My Best of 2016

Dang, this is quite a bit later than I wanted.

I needed that break, not so much because reviewing was burning me out but life was burning me out in general. Work is less crazy after the holidays, I've been accepted into grad school which will cool my job search for a while, and Katsucon is done so I have fewer pressing panel/cosplay deadlines to get to.

Plus, the zoloft is REALLY kicking in now and guys, in hindsight I was pretty dang depressed last year. I had so many different health problems (did you know stress can fuck up your eating AND give you hives? Not simultaneously but I only fixed my eating problems after a little bit of bronchitis and the hives did drive me to the emergency room) that there was just no respite for me at all, there was always something going wrong for basically a solid year.

Personally 2017 is going better so far, although yes we have possibly the last president of the United States currently in power so I'm real glad for the zoloft keeping the "hamster ball of anxiety" in the back of my mind, not constantly in the forefront. But before I fully stride into 2017 with this blog I want to look back at 2016 one last time here and talk about the things I did love last year.

Anime Review: The Morose Mononokean

The Morose Mononokean

Anime Review: Flying Witch

Flying Witch

Anime Review: Tanaka-kun is Always Listless

Before the spring season, Tanaka-kun was a maybe on my list, then it went off my list, and then it went back on my list after I saw people still talking about it a few episodes in. The three episode rule is a great guideline guys, if you still see other people talking about a show after three episodes then by golly, then you gotta check it out at that point!

Tanaka-kun is Always Listless (Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge)

Anime Review: Kiznaiver

My original plan was to talk about both this show and Little Witch Academia 2 back to back since it's really interesting to look at a story that has all of the typical Trigger hallmarks and one that doesn't, even though they're both original stories! That didn't quite work out, and I'm not going to compare the two of them since they're more dissimilar than alike, but I still find it interesting that Trigger tries every year or so to make a more typical anime series and yet never quite hits that mark.

Kiznaiver

Anime Review: ReLIFE

Hey y'all! Still a bit wiped from Otakon so here's what I'm going to do: as the resident ReLIFE expert on TheOASG I blitzed through the show in July and posted a review of the entire series which I'm going to repost here today. Next week we will be back to wrapping up the spring shows but in the meantime enjoy this semi-new post!

ReLIFE

Anime Review: My Hero Academia

Back when the spring anime season was getting underway, I talked on the OASG podcast about how I still wasn't sure what shows I would end up liking but I was sure Concrete Revolutio and Flying Witch would be among them. I was right but imagine my surprise when I also really ended up liking the "populist" hits My Hero Academia and Kiznaiver! My tastes usually don't like up that way but this time they did and I hope that Funimation found a whole slew of fans for MHA since I can't remember the last time I saw this much pre-airing hype for a new anime (as in, Funimation was even making dubbed character spots to advertise for the show even before the first episode, that takes money!). I have seen a lot of buzz for it online and I have to say folks, I've considered getting a Weekly Shounen Jump subscription before but held back (not enough series I like/the series I like are monthly) but if I can figure out a way to catch up with this series (ie, library please hurry up with my holds!) this might be the manga that makes me do it.

My Hero Academia

Summer 2016 Anime Round-UP

For what is I believe the third season in a row, I don't have any continuing shows (currently my plan is to catch up with PreCure in time for the 2017 series, ehehehe), but I have read the manga for quite a few of the shows here so very little of this season feels new to me. Honestly my favorite "new" show is Kuromukuro which just popped up on Netflix and that I've been watching in chunks. I'm not sure when I'll review it (since they only have half of the show up now and probably won't have the second half until it ends in September) but I do want to mention that yes I'm enjoying it really well so far both for the characters and the fight scenes are actually really cool since all of the different mechs have very different, fitting fighting methods. 

I usually also note what's missing from this list (not available legally etc) but honestly I don't think I skipped anything that I'll be trying out later. I haven't tried out Gen Urobuchi's puppet show, Thunder Fantasy, and everything I've seen about ReWrite is either a one star or five star review so I'm avoiding that title right now as well so honestly guys this may be it, another small season for me (but it's more spread out than spring at least, five shows in three days was way too much for me!). And it's been too many years since I read or watched any of D. Gray Man, I remember I read a tiny bit after the long hiatus and I think D. Gray Man Hallow picks up even after that, so unless I find the time to marathon a heck of a lot of episodes (looking at lists, out of the 103 original episodes only about 25 are filler) I'm not sure when I'll ever get to that show.

Oh, I do still want to watch Macross Delta, once I finish Kuromukuro and I'm back to having no mecha in my life it's going to be even harder to not give into fansubs for that one.

Anime Review: Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

I don't believe it, I somehow managed to hold out all the way until the spring season batch of shows without running out of things to blog! I'm pretty thrilled by this turn of events, although I didn't watch many spring shows so I'm going to actually run out of things to blog pretty soon. 

Hmm, well for the moment, as per-usual my first review of the season is my favorite show/the one that really needs as many views as it can get (places like Funimation have said that the views that count towards determining if a show is going to get a physical release or not are all of the views while the show was airing+one week, although I've missed that window). I talked about the first half of Concrete Revolutio earlier in the year so I suppose this is my last shot to convince folks that yes, this is yet another superhero anime worth watching.

Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

Anime Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Normally I order these reviews from my most-favorite anime of a season to least so I should put up a little note that says: this was not my least favorite show of the season! I just go so slammed by con work back in February that I was barely keeping up with anything and even since then I've been non-stop busy and seeing folks make, disapproving noises at the last half of the show wasn't the kind of motivation I needed to finish the show. The fact that it's already dubbed and airing on Toonami in the US is however so let's get onto this very late post.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Anime Review: Active Raid

I've noticed an odd trend in my anime reviews lately, namely that the series with the best first episode premiere of the season usually isn't anywhere near my favorite show of the season. I don't know why this is, you would think that a strong first episode would mean a strong show in general and I just wouldn't use that generic word "strong" for this show.

Active Raid

Anime Review: Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash

Okay, let's try this again, life isn't any less crazy but not blogging drives me crazier. Although I'm a little alarmed that I'm running out of anime to review faster than I expected. Guess that shows that I'm really watching fewer shows this year....

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash (Hai To Gensou No Grimgar)

Anime Review: Snow White with the Red Hair (part two)

So, new week, new anime? Considering I only review series after they've finished I can't precisely say that the second half of this Summer 2015 adaptation by Bones is brand-spanking new but it's still pretty new! As I've been saying with all of the sequels so far, yes this is a direct sequel to the first half, think of this more as a split show than a proper sequel, so go try that out before you watch this part. I suppose you could read this review first but I do have a review of the first half as well.....

Snow White with the Red Hair (Akagami no Shirayuki-hime)

Anime Review: Haikyuu!! Season Two

Apologies for going AWOL, last week was a bit rough, and there was a wedding involved, so I'm just shuffling around my book reviews so that I stay on track. Although, out of all of the material that I review, I have more books waiting to be talked about than anything else so that is a bit of a problem. I really don't have the energy to do additional reviews every week but at this rate it's going to be a race until the end of June for that "best books of 2015" post (yes I know I said initially it was going to be earlier but I'm still reading books!)

To the topic at hand, hurray, more sports anime that's fun above all else.! I feel like Haikyuu is also a really great example of how to make a shounen sports show for women, just give the characters personalities and the fans will flock!

Haikyuu!! Season Two

Anime Review: Utawarerumono The False Faces

It's time to dive back into last season's offerings, and this series was a bit of an odd one for me, it's a sequel and I haven't watched the original! The problem is that I got into the show around episode six at which point anime-only watchers still weren't entirely sure how closely this would be related to the first Utawarerumono (and the original visual novel had been out for less than two months so there weren't many game players around to answer questions) so watching the sequel first was totally by accident. I dealt with it by reading a ton of spoilers (the wikipedia entry used to have a really detailed account but it was removed pretty quickly) but I'm not sure I would say I recommend watching the first Underwaterrayromano first since I don't really recommend watching this follow-up either!

Utawarerumono: The False Faces

Anime Review: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

Before the season started I was tentative on this title, it sounded like it could be good but I really hadn't heard much about it. I knew it was about rakugo, knew what the basics of rakugo was, and that it was a josei title. So it was for an entirely unrelated reason that I was optimistic, the last time I was curious but had no idea if a josei title was going to be good was Chihayafuru and we all know how amazing that series turned out to be!

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

Anime Review: Erased

Now it's time to really get going on the Winter 2016 anime season with noitaminA's third mystery show in as many seasons. For newcomers to the blog, I tried Ranpo Kitan (loosely based on the works of Edogawa Ranpo) but didn't like the first episode at all and watched The Perfect Insider (based on either a novel or a light novel from the 90s) until the end but got frustrated with both it's philosophy and it's "solution" to the murder mystery (I'm honestly surprised that more people weren't even harsher on that detail). Each of these shows has had greater credentials than the last and so we come to this show, based off of a manga with an excellent reputation and with a strong staff (I enjoyed the director's previous work on Silver Spoon quite a bit) and news that the anime would end concurrently with the manga and have the same ending. That's a promising start!

Erased (Boku Dake ga Inai Machi The Town Where Only I am Missing)

Movie Review: Garakowa - Restore the World -

Originally the plan was to watch this movie the weekend it premiered on Crunchyroll but that was smack in the middle of my Katsu-crunch and, in addition to having fewer cosplays were I could multi-task and sew while watching anime, I found that I just wanted to watch the shows I was already following, the lack of reviews for the movie wasn't making me more interested in it. But once I found the time I was glad that it was only an hour, that's at least easier to make time for than a full two hour movie.

Garakowa -Restore the World-

Anime Shorts: Wakakozake and This Boy Is A Professional Wizard

It's been so long since I covered anime shorts that most folks probably don't remember I even do! Considering that these are so, well, brief, I like to lump two or more shows together and not make a review that takes longer to read than one episode. Sound good? (and with this I've reviewed my first 2016 anime, I don't feel so behind now!)