his friends repeatedly over the head with a hammer. Food comes at a high cost in Popee, and whenever anyone attempts – successfully or not – to enjoy it, it will only ever cause pain to themselves or others.

…and sometimes, the food just becomes unenjoyable in the end.

…then again, there isn’t much in Popee the Performer that doesn’t bring a horrific fate upon everyone involved. Still, while food is hardly special in this regard, it is certainly no exception from Popee’s indiscriminate distribution of pain, death, guilt, fear, and general suffering amongst its characters.

Conclusion

Food appears as a device for guilt in both Popee and Stain – while it may manifest itself differently in each, it does so such that it may fall more in line with the show’s general mood. This correlation is very important to Masuda, as it stems from his coming to terms with a part of his childhood. This shows through in that, where you would expect the correlation to be an expression of negativity, it is actually turned around to relay a more positive message. As Masuda says, “It used to make me feel guilty. But not now. Now I just get fat.”

Last time I discussed the characters in Shinsekai Yori, I half-jokingly noted that Squealer, “the little rat dude,” had been my favorite character in the series so far. That claim was then intended to be a blow against the series – pointing out that if a random side character, especially a non-human one, was more interesting than the main cast of humans, the show really needed to step up its characterization.

While this was partly a joke at Shinsekai’s expense, I did legitimately find Squealer to be a curious fellow, and felt like there was something “off” about him and his actions. They all seemed very calculated, much moreso than was required by the circumstances or suggested by the outcomes thereof. However, that post was written during the first half of the series, a time when it was still stumbling over itself trying to find a clear direction, a time when there was no indication that it would take the path that it did. I even noted (and am glad to have been proven tremendously wrong) that it was “too far behind at its halfway point to become a truly great series,” and that it needed to decide what to do with itself. It was a point where the focus on queerats in episodes 5-7 seemed like a diversion, a waste of time. I figured that if this was like any other anime, Squealer would have been no more than a guide through the world of the queerats, one small part of a larger tale and a larger world, and that once they left that world, we wouldn’t see much, if any more of him. Shinsekai would move on from that and have a different vignette to tell about the world, with different creatures and different conflicts.

But Shinsekai is not “any other anime.” The fact that Squealer seemed like the most interesting character in the show was not the result of flawed characterization priorities, however glaringly present as such flaws were early on. Squealer seemed like the most interesting character in the show for the simple reason that Squealer is the best character in the show. He is, it is revealed, the driving force behind all of the show. He is simultaneously Shinsekai’s greatest villain and its greatest hero. A proud warrior and a brilliant strategist fighting for a noble cause. A mass-murderer and brutal pragmatist for whose ends no means are too low. He is easily more multifaceted – and perhaps even more human – than any of the human characters. We see all of the horrific things he’s done, to humans, queerats, and other creatures alike, bringing so many lives to their end and manipulating so many others in the most perverse, twisted ways, and yet we can see all the ways that he – and all of queerat kind – have been so dreadfully wronged, and we can still have sympathy for him. As human viewers, we ultimately want to see humanity prevail, but neither do we want to see Squealer defeated. No side is in the right in Shinsekai Yori. And no side is in the wrong. While each side may be equally human, each is also equally beastlike. And of all the characters, there are none who represent that as well as Squealer.

Also, he is incredibly moe.

From the very beginning, Squealer sets himself apart with his cunning and charisma – a pair of very human, very sapient traits uncharacteristic of what we would expect from a queerat. He showcases what is perhaps his greatest talent, his ability to convince others to fight for him. Again and again he gets Saki and Satoru to come to his aid, and while each time his motives seem more questionable than the last, it is never enough to seem unreasonable so much as unsettling. As the series progresses, we can see him bend increasingly unlikely parties to his will – his fellow queerats soon put his goals before their own lives, he talks the department of queerat affairs out of punishing his colony for their actions against the giant hornets, he is able to get even non-queerats to detonate themselves strategically in battle for his cause, and finally, he raises Maria and Mamoru’s child to identify so strongly as a queerat that his natural “death feedback” works in reverse (not to mention that he was able to acquire their child for himself in the first place). It was always equal parts impressive and terrifying to see just how far he could string others along – he made it clear that he would do everything it took to win, and that he could make anyone do exactly that, so how far would he have to go to finally succeed? In this way, his ruthlessness made him a very exciting character to behold.

But what is eventually revealed to be even more fascinating than this powerful ability of his is his motivation for using it. What Squealer wants, more than anything else, is to be seen as human. And not just him. He wants all queerats to be recognized as the humans they are – as equally intelligent, equally worthy beings. His biggest strength against the humans he fights is his ability to think like them and to know how they think. He has some source of human knowledge – likely a devil’s minoshiro – that he uses to continually make his queerat society more humanlike. From their weaponry to their form of government, he increasingly rejects the “old way” – the queerat way, a way of servitude – and moves towards a model more similar to that of the humans – one of autonomy. He chooses to go to war to overcome the biggest obstacle in the way of his goal of humanizing the queerats – the humans themselves, who refuse to see them as anything but inferior. The fight for humanization becomes much more poignant – and literal – with the reveal that queerats were in fact once the humans without cantus, oppressed and subjugated by the powerful dominant race of cantus users, viewed as a lesser people, belittled and dehumanized to the extent that they were physically transformed into something that was literally unrecognizable as human – so much so that the cantus users’ biologically-programmed death feedback would not even apply. For Squealer to fight – and so heavily shake – such a deeply-ingrained oppressive construct is a testament to just how remarkable an individual he is, and it is enough to even make some human members of the show’s viewership side with him even as the queerats steal babies and destroy villages to push the fight onward.

It also makes his ultimate defeat – and inability to effect permanent positive change for the queerats – all the more heart-rending to watch. The final stand he takes in his trial is at the same time his proudest and most humiliating moment – more accurately, it is incredibly powerful in how it takes his proudest moment of defiance, his most heartfelt cry for the recognition of his – and all of the queerats’ – humanity, and kicks it so mercilessly to its knees. Standing naked and judged as a crowd of his oppressors tower over him, his pleas to be treated as an equal are met with the very laughter he has been fighting to prove he does not deserve. He is denied a chance even for martyrdom, and the remaining queerats are put under even more restriction than before. While he certainly deserved the highest of punishments for his actions, one cannot help but feel that justice has gone unserved here.

Squealer at his trial was Squealer at his most human, and it was there that he proved himself to be more so than any of the humans who judged him.

With its 26th episode this week, may we bid a fond farewell to this first series of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. And a bizarre adventure it has certainly been – JoJo’s has been brilliant in how it has utterly refused to be restrained by any ties to reality, while still maintaining its own internal logic – all of the nonsense that the show pulls is a special kind of “JoJo” nonsense that somehow manages to make itself seem sensical. It’s the kind of systematic chaos in which, looking back on things that came seemingly out of nowhere, it slowly becomes clearer that “Oh, of course JoJo’s would do that!” This exaggerated reality is one of the highest high points of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, because in a world were there is nothing that can’t happen, the only limit on the fun is the creator’s own imagination.

It’s that raw, unabashed embrace of the ridiculous that makes JoJo’s such a joy to watch. It makes the show completely unpredictable and brings such a lush variety of themes, settings, and characters bursting into the narrative that it never gets old. There’s always something new waiting right around the bend, whether it’s Nazi Cyborgs, Piranhas on a Plane, Immortal Beings Named After Famous Rock Stars, Vampire Dubstep Squirrels (this seems a good time to mention Battle Tendency’s OUTSTANDING soundtrack), Magical Blood-Sucking Hair, you name it. It’s easy to laugh at the show for being so outlandish, but it’s never a mocking laugh; rather, it’s an entertained one. And for each laugh you have at the JoJo’s, JoJo’s has a laugh right back at you, as it pulls the rug out from under your feet yet again. Whenever you think you’ve seen it all, JoJo’s doubles down on crazy and shows you something you never imagined was possible. It can pull pretty much any trick in the book, no matter how stupid or unbelievable it may seem, and it can make you believe. From the blood-pumping opening theme to the roaring bass of the Roundabout, JoJo’s straps you in for the ride of your life with each and every episode. It’s a show with the bodacity to make you laugh and the poignancy to make you cry; it’s fabulous enough to make you stare and grotesque enough to make you wince; it’s got the triumph to raise you up in cheer and the suspense to steal your breath away; it is, in a word, exhilarating. Bombastic. Fantastic.

Bizarre.

It’s been a pleasure, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. May the day we meet again come soon.

No. Really. I mean it. Stardust Crusaders when?

CAUSE I FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL

And finally, the lackluster winter season has come to an end. I haven’t had much to say these last three months, as none of the new shows really stood out to me at all. Ultmately, while a couple of the winter series were all right, it was the continuing shows from previous seasons that carried the day here. Thankfully, the spring is looking to be much more promising so far.

I’ve noticed that I dropped a lot of stuff at around the halfway point in the season. Must’ve been around then that my taste came back, and I realized that I’d been grasping at straws trying to find something worthwhile in a pretty dead season.

As with the Fall, in the case of ongoing shows, I will only be reviewing the portion that aired this season (except for World War Blue, because that had a weird airing schedule).

So yeah, let’s get this review thing underway:

So I Watched All of This But It Pretty Much Sucked

21. Aoi Sekai no Chuushin De

Pop quiz: What video game does this represent?

World War Blue, to use the official translation of the title, was supposed to be a personification of the console wars between Nintendo and Sega from back when Sega was still relevant, with all the characters being exaggerated representations of those companies’ flagship titles. What we got was Sonic, Tetris, and some obscure RPGs that barely qualified as video game references so much as generic fantasy characters, all taking part in some minor skirmish against Taito, while the Nintendo army loomed ominously in the background. And a lot of really lame sex jokes. Now that I think about it, there were probably more sex jokes than video game jokes. Anyway, just as the Nintendo army was suiting up to go to battle with our heroes from Segaland, the series ended. The adaptation was over. Seriously? All of the interesting and recognizable designs were for the Nintendo characters, and they didn’t even do anything! This anime only adapted the Taito arc of the manga, which was clearly more of a plot stepping-stone than a major conflict, and it stopped before we even got to the entire point of the story! Apart from the Nintendo characters making themselves look tough onscreen, probably the most exciting thing that happened was a subtle joke where Tetris introduced Bubble Bobble to the magic of puzzles, implying that he had just created Puzzle Bobble. But when the big draw of your series is the Nintendo vs. Sega conflict, you can’t just throw that part out entirely. Without that, World War Blue simply had nothing left.

Nope, Couldn’t Even Finish This

20. Robotics;Notes

Frau will never whisper to you sweet nothings about giant robots.

So last time I brought up Robotics;Notes, it was around the halfway point and I noted that “the plot was slowly emerging” and “there is a lot of potential built up for the second half.” Well, 2/3 of the way into the series, something, ANYTHING had still ceased to happen. Instead of things happening, what we got were meandering character arcs that halted the story in its tracks, and while Frau’s was pretty good, I guess, none of them really had any lasting impact. Seems like the creators thought it would be a good idea to drop everything right before the climax and animate the other character routes from the VN. In a rare moment of agreement with the show’s staff, I promptly dropped the show itself right then and there. Amusingly, it was in literally the next episode after I dropped it that things reportedly started to happen, but from what I hear they were contrived, stupid, and not at all worth the fifteen episodes it took to get there, especially since by this point I cared even less about the characters and what was happening than I did before. Also there was something about a parrot. Dropped at episode 15.

