Fall 1999 season (20 years ago).

October of 1999 is when the One Piece Anime started, as well as the first HunterXHunter Anime.

Closer to Otaku Anime interests would be Eccel Saga and The Big O.

All stuff I still haven't seen yet.  I have just recently watched the first three episodes of Infinite Ryvius.

Continuing Anime included Cardcaptor Sakura and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, and also Ojamajo Doremi, and Corrector Yui.  Four Shoujo Magical Girl shows airing at the same time, I'm not sure if I've seen that before.

25 years ago was Magic Kngiht Rayearth.

2019 has been a slow Anime year for me.

Looking at the fall 2019 season, nothing already set for a Simuldub is of interest to me currently, which surprises me.  The few shows I'm hoping will get a Simuldub or any Dub fairly soon include nothing I'm super excited for.

So far I haven't given out a single 10 this year, and only a few in 2018, one of which being a show I might demote.

I'm starting to wonder if it'd be a good idea for me to take a semi break from Anime for awhile.

I think the most under appreciated show of 2019 is YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world, that show is not perfect but I found it very very interesting and unique, I think it's a shame most people overlooked it back in the Spring season.

Symphogear XV and Accelerator were both pretty good though.

I feel bad about currently giving Sarzanmai as low as a 7, I haven't kept my promise to watch it's Dub yet, I ought to get on that and hopefully it'll go up then.

I just gave a three episode test to Isekai Cheat Magician, which is getting a weekly Dub right after it's Japanese broadcast ended.  It has a pretty decent start.

I talked before about 2011 being the beginning of my personal golden age of Anime, I'm starting to wonder if 2017 was the last year of it.

Of course the last few months my mind has been on a lot of other things.

The Good about Gundam The Origin

My last post about Gundam The Origin focused on what bothered me about it, but as you know I don't like to be a negative nelly, so now that the TV version's Adult Swim run has finished let's talk about what I liked.

Number one, Sayla Mass is awesome.

It's ironic really, the main selling point of this prequel was supposed to be the origin story of Char Aznabel (the subtitle is Advent of the Red Comet) because in our modern cynical society the backstory of a villain is much more marketable then the backstory of a hero.  But low and behold it was their approach to Char I found endlessly frustrating while the story of his oft forgotten Imouto is what kept me engaged.

She was already the most underrated character of the franchise.  As you may recall I made the mistake of first checking out Origin when I hadn't seen any other UC material yet, I knew about Char because he has an entire TVTrope named after him, but I didn't know he'd also have a sister.  I was worried this was a character who was gonna be fridged before the prequel was over, then when I watched the Trilogy (when the last two episodes of the Origin OVAs weren't out yet) I saw she was still around and was thus quite happy.

In the original show/trilogy she's arguably just as important as Char and Amuro, she was present for their final confrontation and is potentially just as qualified to be a Gundam pilot.   The problem is she kept being excluded from the sequels because the Seiyu was repeatedly unavailable, now seeing her given this awesome backstory makes me even more annoyed we have no idea what she was doing during all that stuff.  If you really want to keep milking this franchise Sunrise then reboot the post OYW UC timeline now that you have another actress Japanese fans can accept as Sayla.

I also really enjoyed everything with Ramba Ral & Crowley Hamon and their group.  They were always vital to humanizing the Zeon side in the original Gundam Anime, and this prequel managed to do them justice.

I've long been annoyed at how new installments of this franchise always seem to be behind the original in having a diverse cast of interesting female characters.  When you compare the original MSG to the major western SciFi franchises of the same time in this area it blows them out of the water.  But now it seems every new Major Gundam show just opts for having a Leia/Padme wannabe as the main female lead.  So it's amusing how it took a prequel to get another Gundam Anime I'd actually watch for the women.

I think 2019 has been the best year for (Hollywood) Movies since 2008.

2008 produced two of my top 4 movies of all time (The Dark Knight and Speed Racer), my favorite Narnia movie, my favorite Indiana Jones film, the only James Bond movie I've really seen, the start of the MCU, and other stuff that's probably good which I haven't seen yet.

I spent most of the last decade feeling pretty underwhelmed by Hollywood movies, compared to how easy to please I usually am.  For all of 2013-2018 there are only two movies that I really loved, Jurassic World and Infinity War.  

But then this year all of the sudden they really start hitting stuff out of the park, Battle Angel Alita, Detective Pikachu, Avengers Endgame and Godzilla King of The Monsters really wowed me, then Shazam and Captain Marvel were both above average.  Meanwhile I still haven't seen the new Spiderman movie.

2008 was followed by a few years that were almost as good, let's hope the same thing happens again.