The many John Carters of Anime.

John Carter is the name of a 2012 film adapted from a 1912 Pulp Sci-Fi series originally titled A Princess of Mars but it and it's sequels are often called the Barsoom series. 

The way this movie was seen as so generic despite how it's source material predates everything it was seen as derivative of has made it a euphemism in my mind for all similar scenarios, something highly influential that later fell into obscurity and become overshadowed by it's children which got high profile mainstream adaptations way sooner.

For Otaku Media the comparable situations on my mind are mainly source material from the 90s or early 00s that didn't get a full TV Anime adaption till the 2010s or 2020s. 

The big one I've already talked about is YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. It's 2019 Anime was dismissed by casuals as just another Isekai but with a drawn out Steins;Gate/Re:Zero set up thrown in.  There were not zero Isekai prior to the 1996 release of the YU-NO game, but it still long predates the main formative texts of modern Seinen LN Isekai. 

But those kinds of Anime aren't the only ones I feel YU-NO influenced in some way. When I was watching it not even knowing how old the source material was yet, the talk about being "outside the four great Ancient Civilizations" reminded me of exposition from Madlax a now largely forgotten 2004 Anime. Mio Shimazu I feel is a very formative early Tsundere and Kanna Hatano likewise is an early formative Kuudere. I also feel like Shimazu was a very direct inspiration for the main girl of the third episode of the 2002 Hentai OVA series titled Unbalance directed by Akiyuki Shibo. 

John Carter the film you can argue doesn't do itself any favors in avoiding the generic accusations in how it presented itself.  And YU-NO is similar, as much I love the 2019 Anime I do lament that it's using the modern character design revamps of the game's then recent remake. In 2026 we have Anime like Red River showing us a modern Anime can still feel faithful to it's source's original 90s Character Designs. 

Red River can indeed be added to this list, as a classic Shoujo Time Isekai it's Manga predates Inyuasha. 

But another big Visual Novel example is Muv-Luv.  It's original release was 2003 and the first version adding Alternative to the title was 2006. There was no proper adaptations of a version of it's main story till 2021-2022, but it has spin off Anime in 2021 and 2016. 

The pilot of the 2021 Anime is one that I'm sure watching no knowing the history of Muv-Luv would have been comparing to the pilot of Attack on Titan, but it's Manga didn't start till 2009. It all shares a lot of vibes with many modern Gacha game based Anime. 

There are of course some major important early Visual Novels that still have no TV Anime. Shizuka, Kizuato, Silver, Cross Channel, Tsui no Sora. 

YU-NO and The Elixir of the Hero's Journey

The thing about discourse around Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Monomyth is that it’s based on a bunch of observations that I’m not even sure he intended to claim universally applied to absolutely all stories as much as it often seems like he was.

Even when we take the observation that the Return Section involves three mutually exclusive options that can’t coexist in a story with only one timeline thus moving the total number of bullet points down from 17 to 15, you’ll still be hard pressed to find any story that actually does all 15 with the analysis being forced to really stretch some parts, even in the stories most said to be directly intentionally following Campbell like Star Wars.

However that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful and fun to notice the points that apply intentionally or not. And I also want to note that different Story Structure models we talk about aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as we sometimes paint them.  So for example a Japanese writer who’s been influenced by Western Stories can write in the Kishotenketsu structure and still have pieces of the Hero’s Journey influencing beats within those Acts. 

One aspect of the Hero’s Journey that rarely happens in modern stories in a remotely straightforward manner is that idea that there is a Boon or Elixir in the “Other World” that the Hero has to find and bring back to his world for the benefit of his world. I’m calling it the Elixir mainly because of Blue’s video on the topic on the OverSarcastic YouTube Channel.

The desire to apply this to Star Wars or LOTR or Narnia or The Matrix or any number of Superhero films requires highly abstracting all of it. Now that the “Other World” isn’t actually a completely different world or even always a different part of it geographically speaking is fine actually, it’s everything else that I find kinda funny how you have to really force it to apply. 

One exception is the 1984 Supergirl film, I remember on IMDB back in the day at least one poster really invested in saying that film is the most perfect encapsulation of the Hero’s Journey, and I do see why they would feel that way.  In the case of this topic the Omegahedron is the Elixir. 

I also recall Leonard Nimoy talking about this in the Audio Commentary for Star Trek IV The Voyage Home where in that film the Elixir is the Whales. 

But what I really find fascinating in this context is the 2019 TV Anime adaptation of the 1996 Adventure Game titled YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. It really turns out to be a fascinating fusion of Kishotenketsu and the Hero’s Journey. 

First of all the fact that in Kishotenketsu the “twist” happens close to the halfway point is perfectly represented by how the actual transportation to the Isekai world happens a few episodes into the Second Cour. 

But in this context the Elixir is the Saikite that Takuya needs to save Kanna.  That he’s doing it for one Girl instead of the entire world fits in with common Otaku Media tropes quite well actually.

The last point is a difference from the original game however, I imagine it’s a change many fans dislike but for me it constantly proves to be a crux why I find the Anime so incredibly good and underrated. 

The Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of Anime.

I notice a lot of online Anime Discourse, at least back in 2016-2017, talking about what was the Golden Age of Anime treating that term as just meaning whatever is the best when that's not actually what the concept of a Golden Age means.

The Golden Age of something is it's first era of greatness, some stuff can have came before but they're basically Pre-History in the grand scheme of things.  No fan of Western Superhero Comics actually thinks the Golden Age had a higher baseline level of quality then fully developed modern comics, or that most of the absolute best Comics ever made were made then, but they call it the Golden Age anyway.

Likewise I am going to say the Golden Age of Anime began with the premier of Astor Boy in 1963 and ended with the final episode of Lupin III Part II (Red Jacket) in 1980 even though I am personally into very little from that era.  

I will then define the Silver Age as spanning 1981 through 1994 and maybe even the first season of 95.  

The Bronze Age is then 1995-2010 (or maybe it wouldn't be completely wrong to include the Fall of 94) while the current Modern Age began with 2011 and is still going on as I write this. 

Significantly over 50% of all the Anime I've completed on MAL is Modern in this definition.  Partly because how much Anime gets made each year keeps increasing, but also because it was a few years into the Modern Era that Anime became a full time interest of mine.

However I would have to say the Bronze Age is probably the age I currently like the most, it contains most of the few Anime I actually do have Childhood or YA Nostalgia for.  And there are so many interesting kinds of Anime I feel were only made then.

Now my definition for the Golden Age is perhaps the most self explanatory.  That it ends right before Millennials begin being born makes it easy for us to see it as the Antiquity of Anime History.  

The Silver Age is then contemporary with the earliest Millennials growing from Babies to starting High School.  But I'd also say the key 1981 milestone to kick off this age was Urusei Yatsura while the swan song of the Silver Age was Sailor Moon S the last season of that Anime with Tomita, Yanagikawa and Sumisawa on the writing staff.

I already have a Post on this Blog about Anime in 1995 showing what a game changing year it was. But the argument for starting the Bronze Age in Fall of 94 would be Macross 7 & Magic Knight Rayearth and how DNA seems ahead of it's time as an absurd Harem premise. And I also already have a post on 2011 Anime showing how it launched many of the trends that define modern Anime Culture.  And even in that post I had not yet accounted for Psycho-Pass or some other shows I watched more recently, or how for Detective Conan the Holmes' Revelation Case can definitely be considered the start of the Modern Era for that show and Movie 15 the first movie to truly feel like modern Detective Conan movies.

But 2010 as the end of an Era is also interesting to break down.  War on Geminar was the last real OVA saga, since then OVAs have almost only been for bonus episodes of TV shows and Hentai.  Oreimo season 1 was the last real Otaku Rights show before Otaku culture became too tolerated for such a premise to feel relevant anymore (with that element being downplayed even in future Oreimo Anime).  White Album and Yosuga no Sora were the last Anime adaptations of retro Visual Novels made before modern Anime styles got in the way of such adaptations feeling Retro (I love YU-NO's 2019 Anime but I do wish it could looked more like a 90s Anime).  For Pokémon Diamond and Pearl is the last generation I personally feel can be considered a classic gen.  Legend of The Legendary Heroes was the last major Fantasy Anime before the influence of SAO and LN Isekai took over (a few shows and movies with the vibes of these kind of Fantasy still get made but they get drowned out).

For both Superhero Comics and Anime the change from Golden to Silver is shockingly clean, with if anything a brief gap that feels like neither rather then a transitional period that feels like both.  With Anime it's only the change from Silver to Bronze I consider debatable at all, Fall of 94 and Winter of 95 can each go either way.  I similarly do consider the transition from Silver to Bronze for Comics the most stylistically complex (other transitions are only debated more by DC nerds because this is the only one where the continuity didn't change).  None of the shows airing in both Fall 2010 and Winter 2011 I consider defining shows of either era.

What to call the era that follows the Bronze Age after it's no longer Modern is what isn't so standardized.  For DC Comics it's the Post-Crisis era, I'm of the generation of DC fans who grew up with the Post-Crisis era being the current Modern Era.  But when did the Post Crisis era end?  During the early-mid 2000s we felt like it was still the Post-Crisis era but in hindsight a lot of what was special about the Post-Crisis era to many who consider it their favorite era of DC comics was already being eroded by 2002, I consider the reviving of Oliver Queen in the Quiver arc from 2001 a key turning point.

So with about 15 years seeming to be the average, we Anime fans may well be near the end of our current era, which is perhaps what a lot of people tired of certain current Anime trends are hoping for.  But we probably won't notice the change as it happens just as DC fans didn't and just as I don't think we noticed the huge shifts happening in 2010-2013.  Madoka Magica was a big deal immediately, but how soon did people realize just how much it had changed the game for it's Genre?  Maybe the upcoming Madoka movie will help end the very same era the original show helped start?

But what will we call this era?  DC fans were lucky being given a convenient name early on, though it was originally used to denote continuity changes more so then an era.  We have been using some terms to describe the modern state of Anime, but they tend to refer to specific subgenres of what's going on now rather then all of it.  What do Dark Magical Girls, Isekai, VRMMOs, Magic Academies, endless Fate/ Spin Offs, and Battle Royal/Death Games all have in common?

I know sometimes the Post Crisis era is also called the Dark Age of Comics because of Watchmen/DKR influence.  And indeed some of those Anime trends are Dark but not all of them, Isekai is usually the opposite and plenty of classic style Mahou Shoujo have coexisted with the Madoka Clones.

Maybe "The Light Novel era" works.  LNs were a thing during prior eras and they portably will still be in future eras just as the Edgy Anti-Heroes of 90s Comics didn't just disappear.  But it does feel like this is an era where even some things that aren't LN based often seem like they are because of how pervasive their influence is.

Update: One could just continue the Greek Mythological inspiration and call the 4th age the Iron Age.

Dating Sims vs Visual Novels, what's the difference?

The reason I feel this is necessary is because Anime Database websites when saying what the source material of an Anime is will classify as Visual Novels a number of different kinds of Games that have some similar elements but aren't actually the same, Dating Sims are just one of them but probably the most inherently confused with Visual Novels.

YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound Of This World is in fact neither but really a Point and Click Adventure Game with a lot of Text to sit through between all the pointing and clicking.  I myself have called it a Visual Novel on this blog in the past, mostly because I naively took others calling it one at their word.

The first Anime adapted from an actual Visual Novel was To Heart in 1999, the source material of To Heart was the 3rd Visual Novel ever made and the first to have essentially the same narrative premise as a Dating Sim.

In a pure Visual Novel like the original Leaf trilogy the only interactive element is the branching paths, the dialogue tree, it's basically a digital choose your own adventure book.  While in a Dating Sim like Tokimeki Memorial or Doukyuusei you have a calendar and a map, and sometimes more numbers to keep track of then most RPGs.

Notice I said "pure", there is a kind of spectrum between pure Visual Novels and something I wouldn't consider a Visual Novel at all.  Doki Doki Literature Club has the poem creating minigame, but it's mostly just an elaborate way to choose which girl you currently want to pursue, so it's mostly still a visual novel.  School Days has a status bar telling us which girl Makoto is currently leaning towards, while Shiny Days has a similar one focused on only one girl.  But the Dialogue Tree choices are still entirely what effects that status bar so they're also principally Visual Novels.

School Days and Shiny Days are the only Visual Novels I've actually played and only DDLC have I watched full play throughs of.  So my ability to comment on other less then pure Visual Novels is limited, but what I've heard about how say the SciADV games function they have significant other variables that make me question them.

So when exactly a Visual Novel has too many other elements to still be a Visual Novel is difficult to pin down exactly, but there is a limit.  This kind of overlaps with the debate about if Visual Novels qualify as Video Games, pure Visual Novels I'm inclined to agree do not otherwise every Choose Your own Adventure novel would be a Game of the non visual variety.  And I guess my point here is the more of an actual Game you make a Visual Novel the less it still is a Visual Novel.

Early Visual Novels were wrriten by men who were into Shoujo Manga/Anime.

That thesis if true can explain a lot about the development of Otaku Media in general.  

But to clarify my definitions of "men" for this thesis can include Trans Feminine people who were assigned male at birth but hadn't hatched yet (if they ever did).  I'm not aware if anyone involved actually was, but if any have come out then I apologize for defaulting to referring to them as men here.

By early Visual Novels I principally mean the foundational texts of the genre which largely came from a handful of early developers.  Leaf's Visual Novel trilogy which were the first to use the term and culminated in To Heart, Tactics games like Dosei and One, Key's Seasons Trilogy, Elf games like Kakyuusei and YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World, and early Age visual novels like Rumbling Hearts.

Early in the 2000s we already start to see VN developers being mostly just influenced by earlier VNs and so whatever Shoujo influence remains is indirect.  Though Nasu of Type Moon has outright said he was a fan of some 90s Shoujo if I remember correctly, Shinji Matou sure seems directly based on Saionji of Utena.

Some of the early Anime adapted from VNs, especially TV Anime where the most explicit sexual material is removed, truly seem indistinguishable from Shoujo Manga adaptations being made at the same time.  2003's Rumbling Hearts can absolutely pass as an intense Shoujo Melodrama while 1999's To Heart would resemble a more light hearted Shoujo Slice of Life RomCom. 

