Do Artwork and Animation Really Matter?

Regardless of the amount of time you’ve spent watching anime, you’ve no doubt noticed that people will often put a very big emphasis on the art style of a show, or the overall quality of it’s animation.  At the same time, there are others who loathe people who think like this and insist that shows should be judged for their substance (i.e. story, characters, comedy, themes, etc) rather than their style.  In some ways modern shows further this gap, as certain shows have much bigger budgets than others, and 1080p rips of episodes are now an almost standard way of watching everything that comes out.

Often times, shows today are characterized and judged by their visual appeal, and to an extent are completely defined by it.  Cencoroll, for example, is an OVA that receives a large amount of it’s praise due to it’s fluid animation and interesting art style, and movies like Paprika and Redline are some of the most imaginative works of animation attempted in a long time.  In the same way, animation studios such as Shaft, Kyoto Animation, and Production I.G. have almost built their reputation around producing very good-looking and recognizable shows.  But because of this, in the same way that people sometimes assume anything a director they like will be good, people will likely pay more attention to shows by studios that they like, something I’m sometimes guilty of in regards to Shaft and Gainax.  While there’s nothing wrong with creating a reputation based upon creating shows that look good, in a way it sometimes does cause viewers to ignore flaws or shortcomings a show may have, simply because they think it’s looks pretty.  Also, people will sometimes get the idea that just because not much effort may be put into the animation, then no effort was put into any other aspect of the show.  The idea that “my favorite studio did this, so it’s good” is also getting pretty out of control as well.

Even though judging a show based on purely aesthetics may seem ridiculous, it’s very important to remember one thing; anime is a visual form of entertainment, and as such the creators should actually try to make the shows look good.  If a show has good animation or an interesting or unique art style, then that just gives viewers all the more incentive to watch the show.  I’m sure there have been times when we’ve all had trouble getting through a show, and the only saving grace being “at least it looks good sometimes” (Goddam Guilty Crown).  The fact is, we’re pretty superficial most of the time, and I don’t think anyone would object to a good series having great art and animation instead of shitty art and animation.  What I mean by all this is that your story, characters, and whatnot are, the visual aspect of a show is not a minute thing, in fact it’s a very important part.  Saying that visuals aren’t very important in an anime is like saying cinematography isn’t important in a movie, and that filming something on an iPhone is just as good as filming with a Panavision camera.

Personally, I value aesthetics a lot in anime, probably more than I actually should.  But I think that’s because there are plenty of television shows and movies that show the real world and real people, so what I want from anime is for it to be able to set itself apart from that, sometimes regardless of whether it has an amazing story.  For example; I absolutely love Fantasia, which is nothing but music and creative visuals, with any “story” being told through the scenes.  While I understand people who say that they value the “interior” of a show rather than it’s “exterior”, I still think it’s actually a very important part of any show overall.  After all, artwork and animation are what make anime anime, and without that you’d be just as well off reading a good book.

2013 Winter Anime Season

And so, in an attempt to get back into the swing of things, here are all the anime (that I know of) for next season, and my thoughts on them.  I’ll try to give any info I can and if PV’s are available, I’ll put a link for them.  Also, I’ll exclude stuff like Milky Holmes and PreCure, because, really?

Nekomonogatari: Black – (PV) – Yes, I put this first because I’m an asshole, but also because I really like the Monogatari series (and it’s also not on the chart).  Anyway, this isn’t actually a show, but a four part movie-thing airing on New Year’s Eve.  If I’m correct, it chronologically takes place after Kizumonogatari and before Bakemonogatari.  It’s about Hanekawa’s cat-thing and what happened the first time she was possessed by it.  Other than that it’s a Monogatari story and Shaft; you know what you’re getting.

Savanna Game – From the description, this sounds a lot like somebody cashing in on the Hunger Games craze; well, either that, or Mirai Nikki, but whatever.  Considering that I don’t see a whole lot of amazing looking stuff this season, it could be worth looking into.

Puchimas!: Petit iDOLM@STER – (PV) – I’ve never seen any of the iDOLM@STER shows or played any of the games, so I don’t really have any reason to watch a cutesy, comedy oriented spin off about a bunch of little dolls getting into “humorous” situations.