19. Cuticle Detective Inaba

Eww.

As vaguely receptive as I may have been with Inaba before, I quickly lost my patience with it. I lost the will to put up with a show’s horrific comedic timing and almost aggressive unfunniness. Don, Lorenzo, and Azusa are goofy and all, but none of the other jokes that happened were very good. Because that’s probably the best way to describe the presentation of the jokes. They just “happen.” There’s no thought put into the presentation, no buildup to them, no time to appreciate them – they’re just kind of there. And for a show whose sense of humor seems to be character-driven, none of the characters outside the three listed above have any comedic value, and some of them, like the overactive tsukkomi character, manage to actively ruin the jokes as they happen. The new characters the show introduced, such as Inaba’s brother, ended up bogging things down even worse. It was just frustrating to see the show continually trip over itself as much as it did. At least the ED song was enjoyable. Nothing quite like a singing goat in a cape. Dropped at episode 5.

18. Little Busters

Finally, they’ve realized that Riki is a girl! Took them long enough.

Surprisingly, Little Busters managed to pull off a miraculously decent string of three episodes following its halfway point before it crashed back down to the level of insufferability I’ve come to expect from my arch-nemesis, Key. The sleepover episode was easily the best of the entire series, both for being genuinely funny and for finally acknowledging Riki as one of the girls. And for the two episodes of Book Girl’s arc, we got the series’ best female character in the form of Fake Book Girl, a character who broke my most maligned Key conventions by having a voice that didn’t make me want to tear my ears out and commanding my attention for a reason other than having a brain like a mashed potato sandwich (that actually sounds kind of delicious). Of course, as if to remind me that this is Key we’re dealing with, she turned out to be the overly dramatized manifestation of some childish trauma that Book Girl was facing, so she disappeared after only one two-episode arc, her existence ultimately a disappointment. But for those two episodes, there was a character worth watching. Then the twin sisters’ arc came around and I once again lost all hope for the show on the spot, as the hilariously bad Key drama got so contrived it’s questionable whether its source is even physically possible. It was especially sad because I kind of liked Klepto Twin before her drama arc tore her down. This arc, combined with the wasted potential of Book Girl’s, finally aggravated my allergy to this show’s garbage to the breaking point. Having that run of three consecutive decent episodes, I figured it was a safe bet to assume I had seen the best that Little Busters had to offer, and I decided to cut my losses after the twins’ arc. Dropped at episode 18.

17. Mangirl

Yep, pretty much.

At about the halfway point of Mangirl I decided it just wasn’t funny and I had better ways to spend that 3-5 minutes every week. Dropped at episode 6.

16. Maoyuu

If you can make a fight against a giant walrus warrior boring, you’re doing something wrong.

From the looks have things, Maoyuu could have chosen to be a show about boobs or about economics. It didn’t choose. It tried to be about both and at the same time to push the romance angle into the forefront. Which is really too bad because romance actually requires your series to have characters. I’m sorry, Maoyuu, but boobs, contrary to what you may have heard, are not characters. When it wasn’t focused on mixing oil and water and calling it chemistry, its economics side got increasingly preachy, lecture-y, and far-fetched. And when it tried to bring in some action, it somehow managed to make a fight against GIANT WARRIOR WALRUS boring. Dropped at episode 6.

15. Magi

Don’t worry Aladdin. That’s just A-1 Pictures forgetting to give you budget again.

The more I watched Magi, the more I realized that its interesting setting was little more than a veneer for a pretty routine shounen action series, complete with all the annoyances that come with it. It slowly became clear that, at its core, Magi was just the same tired shounen battle series as every other, with all the same vague battle taunts, vague magical powers, and vague character motivations. I do have to thank Magi for helping me realize that it is this vagueness that utterly drives me up the wall about most shounen – any depth to the conflicts is superficial at best, and the superpower systems tend to be arbitrary, such as moving faster, having a bigger sword, or shooting different-colored light beams. Also, A-1 Pictures put like zero budget into this show and the animation is really sloppy. Oh, well. At least there’s Hunter x Hunter. Dropped at episode 17.

Well, I Didn’t Drop It, At Least

14. Ai Mai Mi

This episode basically made the series worth it.

I’m pretty sure the only reason I was able to finish Ai Mai Mi was because the episodes were less than five minutes long. It was occasionally so nonsensical as to be funny, but mostly it just made no sense. The monster episode was pretty great, though.

13. Kotoura-san

A bit much, yeah. Just a bit.

I’m still not entirely sure what to say about Kotoura-san other than that it was incredibly inconsistent. The tone continued to oscillate between its school comedy and awful melodrama to increasing extremes; its already-fragile balance between the two transformed into an unpleasant emotional whiplash. None of the drama could be taken seriously, but nor could the comedy be freely laughed at. The characters were every bit as inconsistent as well – they would frequently do complete personality 180s at the most random times, and each time it happened a little bit of their charm faded with it. That’s not to say it was all bad: as often as the laughably bad moments were drawn from the emotional grab bag that was each week’s episode, it was about equally likely that, at any given point, it would suddenly transition to one that was surprisingly endearing and well-executed. I’m not sure even Kotoura could divine what the creators were going for here, because I’m not completely sure they knew themselves. Kotoura-san was a show that worked as frequently as it didn’t, but it also failed to work as frequently as it succeeded.

Mild Enjoyment Achieved!

12. Vividred Operation

(The tomato is a symbolism for her butt.)

A tribute to both the super robot and magical girl genres and following largely in the footsteps of Nanoha, Vividbutts was a show with enough bright colors, fast-paced action, and lighthearted excitement to make for a reasonable amount of fun every week. Where the show excels most is visually – beyond the vivid butts themselves, the animation is crisp, the designs and backgrounds are colorful and varied, the transformation sequences have a visual punch to them, and the direction is relatively strong. On the storytelling side, Vividbutts is much less so. The plot and setting are made of swiss cheese, the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP message can be overbearing at times, the characters – while very cute and admirably distinct – are pretty shallow, and the dialogue is not the most inspired. But then, it’s not like it’s trying to be anything more than shallow entertainment. As a vehicle for lovingly-rendered little-girl butts, flashy fight scenes, cute (if not particularly good) characters making friends, and generally silly, harmless fun, Vividbutts succeeds heartily. Overall, it’s hardly a top-tier show, but even if the little-girl butts aren’t your thing, as in my case, there’s still enough here to enjoy if you’re willing to turn off your brain. In terms of shallow fun, you could do far worse.

11. Yama no Susume

Large hill: conquered. Next stop: Fuji.

As with Vividbutts, there isn’t really much to Yama no Susume. Though at only three minutes per episode, its low-content feel-good approach serves well as a nice, refreshing break from the day without wearing out its welcome. I bore easily watching a full 23 minutes of girls doing nothing of importance, but in small doses like this it can be quite nice. That said, I can’t help but wonder if this particular show could have benefitted from being a single longer episode, rather than a series of three-minute shorts, as having it so chopped up messed with the pacing and flow of the story a little. In any case, it was a good move to have a clear goal to progress towards throughout the whole series, as having that single focus helped to prevent Yama no Susume from meandering and wasting its short airtime. It helped to tie everything together and give this otherwise insubstantial series just enough “oomph” to make it worthwhile.

10. Senyuu

Only in Senyuu. Yamakan has saved anime once again.

Senyuu’s sense of humor still isn’t the greatest, but it’s improved enough over the course of the season to bump it up a couple spots on my list. It takes a few clever jabs at itself and other fantasy anime/games and their tropes, and while each character has essentially one joke, Senyuu does keep the variety coming by continually introducing more of them. It’s goofy enough to warrant the miniscule time investment it demands, so I’ll be checking out the second season when it hits in the summer.

The Best That Winter Had To Offer

9. Tamako Market

The moral of the story is that Dera is really, really fat.

I’ve really warmed up to Tamako Market as the season went on. While there was still more focus on cute girls doing boring things than I would have liked, the show does put some more spice into its slice-of-life routine as we learn more about the market, its shopowners, and its tropical visitors. While I wasn’t too big on the arranged-marriage plotline at the end, or really much of the main story at all, it was the little things that gradually won me over. Things like the record shop owner, with his hilariously appropriate choices of mood music. Things like Daisuke Ono as the FLOWER PRINCESS. Things like the friendly rivalry between Tamako’s and Mochizou’s dads. Things like Kanna’s way of calling Dera “MISTAH”. Things like that goofy face that Anko’s crush has. Things like Dera being fat and turning into a projector. Really, if Tamako Market had been less about Tamako and more about the Market, I would have loved it that much more. In the end, it managed to give enough of its time to exploring the delightful little quirks of the Usagiyama shopping district and its inhabitants that I was able to overcome some of my initial misgivings and let myself get swept away in the magic of the market.

8. Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman

Admiral Perry has so much love to share.

Initially I compared Bakumatsu Roman to a cross between Gintama and Lupin III. By the end of the show, I would like to append Sengoku Basara to that list, and both the good and the bad that come with it. On the one hand, the middle of the series got really tangled up in itself and bogged down the fun with its hit-and-miss attempts at drama, but on the other, it came back at the end with a string of such uproariously ridiculous novelties that it was hard not to enjoy. We had mummies piloting giant robots, living dolls planting bombs all over a ship, Admiral Perry spreading love and smiles around the world with his giant laser cannon and arm-mounted machine gun, some kind of bizarre, out-of-place villain backstory about the American Civil War, and all manner of crazed madness for our favorite Japanese Robin Hood Batman III to fight alongside and against. For all its faults, it was still easily the winter TV series I most enjoyed watching all season long. Airing alongside INFERNO COP on Mondays, it always managed to get the week off to a good start.

HYPER OATS

7. Psycho Pass

NO MOE ALLOWED

Psycho Pass’ second half got off to a really rocky start with its poorly-executed helmet arc, and the reveal at the end of the arc brought about a turning point that kicked the main plot into gear and, in doing so, really changed the way I looked at the series. I think I preferred it by a fair degree in its first half, when it was more of an episodic police procedural, because the way that continually switched things up made it so that the show never focused on any one thing for too long, and it helped to mitigate some of the sillier aspects of the world and the uneven writing. Once the continuous plot rolled around, I realized I was probably taking the series too seriously, and needed to lighten up a bit to enjoy the laughable twists it started to pull with things like the helmets and the wonderfully out-of-left-field introduction of HYPER OATS. Even taking it easier on the show, Psycho Pass still had its share of problems, such as Gen Urobuchi’s constant need to inform us what DEEP, THOUGHT-PROVOKING BOOK he’d read that week by name- and quote-dropping it repeatedly throughout the episode with little context or consequence, or the episode that Production IG forgot to finish animating. Among all the mess in the show’s second half, however, Akane really got a chance to shine with her excellently-done character arc. Akane was a joy to watch, and one of the best parts of the show was seeing her slowly grow out of her initial naivety while still maintaining her optimism and continuing to grow rationally. Her cool level-headedness and willingness to speak her mind made her a very refreshing character. In all, while I didn’t like it as much as the first half, Psycho Pass’ second half worked in its own way. It wasn’t quite the show I’d hoped it would be, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

Gooooood, Goooooood *Tents Fingers*

6. INFERNO COP

STAND ASIDE, REDLINE. INFERNO COP IS HERE TO CLAIM YOUR CROWN FOR QUALITY RACING ANIMATION.

