Half-baked - The Anime of 2016

So here we are again, finally. What a year 2016 was. But I won't bore you by adding my disgruntled voice to the millions already bemoaning it as the worst year ever. Instead I'll bore you by talking about a lot of anime.

You may or may not have seen my post about the Anime Awards, but it certainly helped jog my memory about the various winners and losers that the year provided. As before I'll try to give a brief, helpful synopsis of each along with my salient thoughts and slot it into one of the 5 tiers: God, great, good, OK, bad.

It was probably my first full year of paid Crunchyroll membership, so we'll see if that has had any impact on my viewing habits. Heck, I even tried FunimationNOW for a bit. Crazy year. Let's dive right in...

*FUTURE MIKE INTERJECTION*: It turns out that these things take a lot of time and effort to write. As such it would be March at the earliest before I'd be able to put a finished version of this post out there, and if anyone ever cared about my thoughts on last year's anime that time will have long passed. So given that myself and Ben covered off the majority of these shows and more on our FIRST EVER PODCAST and I posted that handy Anime Awards roundup I thought I'd just release this half-baked for the fun of it. Once you get past Gate 2 all you get is my unabridged stream-of-consciousness notes for each series, so enjoy that!

Fading memories: The Anime of 2015

Hello, and welcome to 2016! I can see you're already incredibly excited to have one extra day added to your calendar in which to watch anime, bu- what's that you say? You somehow missed all of the anime of 2015 because you were in a coma/had a degree to do/got a life/someone called you "weeb trash" and made you cry/were living in a country with ludicrous internet restrictions/took a good long look at yourself/[insert some other terrible excuse here]? Well then, boy do I have the blog post for you!

That's right, it's time for me to honour that hallowed tradition (that I've done once before) of giving you a snapshot of all the anime I watched that aired last year. It was a hell of a year for me - what with graduating, getting a job and going to Japan for the first time - but was it a hell of a year for anime? Initially when I was thinking back I couldn't muster up more than a couple of winners, but nor could I really distinguish between what aired in 2015 and what aired in 2014. Upon further inspection, whilst compiling the list of shows I had to include in this post, it turns out that it was actually a pretty decent year! Some very special shows and perhaps fewer awful ones (that I watched, anyway). You may remember the tier system from last year's post - I'll be expanding this to a God/great/good/OK/bad tier system, because three tiers really doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. Hopefully this might give you some indication of what is worth watching and what really, really isn't.

So without further ado, fasten yourselves in - you're in for a wild ride.

A look back: The Anime of 2014

King of punctuality that I am, I find myself typing this piece up at the very end of February. But hey, at least it's more timely than my summary of Autumn 2013 first episodes! *pause for laughter*

Inspired by my good friend Ben's post, I thought I would once again dust-off my writing hat and add some new content to this frankly depressing blog. A review of a whole year will be a first for me on here, with the closest precedent being my top 10 shows from 2011, but I'm always up for a challenge. As such, following Ben's example, I will provide my humble opinion on each of the series last year that I watched through to bitter completion. I'll also try to copy his ranking system in an attempt to force myself to make a solid judgement for once. I won't be commenting on shows that continued from the Autumn and are now about to reach their climax. Perhaps you might be encouraged to seek out or actively avoid some of the series mentioned here on the strength of my rhetoric, but I hope you might at least find it semi-entertaining to read.

So as I sit here listening to an endless loop of Flyers by BRADIO, allow me to regale you with some words about Japanese cartoons and stuff. There are a lot of them so be prepared.

Summer 2013: First episodes - part 3

The final instalment of first episodes from the new season. Will there be any more keepers?

Summer 2013: First episodes - part 2

Another set of first episodes have been weighed and measured! Hopefully you will find some of the below summaries and/or opinions helpful.

Summer 2013: First episodes - part 1

Another season, another load of anime to watch. I haven't researched this season in advance at all thoroughly so I'm expecting a very mixed bag. I do have high hopes for a couple of the series I happen to know are coming however, so if only those ones are good and the rest are dross then at least I can get on with catching-up on my backlog...

Spring 2013: First episodes - part 2

Let us continue with the round-up of first episodes from the new season! There's more quality in this part I'm pretty sure...

Spring 2013: First episodes - part 1

I have returned to deliver the good (and not so good) news about the anime that are starting this season! Little bit of fact spliced with a hefty load of opinion, hopefully giving some kind of indication as to what's worth watching this time 'round. As per usual I don't have prior experience with any of the series described, such as their respective manga or games. So without further ado, let us delve!