Ai Mai Mi – (PV) – “The anime adaption of the four-panel manga Ai Mai Mi.”  Okay, that’s pretty much all you need to know about a show like this.  High school, girls, comedy, it’s a veeeery unique concept that’s obviously never been done before.  You know what to expect, so if you like shows like that, go ahead.

AKB0048 Next Stage – (PV) – The sequel to that show with about 1000 main characters about a bunch of girls who sing pop songs to save the universe or something.  So, yeah, I don’t really have too much of a desire to watch this, even though I’ve heard it isn’t actually as bad as the ridiculous synopsis makes it out to be.

Ore no Kanojo to Osananajima ga Shuruba Sugiru – (PV) – I read some of this manga just to see what it was about, and it’s pretty damn lame in my opinion.  You have a bunch of lame cliches and a bunch of attractive females ready to mount some completely bland and boring guy at a moments notice.  Once again, you can probably tell what you’re getting with this from the summary.

Senran Kagura – (PV) – So yeah, have you ever played Senran Kagura?  It’s pretty goddamn ridiculous; it’s pretty much a standard hack-and-slash game with a copious amounts of tits and ass thrown into it to make people buy it.  So I assume this show is going to be little more than Boobs and Swords: The Animation.

Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman – Pretty much the only thing that comes to my mind when I read the synopsis is Robin Hood, which isn’t really a bad thing I suppose.  There isn’t really a whole lot of information on it, so there isn’t that much to say on it’s behalf.

Zettai Karen Children: The Unlimited – Hyoubu Kyousuke – (PV) – I’ve never seen the original series that this show is a spin-off of, so watching this probably wouldn’t be in my best interest.  Although, often times, spin-offs can stand on their own, so I guess it would still be possible for me to watch it and grasp what’s going on.

Senyuu. – (PV) – Yeah, not really sure about something like this.  It’s one of those really short episode things (five minute episodes) so it’ll probably be more on the goofy comedy side of things.  But whatever, if that’s your cup of tea, go for it and watch it.

Boku wa Tomdachi ga Sukunai Next – (PV) – The sequel to Haganai, which came a bit faster than I expected.  I thought the first season was pretty good, so I’ll probably watch this season on and off as well.  But I just pray to Satan that the annoying-ass nun girl gets run over by a bus or something.

Sasami-san@Ganbaranai – (PV) – This is a Shaft anime, so I’m legally obligated to watch it and to like it.  Anyway, it’s about some shut-in girl and her brother… and I don’t really know much beyond that.  Oh, and the PV is pretty crazy too.  Hopefully, Shaft will pull through and give me something else to watch this season.

Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? – (PV)  – Yeah, both the synopsis and the PV for this show are pretty… something.  I don’t really know what to make of it actually; it doesn’t look particularly good to me, but I guess something about the oddness of it makes me want to try and see what it’s really about.

Beast Saga – An anime for a toy series of robot animal things.  That’s all you need to know.

GJ-bu – High school people doing “funny” high school things.  And that’s all she wrote.

Da Capo III – (PV) – I’ve never watched any of this series and quite frankly, I don’t really understand how you keep a dating sim anime going for this long, but they’ve done it.  Technically, this isn’t even the third season of the show; both the first and second parts each had their own season, so this is technically the fifth.  I mean, Jesus, how much can there be going on in this story.

Chihayafuru 2 – Didn’t watch the first season, and this show really seems like you need to know what the hell’s going on it it to actually enjoy it.

Hakkenden: Touhou Hakken Ibun – (PV) – Both the summary and PV more this show come off as kind of “meh” to me.  It seems like the typical fair when it comes to things like this, so I don’t really have any desires to watch it.

Citicle Detective Inaba – (PV) – Okay, so the synopsis for this show is filled with all kinds of “what” in every shape and size.  A half-human-half-wolf detective with a hair fetish and his cross dressing secretary solve crimes and stuff.  Okay.

