More then half the Anime I've completed is from the last Decade

 The decade that begins with 2011 and ends with 2020.

The reason for that has to do with how while I’ve had some interest in Anime since the 90s my truly diving into it started in the middle of that decade, and then a couple years later I started following currently airing seasonal Anime.

Last time I made a post observing this I assumed that this decade best fits my Anime tastes, 2011 did set a lot of our current trends.  But once I went about trying to create a 3x3 I realized how much my top tier favorites do tend to be older.

It might be that a lot of the most recent stuff I’ve seen just needs to stand the test of time more and could improve upon my revisiting it in the future.  Currently the Anime of this decade I consider 3x3 worthy is stuff from early in it and/or connected to older franchises.  But I do think Your Name, A Silent Voice and Weathering With You are all among the best stand alone Anime Films ever made.

Looking at Anime history from the standpoint of the end of 2020, there are ways in which the 2000s almost seem like a giant transitional period from 90s Anime to modern Anime.  But it’s that very quality that makes a lot of it’s stuff seem like the most unique Anime ever made, for better and for worse Kannazuki No Miko and Nanoha both feel like they could only be products of that decade.

But that’s largely the current perspective talking.  I think a lot of 2010s Anime will be better appreciated when revisiting with the benefit of hindsight.  I’m certain eventually 2020s Anime discourse will include a lot of waxing Nostalgic about the Isekai craze.

I’m back to having seen more of 2017 then any other single year, 2018 had pulled ahead at one point, I’m not sure what I recently watched from 2017 to change that.  I’ve completed 39 from 2017, 31 from 2018 and 28 from 2019.  That’s based on their start dates of course, some shows are included that started late in one of those years and continued into the next.  Somehow 2013 is currently tied with 2018.  And there is still stuff from 2017 I want to watch or finish eventually.  2020 has produced less than other years, meaning it still will even once I’ve completed everything on my currently Watching list spend a little while as the only year of this decade I’ve completed less than 20 from.  For 2010 I’ve completed only 12, so there is a big drop off immediately once we go earlier.

I need to digest the end of this Decade a bit more before I make another attempt to rank my favorites from it.  But for now I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

_________________________________________________________

I’ve decided to make a list of my favorite Anime from each year of the 2011-2020 Decade.  The more recent a year is, the more possible it is that I'll change how I rank Anime from that year in the future even if I don’t increase the sample size I’ve seen of it.

I’m going to list a Movie and a Series for each year.  By “Series” I mean TV Anime as well as OVAs, ONAs or serialized films with enough episodes to work like a TV Anime.  For movies I’ll probably only count Theatrically released films with at least a full 60 minute runtime.  But maybe I’ll consider counting some TV movies or feature length OVAs if they feel cinematic enough.

The general rule is one each per year, but exceptions can be made for ties.

2011

Series: We actually start with a tie, Steins;Gate and Mawaru Penguindrum.

Movies: The K-On movie, it really is a masterpiece.

2012

Series: Robotics;Notes

Movies: Pretty Cure Allstars New Stage: Mirai no Tomodachi

2013

Series: A Certain Scientific Railgun S

Movie: A Certain Magical Index The Movie: The Miracle of The Endymion

2014:

Series: Yuki Yuna Is A Hero

Movie: N/A, there are no movies I even gave a 10 this year

2015

Series: School Live

Movie: Girls Und Panzer Der Film

2016

Series: N/A, Wow, for this year there’s no series I gave a 10.  But season 3 of Sailor Moon Crystal was important to me that year.

Movie: Another tie, A Silent Voice and Your Name

2017:

Series: Technically no definitive 10s here either, but I’m giving it to Fate/Apocrypha

Movie: Similarly I’m giving this one to Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya Movie Sekka no Chikai

2018

Series: Final tie, SSSS.Grdman and Citrus

Movie: Pokémon The Power of Us

2019

Series: YU-NO The Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World

Movie: Weathering With You

2020

Series: A Certain Scientific Railgun T

Movie: High School Fleet Movie, but that’s about the only film of this year I’ve already seen.

Just how much have I changed?

So I posted some thoughts on Wonder Woman 1984, I overall like the movie but had some issues.  I'm not even at all surprised that other people's issues were the opposite of mine.

