Thank You Kyoto Animation

After the horrific tragedy that occurred last July, I knew I needed to write as near a perfect personal tribute to the wonderful people at Kyoto Animation as I am able to before I would even contemplate continuing to write about anime. It seemed like the right and proper thing to do, as well as being the bare minimum I needed to do as so much of the joy that anime has given me in the 15+ years I’ve watched it has been connected to Kyoto Animation.

While the intent as obvious to me, the form of such a tribute alluded me. I almost decided on doing a countdown of my favorite KyoAni works, in part because I’d been thinking of doing one for years now, but realized after further reflection that some clickbaity sounding article was not even close to what Kyoto Animation deserved from me. A better option would have been a long post where I talked about an assorted list of favorites and I almost started blocking such a post out. I realized I still wasn’t happy with this idea since I could really make such a post about any animation studio. As I worked slowly towards the answer, I also realized that I sort of didn’t want to find the answer. Doing so would acknowledge what happened, make it a fact, and remove any space in my brain to retreat to and imagine Schrodinger’s box is still unopened. Incidentally, that’s why I’ve never watched Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue; once I do then there are no more movies of his I can look forward to seeing and I have to acknowledge he’s been gone for 9 years now.

To combat my disinclination to post this, I signed up for this year’s Anime Secret Santa that the website all geek’s considered is continuing from the tradition started by Reverse Thieves. To post my review for that, I need to write this first 🙂 .

And I eventually realized why I’m so uniquely thankful for Kyoto Animation. Episode 0 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina.

The Not-so-Good, Disappointing, and Bad Anime of Summer 2018

Even in the best seasons, not every anime of the season will turn out positively and this season was definitely not one of the best. Before I turn my attention to the fall season, I want to highlight some of the anime that made this season slightly difficult to get through.

Spring 2018 Anime Preview

The Winter 2018 anime season was amazing. Violet Evergarden, Yuru Camp△, Koi wa Ameagari no You ni, Sora yori mo Tooi Basho, and 3-gatsu no Lion 2 all presented convincing arguments why they were not only the season’s best shows but deserved to rank at the top of the year’s best shows. And that was not the extent of the good shows from this season. Others worth mentioning included Kokkoku. It was a weird Seinen series, but, I liked watching the family interactions and was glad to see the show end on a happy note. Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens turned out to be a decent clone of Durarara!!. And Darling in the FranXX has been slowly creeping upwards as the show teases the mysteries behind it’s strange world; I’m expecting this show to explode in it’s second half and compete for the title of best spring anime.

In lieu of spending time being depressed about the passing of the Winter 2018 season, I decided to get a jump on trying to figure out what new series will be the worth watching in the upcoming Spring 2018 season.

The eleven series I list below are the series from the upcoming season that I believe will be worth watching.

The Anime Recap Episode – # 6: January 2018

New year, new season of anime, and a new group of finished series that people will either quickly forget having existed (Juuni Taisen) or will be relieved are finally done (Children of the Whales) so they can finish wasting their time waiting for these series to “get good” or were part of the select few that were good enough people will spend the upcoming months/years hoping for a sequel to be made (Houseki no Kuni). I hope to get to a proper look back at the best anime of 2017 soon; for today, we are focusing on the new anime that began airing for the Winter 2018 season.

Traditionally, the winter and summer seasons are considered the weaker seasons of the year with winter being the weakest overall. Outside of a couple obvious must-watch series it looked like the Winter 2018 season was going to follow the narrative and I would be able to do some catching up on my anime backlog. Then, as it has often occurred in the past, when I started watching the series I thought I would be able to write off, I discovered many of these series could not be so easily dismissed.

I don’t think I’ll find the time this season to tackle my anime backlog and I have the feeling that I still am missing a series from this season I should be watching. So, instead of asking the people reading this to recommend an old show, I’ll be asking which series I should be watching this season. Read on to see which three series the potential pick-ups.

Is It Okay to Judge an Anime Based on How Well It’s Used in AMVs?

In working towards completing a huge project for this site I have first been working on a separate, related, project – an updating and expansion of my grading system. This new system, in my mind, would be a useful tool in completing the huge project and is something I should be able to complete. After all, I have watched nearly 700 anime TV series and have been thinking about how to grade anime shows for over 8 years now.

While letting my mind free range on the topic of what parameters to use in grading an anime I noticed that during my recent renewed interest in anime AMVs that certain anime shows seem to be fertile ground for AMV editors to turn into great AMVs and other shows seem to lack the ability to be turned into great AMVs.

If KyoAni’s Phantom World Hadn’t Failed So Badly …

I am not one of those people that hate everything that Kyoto Animation has produced in the last X number of years, nor, am I one of those people that unconditionally love everything that KyoAni makes. I do, however, fall closer to the latter extreme than the former, but, that is to be expected since they’ve been delighting me for over 10 years now with very few missteps in that time period.

This good will allowed me to bend my appraisal of Myriad Colors Phantom World in that I watched the whole series (though I dragged my feet to finish it) when a similar effort done by almost any other animation studio would have been dropped by the third or fourth episode. It did not, nor would I allow it to, go so far as to color my final verdict of the series which is very low.