Mix: Meisei Story – First Impressions

With the third season of Chihayafuru being delayed to this autumn, Mix: Meisei Story easily became the anime I was most looking forward to from the new Spring 2019 season which makes it the logical place to start my coverage for the season. And because it’s already got a couple unrelated-to-the-actual-anime strikes against it, I also feel the need to help draw people’s attention to what will hopefully and probably be one of the best titles of the season.

The Null Set’s 10th Year Anniversary

Ten years ago, an anime fan suffering through a period of anime burnout decided the smart thing to do was to start a blog mostly about anime with a bit of science fiction thrown in. And so, with little interest in what was currently airing in that Winter 2008 season, The Null Set was born. Writing about anime helped me work through that burned out feeling and somehow it’s now ten years later and I’m still watching anime and still writing (occasionally) about anime.

The Bitter Taste Left by the Second Season of Food Wars!

There were only a few anime series that I was able to watch this Summer season. That one of them was Food Wars! The Second Plate (Shokugeki no Souma 2nd Season) should be of little surprise, since, the first season ranked at #7 in my top 15 anime for 2015 post. That the second season is the favorite to win the title as most disappointing anime of 2016 shouldn’t be a surprise, at least, to anyone who watched both series.

In hindsight, I should have seen this coming.

Top Eight Anime of the Fall 2009 Season

Kobato is this season’s honorable mention.

The final part of my look at the surprisingly decent fall season is the countdown of the best titles of the season. This is always a difficult process since I enjoy so many different types of shows and there’s no clear-cut way of comparing a slice-of-life show to a shounen action show to a thought-provoking SF drama set in the near future but at the same time, it’s fun because it helps me focus on exactly why I like certain shows.

The first step in the process is to figure out how many places will this season’s top list include. The number changes from season-to-season based on the number of quality shows that I feel deserve to be mentioned. This narrowed the field down to eight shows and now the task turned to ranking these shows that I considered great shows of the season. Picking the number one spot was fairly easily but the rest of the list felt like pulling teeth so; whereas, I’ll argue that all eight of these shows belong on the list, I won’t argue to hard over the exact order.

Top Picks – Fall 2009 Anime, Part 2: Genre and Misfit Awards

For this next set of awards, a surprise show is making an appearance. (Maybe not so much of a surprise if you realize where the top picture comes from 🙂 .) Based on how much I was loving Sora no Otoshimono this season and GA: Art Design Class from summer, I decided to give another show from AIC ASTA a chance after passing it over before. After devouring the first season over the past couple of weeks, I’ve just started on the second season – which started airing during this season – so while I’m not far enough into it that it has a chance to rank as one of my top shows of the season, there’s a few awards that I know it deserves to win.

Enough rambling, let’s head to the next batch of awards. 🙂

Top Picks – Fall 2009 Anime, Part 1: Cast and Character Awards

I remember complaining about this season and how weak it was, and it was a pretty weak season, but now that we’re into the second week of the winter season I look back at the list of shows and can’t help feeling a little sad that many of these shows have ended. I’m sure there’ll be shows this season that I’ll get attached to (Hanamaru Kindergarten is a strong possibility) but they’re not there yet. So, maybe, it’s a good thing that I waited this long to do my seasonal anime awards.