The Anime of Autumn 2012

So in the wake of finally churning out another post in the form of the Kuroko no Basuke praise I put up yesterday it seemed only fair that I also do one of those little summary/reviewy things that I do for the Autumn 2012 season. I think this might be the first time that I've done this after a hefty portion of the shows have already finished airing... It's been a pretty decent season overall. Quite a few shows worth giving a watch if you've got the time. Sorry fans of the Summer season - you missed out this year.

Kuroko no Basuke: A 10 on paper, a 100 in my heart

So a while back I did something fairly monumental. I upgraded my score for Kuroko no Basuke on MyAnimeList from a 9 to a 10. Why, you ask? Well that's what I'm about to tell you. Warning: hyperbole may be employed.

The Anime of Spring 2012 - Part 2

In straight continuation from yesterday's post, and with absolutely no further ado, I continue with my summary of the Spring season 2012!

The Anime of Spring 2012 - Part 1

So at the end of the last post I made on here I signed off with "Ah well, at least we have loads to look forward to next season! *looks at next season's line-up* Well that's a shame. See you in Summer folks!" Oh how wrong I was to do that! Whilst I was right about the fact that I wouldn't be posting back on here until Summer (it is TECHNICALLY Summer after all), the reason is actually because I was too busy watching all the anime that Spring had to offer! So I bring you this season summary just as the first episodes of next season are starting to roll in.

What's on right now?: The anime of Winter 2011/2012

Check it out y'all, there's a post on here again. I believe this blog is now an outlet for when I feel like doing some writing, so allow me to regale myself with a tale of the anime currently airing on TVs in Japan!

Sorry to disappoint, but it's mainly a load of dross...

Autumn 2011: Some more first episodes!

I was much better organised when reviewing the first episodes from the summer season. I watched things as they came out, published everything at the same time, had notepad documents containing my thoughts etc. This time round not so much. This post contains the rest of the first episodes that I've seen since the last set, though for some of them it's been quite a while since I watched them and as such I may not remember them all too well. Anyway, let's get this over with!

Why does it have to end?!: Usagi Drop

As I've ranted on about it multiple times, you may well know that Usagi Drop has probably been my favourite anime of this season due to its utterly pleasant demeanour, interesting themes and the simply watchable aura it emits. In case you're out of the loop, the series follows Daikichi - a thirty year old working man - who takes it upon himself to look after his own grandfather's illegitimate child, Rin. Putting the frankly weird origins of Rin aside, the show is primarily about Daikichi trying to do what he can to play happy families in order to do what's best for Rin, but is then also about how his own character progresses and what he discovers about himself and others as a result of entering the world of "parenthood".

A little of everything is better than a whole heap o' nothin'

So in the absence of me making regular posts as of late (reasons to be explained) this post should outline pretty much everything that is happening in my life right now. It will be disappointingly short to accomplish such a task.

Read on after this picture of Chewbacca dog:

Avoiding Episodic Summaries: What I'm Watching

So here's one of what I assume shall be many little summaries of where I am in a season and what else is going down. Find out what I'm watching and what I make of it below...

My Top 6 Anime Openings: Videos and Commentary

So I wasn't quite sure which format I should do this in - voice my commentary over the openings, just give a vocal commentary along with links to the openings or present them in video form with accompanying text. For now I went for the last one, but when I tried to compile the vid myself it somehow came out as 51.9GB which was quite a surprise. So for now have some embedded vids and text commentary, though would really like to hear back what you think would be best for when I do similar things in the future.

This isn't just about the visual element, nor is it just about the music, but rather the fusion of the two and how well that combination serves the audience as an opening. Needless to say, to earn the right to make this list these OPs had to make me want to sit through them for every episode of the series.
Note: I avoided current shows, including ongoing ones like Naruto and Fairy Tail, in this list. Mainly so I can then do separate videos on those at a later date.

QTfromK: Decisions, decisions

So now that I have nothing to do with my life until Uni starts up, I'm finding that seeing as I have more time "free" I find myself with more things to do and as such less overall time to be doing them. If that makes sense....probably not. Either way, I'm having to make a lot of decisions with regard to what I want to do with my allotted time before I go back to having it dictated for me again. The above 'I Fight Dragons' fanart seemed appropriate for this post.

Follow-up QTfromK: Naruto filler

Why? Just why?