Wayyyy too many series to watch >.< [mosu]

Fall anime is usu­ally the best dur­ing the year, and fall 2010 is just spetac­u­lar; def­i­nitely the best since the leg­endary fall 2008 sea­son. In prepa­ra­tion for the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia anime club pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cus­sion, we (Aorii [Major Arcana] and Honya [Lyri­cal Spark]) have decided to join up for a pre­view post~ (if you have an anime club you should totally do this). Charts here and here. Read the rest of this entry »

Arakawa quickly became my favorite anime of the sea­son, for what is hid­den under­neath that strange sense of orig­i­nal humor are some deeply thought-provoking soci­o­log­i­cal themes.

Just what is com­mon sense? Dic­tio­nar­ies define it as “sound prac­ti­cal judg­ment”. Wikipedia defines is as a “nat­ural under­stand­ing… held by peo­ple in com­mon”. But those def­i­n­i­tions are just evad­ing the ques­tion. What under­stand­ing is ‘nat­ural’? Last time I checked babies have no ‘knowl­edge’, only ‘instinct’. How do you define judg­ment to be ‘sound’ and ‘prac­ti­cal’? There is always another good per­spec­tive to judge things from.It’s no sur­prise that Ric’s efforts to teach com­mon sense to the bullet-head twins would prove futile.

Unfor­tu­nately, no one can be taught what com­mon sense is; you have to under­stand it for yourself.

Well… that’s not really true. Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I saw Shugo Chara, my child­hood self retook con­trol of my mind in excite­ment. After all, which kid would not want their own Shugo Chara? But the amus­ing part comes when I watch it along­side Arakawa…

[ lulu ]

The main theme of Shugo Chara was about accept­ing and believ­ing in your own dreams. Sure, it might sound child­ish — easy for a kid to claim their one true life call­ing when they barely know the basics of respon­si­bil­i­ties and com­pet­i­tive­ness in soci­ety. But at the same time, what Shugo Chara fea­tures is an issue many of us will spend much of our lives strug­gling with. After all, the task of ‘under­stand­ing and accept­ing your­self’ is one that becomes increas­ing dif­fi­cult as we age; it starts with the Shugo Chara of child­hood, moves onto the Per­sona of ado­les­cence, and then con­tin­ues on into the Arakawa under the Bridge of adult­hood. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been the start of a great sea­son, and every­thing I’m watch­ing has been either up to my expec­ta­tions or exceeded it. With a good few 8/10 MAL scores from just the start of the sea­son, I don’t think I could even ask for any­thing bet­ter. Hope­fully every­thing will keep up and this’ll be one of my most enjoy­able sea­sons for a while~

Shows I’m watch­ing or tried out includes: Angel Beats!, Arakawa under the Bridge, B Gata H Kei, Haku­ouki, K-ON!!, Kai­chou wa Maid-sama!, Kiss x Sis, Mayoi Neko Over­run!, Senko no Night Raid, Uraboku, and Work­ing!! (I’m behind on Het­alia) Now that’s a lot of excla­ma­tion marks, even more so than last sea­son too. I won­der if we’ll get, say, Lit­tle Busters!!!! by the time 2012 swings around…

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I think I was trip­ping balls the entire episode. Occa­sion­ally laugh­ing but more com­monly WTF­ing. Arakawa sure has… one of the most unique senses of humor I’ve ever seen. Witty? I’m not sure; cra­zies? def­i­nitely. To be hon­est, I don’t even know if I like this show. But what­ever else Arakawa may or may not be, it cer­tainly has some of the most orig­i­nal premises and char­ac­ters I’ve seen yet… so at the very least — I’m intrigued.

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Hey look it’s chartfag’s poster for the 437th time!

As usual, every episodic blog­ger in the world already rushed out to take their stab at rat­ing each and every show. I’m not going to waste my time over that, but I do have some thoughts of my own on some of the series. My over­all thoughts on the sea­son are: looks awe­some, but in need of yuri (espe­cially since Rail­gun is fin­ish­ing). Also, there are sure a lot of excla­ma­tion marks.

Here’s the short ver­sion. Entries within each sub­cat­e­gory is ordered from most antic­i­pated to least. I think I have like… the strangest list.

Def­i­nites: Angel Beats!, Het­alia Axis Pow­ers, K-ON!, Da Capo Ext.
Prob­a­bles: Work­ing!, Kai­chou wa Maid-sama!, Senko no Night Raid
Tak­ing Peeks: Arakawa Under the Bridge, Ura­giri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitte Iru,  Haku­ouki, Mayoi Neko Over­run, B Gata H Kei
OVAs: Nodame Cantabile OAD, Gun­dam Uni­corn, Black Rock Shooter

Read the rest of this entry »