Anime Review: Happiness Charge Precure

"Didn't you say you were trying to be more on time last week?" FIFTEEN HOUR WORK DAYS MAN and this is why I keep planning on building up my buffer of reviews and it doesn't happen. But this show is already a year old so a few days don't matter as much, I already have to explain to people why I'm watching last year's iteration of Pretty Cure instead of this year's Go Princess (which is apparently quite good!). So here it is: two years ago I watched Heartcatch Precure and loved it so I tried out the new series that year, Doki Doki Precure as well as the original. I plan to go back to the original someday but it starts slowly and all of the official streams are pretty low quality, Doki Doki just ended up being really nuts so I gave up on it after a bit. So then I returned last year to HaCha and while I liked it I just fell behind with everything else I was watching.

And so, after I finished Wish Upon the Pleiades it seemed like a good time to go, finish HaCha and see if I could maybe, maybe catch up with GoPri before the end of it's run next January.

Happiness Charge Pretty Cure

Anime Review: Space Brothers

Well this review is a long time coming, the Space Brothers anime originally ran from April 2012 to March 2014 and I did keep up with it for the first year or so but I slacked off in my senior year of college and only checked in sporadically on reviews after that. I did like it while I was watching, it was just long, slow at times, and when I fell off it was in an especially slow period and followed by a little, for-kids cartoon segment each week other folks dubbed "racist cartoon theater" which really didn't spark my interest again immediately.

But I did really like the show and that's why I always planned on coming back, since it has been three years and some change since the show aired. In the end, part of the fun for me was to see how far Mutta had come in the show and also how different my own life was since I started it. I went from being a college junior to an adult who actually has friends who work at NASA! Heck, I can say it now but my first, long-term job after college was working in the museum store at the National Air and Space Museum (which is far less glamours than it sounds, running past rocket engines to get to the bathroom is hilarious however!) so I think I can say that watching this show in the staff cafeteria, with its great view of the capitol and surrounded by photos of people eating in the space station and on planes, is possibly the nerdiest place this show has ever been watched in. And I do like space, I like harder sci-fi, and while this isn't the usual kind of hard sci-fi it's certainly one of the more realistic series I've ever come across

Space Brothers

Anime Review: The World is Still Beautiful

Running too behind for a weekly round up this week so let's get going, I've actually made some progress on my backlog!

The World is Still Beautiful (Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii)

Anime Review: Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

As a general explanation before I get into the reviews: Yozakura Quartet is based off of a manga by the same name and the manga is still on-going so this series does not have a hard and fast ending as I expected. The manga was adapted first into an anime in 2008 of the same name is apparently terrible and should be ignored, that one is the one that Sentai Filmworks has licensed in the US. Over the past few years Studio Tatsunoko has been making a few OVA series as well as another full anime series that adapts the story much more faithfully and is the one I'm talking about here, the main tv series Hana no Uta (Song of the Flowers), Hoshi no Umi (The Sea of Stars), and Tsuki ni Naku (Howling/Crying at the Moon). This is the order you should watch them in, I promise it's for the best but it can be a little hard to find Hoshi no Umi online these days since it's been a few years and none of these series were even licensed for streaming. Since there is no official license, I'm going to try and use the actual Japanese terms for the various supernatural aspects of the works instead of English terms the way I usually would for consistency. The subs I saw used "dæmon" instead of yokai and "Sakura Newtown" instead of "Sakurashin" but since everyone will at least hear those same words this seems to be the best way to avoid confusion!

Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

Anime Review: Garo

Most of the buzz I saw for Studio MAPPA last fall was their unexpectedly good series Rage of Bahamut: Genesis which I found enjoyable and way better than any card game-based series ever has a right to be, but it was there other series that first caught my eye. I've seen bits and pieces of tokusatsu shows before but the hamminess of Japanese live action is a mild turnoff at the very least so it's not a genre I actively seek out. Put it in anime however, which for some reason has that same hamminess much less frequently, and I'm game for trying it out!