INFERNO COP is a masterpiece of Japanimation. From the first appearance of Studio Trigger’s logo to the very end of the finale’s spectacular 9-minute ending song (which I have now watched at least 5 times in its entirety), INFERNO COP is one hour of non-stop, barely-animated, lovingly-crafted, gleeful imagination, vomited straight onto your screen by some of the most creative wack-jobs in the animation business. It’s a parody in the vein of an Adult Swim show (except actually good), trying so hard to be the stupidest, most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen that you can’t help but fall in love with its earnestness. It’s easy to see just how much fun these guys had making this show, and it’s hard not to have just as much fun watching it.

5. Space Bros.

Space, as seen from space.

This season’s offering of Space Bros was split into two parts. The first, with its focus on Hibito on the moon, was far and away the best the series has been to date. Space Bros has always had excellent storytelling and characterization, but it’s biggest flaw has been its incredibly slow pace and general lack of momentum or tension. Hibito’s arc sends that tension soaring as it briefly turns from appreciating the wonders of space to examining its dangers. All the while, it still keeping the series’ big narrative and character strengths intact, the result being a string of near-flawless episodes best viewed from the edge of one’s seat. The second part is still ongoing, the plot having shifted its gaze to Mutta’s astronaut training. It’s back to the show’s normal slow pacing, but Space Bros did need a breather after that intense moon arc. It’d be nice to not have to wait too long for more excitement, but I’m more than fine with just kicking back and letting this show do its thing.

4. Hunter x Hunter

On the left: Hunter x Hunter. On the right: Every other shounen anime.

While the glorified training arc that was Greed Island never had a prayer of being as good as the fantastic Yorkshin arc, it was still more than adept at doing that which Hunter x Hunter does best: delivering a mighty, nen-powered kick to the chins of just about every other shounen series out there. For seventy-four episodes now, Madhouse has been giving us the goods without missing a single beat, and they’ve still got what it takes to pull out all the stops for a really big fight. While the rest of the arc was nothing to sneeze at, and wiped the floor with other recent real-life-video-game (and vice-versa) series BTOOOM and Sword Art Online, the last two episodes blew the rest out of the water, featuring not only a satisfying and very Hunters-ish conclusion to the arc, but also some of the best animation in the series. With the knob turned up to eleven for almost two whole episodes, it was certainly the longest continuous run of such high technical quality. Madhouse is getting better at animating these fights the more the series goes on, and as they take their first steps this season into never-before-animated material, their dedication to making this possibly the most consistently well-animated long-running series of all time will make the new material shine even brighter. Beyond that, though, it is the world and the characters that really make Hunter x Hunter tick, and Greed Island was no exception. The game itself was very complex yet carefully put together – as expected of an author who is himself a big fan of RPGs – and the use of nen to make it all work is pretty astounding. As Ana points out in The Cart Driver’s comments section (WARNING: SPOILERS), even something on this ridiculous a scale believably falls in line with the nen system we’ve seen so far, too, making it all even more impressive. Greed Island also introduced us to a great new character in the no-nonsense Bisky-chama, Gon and Killua proved time and again why they’re just so much cooler (and in Gon’s case, more FREECS-ING INSANE) than any other shounen protagonist out there, and our Greed Island villains were a good fit to show just how far the pair of them have come under Bisky’s training. And of course, Hisoka stole the show as usual every time he came onscreen. What was sadly missing from this arc, though, was any sign Kurapika and Leorio. They were an important balance to Gon and Killua’s more typical shounen sensibilities in the previous arcs, and I really miss having them around. Apparently they won’t be coming back for a while, either, and while I’m still all kinds of okay with The Gon and Killua show, I would really like to see the whole gang together again.

Glorious Victory

3. Girls und Panzer

PANZER GATTAI

After three long months of waiting, we finally got the last two episodes of Girls und Panzer. Was it worth the wait? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and YES. This finale was a noticeable step up from even the high bar set by the rest of the series, as the tanks got bigger, the tactics got crazier, the animation got smoother, and the stakes got higher. Watching the tiny little Hetzer zoom around the enemy formation and throw them into complete disarray, or watching three tanks team up to try and take down the monstrous Maus – a concept tank that was too big for any WWII-era engine to move – or watching a line of tanks ford the river in a move that would’ve lost more than a few oxen on the Oregon Trail (thankfully none of the girls contracted dysentery) – there were too many awesome stunts pulled to even fully appreciate with only one viewing. Notably, the directing also jumped up a notch – there were some wildly clever and technically impressive shots, culminating in one absolutely glorious split-second of a final shot of battle (both from the camera camera and the tank) that hung so heavily in the air you could taste it. The music and sound were marvelous as always, and it was also a treat to have all the old opponents were in the stands commenting on the events of this awe-inspiring display of tank warfare. Girls und Panzer could not have gone out on a better note, and I can only hope that the director makes good on his comment that this might not be the last we see of the franchise.

2. From the New World

Welcome to the New World.

Wow. I might have had my complaints with this show as it was stumbling around last season, but in this second half, From the New World more than just straightened itself out, it took off in a way I never would have guessed it could do. It used the pieces it laid (albeit somewhat clumsily) in the first half to set the framework for one of the most satisfying payoffs I have seen in anime in a long time, and constantly trotted out reveal after reveal after reveal that turned inconspicuous details of the world into truly alarming threats with the greatest of ease, never feeling unnatural or forced in the least. As the mundane quickly transformed into the sinister, it became clear that Shinsekai was going to leave no aspect of its own world unquestioned and unexploited, and the endless stream of “Oh Yeah!” moments continued to demonstrate what a great job the show had done at foreshadowing. The characters, while still Shinsekai’s biggest weakness, improved dramatically once the cast was narrowed down and thrown into action, and by the end were barely a weakness at all. As the overall tone shifted toward the darker side of things, the top-notch soundtrack became ever more appropriate – it absolutely nailed the atmosphere. I expected after the first half that Shinseaki had potential, but not enough to become a truly great series. Boy, was I wrong – I really underestimated just how amazing this second half would be, and as was the case with my initial wariness of Girls und Panzer, I am more than happy to eat my words. This is how you tell a story.

1. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Thank you , David Productions. It has been quite a bizarre adventure, indeed.

Alongside four other ongoing series that at various time proved themselves to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, JoJo still managed to top them all. A tour de force of everything that was great about the manga, brought to life with a bold visual presentation, voice acting so wonderfully over the top you could see it from space, a killer soundtrack from Taku Iwasaki so perfect it’s as though dubstep (a genre which I do not typicaly prefer) was invented specifically for the purposes of its creation, and a heaping helping of JoJo love from the staff that shone through in the care with which they treated this adaptation. It’s really a shame there was clearly a small animation budget, but there’s so much heart here that I really don’t care. That is literally the only complaint I can muster about the show. It just does what it does so perfectly. I’ve given my tribute to the show here numerous times now, and David Productions has earned my utmost trust for anything they choose to do with the franchise (not that I’ve read beyond this point in the manga anyway). They could not have done a better job here, and I cannot imagine JoJo being adapted any other way. There’s nothing out there quite like it, and it’s a shame to see it end. I would be quite surprised if anything surpassed this as the best show of the year. I’m ready for more whenever you are, David Productions. Bring on the Stardust Crusaders.

All right, finally caught up with all my spring season shows, so it’s first-impression/three-episode-test time. I’ve decided to try splitting these impressions up this time rather than lumping them all into one post. Hopefully that should make them easier for me to write and for you to read.

First up is Crime Edge.

Crime Edge was directed by the guy who did the Fate/Stay Night anime, and  it really shows. The show reminds me a lot of Fate/Stay Night, though perhaps not quite as bad. The premise is similar enough – give a bunch of people a partner and historically significant superweapon, and throw them into a fight to the death for a prize that can reward them with what they most desire. It also shares some of the director’s favorite directorial quirks, like the need to throw obnoxious gradients and filters over every scene, either for dramatic effect or because he thinks it’s a suitable replacement for lighting. But perhaps the biggest lingering reminder of F/SN is that refusal to portray itself as anything but a SERIOUS DRAMA about SERIOUS CHARACTERS doing SERIOUS THINGS for SERIOUS REASONS. It’s all played completely straight, and despite a distinct oddness to its premise, the unrelenting seriousness in both its presentation and its writing quashes any attempts to capitalize on that oddity to make something creative and special out of it.

The scenes with Insteads, at least, are well-done, such as this and the multiple instances of hair-cutting.

Well, perhaps “unrelenting” is a bit unfair. There have been a few moments that something interesting has been allowed to shine through. What’s stood out the most so far has been the bizarre undercurrents tying sexual tension to the roleplaying of murderers in the Author/Instead relationship, as the injection and hair-cutting scenes bring to mind the idea of “la petite mort” – a French euphemism for orgasm that literally translates to “the little death.” These scenes have managed to snag my attention just enough to get me curious, but not enough to make up for my lack of interest in the Hairy Grail War or the characters themselves – the lead pair are your typical anime nice-guy and cute-girl, and while some of the side characters seem to want to be the kind of crazy you’d see in a show like Future Diary, Crime Edge’s serious-business approach holds them back.

In all, while Crime Edge is certainly strange, it’s also not particularly interesting. You’d probably enjoy it if you liked the Fate/Stay Night anime, or if you’re willing to stick it out to see if that strangeness ultimately amounts to anything. I’m still on the fence about whether or not that’s worth it. I think I may give it a little more time, but I’m not going to put too much faith into it.

Hataraku Maou-sama caught me completely off-guard. I wasn’t expecting much from it, as the premise isn’t really all that grabby on paper and I recently got burned on Hero/Demon King shows with Maoyuu. The promo material struck me as being one of those dumb typical anime comedies. I was not prepared for these likable characters or this understated sense of humor.

Watching Hataraku Maou-sama felt a lot like watching a more laid-back version of Astro Fighter Sunred with General Vamp as the main character, which is about as high of praise as an anime comedy can get from me. It had the same effective juxtaposition of a larger-than-life archetypal hero/villain dealing with the mundane troubles of the everyday, delicately humanizing a character we’re used to seeing as beyond human. And more than that, it is a celebration of those very banalities in a way that makes you love and appreciate them every bit as much as Vamp/Sadao does.

It’s also got that same great dynamic between the evil overlord and his subordinates and archnemesis that was really the highlight of Sunred. The overlord and his lackey are best pals, chillin’ in a pad together and being as absolutely not-evil as you could possibly imagine. And while the hero and the villain go on and on about how they’re going to finally defeat each other once and for all, it becomes an almost playful banter between the two as each discovers that the other is not the embodiment of good or evil that they are supposed to represent, but just regular guys living from day to day and fighting to give their lives a bigger meaning. And in so doing, they realize just how much they need and depend on each other, even if their loftier ambitions are completely at odds. It’s a great message, and seeing Sadao and Yusa (or Vamp and Sunred) come to appreciate each other has delivered some wonderful and silly character interactions.

Where Maou-sama sets itself apart from Sunred is in its mood. It’s a lot less aggressive in its jokes, its pacing, and its atmosphere, which brings the whole experience closer to home. It’s also not quite as funny, but it fills in that gap with what has so far been a relatively cute romance element with Sadao’s coworker and with more time spent on its earnest depictions of the everyday lives of our characters. Maou-sama places its character interactions center-stage and tells the jokes through the characters, as opposed to Sunred’s approach of telling jokes first and showing us the characters through the jokes. And while Yusa has occasionally ventured a touch too far into run-of-the-mill tsunderekko territory at times, on the whole the characters have been pretty strong and this approach has worked well for Maou-sama.

Maou-sama also takes its fantasy elements more seriously. There looks to be some kind of overarching plot involving the fantasy world making its appearance at the end of the third episode. This could lead to an abrupt shift in tone for the series, but the serious fantasy moments have been competently-enough handled so far that I think it should be able to pull it off just fine. As long as the focus on the characters remains as strong as it has been so far and the newly-introduced fantasy conflict doesn’t completely overwhelm the real-world storyline, Maou-sama has more than enough going for it now that the change can be handled well. If anything, the third episode itself was a reasonably solid transition from the first two.

This show has really been an enjoyable experience so far. By making the extraordinary mundane, Hataraku Maou-sama succeeds in making the mundane extraordinary.

Ah, OreImo, how I’ve missed you. You’re still the best crappy light novel adaptation out there: a gleaming beacon of mediocrity in a sea of garbage, you’re still the same show you’ve always been.

The thing with OreImo has always been that its cast is about half-composed of genuinely likable characters and half-composed of characters that make you sick to your stomach. Since it is a character-driven show, this means that the quality of any given episode is incredibly variable depending on which character gets the most screentime. An episode about Kirino or Ayase can range anywhere from “average LN fare” to “absolute travesty”, an episode about Manami can typically be described as “an episode”, and an episode about Kuroneko or Saori ranges from “enjoyable” to “uncharacteristically great”. And anytime the dad makes an appearance, I remember he is voiced by Fumihiko Tachiki (Gendo Ikari, Kaiji Narrator) and promptly fall out of my chair.

It is important to note that these character distinctions are indisputable FACTS and anyone who disagrees is CLEARLY misguided and an embarrassment of a human being. It would be preposterous to assume that they are merely my individual opinion and that alternative viewpoints are possible.

So what has the second season given us so far? Well, we’ve gotten an “average LN fare” Kirino episode, an “absolute travesty” of an Ayase episode, and an “extremely solid” Saori episode. The first episode was pretty inoffensive as a passable reintroduction to the premise (as well as a reminder of how annoying Kirino can get), but it was the second and third that got a reaction out of me.

Episode 2 left me an uncomfortable reminder of the series’ biggest problems.

Episode 2 was painful to watch, because it reiterated the reason I can’t stand Ayase – she brings out the worst in all the other characters, especially Kyousuke. This episode was also the exemplification of my biggest problem with the series – that while a lot of OreImo’s descent into uncomfortably skeevy territory is played for laughs, I can’t help but feel an air of sincerity about it, as though it’s patting its characters on the back while it’s slapping them on the wrist. (I do admit, though, that the scene at the end where Ayase went the yandere route knocked a legitimate guffaw out of me)

Episode 3, on the other hand, was a very satisfying reminder that the reason I do like OreImo despite its flaws is that its blanket reinforcement of otaku culture comes with a celebration of the good sides of the culture as well as the bad. It was a joy to watch the anime club come together and share the hobby that they love – if OreImo was about Saori’s circle of friends (both the old anime club and the new) rather than Kirino’s, it would have been a much better show on the whole. While Kuroneko is my favorite character overall, it’s Saori who tends to provide the setup for the series’ best episodes. Also, fun fact: Saori’s real last name is Makishima, and her sister’s chuuni friend is Shinya. Will we be seeing an Akane in the series anytime soon?

If these guys ended up being a part of the main cast, I would suddenly gain a good deal more enthusiasm for the show.

As it is, though, OreImo is as full of ups and downs as it’s always been, but it still manages to rise above the rest of the light novel crowd by making the ups good – and frequent – enough to be worth sitting through the downs.

…I suppose I should also thank it for starting a naming trend that makes it incredibly easy to determine which anime to avoid by simply staying away from anything with an absurdly long title.

Yondemasu Yo, Azazel-san is a comedy about the lovely little vulgarities in life – immature and depraved toilet humor, the contemptuous mockery of those deemed deserving of it, a gleeful glorification of all the worst parts of humanity, the unnecessarily graphic splattering of its characters across as many surfaces as possible, and – in the third episode of this new season – hemorrhoids with the eruptive and destructive power of a mighty volcano, all brought lovingly into your home by an adorably despicable cast of demonic cartoon animals. It’s got enough offensive material to bring a football team to the playoffs and takes a great pride in being as gross as it can possibly dream up. The end result, if you can stomach it, is quite funny.

Really, if you’re at all curious about the show, the best way to determine if Azazel-san is for you is to start watching it from the beginning of season one until you become so violently offended that you have to stop. If that moment ever comes, then you’re probably not the kind of person this show was made for, and that’s fine. If it doesn’t, then congratulations, you have now watched Azazel-san! The short, twelve-minute episodes make the series breeze by and let Production IG throw a bunch of disgusting little extra details into the animation.

If, after that experiment, you enjoyed the first season, then you’re in luck! The second is more of what you loved. Akutabe still has as overwhelmingly powerful and deliciously evil a presence as ever, Beelzebub is his old stuck-up self, and Azazel continues to lust over anything that moves and decorate the room with his seemingly endless supply of internal organs at least three or four times an episode. All the while, our straight “man”, Rinko, is the self-sufficient, no-nonsense female character every anime should have, with as big a mean streak as she has a soft side, serving as an excellent sparring partner for Azazel and Bee-yan and their demonic antics, and an up-and-coming – if too empathetic – successor to Akutabe himself.

The first two episodes also give us the return of our good friend Moloch, whose likeness has become the mascot of an in-show restaurant and spiraled out of control into a TV series and toy line that becomes the focus of these episodes’ plot. And to top it all off, the “all-star” voice cast of the first season returns – because if anyone but Hiroshi Kamiya played the obnoxious stuck-up insectoid penguin in a powdered wig and a crown then I don’t know what I would do.

Much of Azazel-san’s humor comes, as one would expect, from the sheer shock value of its content. It’s from the director of Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-san, another obscenely violent comedy that I didn’t care for before but now kind of want to rewatch, so if you’ve seen that, you should know what to expect. In that sense, the episodes so far this season have been pretty standard fare for the series, inasmuch as anything in Azazel-san can really be called “standard fare.” It’s not breaking much new ground for itself, but then, it doesn’t really need to – the formula it has is enough to carry at least another season, especially given the half-length episodes that ensure the show doesn’t wear out its welcome. As long as it can keep coming up with new kinds of toilet humor to splash around in, its appeal will remain – what could possibly be more timeless than poop jokes? The currently-running transvestite-hemorrhoid-doctor arc certainly suggests that the series is at no shortage of ideas.

If you’re in the market for a short show that’s as tact-free as you could ever hope for a show to be, Azazel-san is the one to watch. The five-year-old inside me loves it to bits, that’s for sure. But I don’t blame you if you didn’t even make it through this first impression. This kind of crap certainly isn’t for everyone’s tastes.

Titanic. Gargantuan. The two biggest shows of the spring 2013 season could hardly have more fitting titles. Both have easily succeeded at living up to their substantial hype thus far. As the most talked about series of the season (barring perhaps the controversial Flowers of Evil), I feel like any post that I make about either one at this point would be token at best – I have little to say about either show that has not already been said. I’d rather not rehash the praises of both shows’ gorgeous animation and unique settings, or Titan’s spiderman gear and potato girls, or Gargantia’s Sugitabot/lesbian lobster pirates. While I have do have my complaints about each show – for example, neither has really won me over with its characters for the most part, and the writing in each has been merely competent rather than anything extraordinary – I’d rather not dwell on those lest I belie the fact that these are my second and third favorite anime of the spring so far and are overall very good shows well worth a watch. So I’ve decided to instead put forth a comparison of these big series’ biggest defining qualities – their Big Things.

In Shingeki, the Big Thing is obviously the titans themselves. Towering, man-eating, humanoid hunks of exposed muscle, they are the sheer embodiment of some horrific, existential nightmare. The humans in Shingeki are no longer at the top of the food chain: quite contrarily, they are utterly helpless before the unstoppable behemoths that are the titans. Walls can’t keep them out. Guns can’t make them dead. No expedition to study them has yielded any useful intel. For a creature so large, against which the humans are so helpless, there appear to be a very large number of them – it would take considerable effort from a small army of humans to bring down even one titan; with the large number of them that seem to be out there, Eren’s goal of eliminating each and every one seems all but impossible. The humans are clearly and hopelessly outmatched by the titans’ superior physical capabilities. The titans here are a conceptual antagonist, representing everything that is repressing humanity and that humanity cannot hope to overcome.

In Gargantia, the Big Thing is Chamber, perhaps better known as the Tomokazu Sugitabot. Sugitabot and his pilot come from a culture where warfare is the norm – they’re trained as soldiers from a very young age to fight in a seemingly perpetual battle with some alien enemy. They know of virtually nothing that is not war. When they are suddenly transported to a flooded planet Earth, the more primitive, more peaceable culture is completely foreign. Having only had a crash course in the mysterious ettiquette (which here means: when to and when not to kill people) of the Earth culture, Sugitabot and pilot respond to a threat to the Gargantia by annihilating the attacking pirates with their superior technology and combat prowess, and effortlessly sending their leader “blasting off again”, Team Rocket style, when the rest of the fleet comes for revenge. The pair of them could probably single-handedly eliminate the entire human population of this patch of sea with little trouble if they so desired – so superior is their technology and fluency in warfare. Initially, they are told off for attacking the pirates so harshly, but later, the crew of the Gargantia comes to see the usefulness of Sugitabot’s enormous power. Sugitabot and pilot are the protagonists of Gargantia’s story – we’re meant to cheer them on (if somewhat grudgingly) as they defend the Gargantia from the pirates, try to learn the ways of the Earthlings, and find their way back home to indulge in the right to feast and reproduce.

What we can see in this comparison is the alternative points of view the two series take in regards to their Big Things. In Gargantia, we see through the eyes of the Big Thing – we see the comforts to be had in overwhelming power and at the same time the confusion that can result from such a disconnect from the powerless – the ease with which one can go overboard and the difficulty of empathizing with those lacking in the comforts of power. In Shingeki, we experience the unstoppable force of the Big Things from the perspective of those who cannot stop it, the fear of the powerless in the face of overwhelming power wielded by those who cannot hope to empathize with them – those who are so disconnected from them that they view the powerless merely as food.

Through these shows and their perspectives on Big Things, we can see the source of a lot of the tension in real-world conflicts stemming from differences in power. How the Big Things – those with Big power – cannot comprehend what it’s like to be without power, as if they were a different species entirely. How the power inherent in their actions can so effortlessly force itself upon those unwilling to receive it. How oppressed and helpless the powerless feel when overwhelmed by these actions, and how those feelings drive the desire for retaliation. Gargantia and Titan place us on opposite sides of this power struggle, and by looking at both alongside each other, it’s easy to see where the aggression and conflict between the sides comes from.

So I guess, in conclusion, that Shingeki OP has really become quite a thing, huh?