Well, it's that time again. October means the start of new anime series in Japan, and everybody and their dog is throwing up a "fall preview" post on their blog or livejournal. I was thinking of doing that too, but first, I went back and looked at what shows I predicted I would watch last spring, and laughed a bit at myself. Then I started thinking and writing, looking back on a year of watching free anime in wonderful Japanland, and, well...

I guess it's the normal procedure to wait until December to do an "anime year in review" post, but I think that fall would actually be a better time for me to do so. First, in Japan as in the United States, fall is the nominal start of the Year in Television. Second, I arrived in Japan last fall, so if I wanted to write about a year's worth of anime, of course it cover the span of time from autumn to autumn!

So without further adieu, here is my year in anime. ( Behind the cut. )

And, to conclude this amazingly long post...

Recommendations?

Level One: If you breathe air, you will probably like this series.
Seirei no Moribito/Guardian of the Sacred Spirit
Romeo x Juliet
Dennou Coil

Level Two: Recommended, but your mileage may vary.
Gurren Lagann (must love old-fashioned schlock done right)
Code Geass (must love old-fashioned schlock done horribly, horribly wrong)
Claymore (must be able to love a good story despite terrible art)
Hataraki Man (must not be grossed out by onscreen depictions of people eating natto)
Moonlight Mile (must have tolerance for slow pacing)
To Terra (must be able to love that old-school space opera)

So, if I had to sum up all of the above in one sentence, it would be this:
Everybody should watch Seirei no Moribito.
That is all.

The Big Three magazines each had a Tsubasa Chronicle: Tokyo Revelations feature this month. The illustration spreads in Newtype and Animedia were pretty much the same: Syoaran bloody and blue-eyed, Sakura swooning tragically, Kamui looking vaguely pissed. Animage only had a couple of sketchy character designs, which varied in exactly ZERO ways from what we've already seen in the manga. So not exactly exciting stuff.

But more exciting than that was the revelation (in Newtype) that the upcoming CLAMP in Wonderland II special will included animated scenes from the Infinty arc of the manga. Now THAT's what I'm looking forward to. Gothic pseudo-bondage and Fay artfully arranged in chains in during every avaible shot? Oh yes. I'm so there.

As someone said in the comments on one of

evercool's recent posts: Finally, an animated Tsubasa worth watching.

(Although I maintain that the 45-minute animated "movie" was worth watching solely for the cracktastic value of KILLER BIRD POOP MONSTERS.)

New Tsubasa chapter tomorrow. This is the first time in a long time that I'm actually looking forward to a new chapter of Tsubasa manga. Well, looking forward to, and dreading at the same time. Dreading because I'm starting to get the suspicion that CLAMP is about to pull the Noir twist on us, and reveal that ( Cut for gigantic Noir spoiler and hypothetical Tsubasa spoiler ).

I really hope I'm wrong about that. Because at this point, retconning even one more tragedy on Fay's past would break the universal angst limit and set the entire CLAMP multiverse spiraling into a black hole of all-consuming Fay angst. And that would just be a really cheap, melodramatic excuse for a "dramatic twist" anyway.

Paper Moon

The Dreamwidth version.

Entries tagged with anime/manga: noir

The Giant Anime Post of Doom

Recommendations?

Tsubasa anime.