But what gets me is how often the criticism the movie is getting is frarmed as it being a "Richard Donner style" which allegedly can't work anymore.  And it reminds me of what I (and others) used to say about Superman Returns, calling it the worst movie ever made.  But WW84 isn't actually like the utterly boring Superman Returns? Is it????

I haven't actually watched that movie all the way through since 2006.  But what I like about WW84 is tied to my tastes in Anime not some reversal of how I feel about "Cheesy" Superhero movies...... but none of the Anime I'm thinking of here I had seen yet in 2006, a good deal of it existed already, but I'd still only seen a handful of shows.

And as I was recalling what I was like as a mid to late 2000s Comic Book Nerd on IMDB message boards it all came rushing back to me, I used to be an Edge Lord.  I used to be the type of Batman fan who wanted the legacy of Adam West and Joel Schumacher buried, and used Silver Age as a dirty word.  It's true I was not one of those Robin and other sidekicks shouldn't exist people, but that's because I wanted the stories where The Joker kills Robin and cripples Batgirl.  I got into DC Comics because of War Games and Identity Crisis and OMAC Project.  And yes I even specifically wanted Superman stories to be darker then what Christopher Reeve ever gave us, more then once I was disappointed at Smallville not killing Chloe Sullivan off.

Even the beginning of my relationship with Anime (besides the literal kids shows I got into in the 90s) was Darker stuff, that I still call Noir my favorite Anime probably gives a bad impression of my current tastes.  And after that it was the other Bee Train Shows, Witch Hunter Robin, Code Geass which has dark moments, Death Note, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Attack On Titan.  The first Magical Girl Anime I watched to completion was Madoka Magica, then I saw Utena, then Rose of Versailles, then Le Caviler D'eon, then Gankutsuou.

I was never only into dark and edgy stuff, Pokémon for example was always somewhat of a balancing presence.  In fact I've always been unashamed to admit to still liking the kids shows I watched as a kid. Plus I've always been a defender of Superman IV and Batman Forever.  And there were always certain limits, I always found the first issues of Allstar Batman and Robin offensive, and the way season 8 of Smallville ended always bugged me.  I've always preferred a happy ending and I oddly valued Batman's no kill rule more then then I do now.  And I haven't lost the ablity to appreciate Dark stuff, I still like what I liked then and get crap for defending Zack Snyder.

But something has changed.  I've on this blog attempted to summarize the timeline of my descent into Anime before.  But I'd been trying to think of it as me simply being late to finding what I secretly wanted all along.  However the me who was super into every shocking thing DC was doing in 2005 would never have predicted I'd wind up defending the idea of having an epic super heroic battle to save the universe where no one dies.

When I watched Madoka and Utena for the first time, it was while the Sailor Moon revival was starting in 2014.  Sailor Moon had an on and off again presence in my life, but at that point I still hadn't seen most of the season finales, and I considered S the best season because it was seemingly the darkest.  (Now my Sailor Moon rankings are greatly different.)  Remember what I said about being concerned some westerners might learn the wrong lessons from Sailor Moon? well I'm remembering that that would probably have been me if I'd gotten to write a Sailor Moon knock off back in the 2000s.

Before the Sailor Moon revival kicked off, earlier in 2014, certain western TV shows I was watching had disillusioned me by crossing those lines I always had.  And the one I was starting to love more then ever before was in one of it's darkest hours.  So I think I was primed to appreciate Sailor Moon in a way I hadn't before, even though I wasn't connecting these things at the time.

2015 helped shape my modern sense of humor between how much I enjoyed the early episodes of Gotham and my at some point getting into Engaged to The Unidentified.  Meanwhile I started watching more Magical Girl shows too.

But 2016 was the major turning point.  My relationship with Batman V Superman is complicated, I wanted it to be the best thing ever, but after it came out I initially praised it but believe it or not there was a period where I was pretty down on it.  And that's when I watched Yuri Yuri and Lucky Star and began my relationship with slice of life Anime, they picked me back up.  And then I watched Haruhi to help me further appreciate Lucky Star, and then slowly but surely got into things like Fate/ and Nanoha and Steins;Gate.

All this did kind of coincide with some of the changes in my Theology and Politics, my becoming a Communist and a Universal Salvation proponent.

And then following seasonal Anime over the course of 2017 and 2018 further radicalized me.

So the question is, would I suddenly like Superman Returns if I rewatched it now?  I don't know, I still feel like it's largely boring in a way WW84 definitely is not.  But I guess I should give it a try some time soon.