And even in the ones harder to confuse with a Shoujo Anime because of their indulgence in Ecchi fanservice like a lot of Elf based Anime, the influence of Shoujo tropes is still visible.

But the more concrete evidence exists in the specific characterization Tropes.  I've already made a thing on this blog more then once of my observation that in the 90s the Anime characters who seem like Tsunderes are mostly the main characters in Shoujo Manga adaptations, I've seen it in Sailor Moon, Wedding Peach, Marmalade Boy, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.  But the kicker was Saint Tail where the female lead actually says The Line in 1995.

The word Tsundere was coined on the internet in the 00s as an observation of how certain love interests in Visual Novels behave.  I think the mid to late 90s VN Heroines who would come to later be called Tsunderes like Mio from YU-NO were principally the characters modeled after Shoujo protagonists.  And in these early ones the male protagonists aren't quite the generic Otaku self inserts we'd get later, rather they seem like the male romantic leads of these same Shoujo Manga where the protagonist was being a Tsundere, and so like them the Tsun is often mutual.

There are two well known 90s Anime characters who are often labeled Tsunderes even though they come from neither Shoujo Manga or Visual Novels, and so perhaps you could consider their existence a weakening of my thesis.  In the case of Misty from Pokémon, I've also already written on how most of the key staff of that Anime had previously worked on Shoujo Anime like Wedding Peach and Minky Momo and some other more obscure ones.  So I think they simply wrote Misty the way they were used to writing Shoujo protagonists, then in time her character just got sort of Flanderized.

Asuka Langley however I don't feel truly counts.  She's an example of a character who'd be pretty hard to deny technically qualifies, but there is a massive difference between the way she acts and the Visual Novel characters the term was coined in reference to.  Asuka was simply Anno's poorly thought out attempt to write a character who was mentally unstable because of her Trauma.  And what pisses me off about Evangelion Simps is how because they interpret the archetype entirely through the lens of Asuka they keep saying in their Video Essays that Tsunderes are only good when their behavior is explained by Trauma.  When the truth is the original Tsunderes were the very definition of normal and average in the Manga/Anime most meant to be relatable to normal average Japanese school girls, Trauma is absolutely not necessary.

I've since discovered that the Kuudere also seems to start as a Shoujo thing, in Sailor Moon with Manga Rei and Hotaru in both versions, but I suspect more exist in stuff I haven't watched yet.  And then Goldfish Warning! shows how the hyperenergetic pink haired Genki Girl also started in Shoujo.

We could perhaps add to this conversation some Games who's status as Visual Novels is a bit controversial but do seem to have developed at least in part from the same zeitgeist, like Konami's Tokimeki Memorial, Sega's Sakura Wars with it's clear Takerzakua influence, and Night Walker which honestly may have had a female target audience even in it's porn game form.  

Stosugyou: Graduation is listed on AniDB as the first ever Anime adapted from a Visual Novel, yet it predates Leaf's coining of the term.  I just watched this two episode OVA and it's quite interesting, it has the same Character Designer as the first two seasons of Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach which only adds to how much it tends to feel like the Slice of Life parts of those shows.

When an Adaptation is made Too Late

A lot of the time it seems like it's for the best to wait a long time to adapt something, especially when we're talking about Live Action adaptations of significant prose works of Sci-Fi or Fantasy, it can take 20 or even 50 years for the technology of Film making to catch up to the imagination or the original author.

However the thing about Otaku media is that the aesthetics of where Otaku culture was at that time are more important then the geopolitics or fashion trends of the real world.  In any other context something being too much a product of it's time just means you adapt it as a period piece, but Otaku art is different.

Boogiepop and Others, YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World and Magic Kaito 1412 are examples of source material from the late 80s or 90s that didn't get a proper Anime adaptation till the 2010s.  And I like all three of those Anime to varying degrees, they are all good shows.  But I can't help but feel like something is lost in them being done in these very modern artstyles when at their core these are 90s characters who should be immortalized with 90s character designs.

Animation is not limited in what things it can show the way Live Action is, even TV Anime which is done on more limited of a budget was in the 80s already doing some High Fantasy and Hard Sci-Fi.  However the aesthetics and styles of Anime constantly evolve, and with them the very tools used to animate are replaced.  So it's really just not even possible to animate something today but make it look like it could have been animated in the 90s, the substances behind 90s Animation no longer exist, so nothing animated now can ever be Homousian with 90s Anime.

As someone who lived through the 90s I can still sense the 90s sensibilities in these Anime in ways I can't really explain, (even though at least two seem to have been updated to the present in the adaptation).  But that's all the more reason why their looking so standard 2019 feels off.  

It also matters that all three were works who's source materials were very influential, a lot of stuff following trends they set got animated way sooner. But when those of us who know try to explain that to the average contemporary seasonal Anime viewer, it's hard for them to even believe us when YU-NO looks at first glance like every other generic Isekai of 2019.

It helps that we got glimpses of what aesthetically a more contemporary Anime for each of them could have looked like.  YU-NO has the animated opening cinematic made for the Sega Saturn port and the absolute madness that was it's 4 episode Hentai OVA.  Boogiepop Phantom was basically an animated side story made in 2000 and serves as the only Anime I've ever felt was drawing aesthetic inspiration from Serial Experiments Lain.  And Magic Kaito made a number of appearances on Detective Conan, most notable are the first half hour of episode 219 and OVA 4 which each adapts a story of the Magic Kaito Manga.

That's not to say they needed to be adapted immediately, lots of great Anime came 5ish years after it's source material, sometimes one decade proves to not be too much.

I've argued before that the 2000s were the most transitional decade in Anime history, so maybe that's the real problem.  Some 90s source material is done well adapted in even the late 00s, and plenty of great 2010s Anime was adapted from even early 2000s works.  It's particularly the change to digital Animation that makes it hard for most 90s Character designs to feel right in modern Animation.

Maybe it's not absolutely only an Anime thing.  The DCAMU adaptation of the Death and Return of Superman doing at times scene for scene recreations of stuff from the original 1992 Comic Book storyline but in their New52 based artstyle feels similarly off-putting, more so since I fundamentally hate the New52 style more then I do almost any Anime artstyle.  But this kind of thing is I feel more pronounced in the way Otaku aesthetics work.

Kuudere list

 Since I’ve started defining myself online as a Kuudere, I figure I better break down this Anime archetype by talking about the ones I’m most into, and try to list them basically in the order they came into existence, though for some their Anime came quite a bit later.

The Tsundere and Yandere are the Dere types most well known and the only ones ever the subjects of any serious Video Essays I know of.  I honestly have no idea if my perspective on who is and isn’t a Kuudere even agrees with most Otaku.  Also I’ve still only seen a small percentage of Anime that exist, it’s perhaps revealing that my Kuudere timeline begins in the 90s.

First is Rei Hino in the Sailor Moon Manga, most casuals don’t know this since the 90s Anime changed her personality completely making her much more of a Tsundere. But Manga/Crystal Rei Hino, as well as PGSM, is very much a classic Kuudere. Some may also count Hotaru during the Infinity Arc as a Kuudere, as well as Rei Ayanami in NGE, but they are a type of Kuudere distinct from what I have in mind when I call myself one.