Tamako Market – (PV) – Also known as, “That show that looked like some K-on! spin off that they kept showing at the end of all those Chuunibyou episodes”.  And that’s just what it seems like, another light, K-on!-esque comedy thing.  But at least it’s by Kyoto, so it’ll look all nice and pretty.

Maoyuu Maou Yuusha – (PV) – This is one of the few other shows that looks like it could at least be somewhat interesting.  There aren’t really a whole lot of straight-up “fantasy” anime these days, so at least it has that going for it.  The PV also makes it look interesting enough, so I’ll probably end up watching at least the first episode or two.

Kotoura-san – (PV) – A school romance comedy thing with a girl that can read minds.  Yeah, doesn’t really sound terrible or like it’ll be anything all that special either, so whatever.

Amnesia – (PV) – I really hate when shows that sound like they could potentially be interesting have really weird and confusing summaries to go along with them.  I guess it could probably be okay, but once again, that may be because there isn’t a whole lot I want to watch this season.

Mangirl! – Four girls.  Slice of Life.  Comedy.  Done.

Vividred Operation – (PV) – Yeah, would have never expected that the Strike Witches guy worked on this, would you?  To me, ti looks like Strike Witches had an orgy with a bunch of magical girl shows and this show came out.  Looks like a pretty normal almost-lesbian magical girl show, so that’s all I have to say about that.

Taking a Break from Episodics (And Not Quiting)

Well, for the past few months posts here have been rather sparse for a few reasons.  First, I’m going to college next week and I had to work a lot to pay for a bunch of college-type shit.  Second, I’ve been having to drive across the state a lot because of family stuff.  Frankly, getting locked down into the schedule of, “Okay, I’ve got to download this episode by this time, watch it by this time, and write something by this time” is kind of frustrating and hard when when you have a bunch of stuff to do.  This is why I’m probably not going to be doing a lot of episode by episode stuff for a while (at least for two seasons).  Instead, I’m going to try to do more straight review type things, or editorial articles.  Hopefully not having the pressure of being pressed to do something will give me a little more drive to write something when I feel the desire to do so.  It should, at the very least, at some variety to what I put on here.

Well, that’s that, glad I got that over and done with. Hopefully, I’ll  see you all soon, but if you’ll excuse me, it’s five A.M., I and should really try to get some sleep.

Spring 2012 Anime Guide

Well, I’m just going to go ahead and say, that this season doesn’t really look too hot.  There’s a shitload of sequels, a few decent looking things and a lot of other shows that look completely stupid.  Thank God forFate/Zerocoming back, orotherwise this season would really be a bomb.

1 – Fate/Zero

Synopsis – (Second part of Fate/Zero)  The Holy Grail War continues on as the Servants and Masters begin to seriously do battle.  One Servant, Assassin, has already been defeated, and Saber, Rider, and Lancer are now teaming up to defeat Caster.

Damn, it’s been a long wait for this show (especially with that hella annoying cliffhanger).  Obviously, I’ll be continuing to watch this show, though I’m still kind of debating on whether or not I should call the next episode “Episode 14” or just start over at “Episode 1” of a new season.  Although most places acknowledge this series as Fate/Zero 2, I think I’ll just go ahead and call the episodes 14, 15, and so on, because it’s not like it’s a new season two years after the first – it was already planned out like this.  I assume this half of the series will be much more action oriented and will start to kill of the servants starting with Caster, even though I’ll miss that crazy son-of-a-bitch.  Saber, Rider, and Lancer are going to beat Caster’s ass, Berserker will (hopefully) come back, and Archer sure as hell better team up with Kirei.  It’s going to be awesome, let’s leave it at that.  And this is returning just as Nisemonogatari will be ending it’s run, so I kind of lucked out on that one.  I’m also kind of looking forward to going back and watching Fate/Stay Night after this series is over, and I really hope that it’ll be able to live up to this show, though with what everyone says about Shiro, may have a rough ride ahead.

2 – Tsuritama

Synopsis – Yuki Sanada is a high school boy who cannot communicate with people well and doesn’t have a single friend.  He lives on Enoshima island with his French grandmother. One day, he meets a boy named Haru. Haru calls himself an alien who visited the Earth for fishing.  Another high school boy, Natsuki, and a mysterious Indian, Akira, join the two and the island becomes the center of the event which determines the fate of the world.