However I now consider the worst movie ever made to be End of Evangelion.

Anime 2020 ends for now

Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links..

https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaredMithrandir

https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir 

Also here is the introductory post for this series.

https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2020/01/anime-2020.html

The first 4 episodes of Gleipnir were interesting.  Aspects of it aren’t to my general tastes but it is interesting.

Okay, I have no idea what to make of the ending of episode 13 of HigurashiGou.  There will likely be a delay in my starting the next arc, I think I need to take a break.

Million Lives Isekai episode 7 was fun, I wonder if that “most Talent” comment was a subtle meta gag?

Yashahime episode 8 was neat.

TONIKAWA episodes 5 and 6 were both pretty cute.

Talentless Nana’s season finale was pretty good.

Gleipnir episode 5 was fine I guess, but I don’t think this show is for me.

This is it for my Anime 2020 tag in actual 2020, I’ll be continuing it next year as I finish shows and maybe watch some stuff I didn’t watch right away.  I’m gonna make a point not to watch whatever remaining new episodes of the shows I follow come out till new years day at least.

My next year long seasonal Anime project won’t begin till April, I’m still working on exactly what to call it.

If I had to right now declare something my favorite Anime of 2020, it would probably be Railgun T.

I will before the year’s over probably make a post looking back at the last decade.  But jsut case I'll here wish my readers a Happy New Year.

Mahou Josei Diana Prince

There is a hypothetical Wonder Woman movie that can be described that way, but it still doesn't exist yet.

Wonder Woman 1984 was a good movie, probably the best Wonder Woman movie so far, definitely best Live Action one.  Judging it by the general standards I do Comic Book Superhero movies it's great.

But I had gotten my hopes up from some initial reactions I'd seen that it would be like a Live Action Magical Girl Anime, a genre that has always been somewhat Wonder Woman inspired from the beginning.  And so had decided what I would title my blogpost about it before I watched it.

WW84 is close in a lot of ways, is it the closest Wonder Woman movie to almsot achieve this so far?  Aesthetically speaking it's closer then Bloodlines which has that New 52 inspired look I never want to see an Anime try to emulate.

People praise how she doesn't win by fighting, and that's true in terms of Max Lord, but she still has to beat Barbara, I would have greatly preferred she resolved that conflict by reasoning with her.

But even without that, there is more to what makes a Magical Girl then just not being as explicitly violent as western Superheroes.  There is also the rejecting the notion of Sacrifice, of refusing to play along with the difficult choice.

As I said on Twitter when I watched the first three episodes of W.I.T.C.H.  Sailor Moon as the prototype of the genre does a lot of things different from the genre standard that I kind of only tolerate in Sailor Moon.  And so my greatest fear regarding attempts to create a Western Magical Girl show is that they will learn the wrong lessons from Sailor Moon.

But going back to the subject of Violence, the scene with her fighting the security detail in Egypt reminds me of when I would discus the hypocrisy of how people reacted to Dawn of Justice and the Nolan Batman films.  Diana is equally doing things that should have killed all those people (this also applies to how she beat Barbara) but people react to it differently because the Tone in BvS is emphasizing Bruce's Rage while the Tone here wants us to think of her as being Heroic.

This is also no where near the first time I've seen a Comic Book Superhero story set during the Cold War use the brink of Nuclear War as a plot point.  But I do feel like this is the only one to not say anything about that.  It's just throwing it in there with all the other madness because that's what 80s Superhero stories do.  Honestly for that element The Quest For Peace is still the best.

In 2017 I was restraining myself from expressing my issues with that Wonder Woman film because I wanted the first WW movie to be a success.  Now I feel the need to express my issues more even though I actually liked this movie far more.  I also like it more then Captain Marvel which I've spoken positively of in the past even though it's almost the antithesis of a Magical Girl.

Horror is a genre that generally does better when it’s low budget

 or at least seems low budget from a 21st century perspective, the Lugosi Dracula and Karlof Frankenstein may have been the most expensive films of 1931 for all I know.  My point is in the Hammer Dracula movies it’s not a bug that all the blood looks obviously like red candle wax, it’s a feature.

Sometimes the superficial expectations of what “high quality” looks like doesn’t actually fit the aesthetic of the kind of story at hand, it’s similar with classic Film Noir.

