They posted the 15 second PV for the home-release-exclusive iM@S episode, to be included in the ninth and final volume of the show, onto the internet yesterday, which you can be seeing here, should you be curious.

I have to admit being a little disappointed in it – it was probably misguided, but I’d rather been hoping the last episode may have been Kotori-centric, perhaps revolving around her Yuri-goggled-fueled delusions as portrayed on the animation CDs drama tracks. Alas, as it turns out, even Producer-san makes more of an appearance in the episodes PV – if you squint at least – than Kotori. Who appears not at all.

Isn’t it sad, Kotori?

Well, OK, being that she was pretty much one of only two characters who appeared in every episode of the series, it’s not like Kotori isn’t going to appear at all, and it does have Ritsuko looking all suitably flustered in her usual tsukkomi fashion, so I guess I’ll have to forgive it for now.

In other iM@S related news, it looks like the rumoured iM@S Pachinko machine is going to be announced next week, unless that promotional website is being incredibly deceptive. Not that it’s going to do those of us outside of Japan much good, but knowing how these things normally go, it’ll probably have a ludicrously high budget and be full of original content that’ll never be seen anywhere else ever again.

This comic came out of a conversation on Twitter last week, coming in light of the Live-Action GeroGero Kitchen from the recent iM@S BD release. By way of questioning whether or not Chicken Breast with Aoi Tori Sauce was real dish or just something named after the song in iDOLM@STER, it was posited that it may have infact been used as a joke in Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere at some point. The joke there being derived from the fact that the protagonist is called Aoi Tori, and he very much has a bust fixation.

I’m not sure we ever came to a conclusion either way as to whether or not such a joke existed, but to me, it kind of sounded rather more like the title to a mucky doujinshi when placed into the context of Horizon…

So, another year has come to a close, and since I’ve written so very, very little about anime in the last six months, I figured that I should follow up last years end of year posting.

The pre-amble to this years End of Year Post is a bit of a sticky wicket. It’s been a pretty good year in general, at least as far as TV anime goes. Theatrical anime, or at least those I’ve gotten to see this year, has been a little disappointing in comparison to last years smattering of high-budget spectaculars, but even then it’s hardly been bad.

I think the real problem is that, well, anime news and discussion has kind of been dominated by Madoka Magica this year. It’s pretty unusual that a show that aired in the earliest part of the year is still being brought up at the very end of it, but even as I write this, the top stories on some of the news sites I check are about the show. With the movies in production, I guess that’s probably going to end up being the case for 2012 as well.

Oh, and I’ve also yet to get around to watching those Gundam Unicorn OAVs I’d said I’d not got around to watching last year, despite the fact that the forth instalment turned up a week or so ago. Given I’m spending £30+ a disk on that thing, I should really keep on top of that. I also regret to say that, alas, despite my best efforts, I managed to get spoilt for the ending of Katanagatari about two episodes prior to it’s conclusion. That was frustrating, to say the least.

Ok, without further ado, let’s talk about the specifics with the Beta-Waffle Entirely-Pointless Awards for 2011 Anime Existence.
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Or I could just call it Catalogue 3, but that feels a little disingenuous given that much of this content is also hitting the 360 version of the game, where it certainly isn’t just the third catalogue.
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I realise that I’m not exactly being prescient with this discussion here, but I was watching the second BD volume of iDOLM@STER yestereve (itself not exactly prompt, but I guess you can’t expect too much out of international mail this time of year) and Producers tie started bugging me again.
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