Second is Kanna Hateno in 1996's YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World.  This early Visual Novel was huge in Japan, one of those classics of Otaku media that western fandom doesn’t fully get the influence of since it didn’t get a proper Anime adaptation till 2019.  Just as Mio was vital to the development of the Tsundere, Kanna is a key genesis point for the Kuudere.

Third is Ai Haibara who was introduced to the Detective Conan Anime in 1998.  She is a cool and collected character, in how this show models itself after the Legacy of Sherlock Holmes she is perhaps in a sense Kudo’s Irene Adler.

Fourth is Mai Kawasumi in the 1999 Visual Novel Kanon, she’s an early example of a Kuudere who’s also a Samurai.  After this point I’m not really gonna number them anymore.

Next is Yumera Kirika in the 2001 Original Anime Noir.  The character of Chole also qualifies in different ways, so this show provides two.

But Chiefly of all is Setsuna Kiyoura from the 2005 Visual Novel School Days.  This is the character I’ve been using as my Avatar since I started calling myself a Kuudere and I've ranked her as my number 1 favorite character on MAL.  So for me personally she is the standard I hold all other Kuudere characters to.

Amazingly there is another Kuudere I really like also named Setsuna in the 2007 Anime Shattered Angels.

Then in April of 2008 came Ayase Kishimoto in the 2008 Visual Novel Chaos;HEad which got an Anime adaptation the same year.

Those 9 are the big ones, plenty of other characters in shows I’ve liked could be argued to count, but these are the core to defining what being a Kuudere means to me personally.

Update: October 2022: Now that I've seen all of Karin (2005-2006) for this Halloween month I want to add Anju Maaka, she's similar to Kiyoura in how she's the Kuudere but also kind the brains of the cast, certainty the smartest member of her family in-spite of being the youngest.

It occurs to me that Humora in Madoka Magica probably qualifies.

Update May 2024: I made a post on Miyu from Prisma Illya who I really should have included from the start.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html

The End of 2021 marks 5 years of me following Seasonal Anime.

Since I really started following currently airing shows with the Winter season of 2017.  I had some vague awareness of currently airing Anime in 2016, but that was basically just the most well known stuff.

So I figured I should celebrate this landmark by talking about some of my favorite shows from each of these 5 years, maybe even sometimes specific seasons, it depends.

For the winter of 2017 Dragon-Maid was probably the stand out, but I also enjoyed ACCA, Tanya the Evil and Gabriel Dropout.  But that's just stuff I watched at or near the time, I eventually watched Scum's Wish and now would say my favorite of that season was Chaos;Child.

For the rest of the year, Fate/Apocrypha, In Another World With My Smartphone, Princess Principle, and Anime Gataris are what I consider the best new shows, but also season 2 of Yuki Yuna Is a Hero and it's prequel episodes that came with it were great too.

For 2018 it's perhaps easier for me to name my favorites of the movies.  Both Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms and Pokémon: The Power of Us were fantastic.  For TV Anime, Citrus was awesome, Legend of The Galactic Heroes The New Thesis was very good, Hugtto Pretty Cure was fantastic. Meanwhile Darling in The FranXX was decent and SSSS.Gridman was great. And then at the end of the year That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime started, and the early part is what I liked best of that show.

For 2019 YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love at The Bound of This World was definitely the best TV Anime, Boogiepop and Others has great material, but some big flaws early on.  And then Weathering With You was a great movie.  Also we got some fun Lupin The Third content that year.

For 2020 A Certain Scientific Railgun T I still consider the best, Bofuri was also fun, while In/Spectre and Tower of God are both interesting.  Most everything else I consider notable from 2020 was in the Fall season, and that stuff like everything I've watched in 2021 is perhaps still a bit too recent for me to fully parse yet.

But I'll attempt to list some 2021 Favorites anyway.  Pokémon: Secrets of The Jungle was another satisfying PokeFlick, and then Pokémon Evolutions was pretty cool as well.  High-Rise Invasion which dropped on Netflix was a big stand out, as was Eden later on.  So I'm A Spider, So What was perhaps the most fun I had for much of the year, and Wonder Egg Priority was an interesting little experiment even though the ending fell off a bit.  Star Wars Visions I did a post on already.  And also at the end of the year Yuki Yuna Is a Hero The Great Mankai Chapter was a good Coda to season 2, nothing else from Fall I've really gotten to watch yet, same with some of what interested me back in the Summer, and there's also some Movies I haven't seen yet  So my 2021 faves will probably need revision in the future.

Catching ya'll up to speed

I just watched the 8th and final episode of Pokémon Evolutions, and LEAF IS FINALLY ANIMATED!!!!!!  I was not expecting that, I had basically given up hope.  And she was Bad @$$.  They called her Green, but I'm gonna it was Blue in the Japanese, throwing back to the Manga names.

All of Pokemon Evolutions was great, what they chose to do for the Johto Generation last week I found very cool.  I recommend all of it.

I also today watched the first Fate/Grand Order Camelot movie, it was decent.  And the the first episode of Girls Und Panzer Das Finale was also quite fun.

Last Friday I finished Yuki Yuna Is a Hero The Great Mankai Chapter, it was great as well.

Soon after I made my last update I finished Legend of The Legendary Heroes, which it turns is an unfinished Anime, it was fun though.

Besides that's I've mostly been re-watching stuff.  I finished the YU-NO Re-watch I was talking about, then I did Pretear, then Serial Experiments Lain, then Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child and the first few episodes of Godzilla Singular Point.  

I'm planning soon to re-watch Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya for Christmas, then probably also Robotics;Notes and Steins;Gate, and Kanon once it starts snowing here, I want to re-watch that show in the proper seasonal mood.  I think I'm gonna wait till sometime in January to start Binge watching a bunch of Fall and Summer 2021 shows i haven't finished or in some cases even started yet.

Outside the realm of Anime, Wheel of Time I can't make a verdict on yet, my feels towards it are mixed.  The Dune movie was very good though I have some complaints, and Matrix Resurrections was great, to me it was the perfect way to epilogue to the trilogy.

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child both have good Anime adaptations actually.

I can't claim to have no understanding of why people think at least Chaos;Head's Anime is bad when I myself had originally given up after a few episodes and mentioned that on this blog before.  However what I speculated on in that prior reference was that my issue with Chaos;Head was probably the story itself not the Anime as an adaptation.  And I never said it was horrible or anything, just that I was having trouble getting into it.

In the years since that first attempt I've gotten more used to VN based Anime of it's type, while still not actually playing VNs themselves.  I started the show over from the beginning and wound up giving it a 9 out of 10, then I gave Chaos;Child a bull blown 10.

I give Child a higher score partly because Head is more difficult to get into, the early episodes are a bit disorienting but ultimately that served a purpose and things will get clarified.

