Seven years of doing these end of year posts, and I have a shocking thing to reveal : I’ve now actually watched two entire episodes of Gundam Unicorn. This was partially down to motivation spurred on by the TV broadcast version (I watched an episode of it, and decided I’d rather just watch the original edits), and partially because I decided to not let myself watch Gundam Thunderbolt until I’d finished watching the thing.

Neither point particually stuck – as is obvious from the prior statements, I’ve not finished watching the rest of Unicorn yet, and I ended up breaking down and just watching Thunderbolt a week or so ago (and, man, Thunderbolt is good). Don’t take this as a statement on Unicorns quality mind you – I enjoyed what I’ve watched of it, I’ve just found it weirdly hard to fit into my viewing schedule, especially this last season.

On the other hand, mind you, I am totally up-to-date on The Origin!

Anyway, as per usual, here’s too many uninteresting words about cartoons from the last year that aren’t really worth reading. The usual caveats apply – spoilers ahoy, and these aren’t necesasrily the best shows of the year, or things I’d necessarily recommend watching yourself, more just stuff I somehow managed to summon Words about.
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This is actually the back cover from one of the Christmas cards I sent out this year, but since I’m feeling way too lazy to throw together anything new for this post (it’s been a busy month, I’m exhausted, it’s Christmas day and I’m over-stuffed from lunch, and I have a copy of Bakemonogatari waiting to be read), I figure I may as well re-use it here…

Anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or perhaps just Happy Couple Of Days Off Work if you aren’t the sort that actually celebrates anything. I should probably update more next year – lack of updates here as of late has more been to lack of time than lack of desire, honestly. Plenty of stuff I’ve wanted to write about, little time in which to actually do it. No particular promises that this is going to change in the New Year, admittedly, but I can at least maybe try a little harder to make time for it!

(Though, really, you should all probably just go and read Sakugablog or something anyway)

Brought to you today by the fact that I can barely swivel my head in here without my eyes falling across some kind of Puchimas! related plush(*), although having one perched ontop of both my television and my PC monitors goes some way to rendering that incredibly likely where-ever I look. Seriously, though, those things were out in force in the Otakon dealers hall this year, and it makes a nice change from the dominance of Love Live crane figures that most anime conventions have been straining under for the last few years (though it did mean I was able to pick up the Starpiece Ritsuko figures. There’s still not enough Ritsuko figures). There was something of an upswing in the amount of iM@S merch in general, honestly, though that’s probably as much to do with the increased number of prize figure releases as it does anything else. I shudder to think of the consequences of the same happening at UK events, though.

This post is also, somewhat more obviously, brought to you by the number 11, which is the number of years which this blog has been sat in this corner of the internet. This is the point, one supposes, where the number of years of existence is getting alarmingly close to surpassing the number of posts made in a given year (even if the average still puts me at over 100 per annum). There’s little other than plain laziness to blame on that front, I guess – at the minimum, it’s not like it really takes a whole lot of time to hammer out a couple of hundred words about a tangerine box popping up in a show or anything, and I’m sure there’s other things I could actually be writing about without too much effort being involved. Must try better, I suppose!

(*) I have fullsize Chicchan, PiyoPiyo, Io and Evil Harukasan, and small Koami, Komami, Chicchan, PiyoPiyo, Hakurasan, Chihya, and Takanya right now. I also have a photograph of me wand Chicchan with satirical Japanese office-lady electro-rap duo Charisma.com, but I’m not the sort to share pictures of myself in the internets.

Omo has probably already written most of what I’d want to say about this, but given I’ve not posted in the best part of a couple of months, I suppose I should probably persist.

The short version is that veteran anime director Hiroshi Nishikiori has launched a crowdfunding campaign to produce a 3DCG idol anime short called Chika*Chika Idol, which is somewhat unfortunately floundering on two different fronts.
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For the sixth year running I must, once again, confess that I’ve yet to watch a single episode of Gundam Unicorn. This is particularly bad at this point, because I’ve actually some how managed to get around to seeing the first couple of episodes of Gundam the Origin this year, not to mention being fully up-to-date on Iron Blooded Orphans.

Seriously, I’ll totally crack open those BDs this year.

Anyway, here’s too many words to be actually worth reading about some cartoons from this year. Spoilers be lurking thar below!
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