Well, this series is the Noitamina show for this season, so it’s safe to assume that this show will at least try to be good.  Although, Guilty Crown hasn’t really set too much of a benchmark for this show to follow.  The description is weird as hell, but it seems like it’ll be more of an artsy show with some kind of message, like Arakawa Under the Bridge, or something of that nature.  I mean, Jesus –  a Frenchman, an alien, and an Indian saving the earth?  Well, I guess that’s an anime for you.  Even the PV, with all of it’s happy go lucky music and lack of anything related to the plot, doesn’t really help to add much sense to everything that’s going on in this show.  It’ll almost certainly be weird as all get out (based on this summary, I see no way it can’t be), but with weirdness often comes uniqueness, and  hopefully it will be good too.

3 – Hyouka

Synopsis – Oreki Hotaro is a high school boy, who always acts passively. One day, he enters the Classic Literature Club as recommended by his elder sister. There he meets Chitanda Eru, Fukube Satoshi, and Ibara Mayaka.  Chitanda is a calm beautiful girl but she turns into an embodiment of curiosity.  Fukube is a smiling boy who excels in memory, but he never constructs his own deduction.  Ibara is a short girl and is strict with others and herself. She loves Fukube, but he always dodges her approach.  They begin to investigate a case that occurred 33 years ago.  Hints of the mystery is buried in an old collection of works of the former members of the Classic Literature Club.

So, unfortunately I’m already to the point where I’m basing things off studios.  This series is done by Kyoto Animation, who’ve done shows like Clannad, Nichijou, and Haruhi Suzumiya.  However, they’ve also done Lucky Star and K-on, so this could really go either way in terms of presentation and directing.  Kyoto shows usually look very good, but they’ve been really focused on the moe-blob blandness of K-on recently, so some of that my slip into this show.  It seems as if it’s some type of mystery story which always could be interesting, but we’ll just have to wait and see if the director and studio try to comedy it up a bit too much.

4 – Medaka Box

Synopsis – Kurokami Medaka, a first year, is elected as Student Council President, and the first thing she does is establish a suggestion box, later dubbed by students the “Medaka Box”. Medaka encourages students to submit any problem to the box without hesitation and promises to take on any issue from anyone.  Now the Student Council members spend their days solving the problems submitted through the Medaka Box, whether they be hooligans in clubs where they don’t belong, girls who need help writing love letters or people who’ve lost their pets, gradually earning the respect and admiration of the entire school.

There are two reasons that I want to like this show: first, it’s produced by Gainax, the anime studio of anime studios, and second, the original manga is by Nisio Isin.  However, form what I’ve read of the manga, it isn’t anything terribly special.  Sure, the dialogue is somewhat better than most everything else out there (that’s what Isin does after all), but it’s still a pretty standard “fix peoples problems” series, with the only real interesting thing about the manga being how ridiculous Medaka is.  Maybe that’ll be fun to see, espically being animated by Gainax, but other than that, I don’t see it being too amazing.

5 – Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? of the Dead

Synopsis – (second season of Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?) Aikawa Ayumu is a normal high school boy. One day he is killed by a serial killer and revived as a zombie by a necromancer named Eucliwood Hellscythe. He starts to serve Eu as her guard but he happens to deprive the mahou shoujo Haruna of her magic power. Haruna orders Ayumu to fight against the anti-mahou shoujo system “Megalo” in her place.

Okay, so the first season of this show, in terms of being a completely ridiculous anime self-parody, was pretty decent.  The further it went on, the more and more it became like a standard harem show, which was disapointing.  I still see no reason why Maelstrom or whatever her name was even brought into the show at all, and now it looks like even more girls are being brought into the mix.  Look, even if you’re parodying it, just leave it alone, four is plenty.  I guess this season is going to be like some big-ass parody of High School of the Dead or something, because they’re in school uniforms and, you know, the “Of the Dead” suffix. 