Garo

Anime Review: Gundam Build Fighters TRY

EDITORS NOTE: Hi guys, sorry everything is so late already this week and as a heads up, tomorrow's post is probably not going up to Thursday since I'll be out late babysitting and really don't like typing out huge posts on phones if I can help it (the autocorrect alone makes it a huge headache).

Much like Log Horizon, I did a whirlwind marathon of Gundam Build Fighters last year as the first season was finishing up and absolutely fell in love with it and was completely on board for the second season. It is seven years later and features a mostly new cast but I'm going to say that yes, you should see the first season first. It'll help you in the long run and come on, if you like this you'll want more of it and that's 25 episodes of more right there.

Gundam Build Fighters Try

Anime Review: Log Horizon 2

I don't normally re-watch shows (due to a lack of time more than anything else) but I managed to marathon the majority of the first season before this second one started. The first season just really clicked with me, I liked how it tackled its conflicts (which were basically, how do we build our own world?) and liked the characters so I was excited for the second season. I was a bit worried since the show switched animation studios from Satelight to Studio Deen (who rarely makes a good looking show) but fortunately the majority of the staff went with the show so it's not a very noticeable transition at all.

Log Horizon 2

Anime Review: Shirobako

When I first saw the summary for this story I thought "But if I've already seen Animation Runner Kuromi do I really need to see this?" and now having seen the showI would actually recommend seeing that 2 OVA series first! The two shows are actually fairly different but Shirobako drops you into the animation production assuming that you already know a lot of the basics and ARK gives you a great rundown of those missing parts or you can also check out this handy glossary for the show.

Shirobako

Anime Review: Rage of Bahamut: Genesis

This is another title that wasn't on my to-watch list for the fall initially but good buzz, and some persistent friends, convinced me to try it out. Hmm, it seems as if I've been saying that about quite a few shows that aired this past fall....

Rage of Bahamut: Genesis

Anime Review: When Supernatural Battle Became Commonplace

Sorry for the delay on this one folks, I've been busy although the missing book review from last week wasn't because I was busy, it was because I sat down and realized I just had nothing to say on the book. That's always a problem here, sometimes I just read something all the day through, find it passable, but just have nothing to say about it. I've also been reading quite a bit of middle grade recently and I'm still debating if I want to review that here as well since again, shorter books, less to talk about and these reviews are already pretty short.

Thankfully that's not my worry here tonight, this show wasn't on my radar as the fall season began but after I saw quite a few people talking about how great the new Studio Trigger show was (no one could decide on a nickname for a few weeks, even the licensors it seemed, many people seem to have adopted "Inou Battle") I gave it a shot and what do you know, it's actually a pretty fun light novel adaptation!

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace

Anime Review: Psycho-Pass 2

There's no reason to make this introduction overly long, I put this show on my ANIME I DISLIKED: 2014 EDITION list before it had fully finished airing and now that I've had a chance to finish the show I can say that it fully deserved being on that list. Since I am discussing a sequel, there will be quite a few references and spoilers to the first season of the show; this is not a review to read if you're considering starting the series, this is a review to convince you not to watch this season and to explain the many many things that went wrong in it. And on that note, there will be some rather large spoilers for this season as well, I just don't feel like I can adequately explain the sheer stupidity here without laying it out exactly as it happens.

Psycho-Pass 2

Anime Review: Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works (television series, part one)

Despite the fact that I enjoyed Fate/Zero when I watched it a few years back, this series wasn't on my to-watch list when the fall season started since I had heard that the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel is, well, kind of terrible. And the F/SN VN is a little weird, while all three routes (Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heavens Feel) are canon, Heavens Feel is the "most canon" so why watch something that wasn't going to matter as much in the long run? Plus, they did already make a movie about this route a few years ago and it sounded like that was an alright adaptation, why should I check out this one instead? But then, all of the people on my feed who had played the VN, who had said it was terrible, said that this adaptation was really cutting out sexist dialogue and other less-than-savory moments and turning it into a better story. And after seeing so much good buzz for it I was interested in it again, funny enough I think that's also exactly how I ended up watching F/Z in the first place....

Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works (television series, fall 2014)

Anime Review: Mushi-shi: The Next Passage (part two)

Happy New Year guys, may my posts be much more timely this year! Although I could have put up this review on Monday, if I wanted to forgo watching the last Mushi-shi episode. As everyone knows by now, Crunchyroll has been having some trouble lately, recently they announced they were the victim of a DDoS attack and I suspect that's why both their website and apps have been giving everyone trouble for about a month now. There have been a few days where I haven't been able to get my phone's app to work at all during work and that's the only time I have for watching anime and since Mushi-shi has been so consistently great I did consider just writing up this review and amending it after I saw the last episode. But that didn't sit right with me and it did end on one of it's best episodes, fingers crossed that I also find more time for anime watching in this new year as well!

Mushi-shi: The Next Passage (part two)

The 2014 Year End Round UP and State of the Blog

Well this is going to be long so let's get to it!

Anime Review: The 2014 Young Animator Training Project shorts

In case anyone is wondering what happened to Friday's book review, hi, I've had a headache on and off for the past four days and that has made it near impossible to assemble my notes into a full review, just pushing the whole thing back until Friday and investing in even stronger pain medicine.

It's almost the end of the fall season for anime and thank goodness, I'm really starting to run out of things to talk about since I simply don't have the free time to watch a full series right now, even a short one. However, I did remember that I didn't talk about this year's Anime Mirai shorts (if I recall correctly, one or more of them was taking forever to be fansubbed so I gave up waiting on it), one of them I was flat out uninterested in (the anthro one) but I was able to find the rest of them on youtube easily enough. Unlike 2013's Little Witch Academia, none of these are legally streaming anywhere so if you want to watch you'll also have to resort to less than savory means.

Anime Review: Tonari no Seki-kun and Magica Wars

This is why I usually take November off, I simply run out of things to review and have to scramble a bit, especially when it comes to anime. Thankfully after doing this for so long I've started to anticipate this so I'm going to do something I haven't done in a little while, I'm going to talk about two series of shorts that came out in this past year. Since two mini-reviews is totally the same as one full length review, right?

Anime Review: Free! Eternal Summer

This should be the last of my summer anime reviews which is slightly ironic since it's the most summer of the summer anime I watched and I'm seriously contemplating wearing long underwear to work tomorrow (curse you polar vortex). I didn't start out the summer watching this show but I had a feeling I would get around to it sooner or later and I finally did when friends told me it was actually better than the first season which was an odd thing to hear. I never thought that the first season was particularly good or bad, it had it's good and bad parts but was ultimately a bit bland, to hear that the staff decided to do actual character development and build upon the first season was a bit shocking more than anything else!

Free! Eternal Summer

Anime Review: HaNaYaMaTa

During my Summer 2014 Anime Round-UP I mentioned that this was a show I hadn't tried out yet but was on my short-list to try if I found myself with some free time and that's exactly what ended up happening. I don't remember why but I found myself with a lack of colorful, cute shows in my viewing schedule and this seemed like a natural addition and a good way to fill those lunches at work where nothing else was airing that day.

HaNaYaMaTa

Anime Review: Terror in Resonance

Sorry for the delay here, I seem to write two kinds of reviews: quick ones where I can get one done in half an hour and then monstrous ones that take two hours to do a rough draft and usually I need to sleep on it to edit, guess which one this ended up being? So with that, no introduction this time around and let's just get down to Watanabe's latest series that's not Space Dandy, streaming on Funimations's website and hulu.

Terror in Resonance (Zankyou no Terror)

Anime Review: Monthly Girl's Nozaki-kun

These days I get most of my manga recommendations from tumblr, although "recommendation" makes it sound as if people are specifically telling me to read them. This time around I was following a blog for another series altogether, saw them posting a group of strips from this series and fell head over heels for it, I had to make sure I didn't just reblog every single one I came across! I immediately started hoping for an anime since I knew it would be a tough sell to convince my friends to read scanlated 4koma and thankfully one was announced quite soon after I first discovered it and I then proceeded to hope that I wasn't hyping up the series too much. Fortunately it seems like my friends have all fallen harder for this show than I did and I'm still seeing new people every week, people who don't even watch a lot of anime, picking up the show and falling in love.

Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun (Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun)