It’s that time of year again, halfway through the year, which means it’s time for Chris’ top ten from 2 years back! But I don’t even remember what I watched yesterday Rules for the list: Anime on this list are those that finished in 2014. That means that anime that finished airing in 2015 were not considered for this list; conversely, anime that began in 2013 and finished in 2014 are fair game.

After three and a half months as a work-in-progress, my top 10 of 2012 is finally done. Turns out I can talk endlessly about stuff I hate. Hey, shut up, it’s still relevant, damn it!

This year didn’t quite live up to 2011, so this list wasn’t as hard to make as last year, but there was still some pretty good stuff.

Walls of text inc

Note 1: Anime on this list are those that finished in 2012. That means that anime that have not finished airing yet were not considered for this list; conversely, anime that began in 2011 and finished this year are fair game.

Note 2: While I will avoid significant spoilers, it’s pretty difficult to review a show in any detail without revealing something. If you’re the type that’s afraid to watch commercials or read the back cover for fear of spoilers, you may consider skipping over entries you haven’t seen. If I do plan to spoil huge things, I will leave huge tags. You’ve been warned.

Note 3: There will be no sequels on this list.

Double post lol Anyway, this one’s short, just popping in to say I’ve figured out the video editing process and I’ll be uploading videos of my Rock Band customs to YouTube. Here’s a few to get started: Little Braver Shine Days Alchemy If anyone’s got requests, put them in the comments or on the videos, and I’ll consider it.

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas (Hanukah, etc) and a happy New Years.

And so 2011 comes to a close. A good year for school, conspiracy theories, and surprisingly, a pretty good year for anime. Which means it’s time for top 10s!

I’m glad anime isn’t dead yet. I even did my homework this year, as this list is compiled from a pool of 20 candidates. And those were pulled from like 50 shows I actually tried (and failed) watching. I even almost watched everything I wanted to (sorry Wandering Son and Mawaru Penguindrum)! And I played a couple good Visual Novels, and finally beat that damn .hack series (just in time for the announcement of the next installment ;_;), and wasted 60 hours on Skyrim. Good year.

So onward, into my favorite Chinese cartoons from 2011, and my endless ranting.

Note 1: Anime on this list are those that finished in 2011. That means that anime that have not finished airing yet were not considered for this list; conversely, anime that began in 2010 and finished this year are fair game.

Note 2: While I will avoid significant spoilers, it’s pretty difficult to review a show in any detail without revealing something. If you’re the type that’s afraid to watch commercials or read the back cover for fear of spoilers, you may consider skipping over entries you haven’t seen. If I do plan to spoil huge things, I will leave huge tags. You’ve been warned.

Konnichiwa from the depths of textbooks! It’s been a while since I’ve put anything up here. I’d say something about all the exams and homework I’ve had, going into my junior year, but everyone knows that’s a lame excuse.

But on to the topic of today’s post. I’ve been doing some thinking (with all 1.6 volts of my potato-sized brain), particularly about why some anime work and why some don’t. My biggest complaint about a lot of shows I finish and don’t like are that they felt rushed, and that it should have had 12 more episodes. But looking back on my repertoire, a lot of my favorite shows were 12 episodes or less. So obviously, the curse of 1-cour isn’t impossible to overcome. Hell, Yamamoto Yutaka himself, who I’m poking fun at in my title, stated at NDK that failing to tell a story in 12 episodes is the writer’s fault, not the block’s.

Why can some shows succeed in a mere 4-5 hours of animation while others flop? Is 24 episodes always better than 12? How about 50?

No seriously, why do we like what we like, and how can that total weeaboo over there actually enjoy something like that?

The anime fanbase is probably the most divisive, controversial, contradictory, and passionate community I’ve managed to make myself a part of. This is probably due to the infinitely broad range of niche markets the anime industry as a whole caters to, combined with the fact that if you’re an anime fan in the US, you probably know how the internet works, and the first thing you do when you watch something is to share your experience online. And when that guy passes your favorite show off as pseudo-intellectual, otaku-pandering, mindless drivel, god damn but shit is gonna go down.

