Along with Fireball Charming, because my empress Drossel commands it. Not sure how well this will work, what with each episode being only 2 minutes long and all, but I did cover almost 70 episodes of Hetalia. This is not uncharted territory for me.

I’m guessing the first season of Fireball must have done some mighty fine business for Disney. Certainly enough for them to pump money back into the franchise because oh my Drossel has the animation quality ever improved. From the lighting in the classroom scene from the last episode to Drossel’s magnificent display of her reflexes (say it again Gedächtnis, magnificent!), they’re really flaunting their budget here. Swooping camera angles and everything. Now if only every CGI mecha could look as good as Drossel. Not that I want every mecha to have as prominent hips as she does. While the original design will always be my favourite, what this new design does is make her do is thrust those hip bones pistons about quite a lot. No wonder Gedächtnis told her she was being a bit un-ladylike, what with her effectively doing a pole dancing move into the chamber and everything.

One part I love about Fireball is how the world is apparently inhabited by way more than just Drossel and Gedächtnis, but that’s all we ever see and the show goes out of its way to not show anyone else. One of my favourite moments from the last season was the room of invisible maids. Now we have the man in charge of dropping a pan on Drossel’s head. We never see the poor guy, and we’ll never see him again because Gedächtnis is a tough employer, but he’s one of the many staff in charge of keeping their palace up to scratch.

…welp, guess 400 words per post is about as much as I’m ever going to manage for Fireball. Hopefully blogging this series will cut my wordcount down beyond its current 1100 state.

Some people suggested at the time that we shouldn’t cover anime at the time of the disaster, because of respect or something dumb like that. Wouldn’t the worst thing to do, in light of the economic hit the country will take, is to stop covering their exports? Even so, the reason we have a connection to Japan in the first place is because of anime. There were some pretty crazy drives by anime bloggers to raise funds, which was cool to see. I didn’t donate any money myself because I have none, but it did prompt me to sell my body to the vampires donate blood for the first time, which was a fucking weird experience. One thing I did notice was the total lack of a sense of humour amongst most people talking about the incident. Say anything that wasn’t “our deepest condolences” would cause some people got all worked up about showing respect. I guess I’ll have to chalk this down to cultural differences, for I’m the sort of person who’d crack a joke about a tsunami charging towards my house, let alone the other side of the world. It’s rather ironic that the British and Irish culture of joking about everything is placed in area of the planet with the least natural disasters.

A Grade

A Madoka Magica

Epis­odes 9–10

There’s something almost poetic about the delay for the final two episodes of Madoka Magica. As I said before, Madoka currently hinges on it’s ending. The final two episodes really are make or break as to whether this perfectly constructed plot comes off in the end. What better than to delay those final two episodes in classic Shaft style, possibly to air them on the real Walpurgis night at the end of April. Please do that Shaft. Please have a Madoka double bill on Walpurgis Night. And please please please make this ending fit what has been one of the greatest stories told in anime up until this point. Madoka deserves it.

B Grade

B+ Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Trail

Episode 4

Now that’s more like it. This is the Black Lagoon we know and love. Well, not quite. This was Black Lagoon: Character Exploration Addition, which we don’t see all that often. Normally we just get the Crazy Awesome Edition or the Ceep And Dreepy Edition. It’s been interesting delving more into the psyche of what makes Balalaika such a mad women or why Revy clings just that little bit onto Rock. Or does she? That was what made her discussion with the chibi maid interesting, because I wasn’t quite sure which side to believe. Roberta’s Trail is finally all coming together. I just wish that crappy second episode didn’t exist.

B– Tailenders

I went into this expecting a massively watered down version of Redline. Which is exactly what it was, but it was still pretty enjoyable regardless. I liked the world design a lot, such as how they drove through crazy clockwork structures, without quite giving us the exact reason why these things exist. It was fun to come up with my own theories why the terraforming machines created the land as such, or what the terraforming machine even was. I was kinda similar to Pale Cocoon in that humanity spent so much time running away they weren’t even sure what the original world looked like anymore. Not that it was handled as well as Pale Cocoon, nor as bombastically entertaining as Redline, but it was one of the better animation shorts I’ve seen.

