From the Makoto Shinkai film The Place Promised in our Early Days, on the stairs leading to (one of) our protagonists apartment in the later part of the movie. Kind of unclear a screencap, but trust me, that’s totally what those top two boxes say.

I actually spotted this back during a theatrical screening of the movie, shown as part of the Glasgow leg of last years Scotland Loves Anime festival in October, but procrastinated about posting about it because I couldn’t remember where the heck I’d put my DVD copy. It probably shouldn’t really have been much of a surprise, anyway – whilst Garden of Words proved to be more of a Ringo Box movie, and I’ve not been back to check Voices of a Distant Star, both 5cm/s and Children who Chase Long Titles sported orange-transportation devices.

I had been a little terrified about revisiting the movie, though. I’m not a particularly big fan of Shinkai’s work, I’m afraid – I enjoy most of his productions on first viewing, but upon rewatch I tend to be overwhelmed by the extremely tortured writing his work often sports. 5cm/s I found kind of unbearable upon a second viewing. With Place Promised actually being my favourite of Shinkai’s output, or at least the one I enjoyed the most at point of first encounter, I didn’t really want to ruin that – it was nice to be able to say I genuinely enjoyed at least something he’d made.

Saying that, whilst I can’t really remember any of the minutiae as to why given it was the best part of four months ago that I last saw it, I still enjoyed it well enough. All’s well that ends well, I guess!

(PS – Hi there Reddit, I guess? That sure it a lot more traffic than I’m used to… For what it’s worth, when I asked (RoD/Kamichu/Magi) director Koji Masunari about Mikan Boxes at a Welcome to the Space Show Q&A, he said it was mostly due to their commonality in Japan more than any specific memetic thing)

I don’t want to give the illusion that I’m doing anything as silly as returning to episode blogging, at least not for a show which has “sister” in the title rather than a good word like, say, “idol”. Now, maybe if Studio Pierrot took a break from whatever show I don’t watch that it is they produce these days to make, I dunno, My Younger Sister Might Be A Magical Age-Changing Pop Idol or something, then maybe I’d create a whole new blog just to write about it at great length, because clearly that’d be worth the effort.

Digressions aside, the second episode of ImoCho (or Recently, My (Younger) Sister Is Unusual, for those of us who like English and don’t have to worry about twitter character limits) aired today, and I must confess, I ended up watching it. Purely out of scientific curiosity, you understand, and I just happened to have Crunchyroll streaming an episode of gdgdFairies to the television at the time.

Yeah, I’m probably protesting too much.
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Yamakan sure did go and make the Fractale of idol cartoons.

Which isn’t to say that Wake Up, Girls is a bad show – it’s actually pretty entertaining and has a traditional 2D animated dance sequence, and at least one of those things is more than you can say about most idol anime these days, but watching the movie which begins the franchise is an experience not-unlike watching the first episode of the directors most infamous of prior works.

That is, it’s all cynical as hell, and it sure enjoys pointing it out on a regular basis.
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From Precure AllStars New Stage 2, being used as a table by Candy from Smile Precure.

I don’t really have anything left to say about the movie itself – I wrote about it in yesterdays end of year post, having only just gotten around to watching it a couple of days back due to feeling obligated to watch it because mentioning the Precure movies in those posts is pretty much tradition.

I will add that I drew at Peace Janken, though. Darn.
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For the fourth year running, I’m going to have to confess that I’ve still not watched Gundam Unicorn. Yes, I have all, what is it, six episodes that they’ve released thus far sitting on my bookcase, but that this point, I may as well wait until the last episode is released rather than struggle, as I did with the second episode of Code Geass Akito a couple of days back, to remember what happened in the previous instalment once the long wait for the finale is over.

As for how the rest of the year ended up panning out, at least anime-wise, I feel it’s gone pretty well. Maybe it’s just a warm afterglow of this last season of the year, with shows like Kill la Kill, Kyousougiga, Build Fighters and Yozakura Quartet, it’s been a really strong last quarter in terms of the kind of cartoons I enjoy watching, even if the New Years episode of Sword Art I’m subjecting myself to whilst trying to finalise this post leaves a bit of a bitter aftertaste.

Anyway, on with the usual Token End of Year Post format. Just bear in mind that this is in no-way an Anime of the Year post, more just a bunch of things I feel like writing about – otherwise this’d be a whole mess of words about Yamato 2199 or Gatchaman Crowds (looking forward to that BD-version final episode) or some other show that isn’t about Attacking Titans that I don’t really mention. There’s plenty of others out there expounding the virtues of their version of the best of the year if that’s what you really want to know.
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