Big Budget movies about Frankenstein or Dracula just wind up looking like superhero movies using Victorian pulp rather than comic books as their source material.  I enjoy some of those movies, but they aren’t movies I’d recommend watching as Horror.

My reason for this rant here is that every week now when a new HigurashiGou comes out there is somewhere a twitter image comparing an old 2006 Higurashi screenshot to it’s Gou counterpart saying “and you think Deen looked better then Gou”.  And it feels similar to what I ranted about in that old Sakuga post.

Art is subjective.  And Gou is not objectively better because it looks more pristine and shinier and more like an average generic 2010s Anime.  Rather that is exactly why it no longer feels like Higurashi to me.  I enjoy plenty of generic 2010s Anime, but that’s not what I watch Higurashi for.

I don’t want to dunk on Gou, it’s not the worst looking, I can tolerate it more than Pokemon Sun and Moon which I dislike for similar reasons, and the storyline has my attention still.  My point is the old Higurashi worked, it became nigh universally considered the best Horror Anime partly because of the very visual aspects these people are now trying to bury it for.

This is not any kind of Childhood Nostalgia for me, I first watched Higurashi in 2017, my first post about it on this Blog was when I had just first watched it, so not even half a decade yet have I been into it.  What I do have childhood Nostalgia for is Sailor Moon. I'd started seeing it on TV before it was ever on Toonami even.  And I am fine with how Sailor Moon Crystal looks, it also looks very different from the 90s Anime, but it’s not simply trying to force those character designs into the most conventionally modern artstyle, the opposite really, it's trying to be stylistically faithful to a 90s Manga in a way the limitations of 90s Anime couldn't.  

But perhaps a more apt comparison is Fate/Stay Night another Visual Novel adapted by Deen in 2006 and then later by a more "respectable" studio with "seemingly" more budget put into the Animation.  Fate/ has horror elements but that's not it's primary appeal.  So yes for Fate/ the Deen Anime is almost unwatchable to me while UFOTable is in every way an improvement.  But the reason Deen's style didn't suit Fate/ as well is because Fate/ is meant to feel Epic and Mythical rather then Spooky.  

Robotics;Notes episode 15 is a good Christmas episode

I feel compelled to make this post about it even though I'm not entirely sure how to articulate my feelings.

Most of Japan is similar to California and Israel in that Snow at this time of year isn't as common as it is for those of us living further north.  That makes a subtle difference in the thematic role Snow plays in Anime in general.  In my post a couple years ago on episode 6 of Noir I got the name of that episode confused, it's Lost Kitten not Snow, but it kept using the word Snow in ways that confused my memory (I think it's because Snow was the name of a song on the Soundtrack).

The episode climaxes in a Christmas Miracle that is really a simple act of kindness.  Standard Christmas episode tropes.  But it's also specifically tied to the show's Sci-Fi setting and how Otaku driven it is.

I'm sure all the Christmas episodes BeneathTheTangles talked about are perfectly good if you're into those shows.  But I think this may be the best Anime Christmas Episode at being Christmas for Anime weirdos.

Haruhi Suzumiya watch order controversy

I forgot to cover Haruhi in my last post on watch orders.  (I also need to again update my Raildex watch order.)

Digi has commented on this issue more then once but most notably in the How to tell a good Anime from 1 episode series.  That was supposed to be about the three episode rule thing but both Haruhi and Lucky Star are completely separate from how that usually goes. 

Digi's main argument for the original broadcast order is that if you watch them chronologically the end of season 1 doesn't have a climatic finale that feels like something built up to.  That is an issue that mattered to the network when they originally were only gonna have 14 episodes and had to air them once a week for about 3 months.

However from the standpoint of being someone new to watching these kinds of Anime when Digi made this video in 2016 as I was and thus planning to binge all 28 episodes followed by the movie in probably less then a day, that is irrelevant.

For all intents and purposes new Haruhi fans are going to be watching them as if it was a 2 cour show.  And I actually don't like when a 2 cour show's exact halfway point feels like a season finale.  I don't want 2 cour shows to feel like 2 single cour seasons airing in quick succession together.  I want them to feel like 1 season that has twice the runtime to work with.