B-Supernatural

Episodes 1–10

Proof Madhouse can make good anime out of USian material…sort of. I’m wary of heaping too much praise on Supernatural. The overlying plot is rather dumb and gets in the way of a good episodic show. Plus some of the depictions of couples in this show are eye-rollingly dumb. But it does have a lot of good aspects to it as well. As an episodic show, it’s one of the only decent ones I’ve seen in recent years, sort of like what Psychic Detective Yakumo was trying to be. I’m often not able to predict the twists in each episode, even when I think the answer is obvious. The animation style is unique too, albeit it does have the similar problem to Wandering Son except instead of bright lights shining on everybody’s heads, everyone in Supernatural appears to have black shadows over halfof their faces most of the time. Most of all though, it has the lead two characters. Sam and Dean are great fun to watch as their personalities bounce off each other. The interactions between those two carry this show. It’s pretty easy to see why the live-action has such a large fangirl following. Those two are, like, totally in love with each other kyaa~

B– Durarara Specials

Episode 2

SECOND SEASON WHERE!!!

B– Wan­der­ing Son

Epis­odes 7–10

If someone wants to ask why I never really fell for Wandering Son, I’d tell them it’s because I am as far removed from the target audience as you can get. If they asked me to elaborate further, I would point them towards the character of Doi. Doi was me when I was that age. A bit of a smart-alec who had since grown up from his younger years and is trying to be friends with those he may not have been very nice to in the past. Doi was made out quite blatently to be the villain. We were meant to hate Doi and take delight when whathisface shunned him. Basically, that was Wandering Son telling me that I could never be forgiven. Up until that, I had really enjoyed this months episodes of Wandering Son. It finished that dumb Romeo and Juliet arc and proved it had direction and character development all along. But that scene with Doi was such a kick in the gut for me.

C Grade

C+ Level E

Epis­odes 8–12

I can see why Level E only ran for 3 volumes. It has no real idea what it wants to do, beyond show us just how big a prick Prince Baka is. This leaves the show with very little heart carrying it through. It’s decently funny and some of the characters are great, but no purpose leaves it floundering a bit. It’s just too hit or miss for me to really enjoy the show. I liked the first Colour Rangers and the first arc a lot, but the Love Alien and Colour Rangers 2 didn’t impress me much. I’m glad the final arc went back to our punk-ass Yukitaka and his Love Hina-esque hole in the wall. Ex-delinquent characters plus some foil for the Prince beyond Craft really help this show shine.

C+ Bak­u­man

Epis­odes 22–25

In amongst the rage against the shitty females characters, the gradual but devastating collapse of the animation and the supreme insufferability of Mashiro, somehow Bakuman has managed to become a more enjoyable anime again. Yeah really. Somewhere in there the story got back to being about dreams. Watching the development of the various side characters and peeks into their more vulnerable sides has really helped this anime improve. I’m still going to mark this season down as a failure, yet I’m not nearly as unenthusiastic about the sequel as I was this time two months ago.

C+ Ore no Imouto True Route OVA

Episode 13

Kuroneko featuring in her own spin-off series with no Kirino whatsoever? My prayers have been answered! Ultimately the core of Ore no Imouto is too rotten for me ever to heap praise upon. At least, not on any part of the show whose name doesn’t start with a K and end with an O and like Code Geass Maschera as much as I do. It still stumbled about, tripping over quite poorly with the OTT reaction of the fujioshi, sprawled over the table, declaring her dreams of poor little shotas getting gang-raped. But hey, it had Kuroneko and no Kirino. Credit where credit is due.

C+ Young Animator Training Project

Episode 1: Oji-san no Lamp

Part of the Young Animators Training Project. Honestly, I’m surprised this even got subbed, but I’m glad it did. Not that I have anything particularly interesting to say about this. Story was original and competently told but without anything truly memorable. Animation was clean and did what it was meant to do without much fuss or artistic variances. It was good, but instantly forgettable. My bets is that these Young Animatior Training Project pieces will merely serve as an otaku nerding out session in the future. The next great director in animation could come from these projects, so you’ll get to nerd out by saying “yeah, this guy first directed Oji-san no Lamp. You guys probably haven’t heard of it but I have because my otaku powah level is so much higher than yours mwahaha”.

C Hen Zemi OVA

Episode 2

Still way more watchable than it has any right to be. Not that that’s exactly a ringing endorsement, because by all rights Hen Zemi should be horrible. Show about perversion by Xebec? Instead though, we get something oddly entertaining, albeit in an extremely squeamish sort of way. It’s almost a relief to have an anime be so honest and straightfoward about discussing nipple slips, vibrating eggs and a mans defeated libido when he’s finished masturbating and not just say “haha boobs” and leave it at that. Shame this director isn’t directing the TV series. Instead they’ve put the director of Rainbow Gate on. This show is doomed.