What gets me about how hostile to these Anime their VN fanboys who've made YouTube videos on them are, is they keep saying these "horrible" Anime give people bad impressions of these brilliant ingenious Visual Novel masterpieces.  But the truth is the only people who think these Anime are horrible abomination are VN fanboys overreacting to even the slightest creative adaptation choices they don't like.  Non VN fans who just watched it like they did any other Anime at worst simply went "meh" and moved on.

Their average MAL rating is between a 6 and 7, that's between Fine and Good.  Given all the 1s and 2s being hurled at these shows from those haters, clearly there are many who also gave it higher ratings then the average.  I haven't written any reviews for these shows on MAL, among those who have are people giving them 8s, 9s and even 10s.

Most 5s, 6s and 7s given on an out of 10 rating system generally mean one of two things.  Either that person respected the execution but just couldn't get into the premise or the characters, or they see the potential value in the premise, characters and story but had issues with the execution.  The latter group are probably fully prepared to assume it's something great in it's source material.  And the former were not going to get into that VN even if VNs are a medium they're into.

To RedBard specifically, the problem with these Anime seems to begin with them being single cour, unlike Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes which had 2 cour Anime.  Everything more specific is really the same stuff VN fanboys whine about in the VN based Anime widely considered to be great, even Steins;Gate isn't immune to these complaints.  Every YT video about recommending these VNs with little comment on the Anime doesn't mention any vital story element or themes the Anime hadn't already conveyed to me.  Information about how they're played however does tell me I wouldn't enjoy playing them as much as I do watching the Anime, even compared to other VNs.

I do prefer 2 cour shows in general, but these I felt worked as 1 cour just as well as Madoka did, which means I don't think dragging them out longer would have resulted in anything good. I did not feel like anything was missing, no criticism I might have would be fixed by adding more context.  It's only people comparing to the source material and know what's missing that can't stop themselves from thinking about it's absence.  But their perspective is the wrong one, most Visual Novels are longer then they need to be, that lack of restraint is largely what's holding the medium back, and I'm saying this as someone who defends three hour cuts of Superhero movies.  I recently tried to play YU-NO and I'll probably try again, but I was not prepared for it to take half an hour to get through the first 5 seconds of the Anime, I gave up before even reaching a save point.

I spend a lot of time watching Adaptations of things I have no source material familiarity for.  And often I can tell when something is missing, when an issue I'm having is probably because of something that was cut, that is where criticism of something as an adaptation and criticism of it as it's own stand alone piece of Art overlap.  

However any criticism that does not exist without comparison to the source material is irrelevant to judging the adaptation on it's own terms.  So you're not gonna convince me an Anime I enjoyed watching, and maybe even made my cry (as Chaos;Child and Umineko both did), is actually very bad because it left out some memorable internal monologue you really liked.

I am a defender of voice over narration and internal monologues in Anime and movies, I HATE the popular YT reviewer use of "show don't tell".  But Visual Novels aren't like the way these tropes pop up in Light Novel based Anime or Hard Boiled Detective novels. VNs are incredibly over indulgent with massive amounts of text of the protagonist pondering things that I'm sure build on the themes and characterization but really are not nearly as intrisincly necessary as their fanatics think they are.

The reason Steins;Gate's Anime was much more successful then any other SciADV Anime was because it simply had better luck getting seen by the non VN fans who would be into it's premise.  Part of that is how the Chaos;Head Anime kind of wears it's VN roots on it's sleeve a lot more.  Part of it might be Steins;Gate being more actively promoted in general (Chaos;Child was the only spring 2017 show I never even knew about while it was airing).  But it mostly comes down to something I'm going to say that might shock some people.  Steins;Gate is the most Normie friendly of the SciADV franchises, while both Chaos; shows are the least.

Trixie The Golden Witch likes citing Steins;Gate as one of the top Otaku Pride shows because it's set in Akihabara.  Yes Steins;Gate has lots of Otaku references, but it's really not actually about any of that.  Being set in Akihabara is perhaps itself a cause of this, like how people who live in New York have never visited the Statue of Liberty.  The status of Akihabara as an Otaku center is most relevant to Ferris's subplot.  Akihabara's older significance as a tech hub is probably more relevant to the main plot, since that's why it's a place one would look for an IBN 5100.

I know exactly how to recommend Steins;Gate to Normies, I tell them it's the best SciFi Anime and in my opinion best Time Travel story in any medium.  If they like the Denzel Washington film Deja Vu, you can tell them Steins;Gate has a premise like that but much more elaborated on due to it's serialized format.  

Even the Hououin Kyōma persona seems more like an American B Movie Mad Scientist then anything specifically Anime.

Steins;Gate became the only one of these that most non VN players have even heard of not because it's Anime is sooo much better at being an Anime, frankly I think it's Animation style and Art design is much blander then Chaos;Head.  It simply is a far more accessible story with inherently wider appeal then the rest.

Robotics;Notes is a giant love letter to the Mecha Genre, but more specifically a Sub Genre of Mecha the American fanbase never got into (Glass Reflection saying the in-universe Mecha show is basically Gundam really annoys me, it's clearly a Shounen Super Robot show like Mazinger Z).  I do consider it and even Occultic;Nine potentially Normie accessible, but still a tougher sell then Steins;Gate, one tactic I use is to describe Robotics;Notes as the msot Speilbergian Anime.  But with Robotics;Notes it's precisely what's more Otaku about it that makes me personally like it more.

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child however are the embodiment of almost everything Anti-Otaku Anime fans hate, they will never respect them in any medium.  Going back to the discussion of MAL scores, if any non VN players have given these Anime truly low scores on MAL, it's probably those Anti-Otaku types being disgusted by their very premise.

Chaos;Head is about an antisocial shut-in literally named Taku who'd rather talk to his hallucination of his favorite Anime Girl then real people becoming the only person who can save this town that he hates.  That's a true Otaku Hero's Journey.

Then Chaos;Child..... well I'm gonna have to spoil it's central twists here.

Overdue update

If my blog has regular followers, you've probably deduced I've given up on consistently posting updates on my Seasonal Anime viewing.

I've dedicated to start more often waiting to binge.  I've finished the simuldubs I was following and all of them were good shows.  I'm now only still following Yuki Yuna is A Hero and once that ends I'll probably be following nothing for awhile.

The shows I do want to still follow weekly are ones that are more episodic with minimal overarching plot.  But it's difficult to know what shows are going to be like that up front, your seasonal round up videos on AniTube are usually going off just pilots.  I do know I'll at least start the new PreCure.  

LN adaptations I would be interested in binging by Novel or Arc, if I can know for certain when a given arc ends.

In the meantime I've bouncing around between semi-binges.  Re-watching YU-NO as I already mentioned and I may have even more to say primarily about that show, I've also obtained the Switch version of the VN which I'll give a try after finishing the re-watch.  I'm also 7 episodes into EdensZero and 20 into Legend of The Legendary Heroes.

I also watched D-Frag which I think is the most underrated comedy Anime of the 20tens.  I watched the movie Aura: Koga Maryuin's Last War which was good, what distinguished it from Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions can't be communicated by a plot description, it has a very different tone which makes it a good a companion piece.  I also enjoy what I've seen of Sabagebu and would like to see it get dubbed.  Also the show Shattered Angels is fantastic Shoujo Melodrama with cool action thrown in.

