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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Trying to figure out Higurashi Gou: Watadamashi-hen edition

December 13, 2020 HainiryunHigurashi no Naku Koro Ni, Wild SpeculationLeave a comment

So here we are again, another arc finished and a pile of new factors to consider. This one felt like getting a lot of new pieces that don’t necessarily fit together in a neat way.

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Trying To Figure Out Higurashi Gou: Onidamashi-hen Edition

November 7, 2020November 7, 2020 HainiryunHigurashi no Naku Koro Ni, I have not read Umineko and the anime wasn't great so that kind of hurts my ability to speculate on that axis, I sure have been watching anime for almost a decade now huh, I'm sure everyone saw this post coming, Obviously this has spoilers for the original story so don't read this if you care about that, Wild SpeculationLeave a comment

So Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni has been one of my favourite pieces of media ever since I started getting into anime in general back in 2011ish. For all their flaws I still consider the 2006/7 adaptations among my favourites and I’ve rewatched them half a dozen times over the last decade. So when it was announced that they were getting a remake this year I was pretty interested obviously. If nothing else I was hoping for a more accessible entry point to the series for newcomers; a slightly more polished take without the reputation for being a bit janky the original adaptations had.

Episode 1 rolled around and it was more or less exactly that; aside from a weirdly unsubtle stinger with Rika at the end and a handful of scenes given more/less time it was a fairly straight remake of the first episode of the 2006 anime. This left me with sort of mixed feelings; It’s nice to have it back and filling that space I was expecting it to but at the same time, why does this need to exist? Jank aside the old anime were perfectly servicable and so watching this would just be seeing the same stuff all over again with a new lick of paint. Then episode 2 came out and threw all that out the window.

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“See You Tomorrow” – Death and Separation in Figure 17

March 13, 2020March 13, 2020 Hainiryun2000s anime project, Figure 17, I continue to be very good at posting things in a timely manner, The ending to this felt kind of inevitable and was very well done but I am still Upset3 Comments

All right 12 days was fun lets get right into the new year with… Wait… What do you mean it’s the middle of March?! Maybe some day I’ll be able to stick to a consistent posting schedule but what the hey.

So this year I decided to open the new decade with a little project. I initially got into anime in a big way around 2011, I watched a handful of things before then but that’s definitely the point where it became one of my main interests. Because of this the 2000s have always sort of felt like a decade of anime I just narrowly missed out on engaging with. I’ve watched a handful of things from the era but there’s something aluring about going back to what I missed. Combined with a fascination with generally obtuse anime that have slipped out of the discourse I decided I’d use this year to watch forgotten anime from the 2000s. The criteria are pretty vague: 1) aired from 2000 to 2009 2) I hadn’t heard of it or was only sort of vaguely aware it existed and haven’t seen anyone really talk about it much. I’m about 20 or so entries into the list so far (I’ve been watching a lot of anime recently for a change!) and there have been a few solid entries and a lot of so-so stuff but that’s sort of what I expected going in. And then there’s Figure 17. A series I had genuinely never heard of until I started compiling the list, which meant I went into it with zero expectations. And it blew me away. Continue reading ““See You Tomorrow” – Death and Separation in Figure 17″ →

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” →