C Nichijou

Episode 0

Damnit KyoAni, I should have expected this. Give them an absurdist manga and somehow they will still focus on the cutesy angle. It was still all right, mainly the talking cat being awesome, but they need to get back to the absurdism and away from all that blasted cuteness. Not that they’re going to do that though, are they? This is KyoAni we’re speaking about. Oh well, we’ll have to wait until the TV series airs to see which part they focus on, but if they stick to the formula of this preview, then it could get old very quickly.

D Grade

D Break Blade

Epis­ode 4

What the hell happened here? Where has my beautifully choreographed clunky robots duking it out in a desert setting gone? Now Break Blade has turned into over-powered mecha spam. Introducing a dozen new characters  at the halfway point is never a good idea, and it doesn’t help when they’re all trying to be cool but come off as lame and cliche. It was just a massive disappointment compared to the previous awesome 3 episodes. Hopefully Break Blade episode 4 was just a blip, like Roberta’s Trail episode 2, and the rest of the series will go back to being awesome. Mind you, there’s a niggly little voice in my head that tells this this won’t be the case and we’re in for a very disappointing finale.

D– Suite Precure

Epis­odes 5–6

Suite Precure is just too dumb to care for. The attempts at drama are incredibly lame and none of the characters ever do anything to endear themselves to the audience. Any attempts at depth in the characters fall flat and it’s generally just not good fun, as a kids show should be. The real killing point was at episode 6 where I watched the bitchin’ transformation sequence and it didn’t do anything for me. Considering that was the sole reason I kept watching the show in the first place, that was a pretty damning sign.

E Grade

E+ Fractale

Epis­odes 7–11

Is an E grade just a bit harsh? Maybe. But Fractale insulted the storytelling lover inside me. Fractale produced an anime that had a lot of elements but never considered what connected them together. It tried to create depth without a purpose. An overlying plot without a story. Fractale liked to pretend it knew what it was doing, and at the start it appeared like it did. But the end came and it finally became clear that this show had not a fucking clue what it wanted to do the entire way through. So Yamakan. Are you going to retire now?

F Grade

F Rio Rain­bow Gate

Epis­odes 9–12

Rio is extraordinary. Have you ever for a second considered what must be going through the creators minds as they constructed this piece. How much of this awfulness are they doing intentionally. Some of the ‘so bad it’s good’ scenes you might consider the work of a mad genius, but the attempts at drama and character interaction between Rio and Rina stink of such seriousness you really have to wonder what exactly were the script-writers thinking. I am going to miss Rainbow Gate though. It lives in a world that cannot be achieved by the more traditional bad anime like Fractale or Suite Precure. Rainbow Gate lives in the land of the Terribad. A true F grade, through and through.

Cuteness is a very simple way of appealing to the viewer. It runs the same way something sexually titillating would work. Here’s some boobs, now get a boner. Here’s a kitten, go kyaaa~. That’s the highly simplified version of events. A more likely scenario would be something slightly more complex. Here’s a generic male lead who accidentally falls over and grabs hold of some babes breast. The girl blushes before knocking him away. The aim of this scene is still sexual titillation. Self-projection into the male lead and imagining that the girl likes being grabbed by the boob. For cuteness, it would run something along the lines of having a fancy male character blushing when he realises lead female has seen him rescue a kitten. The end product is still attempting to generate a kyaaa effect.

I don’t like this. The appeal being merely cuteness is such a cheap method of drawing thrills from the viewer. There’s no story here. No characterisation, no humour, no expertise. It’s not that I can’t enjoy cuteness, but to gain such cheap thrills is lame. Compare this to giant robot fights for a second. I don’t get any enjoyment from simply watching bullets and beams being fired everywhere. I haven’t a clue what’s going on in the fights during Gundam Seed, and it merely ends up being a parade of colours that is dull to sit through. The fights in Broken Blade clearly demonstrate each move in the battle with incredible care and precision, highlighting how clunky these machines are. You actually get the sense that these are real machines and the moves tell a story in their own way. That’s a proper use of robot battles.

Cuteness has do something beyond the cheap thrills to appeal, using cleverer methods via storytelling to get across the cuteness. The mini squid girl segment from Invasion Squid Girl is fantastic at this and one of the few times cuteness has actually appealed to me because it told a story through the cuteness. Either that, or the cuteness has got to serve another purpose. Back to sexual titillation for a second, there was the pole dancing scene in Panty and Stocking. The deliberately sexualised manner of it was a parody of the magical girl transformation sequences and how otaku loved seeing their magical girls naked midway through the transformation. The sexualisation served a purpose and the scene would have felt unnecessary and pointless without that layer behind it.