My main reason for advocating chronological viewing is because the 6 episodes that directly adapt the original Light Novel are the best introduction to this universe.  In the source material only the first novel is called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and that's why she is only actually melancholy during those 6 episodes.  After that the rest of season 1 are basically bonus side stories where the order you watch them doesn't matter much at all.

The story of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a satisfying piece of art all on it's own, even if it had never had sequels or an expanded universe it would still be worth revisiting.  Something that isn't always the case with Light Novels that start ongoing sagas, especially the trends that blew up in Haruhi's wake.  However when Anime viewers are interrupting that narrative to watch future random one off stories some of which are set after season 2, it tricks people into thinking it doesn't stand on it's own.

My first time watching Haruhi I did follow Digi's advice and I deeply regret that.  For a brief time right after watching it I convinced myself that the weird tirppiness of binging the show in that order had some artistic value to it.  But I have never felt compelled to rewatch the show in that order, and when I did finally just watch the Melancholy episodes in succession they felt so much more cohesive.

And I really don't care that the Anime director says he prefers the broadcast order, because even if you want to apply hyper strict Auteur Theory like Rick Worley would the Auteur of Haruhi is the Light Novel author, the Anime like most Anime was originally made to be a glorified commercial for the Light Novels which is why no one cared that they teased the Sigh arc with no guarantee it'd ever get animated.  

After this point I am officially getting into Spoiler territory.

BNA, Lupin III and more Seasonal Anime 2020

 Last Monday and Tuesday I watched BNA.  I’ve now seen a total of 3 Trigger shows.  I gave it an 8 on MAL, it’s fun but I think it needed more than 12 episodes to properly flesh out what it was trying to do.  The final episode suddenly makes the Pure Breed/Half Breed thing a big deal with no prior set up.

Before I watched it I had seen a video from a certain NazBol Anituber who tried to lay out how it’s Anti Israel propaganda (which would be a good thing from their POV).  There are several problems with that reading, not the least of which being there is no stand for the Palestinians.  The far more meaningful parallels are to Native American Reserves and Hong Kong.  Vic and Hope did a better video on it.

Our Last Crusade or The Rise of A New World episode 7 was… an episode.

Lupin III The First’s Dub became available recently and it was a pretty solid Lupin movie, and by far the best CGi Animation I’ve seen from Japan thus far, for that reason alone it’s great.

HigurashiGou episode 12 was fine.  After finishing this Arc I think I may wait to binge the rest.

Million Lives Isekai episode 6, “but over time some failed to comprehend what our scriptures said about love and peace” that sure sounds familiar.

Assault Lily Bouquet episode 6 was great.

The Day I Became A God episode 5 was emotional.

Warlords of Sigrdrifa episode 6 was pretty interesting.

Yashahime episode 7 provides the context of the framing device of episode 1.  Newbies who followed my advice of starting with episode 2 can probably just watch episode 1 now, unless you’d rather not watch an Inuyasha epilogue till after watching the actual show.

Talentless Nana episode 12 was great, only one episode left, this show should turn out more than decent.

So episode 5 of the TONIKAWA Dub has an Audio Sync issue because Crunchyroll sucks at Quality control.  It seems a lot of people were able to finish it in spite of that issue but I can’t.  So I'll have to wait awhile.

Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links..

https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaredMithrandir

https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir 

Also here is the introductory post for this series.

https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2020/01/anime-2020.html

Die Hard of Anime Christmas?

I have in the past both on this Blog and elsewhere referred to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's as the Batman Returns of Anime in terms of the debate about classifying it as a Christmas movie.

I have since then learned that Die Hard is usually the first Hollywood action/adventure movie people think of when it comes to movies that are technically set at Christmas time but not directly about Christmas in an obvious way.  I agree with James Rolf that BR is more of a Christmas movie.  But I have enough posts on this Blog referencing Batman in the title for the time being.

I have however remembered that there is another Anime I've seen that fits that category of Christmas movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.  That being a movie is probably easier to compare for most people.  There is a film version of the story of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's but I honestly don't remember if it included the Christmas references and for a number of reasons I don't like it nearly as much as the two series.

The Haruhi film probably spends a larger percentage of it's run time referencing Christmas, BeneathTheTangles only lists episodes 9 and 11 of Nanoha A's as Christmas Episodes.  But I feel Nanoha is more properly thematically right for Christmas.  

Nanoha A's is also more like Batman Returns in being specifically a second instalment.  Disappearance would've been the 3rd or 4th movie if Haruhi had been done as films from the start.

