12 Days 2020, Day 2: Nagasarete Airanto – Rainy Day Friends

December 15, 2020 Hainiryun12 days of anime, 2000s anime project, Nagasarete Airanto, This show also had a duck in it so it gets points for that, Very good episodes of shows I didn't get super intoLeave a comment

One recurring theme of this year’s dive into forgotten series of the 2000s has been series which,. while I could definitely see their strengths, didn’t quite click for me. But at the same time even a lot of those series had their little moments where they really shone. Nagasarete Airanto was very firmly in that category. I could see what it was aiming for and I didn’t hate it but it never quite hit the point where I could say I really enjoyed it. Episode 10 though? Episode 10 was special.

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12 Days 2020, Day 1: A New Old Decade.

December 14, 2020December 14, 2020 Hainiryun12 days of anime, 2000s anime project, I watched an awful lot of anime this year, Technically I did not watch Utawarerumono this year but it aired during the target timeframe so I can totally use images from it in this postLeave a comment

Well it’s that time of year again, when I decide that, after a full year of producing almost no writing, it’s a good idea to try and produce 12 posts in 12 days. This is actually the 5th year running so that’s kind of a neat milestone if I can keep it up.

So towards the end of last year I had a silly idea. I first started getting really into anime around 2011, I dabbled before but it was mostly just rewatching stuff from my childhood, 2011 was the year I started actively following airing shows and diving into the endless backlog of older stuff. An effect of this all is that I narrowly missed out on seeing a lot of the anime of the 2000s. Obviously there have been a handful of things I’ve actively gone back and sought out after the fact but also there are inevitably things I’d just never heard of. So I decided to mark this new decade by spending a year watching things from an old one. For all of 2020 the only non airing anime I’ve watched have been from 2000-2009.

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12 Days 2019, Day 12: Heybot and the Sunday Prison

December 25, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, Heybot only gets sent to Hell once and Jail twice in the entire show and that's honestly kind of surprising., Heybot!, Meta shenanigansLeave a comment

You didn’t really think we’d be getting through this year’s posts without this show coming up did you? Today we’re going to talk about endings, fittingly enough. As I mentioned back in my post on the show earlier in the year, Heybot has a… complicated, relationship with continuity at the best of times. Continue reading “12 Days 2019, Day 12: Heybot and the Sunday Prison” →

12 Days 2019, Day 11: “Here and now, something only we can do” – The Value of the Impermanent in Manabi Straight

December 24, 2019December 24, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, If only I'd watched this show one year earlier, Living in the moment, Manabi StraightLeave a comment

Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight is a series that has been on my plan to watch list since like, 2011. I definitely should not have slept on it for so long. The world of Manabi Straight is one in which childhood is increasingly in decline. School still exists but it’s no longer mandatory past the basics and is positioned precariously between rising labour demands and collapsing budgets in the face of catastrophicly low birth rates. The end result of this all is that in the show’s setting childhood is something that increasingly needs to be justified. Continue reading “12 Days 2019, Day 11: “Here and now, something only we can do” – The Value of the Impermanent in Manabi Straight” →

12 Days 2019, Day 10: Graduation – the Existential Desolation of Sega Hard Girls

December 23, 2019December 23, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, Arbitrary milestones, CG anime is good actually, I am legaly required to refer to Straight Title Robot Anime at least once per 12 days series OK, Sega Hard Girls, That title is maybe a bit pretentious but it's snappy so I don't care, The unknown is scary sometimesLeave a comment

So this year I hit a bit of a milestone; 500 finished anime. While ultimately pretty arbitrary and not indicative of anything much it’s still a big number, so I decided the 500th entry should be something momentous and well regarded. Gotta hit those big milestones with big series, right? Just kidding, I watched Sega Hard Girls.