To bring this post in a full circle, let’s go back to Chiyo for a second. Dressing Chiyo in a penguin suit is cute. But the humour of the whole situation is the reactions of the other characters. Each character’s reactions add to their characterisation. Of course Sakaki would explode at the sight of Chiyo in a penguin suit, but the other characters all being subjugated to the extreme cuteness and blushing like Sakaki showed how goddam cute she really was. That’s what made it even funnier when Tomo’s gut reaction upon seeing the waddling epitome of cuteness was to push it over. That’s how you use cuteness. It’s a means to an end, not the end itself.

Durarara

Well I’ve covered the first episode in detail already but let me take a step back a second and say that this episode was no A-grade material. It wasn’t so much exposition saturation as introducing explosion. With so much information being hurled at you in the first episode, it was impossible to take it all in.

Still the best first episode of the season though. I said it before, but it’s when an episode oozes quality even when not that much is happeningon screen that you know you’ve got something great on your hands. Baccano started the exact same way and that worked fantastically and Durararahas a whole 24 episodes to start making sense in.

So yeah, Durarararagi (sorry, I stuttered) had obvious quality stamped on it before it aired and the first episode has obvious quality stamped all over it too. I just hope none of these characters are as painfully annoying as Enjin from Yozakura Quartet. This show gives off similar vibes to Yozakura and I’d hate to see it ruined.

Rating: B

Ookami Kakushi

I appear to be the last man in the universe not to have seen Higurashi but from what I heard, the first episode of that was very similar to how Ookamistarted. So I’m all for givingthis the benefit of the doubt and continuing on but that doesn’t change that this was a very poor episode.

The writing was poor and it didn’t have the failsafe of being completely OTT like Umineko to fall back on to provide entertainment so the episode remained pretty dull throughout. The ‘character designs by Peach Pit’ that everyone was touting turns out to be a negative strike for this, I don’t like them one bit.

It was an all round very poor episode. But hey, mystery and intrigue and whatnot are beingtouted along with the possibility that they will all get brutally murdered. But things really need to pick up or I might bail on this show. For everything Deen did with Umineko, at least it was entertaining. This isn’t…yet.

Rating: D+

Hanamaru Kindergarden

I had a half-written post in my drafts where I lamented the fact that an awful lot of anime made recently have ‘cuteness’ as the main appeal, such as Kobato, K-ON and Kimi ni Todoke. Hanamaru fits straight into that category except…I actually enjoyed this.

My prediction of something similar to a Yotsuba anime turned out to be right on the ball. This is the cuteness and innocence of kids in a world where real adult problems and lives exist, with their problems and lifestyle being seen through the world of these kids. Granted, Yotsuba does this a lot better but that’s a high standard to be compared to.

The genuine adult problems was actually a bit of a shock. I certainly didn’t expect anything like that at all, which goes to show there is a bit of brains behind this anime. It lacks the cutting ‘that’s so true’ edge at the moment but it’s a surprisingly enjoyable way to spend 20 odd minutes.

Rating: C+

Seikon no Quasar

You know the way everyone was hung up over the ‘breast-milk’ aspect of this show? Well, that’s actually the best part of this show. There’s a creepy nature to the sexual content in this show when combined with the Christianity and I can actually see potential here and I’m willing to give it another episode or two. But there’s so much it does wrong.

If you’re trying to subvert the sexual nature, you don’t then and go toss in blatant fanserviceas well. The entire suckling scene would’ve worked far better if prior to that scene I wasn’t treated to continuous Gainaxing, panty-flashes and prominent curves beforehand. If the sexual content was played for plot rather than fanservice this would’ve worked a whole lot better.

What’s going to eventually be the killing blow is the animation. Oh dear lord was it terrible. Random panning shots, a scene of a character standing perfectly still for 5 seconds, a still frame of something that doesn’t need to be still-framed and the occasional shotwhere the artwork suddenly collapsed. Censorship galore and it’s pretty darn jarring.

::Edit:: Hmm…actually the only reason I’m giving this a shot is because I found myself thinking “it has fanservice so I’ll instantly dismiss it” and then hated myself for doing that. I’m going to cast aside my elitism for a change and when I do drop this show, it will be for poor story-telling and plot. Not for boobs.