On November 19th (today as I'm typing this and hoping still when it will be posted) I watched the first three episodes of Wheel of Time on Amazon and all 10 episodes of Netflix's Cowboy bebop.

WoT is one of those classic Fantasy franchises I have bene aware of for a long time.  These opening episodes are interesting,  I don't think it'll feel worthy of it's source material's legacy till we actually visit a setting that makes me go "wow, that could have been in a movie".

Cowboy Bebop I decided needed the perspective of someone not simply comparing it to the original all the time, a role I've given myself before.  It's a fun Space Western with likeable characters, that is perhaps goofier then some old school fans would prefer, but it does get serious when it needs to.

Cowboy Bebop was originally a homage to certain American genres like Western and Film Noirs and other pulpy stuff.  This show having more "Whedonesque" dialogue then the original fits how those genres have changed.  We're now in the era of Guardians of The Galaxy rather then The Fifth Element.

YU-NO again

I'm currently doing my third watch of the 2019 Anime adaptation of YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World.  My first time was following the Simuldub one episode a week for half of the year, my second was in early or mid 2020 doing a standard binge watch of all the episodes in a day or too.  This time I'm doing it at a more fluid pace.

I'm also re-watching it in the context of how much more Anime I've seen since, dedicating a good chunk of 2021 to watching more Anime adapted from Visual Novels, both highly revered and poorly regarded.  With an emphasis on some of the earliest stuff, and seeking to learn more about VNs and their history in general.

YU-NO didn't get the attention it deserved because the Western Fandom never got the memo on how old and influential the source material was.  It's like the frustrations many western media Nerds had at seeing people who didn't hear of Dune till this year calling it an attempted next Star Wars.  But YU-NO's simultamious influence and obscurity runs deeper then that even, perhaps more comparable to John Carter of Mars, or for a comparison to how it's tied to the English speaking world being deprived of it till we'd gotten used to it's imitators, Paul Feval's The Blackcoats or Ponson Du Terril's Rocambole.

YU-NO is probably the most important Visual Novel left out of Bowl of Lentils The Origins of Visual Novels video.  The culmination of that history lesson is chiefly Leaf's Visual Novel Trilogy which originally coined the term.  YU-NO was first released in January of 1996 between the second and third instalments of that trilogy.  The Leaf VN trilogy however becomes less focused on it's fantastical and genre elements as it goes on with To Heart being the first primarily High School Harem VN, the foundation on which's Key's Seasons Trilogy built.  YU-NO's importance however partly lies in how the sheer ambition of it's story dwarfs anything else that can be called a Visual Novel or Sound Novel that came before it or it seems for awhile after.

YU-NO is pretty much the genesis of at least two sub-genres of Otaku media, the time looping to thwart a bad end scenario exemplified by Higurashi and Steins;Gate.  And Isekai in the form it's most commonly associated with today.  But like Sailor Moon's relationship to the fully developed form of the Genre it started, it lacks a certain core conviction I would be less forgiving of if it weren't the innovator.  The fact that Takuya is forced to accept that Mitsuki can't be saved, the later Otaku media spawned from it are about defeating Fate, and later in the story that applies to more then just her.  [Turns out an epilogue OVA I didn't know about resolves this issue somewhat.]

One of the few pieces of discussion about this Anime as an adaption that was floating around when it started airing was a statement from the people making it about Mio being "even more Tsundere" and some parallel statements about other characters, which was taken as a bad sign for the adaptation and I understand why as someone who's reacted similarly to quotes related to Batman projects.  But trust me Mio in the 2019 Anime has not been flanderized into a standard modern Tsundere caricature.  In fact when I compare her to the characters usually propped up by even the most cynical AniTubers as the good "well written" Tsunderes, I consider her more balanced and stable then any of them.

I had observed on this blog before I knew about YU-NO how in the early and mid 90s the Anime characters who were doing the Tsundere bit were mainly the protagonists of Shoujo Anime.  The term Tsundere was coined probably on 2channel in the early or mid 2000s mainly in reference to Visual Novel characters who at the time mostly hadn't been animated yet.  Mio is the model on whom that VN archetype was based, and as such is perhaps the missing link to verify my observation, I really think she was written to be like a 90s Shoujo protagonist.

Visual Novels and their Adaptations

I'm not the only person who's liked a number of Anime adapted from Visual Novels even though I've never played/read a single one of them.

However unlike many others in that situation I am interested in them.  I respect them as an artform, my inability to consume them directly is if anything a result of my own laziness (though my ADD is probably also a factor) and not at all an indictment of the medium.  I've been trying to understand their history more, a YouTube channel named Bowl of Lentils has a couple videos I recently watched on the subject I recommend.  I also made a blog post where I advocated for Visual Novels by comparing them to The Stage.

Thing is being a fan of Anime adapted from Visual Novels can actually lead to conflict with Visual Novel fans, because inevitably they will have criticisms of those Anime that an Anime only viewer is less likely to care about as much if at all.

That problem exists with all Adaptions of course, but it's more pervasive in certain contexts then others.  No one cares that Jurassic Park isn't like the book, I would argue the moral of the story is different in Spielberg's Version and still no one cares, in fact much of what people hate about Jurassic Park sequels happens to be things they are bringing back from the original book.  But Peter Jackson adds stuff to the Hobbit and everyone loses their mind.

Within the Anime community however while the Manga and Light Novel fans complain sometimes the memes about them are more just how they're ahead of us.  It's VN fans who almost seem like they resent the Anime versions even existing.  And frankly it might be because their medium doesn't get the respect it deserves, and in that area I'm on your side.

The big four Visual Novel based Anime are Clannad (and Clannad After Story), Higurashi When They Cry (plus it's second half Kai), Steins;Gate and the UFO Table Adaptations of Fate/Stay Night.  In all four cases the visual novels are important and influential within that medium while also those TV Anime adaptations are considered top tier Anime, probably the best of their genres.

Now I'm not gonna claim all four of those are equal in VN purest complaints.  Heck with Fate/ the complaint is almost more just that Anime fans aren't starting in the right place.  And apparently Steins;Gate is considered the Gold Standard among VN fans as an adaptation, but there's still cut content they miss.

Higurashi is the one that gets the most complaints.  It is almsot universally considered the best Horror Anime, and yet is also criticized as a completely garbage adaption by fans of it's source material, how does that happen?  Well the thing is the VN fans don't even like it being classified as horror, complaining that too much time is taken away from slice of life fun and character bonding moments in exchange for all that shocking horror.

Thing is Ryukishi07 said the initial mission statement of Higurashi was to create fear where VNs like Clannad were focused on sadness, so that artistic intent makes it by definition Horror, at least the Question Arcs.  So you kind of just have to accept that adaption to a more fully dramatized medium with less screen time and different rules is going to cut things.  No Dracula movie is even close to exactly like the book and some details still haven't shown up in any of the 20some films that have been made.

The complaints about the Higurashi Anime are mostly in the execution, even when they arguably do have more they could mention.  I've spent a lot of time now watching Higurahsi VN fans complain about the Anime but still never seen anyone mention that it has a Filler Arc that begins Kai, a scourge that normally only long running Manga Adaptations are supposed to face.  I of course am a defender of filler arcs, just see this Twitter thread or any time the Doom Tree Saga comes up.  And in this case an arc from Satako's POV about her noticing Rika's odd behavior was a fitting parenthesis between the semi Answer arcs and full answer arcs.

I of course am someone who likes more then just what's nearly universally praised, I'm notorious for liking things that don't get good IMDB scores.  And when it comes to Visual Novel based Anime the ones you're supposed to consider good Anime aren't the only ones I enjoy.  Plenty that get labeled bad both as adaptations and as stand alone Anime I will unapologetically say I like, and I've also seen some rarely talked about at all.  

However I do not put all of those in the same category.  Tsukihime, Deen/Stay Night and Umineko are shows that I understand why they aren't considered Masterpieces and would generally not want to be anyone's first impression of Anime unless I had really good reasons for thinking they'd be to that person's interest.

Robotics;Notes is currently the most recent Anime I've completed.  It's generally considered okay rather then Bad but I personally think it is equal to Steins;Gate maybe even better in some areas.  I talked about it more on the SFDebris forum.

It's technically in the same universe as Steins;Gate, called the Science Adventure or SciADV series.  One generally considered bad VN Adaptation that I did indeed fail to get into is another from this series, Chaso;Head.  However I don't think my issues with that Anime have much to do with why VN fans don't like it as an adaptation, rather I think they'd be the same for an Anime equally as well executed as those two shows.

Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes are pretty clearly based on a specific SciFi premise, one that is common in SciFi but adding their unique Otaku approach to it.  Chaso;Head however doesn't have as clear of a focus, and for that reason I as a viewer couldn't figure out what to latch onto.  There are some other Anime from this series I haven't tried yet, one could prove relevant to another subject I want to talk about (a subject Umineko would also be relevant to).

Then there is YU-NO an Anime I've talked about a few times already, but only me it seems, I don't know what fans of that VN think of the 2019 Anime because none of them make YouTube videos.  It's source material is one of the first VNs with a truly Epic and Ambitious story to it, it was influential yet the West never got the memo on it.

My 2019 Anime Experience has been looking back more then at the present

What I currently consider the most important 2019 Anime is the one where I was shocked to learn how old the source material was.  YU-NO has in general made me want to learn more about the history of Visual Novels.

The most satisfying Adult Swim based experience I had was watching the Lupin III show that aired last year.  And that is only the tip of the iceberg of how much I've increased my Lupin cred.  It might be accurate to say I've doubled the amount of Lupin III I've seen this year.  I can currently say for certain that the only Lupin III Anime which has been Dubbed I haven't seen is most of Part II.

The Magical Girl Warrior genre was always a favorite of mine, but this year I've set out to see enough of it that I now feel I'm as much of an expert as I can be without it being the only Genre I significantly care about.  Much of that was concentrated around MahouShouJune, but some happened both before and after then.

I've also increased my Mecha knowledge by getting started on Macross, and my Isekai knowledge by watching the first season of the El-hazzard OVAs.  My Vampire Anime knowledge by watching Serpah of The End when it was on SonyCrackle, and my non magical Shoujo knowledge by checking out some Marmalade Boy and the first two episodes of Goldfish Warning!.  I'm watching Flying Witch via AnimeNetwork on demand.  And going back to stuff from just last year I really liked SSSS.Gridman.  I had also watched a few 2017 shows before making that top ten of 2017 post.

I'm pretty sure it was also this year I watched Slayers, and made some progress on the Lodoss War franchise.  And I watched the first Tenchi movie.

And I've been inspired to do a research project on 90s Hentai. I'm not sure when or if I'll actually post it, but right now the three center piece examples for it are stuff I watched in 2019.

In addition to all that I've also devoted some time to re-watching what I'd seen before.  Pokemon movies still help cheer me up when I'm down.  I finally did a full re-watch of Stiens:Gate when it was on SonyCrackle.  And most of Railgun I can say I've watched twice this year.

I have gained some enjoyment from what's new this year.  Given how fall started I'm suprised how many shows I'm currently following.  Isekai Cheat magician also proved pretty cool.

Outside of Anime, it's weird how the hot mess surrounding Rise of Skywalker has actually made me want to watch Star Wars content more then I had for awhile, expect posts about The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars early 2020.  And I'm very amused by the new Harley Quinn cartoon.  Also I loved the first three episodes of the CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths.  And I already posted on why I think this was a great year for movies.

The saddest news of course is that my Mom passed away on November 26th.  That's mainly why I posted so little in November.  I'm handling it pretty well though, I have Faith in the coming Resurrection.

My Top 17 Anime of the 20tens

The sheer volume of Anime I’ve seen favors the last decade, about half of everything I’ve completed.  Probably a natural result of that it was within this last decade I started watching Anime full time.  Still my absolute favourites lists tend to favor stuff at least a little older, but that’s subject to change, I think in the future I may start considering more 2010s Anime to be 3x3 worthy once they’ve stood the test of time.  And that is all the more reason why making a list of just this decade can be useful.

I’m deciding to do this list of the decade as beginning with 2010 and ending with 2019, like most decade lists.  I am however one of those nerds who thinks Decades should perhaps properly be defined as beginning with 1 and ending with a 0,.and that's why about a year from now I may make an updated version of this list that is for that Decade.  The slight shift in which 10 years are eligible might not be the only reason it’d be different, my mind could change on especially Anime of the last couple years in that time, and simply what I’ve seen may increase, there are still some key shows of the Decade I haven’t seen yet.

The list may sometimes be arbitrary in terms of when an entire franchise is one entry and when I’m just counting a specific installment.  But there are reasons.  If so far pretty much all of that franchise’s Anime incarnation is within said Decade that helps it count as one entry.  But also whether or not the franchise is an anthology by nature matters.

I don't usually like to do Honorable Mentions.  But for this I feel the need to include Sword Art Online and Attack On Titan.  I can’t call them personal favorites but their status as two of the big mainstream Anime of the decade has made them in different ways important to my Anime journey and I’ve gained plenty of enjoyment from both.

17: SSSS.Gridman

A masterful homage to Power Rangers style shows.  And perhaps has some of the best villains of the decade.

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

An interesting historically significant Anime.  Aired in the last year of this decade and indeed seems like a product of its trends, but is really an adaptation of the first truly ambitious Visual novel from 1996.

15: In Another World With My Smartphone

I still feel compelled to include this one, it’s what got me hooked on Isekai and still the best approach to Polygamy I've seen in Anime so far.

14: Engaged to The Unidentified

This show is what got me into Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.

13: Yuru Yuri

For this decade my favorite Slice of Life/Cute Girls Doing Cute Things show.

12: Yuki Yuna Is A Hero

This will always remain a favorite of mine, it's played a key role in how I went from just casually interested in the Magical Girl genre to it being perhaps my favorite Genre.

Movies interlude Pokemon:  I like the XY and Z movies, have very mixed feelings on I Choose You and love Power Of Us.  Haven’t seen Evolution yet.

11: Citrus

Still my favorite Yuri of the decade, I don't care if you find that offensive.

