Merry Christ­mas every­body~! ^o^ Hope your hol­i­day has been going great~! In the mean­time this’ll be the final of my hol­i­day post spam (seri­ously, 13! I’m spent! I have no clue how those episodic blog­gers keep all this up xD)

It’s been pre­ciously one year since I start play­ing Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo, and com­pared to my 2010 anime expe­ri­ences, this visual novel eas­ily blew them all out of the water to take my #1 spot. With a unique premise, an imag­i­na­tive back­ground that was taken advan­tage of to its fullest, an awe­some set of char­ac­ters includ­ing one of the best pro­tag­o­nists ever, not to men­tion a high-impact dra­matic buildup that would even have the famed Key staffers envi­ous— this is one visual novel that’s a must-play if you’ve got any inter­est in the medium at all~ Read the rest of this entry »

[sorato]

Angel Beats! was amongst the biggest opin­ion split­ters of the year. It was an incon­sis­tent train­wreck to some, a clas­sic Key-formula tear­jerker to oth­ers; but for me it’ll always be about how Maeda Jun man­aged to bring us Life in just thir­teen episodes of time. It was sim­pli­fied and abstract, yet touched every one of the emo­tions we held dear, from the suf­fer­ing and sad­ness to the joy, the laugh­ter, and most of all, the love that we are all blessed with~ Read the rest of this entry »

Three sea­sons and six manga series later, this still remains by far my favorite moment~

I’ve ram­bled much on why the movie was so much bet­ter than the orig­i­nal series, which was ground­break­ing in the mahou shoujo genre to begin with. The brand new scenes the movie intro­duced were ter­rific, but noth­ing beats the new, crisp, high-production ver­sion of their beau­ti­ful part­ing scene~ Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard for many of us not to instantly fall in love with Shuu x Tsukimi. They’re both so shy, so pure, so roman­ti­cally ide­al­is­tic~ step­ping onto the stage not just from the same boat but already wear­ing the same shoes— they’re even both vir­gins! Of course, they’re not that inter­est­ing together; Shuu doesn’t really know the real Tsukimi, and he cer­tainly doesn’t hold the light capa­ble of chang­ing her world instantly the way Kura­nosuke does. So thanks to my stu­pid logic, I didn’t enlist for the S.S. ShuuKimi quite imme­di­ately, until this… Read the rest of this entry »

Star Dri­ver is a bit of a mess, yet so enter­tain­ing and filled with glo­ri­ous moments that I can’t really com­plain. It was hard to pick a favorite moment— Kira­boshi set new lim­its on gar­ish vil­lainy; Galac­tic Pretty Boy out­did both series of Code Geass with a sin­gle moment of incom­pa­ra­ble fab­u­lous!; there’s also the fish girl’s song. But my favorite is still this one—

Every­one in the series com­ments over and over about how Takuto, Sug­ata, and Wako forms a trio of ideal best friends, yet for seven episodes the only moment that iden­ti­fies such a rela­tion­ship was the ED. Well, teenagers still angsty over the cir­cum­stances of their birth, but noth­ing a problem-solving fist­fight can’t resolve. Read the rest of this entry »

I was tempted to call this Slay Twelve Gen­er­als, Shat­ter Twelve Swords— but this epic con­clu­sion was more than just the fastest ‘boss rush’ of anime.

Katana­gatari was rather unique. It was an anime with graph­ics like no other, a mar­tial arts series that was far more about phi­los­o­phy than action, and a Japan­ese light novel adap­ta­tion that fol­lowed the trends of Chi­nese Wuxia lit­er­a­ture. It offered a fresh expe­ri­ence by pac­ing the jour­ney with its own air­ing sched­ule, one episode and one sword per month for an entire year which defined expec­ta­tions. Like most, Katana­gatari had its mix of bril­liant and bor­ing moments, but its con­clu­sion was noth­ing short of epic— and def­i­nitely amongst the best this year. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve awaited this moment… ever since he was killed dur­ing the first Full­metal Alchemist…

Maes Hughes was my favorite char­ac­ter in Full­metal Alchemist. He was dili­gent, ded­i­cated, smart, and hilar­i­ous, not to men­tion the per­fect hus­band and father (okay, close to per­fect; he’ll spoil the kids rot­ten). He then died in one of the worst ways— watch­ing the love of your life shoot­ing you and know­ing that you were just one step short of deliv­er­ing the vital infor­ma­tion to your best friend for life… Read the rest of this entry »

What would hap­pen… if they made toi­let use a neces­sity on nextgen’s vir­tual real­ity MMORPGs? One mangaka’s por­trayal of this idea left me laugh­ing for minutes—

1/2 Prince is the story of Xiaolan, a female gamer who got fed up with her brother’s taunts about how girls always need guys to help them level in games. As she reg­is­tered for the newest 99%-realistic vir­tual real­ity MMORPG, Xiaolan decides to use her award for being the first reg­is­tered player to ignore the game’s rule that all avatars must have the same gen­der and sim­i­lar appear­ance as the player in real life. Instead, she cre­ates Prince, who is both male and the ben­e­fi­ciary of 30% beau­ti­fi­ca­tion— but Xiaolan soon found her­self in for far more than she bar­gained for.

Read the rest of this entry »