December Roundup

There’s a lot of blog­gers out there doing decade-in-review posts. I won’t be fol­low­ing suit though. It’s not so much that I haven’t seen enough from this dec­ade, or that I haven’t been around long enough. Those are both true but the main reason is because if I was to list out my top 20 tv anime from the dec­ade, the only dif­fer­ence between that and my top 20 of all time would be the exclu­sion of Cow­boy Bebop. It’s not that I haven’t seen enough from this dec­ade. I haven’t seen enough from the pre­vi­ous dec­ade. I will, how­ever, be doing a year in review of 2009. But for now, lets get down to this month!

Up until now I’ve simply tossed in a Gintama pic­ture but there’s a lim­ited amount of Gintama art out there. I’ll come up with some new format for next month so for now you can just view the end­ing mes­sage in Trapeze.

A Grade: One of the tops of the year. Get ready for some fanboying here

A– Full Metal Alchem­ist: Brotherhood 

Hur­rah for FMA return­ing to form again! Last month was the first time since doing these monthly roundups that FMA didn’t get an A grade but with the situ­ation at Briggs get­ting more inter­est­ing every epis­ode and the grand plot of the series show­ing up, it’s cer­tainly taken a turn for the bet­ter. This really has been one of the best shows of the year, even if we had seen half of it before.

B Grade: Hugely enter­tain­ing stuff. Not amaz­ing but def­in­itely worth watching

B+ Trapeze 

Yes, Trapeze deserves a B+ for the last few epis­odes. It’s really snuck up on me but Trapeze has gone down as my ‘sleeper hit’ of the year. The best feel-good anime I think I’ve ever seen. Even with all the pre­ten­tious art­f­ag­gory, I loved this series and oh god am I going to miss it. Irabu sen­sei, Fukuui­chi, May­umi and all those nut­ters that appeared over the course of this series, it’s really snuck up on me how much I loved watch­ing them. Noitiam­ina strikes again!

B Darker than Black: Comet of Gemini 

Can’t say I liked the end­ing all that much. The build up wasn’t well done and it went along that road of ‘fudged mys­tical end­ing’ that admit­tedly I saw com­ing. Even so, I still enjoyed this sea­son of DtB an awful lot. It kept con­sist­ent qual­ity the whole way through, the total oppos­ite to last sea­son, but at the same time never really left me over-awed. Still, this has been one of the few good shows this sea­son pro­duced and I’m now look­ing for­ward to those OVA’s.

B Cross Game 

I’m really lov­ing Cross Game at the moment. The build up to Seishu has been quiet and yet effect­ive. I’ve found my new favour­ite duo to ship with Azu­maXAoba. Heck, Azuma has become one of my favour­ite char­ac­ters of the year. I may take the piss out of the fact that he spends pretty much all of his time in the ‘default blank face’ mode but that’s one of the reas­ons I love the guy. You bet­ter pick things up Kou. Azuma and Aoba are steal­ing the show from you.

B– Book of Bantorra 

It’s a good show. Des­pite the total lack of love Ban­torra gets, I’m enjoy­ing this show quite a bit. How­ever there’s a prob­lem that I iden­ti­fied at the start of the series which still hasn’t rec­ti­fied itself. I just don’t care for the show. I’m not emo­tion­ally attached to any of the char­ac­ters and no amount of plot advance­ment leaves me end­lessly pon­der­ing what will hap­pen next. Basic­ally, when I’ve watched an epis­ode, I instantly for­get about the series until the next epis­ode airs. You need emo­tional attach­ment to trully enjoy a show and Ban­torra just hasn’t done that yet.

B– Hetalia Axis Powers 

Stand­ard month for Hetalia. Some epis­odes make me fall out of my chair from laugh­ing, the oth­ers make me fall out my chair as I fall asleep. What I have enjoyed is hear­ing all the dif­fer­ent coun­tries rendi­tion of the end­ing song. Eng­lands rock music end­ing was cer­tainly mem­or­able although the best end­ing still has to go down to Germany’s march­ing theme.

C Grade: It’s good enough to keep watch­ing but it’s not that memorable

C Umineko 

Over the past 6 months I’ve been treated to the con­tinu­ous dis­aster of badly writ­ten story-telling of Umineko. Yet, I never dropped the series. Being the insanely harsh drop­per that I am, why did I keep with Umineko right until the end? Because damn, was it enter­tain­ing, albeit often unin­ten­tion­ally. Maria’s head on a plate, the totally ran­dom appear­ence of goat but­lers, death by giant cake, epic Bat­tler point, Moetrice, uuuuh~, the greatest mother of all time. Yep, Umineko was a con­stant form of enter­tain­ment. Not sure if I’d watch a second sea­son though if they made one.

D Grade: I’ve lost interest in this anime. If it’s a D then I’ve prob­ably dropped it

D Let­ter Bee

There is qual­ity in Let­ter Bee. Every now and then you would get a glimpse of what it could achieve and what it was cap­able of being. How­ever if you wanted to find these moments you had to fight your way through moun­tains of cheese and jokes that just weren’t funny. In the end, the ter­rible fillers killed this show for me and I don’t have the enthu­si­asm to con­tinue even if the plot returned. It would move too slow for me to care anyway.

E Grade: Unlike D grades where I drop out of dis­in­terest, E grades are dropped in Disgust.

This entire sea­son deserves a bloody E grade. 3 shows is all I’ve ended up watch­ingto the end, provid­ing Bantorradoesn’t col­lapse in the next few epis­odes. I’d like to put this sea­son behind me and start anew with the upcom­ing winter sea­son. Thank you FMA, Hetalia and Cross Game for pick­ing up the slack. Where would I be without you guys? I’d prob­ably have meta­morph­osed into an oldfag.

F Grade: Any F stand­ard anime I would only watch 1 or 2 epis­odes of so god only know how an anime could last to the end of the month and still get an F but I’m sure it will hap­pen some day