If there’s one very specific subset of anime that seems to exist to appeal to me specificly it’s janky CG shorts literally animated in MikuMikuDance. So what could be more on brand to hit a milestone like that with? It was great choice, it’s a cute little series which affectionately pokes fun at old Sega games, the cast are a lot of fun and it’s consistently funny. It also broke me a little. Continue reading “12 Days 2019, Day 10: Graduation – the Existential Desolation of Sega Hard Girls” →

12 Days 2019, Day 9: Michiru and Kaoru

December 22, 2019December 22, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, It was cool that they got a power up for the final battle but they should absolutely have let Michiru and Kaoru become Precure as well. They earned it., It's very funny that Michiru and Kaoru's menacing dark fall forms are just them wearing turtlenecks. Evil turtlenecks., Precure, Precure is a very itterative franchise, Splash StarLeave a comment

My many rambling trip through the early Precure entries continued this year (I really need to start getting through more than one per year or I won’t be caught up till 2028) with the third series, Splash Star. Which is my favourite yet. A lot of that rests on the strength of its villains, in particular the two we’ll be looking at today.

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12 Days 2019, Day 8: Symphogear’s Swan Song

December 21, 2019December 21, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, Can't believe Chris's ultimate attack is a reference to one of the worst JPRG dungeons ever, Everybody won Symphogear Bingo, It's not true to the spirit of Wild Arms if Marduk isn't localised as something different and stupid every time, Sincere Stupidity, Symphogear, The poor Autoscorers got left out in that final sequence but at least they got to shine earlier onLeave a comment

Have you ever seen a series just doing a victory lap? Symphogear’s finale felt like that in a lot of ways. With the existential threat of Shem-ha being dealt with in the episode’s first half and Miku rescued from her control, The series conflicts were all basicly resolved. So it kept going. Continue reading “12 Days 2019, Day 8: Symphogear’s Swan Song” →

12 Days 2019, Day 7: If you Die in the Granbelm

December 20, 2019December 20, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, Destroying structural oppression is good actualy, Granbelm, I don't like death battle shows, It's a real shame that this show seems to have passed by under most folks radars because it's genuinely great IMO, Meta shenanigans, Why yes Nene is my favourite character how did you know?2 Comments

Granbelm was one of 2019’s biggest surprises, I had no idea what to expect going in and it ended up being my favourite new series of the year. I also blogged about the whole thing so feel free to check that out if you want. On the surface of it Granbelm is just another battle royale deathmatch type show, this time with cool robots, but it’s got a few tricks up its sleeve to help it stand out. Today’s topic is one of those tricks; its use of meta expectations as obfuscation.

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12 Days 2019, Day 6: Short Awards 2019

December 19, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, Anime Shorts, Bananya, Pirikarako-chan, Senryu Girl, Strike Witches, Teekyu, There's no best sequel award this year since there weren't that many of them and I wasn't super into any of the ones that did happen, When all is ash Teekyu will remain, When is Teekyu coming back to once more destroy/save anime though?Leave a comment

Well this is the third year in a row I’ve done this so I guess it counts as a tradition now (technically it’s the fourth but I hadn’t quite pinned down the format at that point so lets just ignore year one). I watch a lot of short anime, I sort of make a point of trying to watch as many as possible, because I think they’re often unfairly looked down on because of their length and the perceived lack of effort that entails. There are some absolute gems floating around outside the bounds of the standard run time though, and each year I like to use one of these 12 days posts to highlight a few of the more interesting offerings each year. Continue reading “12 Days 2019, Day 6: Short Awards 2019” →

12 Days 2019, Day 5: Granblue Fantasy and Deviation in Adaptations

December 18, 2019December 18, 2019 Hainiryun12 days of anime, Drang is the best and also the worst, Granblue Fantasy, Io is underrated actually and I will fight you, They also fixed the implied mass murder so that's cool1 Comment

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Way back in the long forgotten era that was the 12 days of anime 2017 I wrote a piece on how Granblue Fantasy’s anime adaptation was at its strongest when using the downtime freed up by cutting a lot of the padding in the game’s story to explore areas of the setting the game doesn’t touch on so much. Outside of those few moments and some other changes to facilitate a more climactic finale the first season was a mostly fairly straight adaptation of the early story, It definitely had its moments but perhaps it was a little unambitious. Fast forward two years and the anime’s second season seems willing to deviate a lot more and it’s all the better for it. Continue reading “12 Days 2019, Day 5: Granblue Fantasy and Deviation in Adaptations” →