6 – Accel World

Synopsis – One autumn day in 2046, Haruyuki has an encounter with Kuroyukihime, the prettiest girl in his school. For the middle school boy who is often bullied, the meeting changes his life. Through a mysterious piece of software from her, Haruyuki learns of the existence of the virtual Accel World. In that moment, the lowest of the “school caste” becomes “Burst Linker”, a knight defending a princess.

So, we’ve got a .hack/Baldr Force look-a-like with a fat main character, which seems to have everybody in the internet up in arms.  Everyone really seems to be behind this fat protagonist, I guess because fat people are honestly never the main characters of anime.  I don’t really see how it makes a difference that he’s fat or anything – instead of being a loser because he’s a loser, he’s a loser because he’s fat.  Either way, if you look up any type of PV of this on Youtube, the top two comments are almost guaranteed to be about him being fat.  He’s going to be skinny by the end anyway, so what’s the difference?  Other than that, it looks like a pretty standard shounen type show, but virtual world type things always have the potential to be interesting, since you can do pretty much whatever you want with it.

7 –AKB0048

Synopsis – In the beginning of the 21st century, a world war breaks out over interplanetary travel tech. The environment is pretty much destroyed so mankind leaves Earth and starts Star Calendar 00. Entertainment and songs become heavily regulated and eventually banned due to their power to move people, but a brave idol group puts on guerrilla performances in the name of a famous act from earlier times that sang to Earth’s bitter end, AKB48. The illegal revival group’s name is… AKB0048.

Yes, I put this on here because it’s just that fucking stupid.  Seriously, the Japanese are the absolute biggest money whores in the entire universe.  No one else could write something this fucking retarded just to promote an idol group.  And are there really this many people in the group, nine fucking people?  Sure music has the power to influence people, but it sure as hell isn’t J-pop idol music that’s influencing anything other than a bunch of preteen girls and horny pedophiles to buy their shit and go to their shows so they can buy more shit while they’re there.  I’m sorry, but I just really hate fucking J-pop, and I really fucking hate such blatant marketing ploys.  This is going to be terrible and anyone in their right mind could tell that, but as long as it makes money, that’s what’s important.  After all, isn’t that what K-on and iDOLM@STER have taught us over the years?

And that’s all she wrote, but like always, here’s one of those big-ass visual guide things.

Nisemonogatari – Concerns and Expectations

Okay, I’m sorry that I’ve been so obsessed with the Monogatari series on here for about a week, and since the first episode of this will be airing tomorrow, and I’ll be talking about the show then as well.  Now that I think about it, I probably should have done this a while ago… whatever.

So, if you’ve been following this show at all, then you know that it was recently announced to be simulcast on Crunchyroll, much to everyone’s surprise.  It’s not really any big deal to me that a show gets picked up by Crunchyroll, because there’s no way I’m going to pay them $120 dollars a year to watch the one, maybe two shows per season they pick up that I actually want to watch.  Especially when I can just download the show for free (Have a problem with piracy? Click here).  Now, when I first heard about this the only thing I think was “Oh, shit, that means that no fansub groups are going to do this”.  Now, I don’t really have a problem with Crunchyroll’s subs or anything, but we’re talking about Nisemonogatari here; it isn’t exactly going to be any easy thing to subtitle.  I don’t know if the same “Put text everywhere” mentality carried over to this show, but I think it’s safe to assume that it’ll probably be like it’s prequel.  So, I have no idea how Crunchyroll plans to do all of that, or how well they’ll do at the actual dialogue either.  It’s kind of a shame, because GG Subs did an amazing job with the original series but obviously they won’t do this now.  We can only hope that either Crunchyroll doesn’t screw the translation up, or that GG will swoop in and save the day if they do.

It’s also supposedly been sub-licensed by Aniplex USA (They have a page up about it, but it just says to watch it on Crunchyroll), so we can only pray that this means a state-side home release, but hopefully not some bullshit $400 import box – fuck that shit.  Who knows? Maybe if this has been licensed, they’re also working on the rights to Bakemonogatari, or maybe even already have them.

But among all these concerns I have, there was one thing I discovered about five days ago that shot my excitement for this show up about ten times what it already was.  So I was looking it up on MAL one day, and I see this.