10: Symphogear

Watch it

9: Sailor Moon Crystal

Yes, I went from being pretty hard on Crystal at first to now seeing it’s true value.  Just watch the Viz Dub so you know you’re getting the BluRay rips.  I’m including all three seasons here.

8: No Game No Life

For now I’m going to rank this as the top Isekai Anime.

Movies interlude PreCure:  All but the first of the PreCure crossover movies are in this decade.  I think the best of them are still the earliest ones.

7: Hugtto Pretty Cure

This is the best PreCure of the Decade.

6: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Usually I’m not likely to actually rank Madoka as the top Magical Girl anime of the era it started.  But for a list like this cultural influence should be factored in.  And my mind does constantly shift on how to rank Magical Girl Warrior shows.

5: Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.

This is right up there with Utena as the most important Feminist Anime.

Movie interlude final:  Three of the movies from my movies 3x3 are from this decade.  But they are also all capstones on series from the prior Decade.  K-On’s movie, the Gundam 00 movie and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

4: A Silent Voice

The only proper entry a movie has on this list.  I saw it finally in the last few months and the only reason it isn’t on my movie 3x3 yet is because I haven’t updated it and can’t decide what to kick off.

3: Steins;Gate

This is probably my favorite strictly SciFi Anime, and perhaps my favorite piece of Time Travel based SciFi in any medium.

2: UFO Table Fate/ Anime.

It’s hard for me to choose between Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works.  The former is what I recommend as the ideal normie entry point to the franchise, but it’s precisely because I’m already an Anime person that the latter often satisfies me more.  The second Heaven’s Feel movie also did not disappoint.

1:  A Certain Scientific Railgun S.

I only watched any of Raildex pretty recently, but this show has quickly climbed it’s way to the top in my reverence.  I already made a few blog posts about it in 2019.  And Railgun S is definitely the height of that franchise so far.

YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world.

I spent about half of this year following this show's Simuldub as it aired and didn't learn till it was over that it was based on a Visual Novel from 1996.

It seems like such a product of different trends of this Decade but it's actually something that predates every Anime it reminds me of, from the Time Loop adventures like Stiens;Gate and Higurashi to all the Haremy Isekai.

Apparently in Japan it was a big deal at the time.  But no one in the West cared about Visual Novels till a decade later so it didn't get localized, and then countless Visual Novels that were inspired by it directly or indirectly got TV Anime Adaptations first.  This was apparently the first Visual Novel with an ambitious story-line.

It did get a like 4 episode OVA in 1998, which will probably be as hard for me to find as Pretty Sammy was.  Hopefully FUNimation will decide to Dub those with this cast as like a Bonus for the Home Video release or something.

I think it's largely the visual style of Anime of this show that helps prevent people guessing how old it's source material is.   As an Anime it looks exactly as modern as the shows it aired against.

For all the ways it seems to fit in with modern trends it's also distinct.  Characters actually do have sex for example.

I saw so many people writing it off, but really this is perhaps the most important Anime of the year.

Update: I decided to document on Twitter my experience with the OVA.
https://twitter.com/JaredMithrandir/status/1196223242085777415

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.

What have I been up to?

I watched Godzilla King of The Monsters recently and it was great.

For Anime I've spent a lost of the last few days re-watching Steins;Gate, that show totally holds up on re-watch, Replay Value started doing a series of Analysis videos on the show.  And I watched it via Sony Crackle, though it doesn't have the OVAs movie or 0.

And I just before starting this post watched the first two episodes of Seraph of The End, it's interesting.  That was also done via Sony Crackle.

For weekly shows I'm currently following.

YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world continues to get more intriguing with each episodes, it really annoys me that this was among the Spring shows most people ignored.

A Certain Scientific Accelerator has not disappointed, Raildex is continuing to strive for being my new favorite franchise.

Symphogear XV is pretty good, if this does turn out to be the last season I think it'll be satisfying one.

And then I'm following the Adult Swim releases for Gundam The Origin (which I already saw in it's OVA form) and Lupin III Part V.  The latter is proving to be a more then worthy addition to the franchise.

I've also been checking out other Lupin stuff from time to time.  Besides the Red Jacket series I've seen everything Dubbed it's currently possible for me to see.  So seeing more Red Jacket is my priority lately when I get in a Lupin mood.

I feel bad about how many shows of the last few seasons I wound up dropping.  I hope for Fall I do better.

Summer Days driftin' away

The only show I will definitely be watching Subbed is Symphogear XV, Symphogear it seems is unlikely to ever get Dubbed.  It won't be starting till July 7th so I haven't started anything yet.

YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World is a spring show that is two core.  I'm not sure I'll be following this to the end, but it's been keeping my attention pretty strongly so far.

None of the Summer shows FUNimation has already announced a Simuldub for are among those I'm already interested in which worries me a bit.

Some of the shows I'm waiting for I may watch subbed if I have to, but will still probably wait til I can binge a good chunk of it.  Even the Simuldubs I may wait till there are a few episodes up already.

Particularly A Certain Scientific Accelerator, I think I'll wait at least 5 or 6 episodes and see if I can maybe binge the first arc of it.

The new Fate/ Spin Off is likely to be an Aniplex one which means I may have to wait a year to get a Dub, I feel fairly willing to wait that long but we'll see.

Granbelm is a show I'm interested in that already started, it seems like the kind of show Sentai/HIDIVE have been picking for their Simuldubs lately, vaguely Yuri Action/SciFi Adventure shows.

Machikado Mazoku looks interesting.

The new Neptunia OVA I will wait for the Dub for no matter how long it takes.

After that it's mainly the Isekai and Isekaiesque shows I'm currently planing to keep an eye on, (but that doesn't mean something else won't grab my attention later thanks to the right buzz).  That includes shows like...

If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest

Isekai Cheat Magician

Do You Like Your Mom? Her Normal Attack is Two Attacks at Full Power, Okaasan online

Demon Lord, Retry!

As far as DanMachi goes, I still haven't properly caught up on the prior seasons, the spin off is inherently more interesting to me.

Meanwhile I'll likely binge the Dub of Sarazanmai when it's done, but I already saw it all Subbed, and saw the first episode's Dub which pleasantly surprised me that they did Dub the singing.

BTW, if you detected the double reference made by this post's title that has nothing to do with anything I actually talked about in it, congratulations, you like me are a rare kind of nerd.

Spring Seasonal Anime is halfway through

Since Sarzanmai is only gonna have 11 episodes, episode 6 is the exact middle.

It usually doesn't take an Ikuhara show this long to start breaking it's own formula.

It looks like next week will start explaining the backstory of all this a bit, that should be fun.

I'm disappointed I don't have more to say already, I guess there is something about Ikuhara shows where I need the full picture to really think about any of it.

Lots of other shows are halfway done by now, at least half way through the Spring Cour.  Tough I'm not that far yet following Simuldubs for everything else.

In the context of Time Loop driven Anime, YU-NO is more akin to Steins;Gate and Re;Zero then Madoka.  But still unique even in that context, I remain interested.

Afterlost also has my undivided attention.  And Fairy Gone is perhaps just starting to get really interesting.

Isekai Quartet is amusing.

I think Spring is gonna easily beat out Winter.