The 2008 Year in Anime by the Numbers and Breaking Down Why It’s Hard To Be a Fan of Anime Without Resorting to Fansubs

Bamboo Blade

One of the great resources in anime fandom of late has been this guy. His charts have become almost indispensable when trying to figure out what to watch in the upcoming anime seasons. Recently, he’s started to compile these charts for previous years and the information that can be gleaned from these charts are extremely interesting and a real eye opener.

Fall 2009 Anime Impressions – Tatakau Shisho, Seitokai no Ichizon, Nyan Koi

Nyan Koi

These three shows are the final shows that I plan on reviewing for this season and I figured lets to them all together so I can be done already.

Fall 2009 Anime Impressions – The Sacred Blacksmith, Miracle Train, Trapeze

Miracle Train

Trudging on with these anime impression posts, next up is a trio of shows The Sacred Blacksmith, Miracle Train, and Trapeze. On first glance, this is a very diverse set of shows which would make it difficult to talk about them all at the same time but they all happen to share something in common that’ll make it easy to talk about them.

Fall Anime Wallpapers (Kobato, Sasameki Koto, Kimi ni Todoke, Natsu no Arashi)

The wallpaper making bug bite me again (writing series impressions of mediocre shows is so much fun ). For awhile I’ve been wanting to figure out a way to make wallpapers out of screen shots that could be used at all three sizes that I make wallpapers for and I think I hit upon a simple yet nice design. I hope you like them and I might have more wallpapers for other shows in the near future.

Fall 2009 Anime Impressions – Kimi ni Todoke and Sasameki Koto – A Tale of Two Shows

Sasameki Koto

I’ve been ready to write my impression post of Kimi ni Todoke for some time now but I felt that I was lacking some sort of needed angle to best describe how I felt. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, I thought maybe I needed another show to compare it to, like I just did for Kampfer and Sora No Otoshimono, but nothing really fit until I finally sat down to watch Sasameki Koto yesterday. This was exactly what I was looking for and so here’s my impression post for Kimi ni Todoke and Sasameki Koto.

Top 5 All-time Anime Comedies

I’m always leery of writing top all-time posts because I realize that I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge that a decade long anime fan might have so I always worry about missing obvious picks. And I’d probably skip them all-together if I didn’t realize that such lists give readers and potential readers a large amount of information about a writer (as was pointed out elsewhere just recently). Before I tackle an overall top all-time list, I want to start with an easier list that I’m more sure upon – my picks for top anime comedies.

Fall 2009 Anime Impressions – Kampfer and Sora No Otoshimono – There’s a Right Way to do Fan Service and a Wrong Way

Sora No Otoshimono

The majority of the professional, paid anime critics will insist upon putting every single fan service show in the same pile and labeling the whole lot as garbage – their existence being a personal affront to anyone with even just a hint of sophistication much like how English teachers feel about most popular books. They forget that people like Shakespeare ran his theater and wrote his plays for the common folk of the time – not for the intellectually “elite” of the times. If he did, I’d be willing to bet that no one would remember his name today.

The fact of the matter is that it’s possible to create a fan service show that’s entertaining and full of fan service and still displays the creative spark that separates quality shows from the generic shows. One of these shows does a pretty good job of displaying this spark whereas the other is exactly the type of rubbish that many think of when you mention fan service. Can you guess which series I’m talking about?

A Memorial and Some Odds n Ends (Armed Librarians, Outlaw Star, Bakemonogatari)

I’m not sure how many people will care but I figure that I at least owe The Null Set readers an explanation to the whereabouts of it’s author and to offer some anime related content already.

During the last week of October and the first couple of days of November, I was helping my sister to nurse her one pet guinea pig, Lucy, back to health – trying to entice her to eat her food and when that failed, I held Lucy so my sister could force feed her. This ate a lot of time up in the day – not that I minded, in the 2.5 years we’ve had Lucy, I grew fond of her and also because it was the big brotherly thing to do. On Halloween it seemed like she was getting a little better but that turned out to be fleeting and by Monday, Lucy had passed away. Since than I’ve felt sad over the passing and depressed because my younger sister is heart-broken so I haven’t felt like writing.

Happy Halloween!! (2009)

Hope everyone that celebrates Halloween has a Happy Halloween today. It’s still light out where I live so it doesn’t feel like Halloween yet. (And a totally old person thing to say is that in America, don’t forget the clocks go back an hour tonight.)

I decided that my sister needed to watch at least one 07th expansion/Studio Deen anime and episode 18 of Umineko No Naku Koro Ni being fresh on my mind (what an awesome episode), we started watched it last night – it also fits into the season. She seemed interested so let’s see how that plays out.

Anime Songs That Can Get Me To Shed Tears

You can thank Winamp and it’s non-random random shuffling for this post.

I have a super condensed anime music playlist that I like to listen to; it’s only 230 songs long and there’s a handful of songs on this list that when I’m in the right mood will get me to shed a tear. Last night I wasn’t much in the mood but out-of-the-blue Winamp starts playing every sad song on the list in a row and even repeating some more than once so now I’m in that mood.

It’s probably not a good idea to marathon a Key series right now so instead I’ll write this post.