Needless to say, I instantly had to change my pants.

In case you were not aware, Shinobu is a fucking boss.  And not only is she a main character, but she’s fucking talking again (that’s the reason I circled the VA, I don’t even know who that is).  So, finally, Shinobu is going to stop pouting and being a bitch to Araragi and do something again, and be a badass while doing it.  I could only guess that she’s going to kind of take over Oshino’s role and help Araragi figure out what to do with all of his “patients”, or she could just have finally forgiven him for what he did to her.  Either way, she’s fucking back, she’s fucking talking, it’s going to be fucking awesome.

My Top 5 Anime of 2011

Another year has come and gone, and with it tons of shitty anime.  You know what I’m talking about; the shows that don’t really exist for any other purpose other than the fact that Japan is the most sex-crazed country in the world, those that are made because Japan will throw insane amounts of money at anything they deem cute enough, or those that are just plain retarded.  Yet, every year a handful of people in the industry decide to actually try to make something good.  It’s rare, I know, but it does happen, at least a few times a year.  These shows are the reason I continue to watch anime, because I know that deep in Japan’s erotic and perverted bowels there are people who really want to make shows that are entertaining, fun, and visually unique.

5 – Nichijou (My Ordinary Life)

While I never really paid a whole lot of attention to Nichijou in it’s first half, for some reason I just decided to watch every episode I had missed in a day, and found out that I actually really liked this show.  For one thing, comedy anime are now a dime a dozen; ever since Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star, everyone has wanted to cash in on the fad of ordinary girls doing ordinary girl things.  Almost all of the time these aren’t funny at all, because they rely too heavily on lame, overused gags and some “Oh, I do that stuff too” thrown in for good measure.  Nichijou, however, decided that everything that happens should be as crazy as humanly possible, which, as much as I normally don’t find random stuff funny, I actually thought it worked really well.  I don’t know what it is that makes it so different, but I think it may be because it’s so obviously not trying to be normal and relatable, or it may be because the characters are actually supposed to be the source of humor, instead of just the situations they find themselves in.  It’s kind of sad that this show didn’t end up selling all too well, probably because OMG IT ISNT AS KAWAII AS K-ON 😦 BOOOO, but I suppose that’s the price you pay when you don’t give those Japanese otaku enough kawaii, and instead try to do something that’s actually funny.

4 – Fate/Zero

Well, I’m kind of cheating here, since this show isn’t really finished airing yet.  But hey, MAL lists the first and second seasons separately, so that’s my excuse.  To be honest, I wasn’t too sold on the first episode of this show.  To me, it seemed like some huge in-joke to everyone who had seen/played F/SN and I wasn’t going to have a clue what was going on.  And the hour long episode of pure exposition didn’t really help matter much.  Yet, after that first episode, I thought it was great.  It’s rare that something that is essentially a big tournament/elimination anime is done as well as F/Z has done it.  For the most part, all of the characters are interesting, though there is a problem with the sheer number of them.  So far the story hasn’t really been too much of anything, but that’s too be expected, as it’s taking it’s time developing characters and building suspense for when people start to die.  And if the second part continues to be this good, then I have very high hopes for this show.

By the way, has anyone seen the price of the Blu-ray boxsets of this that Aniplex is selling?  Go check it out, it’s unreal.

3 – Madoka Magica

Overhyped?  Yes.  Awesome?  Yes.  I’ll be the very first to say that people are a little too firmly attached to this shows nuts to see that it isn’t the epitome of anime as we know it today.  And I really like how everyone goes on and on about how it has revolutionized the magical girl genre, because of how dark it is and everything.  I suppose none of these people have ever seen Utena, so I guess I have to forgive them.  But no amount of hype can change the fact the Shaft is awesome and so are the visuals of Madoka, and honestly if this had been done by another studio it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good as it was.  The combination of Shaft’s animation, the genuinely interesting story, and the dark tone it takes makes it one of my favorite anime this year (and in a while) but I’m not so on board with calling it the anime of the decade or anything.

