Of course, “TV anime” is assumed at the moment, because outside of movies that’s what “anime project” tends to mean these days. Also, the comic only makes sense if I come up with an excuse to ignore the Live4You OAV, since Miki was actually in that. But, yeah, I actually already had my comic lined up for today, then someone went and did something crazy like announcing they’re making an iM@S anime that isn’t transmogrified into a giant robot show. Cool beans and all that, but queue rush-job on my part.

Although speaking of iM@S and giant robot shows, can I just reiterate that Xenoglossia is actually a pretty good show. Sure, it was offered up to Sunrise as a sacrifice for them to be a little subversive with, and as a result doesn’t really bare any similarity with the original work, but compared to most recent Sunrise works it’s not only unusually consistent, but downright coherent. Not that many tend to agree with me, but whatever. I’m content to know that at least I’m right.

(Although on a purely objective level, Zegapain is totally the best Sunrise TV show of the last decade. Probably).

Except I don’t really usually make this kind of end of year post, meaning that this is less of a token post than it is an anomaly.

It’s been a weird kind of year for me anime-wise. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of stuff, but I’m not really sure that’s actually the case. I mean, the likes of Kurogane talk about having seen some 40+ shows, and I know for a fact I’ve not seen that many (at least, not that many from this year). Sure, I’ve seen a fair amount of older shows on home media formats, but I doubt even that would make up the difference.

No, in actuality, I’ve been watching a lot of anime these last three or four months, whilst the first half of the year was pretty barren. I don’t think this is anything to do with the quality of the shows airing during those periods, more just where my mind was at the time. In addition to that, with the anime events at the BFI back in May, Scotland in October and at the Leeds Film Festival in November, I’ve certainly seen a hell of a lot of anime movies theatrically this year (Actually, I’ve just seen a crapton of movies theatrically in general).

But, hey, it’s certainly been another year of anime. I don’t really think it’s necessarily been any better or worse than any other given year in recent memory, even though we are in a still downturn in terms of the number of shows being produced. I think my biggest disappointment of the year is that Sunrise have been in some regards quiet. Of course they still made those Gundam Unicorn OAVs I’ve not got around to watching, the Gundam 00 movie and a few other bits and pieces, but at the same time they’ve not made any of the kind late-night otaku fare I’ve tended to get far too obsessed with in the last decade. If it wasn’t for the fact that it ended with what felt like a clear set-up for an OAV series they didn’t sell well enough to fund, I’d say that it probably explains the whole tone of last years SoraKakeGirl – somewhere between a loving tribute and a scathing mockery of everything Sunrise was in the 00’s. Kind of an “out with the old, in with the new” thematic purge, if you will.
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Merry Christmas, y’all. Because, you know, I feel the inclination to at least throw something together to post today. I would call Milky Holmes the Secret Best Show of the season, but given that I’ve sat through several discussions about how awesome the shows last episode was the last couple of days, I don’t really think it’s quite so secret. Also, when I say “sat through”, I really mean “ignore”, since I’ve yet to watch it myself (waiting anxiously for the Crunchy stream tomorrow…).
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From episode 12 of The World God Only Knows, the most recent and final episode of the present series, in the pre-OP sequence. At least I think it’s a Mikan box – I watched it on Crunchy, and whilst usually a fine way of watching things, the visual fidelity here wasn’t quite up for my very specific requirements in this case.
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Another month, another anime film festival…. would be something that would be great to be able say. Alas, I doubt any of us are that fortunate (and, frankly, even I have a limit of how frequently I can see the same movies over and over), but we in the UK have been pretty well off this year, and after visiting Edinburgh for Scotland Loves Anime last month, this time I headed down to Leeds for Leeds International Film Festival Fanomenon Anime Day.

Of course, there are only so many anime movies to go around, with just over half of the movies being shown in Leeds being titles that I’d seen previously either at the BFI back in May or in Edinburgh last month, and there’s only really so much which could be said about those movies. I mean, I can’t really think of another way to say that One Piece Strong World is a touch too long for it’s own good, nor do I feel like harping on about how the Evangelion 2.0 screening was less than ideal (for those who were there, I was the obnoxious fellow who piped up to ask them to turn the volume back up during the ending credits prior to the post-credit content).
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