I really loved this movie. Actually had trouble talking straight afterwards, honestly. Left me very emotional.

To elaborate, though, today saw the first screening of Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (as it’s being dubbed for it’s general UK release in a few months – as opposed it’s rather long winded full title of Let’s Decorate the Promised Flowers in the Farewell Morning, or Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazaru, or just Sayoasa for those who don’t go for movies with names the length of light novel titles) outside of Japan, at the Glasgow Film Theatre in Glasgow, and I went along to see it.
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So, they announced a new fork of the iDOLM@STER franchise today.

Shiny Colors is a new mobile production game with new mechanics and a new cast, in which the player is a new Producer for the 283Pro (“Tsubasa Productions”) Production company. Well, simply categorising these things as being just one thing is a little disingenuous at this point, given that it’ll ultimately end up spawning CDs, manga, radio shows and, inevitably, Lives, amongst other things, but the new game was the primary point of announcement today.

It’s a slightly weird thing. Discounting Dearly Stars as something they never really followed up on, it’s the fifth active stream of the larger franchise at this point after OG 765Pro, Cinderella Girls, Million Live and SideM. It’s also going to effectively be the sixth continuing gatcha-style game going, joining Cinderella Girls, Starlight Stage, Theatre Days and the two SideM games, and the third mobile game launched within less than a year.
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Is this, perhaps, the most 2017 of statements?

This years Gundam Unicorn update is… I’ve still not watched more Gundam Unicorn. Although I somehow thought buying the second half of ZZ, which just turned up today, was a good idea? Whoops.

Let’s just put this lack of Unicorn-related momentum down to it being a good harvest this year. It feels like there’s been a constant stream of at least one thing a week I was particularly excited about watching every week for the last year, and at some points I was watching something new pretty much every evening. It’s been a good year for TV anime.

From a theatrical anime point of view, it feels a bit odd to call a year with not one, but two, new Yuasa efforts comparatively weak, but that probably more to do with how ludicrously stacked parts of last year ended up being, with things like A Silent Voice, From This Corner of the World, Kizumonogatari I&II and, I suppose, Your Name. Then again, it’s been a nice year to be in the UK in that regard, because we ended up getting at least something in cinemas here almost even month, and it’s entirely possible that any perceived weakness was more a result of not binging the years best content over a weekend, given the way this years SLA line-up panned out.

Also, that I’ve not been able to see the new Nanoha movie yet. Or No Game No Life. Or Heavens Feel. Guess there’s still some good stuff left to see after all.

Anyway, usual format from here on out. Spoilers ahoy, and don’t necessarily take anything I write about below this point as being that glowing an endorsement. I tend not to write about my actual favourite stuff of the year, since that’s hard, so, this is just the first few things I could actually formula any words on.

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One of these days, I’ll actually make some consideration as towards what I want to post here on Christmas and not just cack-hand an illustration at the last minute on Christmas Eve. You know, actually do something that I’m happy with. Not this year, though. More important matters to attend to.
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It was the final day of the Glasgow leg of Scotland Loves Anime today. I guess the interesting thing that played today was SHAFTs version of Fireworks, or to give it it’s full English title Fireworks, Should We See Them From The Side or The Bottom?

This is mostly a quick post just for me to splatter out a few quick thoughts about it without bombarding Twitter with tweets about a movie which is still largely unavailable for most to see. If you want the quick review, I liked it a lot, but feel free to ignore me posting here even more than usual. Honestly, I feel that I’d probably have needed to see the original TV movie to really write anything worthwhile about it anyway.
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