2 – Mawaru Penguindrum

Uh, well I just wrote a whole bigass reveiw of this series so, if you want to see me ramble on why I like this show, go check that out.  It had nice artwork and animation, a good (yet pretentious) story, and plenty of weird stuff to keep you wondering what the hell is going on.

1 – Steins;Gate

With this show being related to Chaos;Head, I wasn’t really sure how I’d feel about it.  I mean, I liked Chaos;Head well enough, but it’s problems with it’s sporadic story and lack of subtly didn’t really sit too well with me in the end.  Another big thing that I thought would be a problem was the time travel aspect of the show, since the concept of time travel in any medium of entertainment is hard to pull off; you know, since it doesn’t exist and all.  However, I thought the way it was handled in Steins;Gate was fairly interesting, since for a good portion of the show, they can’t technically “time travel”, and can only communicate with the past.  And the fact that the series shows what everyone knows would actually happen if a bunch of random “scientists” in their twenties found a way to manipulate time made it even better to me.  Although a lot of people didn’t really like that the story didn’t develop into anything too big, I was actually glad for once that everything didn’t turn into a classic “We have to save the future” scenario.  Well, it did, but that plot point wasn’t that prevalent throughout most of the series.   But the biggest reason of my love for this show is it’s main character: self-proclaimed mad scientist HOUIN KYOUMA!!!  Call him Okabe, Okarin, or Houin Kyouma, he is the anime character of the year, without a doubt.  He is hysterical, fun, and genuinely interesting, and takes this anime from being good to being great.  Honestly, if some generic geeky/smart character had been the main character instead of Okabe, how much less awesome would this show have been?  And while it may not have truly been the greatest anime of this year, this series simply made me realize why I suffer through all of the stupid and shitty anime that come every year; for shows like this, that are just plain fun to watch and experience.  

Mirai Nikki – Sanity can go to Hell (Episodes 1-8)

Okay, this show is insane, straight up.  But it’s like Higurashi insane, where nobody wants anything more than to ax-murder people and occasionally indulge in the random slice-of-life or comedy scene.  Although most of the series is focused on the obvious horror aspect of the show, when it does take a lighter turn, it rarely feels lame or forced, which most other series that switch between being serious to humorous fail to accomplish.  But that doesn’t change the fact almost every single person in this show is completely batshit crazy.  People are blowing up buildings, pulling motorcycles out of nowhere, wearing gaint eyeballs on their head, making their cult followers rape someone, electrocuting people, and plenty of other weird stuff.

Yuno freaks the hell out of me, and if I was Yuki, there would be absolutely no way I wouldn’t have had a nervous breakdown and bludgeoned her to death by now.  I mean, she was going to kill his mom if she didn’t like her,  and I bet that she already killed her parents, because they probably didn’t liker her stalking some loner kid.  The series is also taking a rather fast approach at killing off the diary owners when compared to something like Fate/Zero, but then again, you can’t really compare those two in the same way.

But as good as the series is, you have to suspend your disbelief for a lot of this stuff.  I’m not talking about stuff like the diaries or Deus or anything like that, because that’s explained as reality in this show.  However, this show does still exist in the real world, so some limitation on things have to apply.  For example, how in the world does a 5 year old kid get deadly poison gas, and how does he know how to rig a package to open it?  Why would a 5 year old kid even be given a chance to become a god?  Where the hell did Minene pull a motorcycle out of a smoke cloud?  And most importantly,  Why did they kill off the crazy black-suit-eyeball guy?!?!?  He was so legit.

Mawaru Penguindrum …I don’t even…

This show is so awesome, but it’s just so damn confusing.  I have now come to the conclusion that I am simply not smart enough to understand this show.  Just thinking about it makes my head hurt.  I don’t even want to think about thinking about the ending, because I know doing so will just make my head even more sad, and the real ending will probably (and hopefully) rape my mind to hell and back anyway.  I’m pretty sad that it only has four episodes left, but at the same time relieved that this show will hopefully explain everything that’s going on… or it could pull and Evangelion and not really tell us what happened for two years.  So here is my best attempt to summarize to plot of Mawaru Penguindrum.

The simplest plot description I could make

I dare you to make more sense of it.