Every now and then a series comes around that in adition to its own strong points is elevated by something entirely seperate. The atmosphere. that rose up around Kemono Friends was one such elevation. Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 12: Welcome to Youkoso Japari Park”
Rewatching a favourite series can be a great experience. But it can also be kind of scary. While it’s an oportunity to revisit a show you love with a little more experience, and maybe discover some things about it you wouldn’t have picked up on last time around, it’s also inherently risky. What if it sucks? Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, day 11: Revisiting Hinamizawa”
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans is a bleak show. So bleak that the ending caught me off guard with how weirdly optimistic it managed to be whilst still fitting the tone of the series perfectly.
Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 10: Gundam IBO, Victims of Circumstance”
Mahoutsukai Precure’s Mofurun was a damn good mascot. Where many Magical Girl mascot characters can feel like side characters, Mofurun absolutely felt like a major part of the team. And then the movie took this one step further. Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 9: Cure Mofurun”
Alice & Zouroku is a story about a god becoming human. Initially appearing as a fairly standard “super powered children being manipulated by an obligatory shadowy organisation” series, it manages to avoid most of the trappings of this kind of show and instead dives deep into what it means to be human, and if that fundamental humanity even really matters. Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 8: Alice & Zouroku, Loss Of Divinity”
As a cursory glance at my twitter feed will tell you, I play quite a bit of Granblue Fantasy. As such I was at least cautiously optimistic. While I’m a big fan of how the story is progressing at this point, several years in, the early game’s main quest is… pretty generic.
And then they aired the preview episodes, the whole thing got pushed back 3 months and they ended up releasing the first 2 episodes around the original planned air date as a sort of preview. They were OK, formulaic and unlikely to sell someone not familiar with the game on the premise, but OK. This kind of shot down what minor hopes I’d been harboring of a less than direct adaptation, with the preview eps following the game’s story more or less beat for beat. If I hadn’t already agreed to cover the anime for the wiki I might have given the whole thing a miss when the rest of the series eventually aired. When it actually did come out though? I had a surprisingly good time with it. Continue reading “12 Days Of Anime 2017, Day 7: Granblue Fantasy and Downtime in Adaptations”
So this time last year I decided to change things up a little and use day 6 to highlight some of the shorts that stood out in 2016. Given I’ve made shorts my thing at this point, it makes sense to turn that into a yearly thing. Since I’m now posting about every short in the roundups I’ve decided to give awards to a few series that I feel stood out for specific reasons. Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 6: Short Awards 2017”
As I mentioned yesterday, I attempted a sadly short-lived Magical Girl binge this year. The first show on the list was Princess Tutu (after all, the protagonist is literally an Anime Duck, I couldn’t not watch it), and it was a fantastic way to start. Managing to embrace its fairly tale aesthetic whilst putting enough of a spin on to feel like its own thing, it’s a delightful series from start to finish. One thing that really stood out however, was how it handled its villains, by spending the first half of the series without any. Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 5: Dance With Me”
As part of my ill-fated project to watch a bunch of older Magical Girl series this year (I managed a whole two shows). I watched the original Futari Wa Precure. Which is pretty great actually, it’s definitely a strong start to the franchise. It also has some pretty odd episode conceits. Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 4: Honoka’s Unusual Birthday”
Growing up, I never really got super into the Pokemon anime, I played the games and caught the occasional episode, but I didn’t follow it actively or anything. When Sun & Moon started airing the amount of praise on my twitter feed, along with how much I was enjoying the game itself at the time prompted me to check it out, which turned out to be a very good call. Continue reading “12 Days of Anime 2017, Day 3: Two lost Pokemon (and Litten)”
The Anime Duck Compendium 