It’s one thing to see a show as complete garbage, but it’s another thing entirely to find out there’s an army willing to defend that show to the death–defend it in a scientific, literate, intelligent way. How could anyone intelligent enough to weave such arguments together possibly see redemption in this waste of pixels? After all, real anime fans would only watch what I watch.

It’s a topic I’ve spent many a minute pondering on the toilet, and in class. It’s something Gene touched upon in his last post, and was elaborated upon in the comments. Clashing tastes, and why it pisses us off so much when it happens.

And neither is this blog, even though we’re out of showings. You didn’t seriously think we’d leave you in peace all summer, did you?

Finals are over and school is done, but it’s like my life didn’t get any easier. Thanks to all of my procrastination of procrastination, all of that “I’ll do it over summer” is now catching up. So much anime to watch, so many games to play, and so many miscellaneous things to waste time on. This happens every summer, and I never finish everything, and then I push it all to next summer. It’s like some kind of endless loop, or something.

Yeah, yeah, it’s late, but at least it’s still 2010.

After looking up and down gg’s list of 2010 Anime, rubbing my chin thoughtfully, gazing wistfully into the sunset, meditating upon my learnings for 10 days and nights, and shoveling snow in my driveway, I concluded two things.

Of eligible shows in 2010, I had started 28.

I had finished 7.

As I don’t feel qualified to review anything I haven’t completed, this clearly presents a problem. So, instead of reading Wikipedia and /a about random shows and pretending like I knew what I was talking about, I instead decided to review the 7 I actually watched, and add some filler top-picks at the bottom. Note that while this will be a “worst-to-best” list ala Grant, the fact that any show appears on this list at all means it was in the 25% I felt was worth watching, so it’s more like a “worst-of-the-best to best-of-the-best.” Or maybe, since I didn’t like 2010 that much, it’s a “worst-of-the-best-of-the-worst to best-of-the-best-of-the-worst.”

I hope everyone is enjoying the end of school and productivity for a month. I know I loved sleeping for 12 hours the last few days in a big, warm bed in complete silence. For those who were able to go, I hope you enjoyed Birdy the Mighty: Decode-if you have any thoughts on it, be sure to comment on Grant’s Birdy post.

There’s really no coherent topic to this post, other than that it’s all somehow connected to anime. Join me as I ramble about Bill 156, Mushishi (minor-ish spoilers), on anime recently passed, and anime in the near future.

EDIT: Apparently, this post is so ridiculously awesome, it initially warped time and published a week before I published it. Date manually altered to be more accurate.

Hello! I hope you’re all enjoying Thanksgiving break. And even though the last true showing of the semester is over, this blog will continue to live on and bring you confusing things from Japan. Speaking of confusing things:

Neon Genesis Evangelion. A show any anime fan worth his/her weight in moe has heard of, and one that many have seen. A show that has been the center of thousands of pages of forum discussion and debate. A show that has spawned countless gigabytes of fanart, fanfiction, and doujinshi. A show that is supposedly one of the most influential works in the last 20 years.

A show that has successfully confused a large chunk of its viewers.

Sometime last summer, while apathetically standing in the shower staring at the showerhead, I challenged myself on a whim to create a brief synopsis of the series. And although I had seen the show within the last couple of years, I found the task more daunting than I had anticipated. A group of young teenagers suit up in giant mecha to combat aliens.Was that it? The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn’t really sure. One of the most well known anime in existence, and all I knew about it was that there were some kids trying to fight aliens in giant mecha, and Shinji was a pussy. It bothered me enough that I actually went back and watched the whole series over again, trying to pay attention to the background and history behind everything. While I still can’t really claim I understand everything, I hopefully have a functional knowledge which I will now try to express in text. The background, the lore, the people, and the politics of NGE.

Do I really need to say there will be spoilers? If you haven’t seen NGE, and would like to, you may pretend this post doesn’t exist and keep yelling at me to post something new. On the other hand, if you haven’t seen this, and are too lazy to, and still want to sound smart in internet debates (lolwut), feel free to read ahead and spoil yourself senseless.

Also, long post is loooong. Get yourself some pocky and find a comfy seat.