Still both are very good, Disappearance has pretty consistently been on my Anime Films 3x3 and Nanoha A's is one of my favorite instalments of one of my favorite genres.  

Disappearance is also arguably a good example of a Eucatastrophe for any Tolkien nerds reading this.

Anime 2020 deep into December

Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links..

https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaredMithrandir

https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir 

Also here is the introductory post for this series.

https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2020/01/anime-2020.html

Our Last Crusade episode 6 reminded me how tired I’ve gotten of people with superpowers being persecuted minorities in speculative fiction.

HigurashiGou episode 11 was good, still not sure what to make of this arc.  I didn’t finish episode 4 of the Dub, not really because of the Dub itself, at least it didn't create new issues.  It just didn’t take long for me to realize I don’t really wanna rewatch this one, the first arc is kind of the least rewatchable for me in the old show too, and this different ending was just not as shocking as I feel they wanted it to be.  I may wait to return to the Dub till I can binge it a good chunk of it.

Million Lives Isekai episode 5 was very amusing.

Yashahime episode 6 was very conventional.

TONIKAWA episode 4 was totally fun.

Warlords of Sigrdrifa episode 5 was better than last episode.

Ya know this huge arc of SAO is starting to remind me of my issue with True Blood and Game Of Thrones, jumping around all over the place constantly to barely connected plotlines.  Meanwhile this episode randomly threw in the Anime only Movie characters and it felt totally awkward.

Talentless Nana episode 11 was good.  To a certain extent what I said about Our last Crusade is applicable to this show too, but that’s mostly from what I've told about where the Manga goes later.

Final month of 2020 starts

 I watched the High School Fleet movie which in Japan came out in January of this year.  The series from 2016 was pretty good and this movie was a lot of fun too.  My favorite part was when that one Captain goes full Batman.

Well I watched the first two episodes of TONIKAWA and they were pretty amusing.

HigurashiGou included some scenes I’m pretty sure we didn’t get till Kai last time, but were I imagine always part of the Question Arc in the VN.

Assault Lily Bouquet episode 5 was very fun.  This show is a throwback to the old Catholic School set Yuri genre but with modern Action Anime tropes thrown in.

Million Lives Isekai episode 4 was alright.  The continent they’re on looks like Australia.  Glasses called herself a Magi-cal girl which made me realize something about how that term is mapped onto the lip flap of Mahou Shoujo.

Wandering Witch has a Dub starting, I thought the Dubs would have been done starting a few weeks ago.  If I give this show a second chance for the Dub it won’t be till the Dub has gotten past what I already saw subbed.  So for now I have no comments on it.

Yashahime episode 5 was alright.

The Day I Became A God episode 4 was hilarious.

TONIKAWA episode 3 was pretty fun at first, but the absurdity of that Three’s Company esque misunderstanding at the end was a little much.

Warlords of Sigrdrifa episode 4 was a beach episode.  I don’t like beach episodes, they’re rough, coarse, irritating and they get everywhere.

Well I think I have an idea of where Alicization is going next.

Talentless Nana episode 10 was okay.

Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links..

https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaredMithrandir

https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir 

Also here is the introductory post for this series.

https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2020/01/anime-2020.html

Frau Bow from Robotics;Notes

 I want to make a post on why I think the character of Kona Furugoori is unique and interesting.

There are generally two types of female Otaku who pop up in Anime.  There are the ones based on Japanese culture's actual stereotypes about Fugoshi or women that are into the Anime and Visual Novels at women.  And then more commonly there are the ones that are basically a stereotypical male Otaku inhabiting a Cute Girl's body usually with the idea of treating that as a humorous absurdity.

In Lucky Star for example the former is represented by Hiyori Tamura while the latter is represented firstly by Konata but also every other Otaku who shows up in the Anime at least with Patty specifically being the Weeb.

Frau in Robotics;Notes however seems to be a genuine mixing of these traits in a way you don't see very often.  She's into Yaoi/BL but also into devoting herself to a 2D Waifu.  

She also falls in love with the male MC and is actually the first girl to get anywhere with him which was enlightening in how surprising it felt, in fiction female Nerds actually have less luck at love then male Nerds which is the opposite of how most people think the real world works.

She also has her own plotlines related to being a Game Designer and trying to find out what happened to her mother.