One Year of Anime Reviews (And Lots of Mental Scars)

 The first anime I ever reviewed one year to the day

So I guess it’s been a year since my first anime review.  I suppose that as far as milestones go this one isn’t the most memorable or exciting (Come back in two entries for a better one) but I figured it’d be weird to not at least acknowledge things.  For those of you who aren’t aware last year I decided to start watching anime again after several years of going out of my way to avoid it.  Basically I had become burnt out on it after a stint as president of my university’s anime club.  However back in the day, when I was a child, I LOVED anime with a fiery passion.  I lived and breathed that shit.  I don’t think I even knew what the word “otaku” was but from age nine to nineteen I one of the biggest ones I knew.  I recall watching various movies and OVAs on the Sci-Fi Channel (Now embarrassingly known as “SyFy”) during their anime blocks, going to cons to track down fansubs of Dragon Ball Z and After War Gundam X, and amassing a large collection of soundtracks.  

When I started the blog it was mostly to write up extra thoughts for my radio show The Saturday Morning Cartoon Show that I was unable to express on the show proper and one episode we happened to watch Gigantor.   After that write-up I ended writing a follow-up for SMCS fans who may not have been that fluent in the style.  All that writing about anime made me nostalgic for the old days so I decided I’d try to recapture my lost love for it.  The best way to do that I figured was to watch a bunch of shows I’ve never seen before and since I had this blog I figured I’d review them here while I was at it.  So one year and thirteen new (To me) shows later I feel I’m still not really any closer to being the kind of fan I used to be, but seeing as I have in fact watched that much anime and have written so much on it I might as well be an otaku.  Wow, I’m an anime nerd with zero of the benefits.  Sometimes I hate this blog.

More on anime and possibly drinking to forget after the jump.

Pictured:  A 14-year old, you f**king perverts!

Did I learn any lessons the past year after watching so many shows?  Meh.  I confirmed what I’ve often said in the past: that Japan isn’t the Holy Grail of cartoons some people think it is.  Most of these shows were randomly picked and several of them were really bad while others were pretty good just like some cartoons in America are pretty good (Adventure Time) and some are really bad (Young Justice.  Yeah I said it!).  I do feel though that I have a much, much better idea about who’s animating these shows and I’m realizing just how much of them are based on light novels.  Seriously that doesn’t happen nearly to that extent here as it does there.  Hell the internet is losing its minds just because The Game of Thrones has been turned into a TV show; it just doesn’t happen very often here.

My favorite show of the past year obviously was Gurren Lagann which is also my most visited blog.  Not for noble reasons, though, as I’m pretty sure that’s mostly people looking for pictures of Yoko seeing as “Yoko” is the most searched word that brings people to this site from Google.  Why?  I have no goddamn idea.  Now Gurren Lagann is an interesting anime based on what people think about it.  Now it’s pretty clear I loved it and if you don’t know I can assure you that the internet is obsessed over the series but lately I’ve seen some pretty intelligent people who seemed to actually dislike the show for being…well, insane.  Look, if you can watch that show start to finish and you come out of it complaining it doesn’t make any sense (Especially if you talk about how “blah blah show did it better/first”) then you probably have a point but it’s also very possible that you’re either pretentious or a Grinch.  Not that there’s anything wrong with being a Grinch, of course.

This is a Pro-Grinch Marriage website, people

Eden of the East is technically a better show, of course, despite the lower rating I gave it but I had a good time with Gurren Lagann.  On the other side of thing I had few shows I didn’t like but none of them were so bad that I gave them failing grades.  But goddamn I hated El Cazador de la Bruja.   That’s the real problem with this experiment since I can easily kill my brain cells with bad shows like this one.  The worst thing was not this show but Kaze no Stigma and not because the show was worse (Although it was pretty bad) but it had a worse main character.  Freaking Ayano Kannagi.

Booooo!

So I know that my opinions aren’t the be all end all of things but I won’t lie to you and say I wasn’t shocked to learn that the masses of anime fandom didn’t seem to share the seething hatred I have for the character.  Now this is no doubt partly due to the large amount of official artwork fan service that I’ve come across but it’s mostly due to the fact that to most anime fans this isn’t an uncommon character trope.  They call it “Tsundere” which refers to a female character that tends to switch between being extremely temperamental and sweet/caring.  Being a fan of Ranma ½ I’m not unfamiliar with this idea of course, but even so there’s really no redeemable quality to Ayano.  Friends, believe me when I say that she is among the worst characters I’ve ever been told I was supposed to root for.   Together let’s shun her and any fans she may have.

On the bright side I still haven’t seen any anime I’ve totally despised yet.  But really its just a matter of time.  I know they’re out there.  Watching.  Waing.

Its like Gurren Lagann except it makes me want to kill myself

Anyway I guess I'll continue reviewing anime though I suspect at this point I won’t be gaining what was once lost.  Meh.  I’ve reviewed this much over the last year I may as well keep going.  At least I can say that anime has become a somewhat enjoyable hobby rather than “that thing I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I used to do” that it once was.  This next year I was thinking I may review some classic anime I watched growing up like Slayers and Gundam Wing (Bleh) but as of this writing I’ve got shows like The Sacred Blacksmith, Suzuka and Mermaid Saga lined up so hopefully by 2012 I’ll still have lots of stuff to talk about.  Even so I’m extremely open to suggestions.  I asked this once before and got no response but if anyone has any anime you think I’d like, or even anime you think I’d hate and are trying to set me up, feel free to let me know either in the comment section or by e-mail at betaisdead@gmail.com.

Oh, by the way: for those of you keeping count (Which I assume is almost none of you) this is blog entry #98 meaning that blog entry #100 is right around the corner.  I have something really interesting (Subjectively, obviously) planned but it’s such a large entry that I feel I actually need a “pre-blog” to explain certain details.  That’s going to be an ass load of writing on my part so it’s a good thing I don’t get paid for this stuff (Goddamn it).  So anyway make sure you swing by next week for my two part 100^th Blog Spectacular.  Here’s a hint of the subject matter:

Oh God, I hope its about Ghost Rider or the Silver Surfer