Rating: C–

Warning: If you are viewing this post in Internet Explorer than the pictures will end up all stretched out. Go get Firefox

Best Animation:

This was actually a difficult category since there were no real shows that blew me away animation-wise this year. Third place went to Eden of the East, for some of the most gorgeous and detailed background artwork I’ve ever seen, although that was a bit of a cop-out choice amongst many other well-animated shows. Ride Back takes second spot for one of the very few instances where CGI was integrated to phenomenal results. I drooled at those Ride Backs for the entirety of that show. First place goes for a movie I haven’t actually seen yet. The Kara no Kyokai movies bore me, I mean really bore me, and yet I’ve watched 5 of them. Why? Because I have yet to see better animation in my life. If the last Kara no Kyokai movie is at the same level the it easily outscores anything else this season.

Top Opening Songs:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This was really tough to cut down and I felt terrible leaving out the first FMA opening but eventually third spot went to that epic Umineko opening song. It was perfectly OTT with all the yelling and dramatic music flying about everywhere, man I loved that opening. Second place went to the Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou opening, which never failed to plaster a big grin across my face. First place was insanely obvious though. You could spend ages dissecting the messages in that opening song (and people sure did), what with all the now famous imagery of the Selecao numbers and Noblesse Oblige. Eden of the East, Falling Down by Oasis.

Top Closing Songs:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ah, the humble closing song. Never as great as their opening counterparts and constantly looked over. And for good reason, they’re never as good as the openings. But hey, I’ve picked out three I certainly enjoyed from this year. The Spice and Wolf ending I actually enjoyed even more than the engrish ear-worm from last season, a mighty achievement indeed. There doesn’t seem to be anyone out there who doesn’t like the Bakemonogatari ending and I’m not about to buck that trend. However my favourite ending goes to the other Shaft series that everyone sorta forgot about. I love that Natsu no Arashi ending, such a damn funky tune. Shame the second season sucked.

Best Insert Music

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now this was a tough category except this time it was because this year just didn’t have that many memorable soundtracks, especially compared to last year (although, as I said at the start, I need to watch Phantom). I’ve always liked the music in Spice and Wolf, although it’s hardly amazing. Eden of the East gets the nod for second place, mainly because of that song when Takizawa was shooting down the missiles. The winner was insanely easy to pick. I watched Hellsing this year and Yasushi Ishii’s work on that series was fantastic, but it doesn’t compare in the slightest to the Darker than Black soundtrack. I know people out there disagree with me but damn did I love every single chord of that soundtrack.

Best Male Character

Not many great male characters this year. Guin was in with a shot here but I ended up giving Roy Mustang third spot thanks to a combination of the gradual collapse of the Guin Saga anime and Mustangs epic performance in episode 19. Second place goes to my favourite expressionless character, Azuma from Cross Game. My winner is a bit of an unorthodox choice considering he’s probably only the 4th most important character in the series, but Xerxes Break stole the show every time he was on screen in Pandora Hearts. There was so much to this guy going on behind the scenes that everytime he appeared you found yourself wondering what on earth was he thinking now.

Best Female Character:

Oh lordy was there ever a bucketload of fantastic female characters this year, so much so that I can’t give anything to Hime from Sora no Manimani or Minami Chiaki bar a passing mention. Alice from Pandora Hearts takes third spot. Pandora Hearts had a multitude of fantastic characters, not least my favourite male character of the year Break, but Alice was the best of the lot. I was as fascinated as everyone else was by Senjogahara. She’s made it into my top 10 anime characters of all time and in any other year I would’ve laughed at the possibility that anyone else would top her performance. But no, this year had Horo. And nothing beats Horo.

Best Action:

A genre that didn’t get enough love this year, mainly thanks to the painful lack of mecha, but still produced some damn memorable pieces. Ride Back takes third spot, mainly for that fantastic rescue scene in episode 4, which was memorable for more than just the hopeless aiming abilities of those soldiers. Second spot goes to Full Metal Alchemist. The truly epic fights may only show up every 4–5 episodes but they are certainly worth waiting for (episode 19, again, deserves a mention). The winner is obviously Darker than Black. The combination of excellent choreography, clear-cut animation and some ingenious twists that is inherent with those bizarre contractors made every battle in DtB a huge amount of fun to watch.

Best Comedy:

My two favourite genres. Action and Comedy. Thankfully, comedy got a much better deal this year compared to last year, where the only comedy anime worth noting was Kannagi. Third spot here goes to Natsu no Arashi, for doing a little bit for making me dislike Shaft a little bit less after the dull Maria Holic and total saturation of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei series. Bakemonogatari took that slight dislike for Shaft and turned it into full-blown love with the brilliantly witty script writing and the constant stream of uber quotable dialogue between Senjogahara and Araragi.  But the winner was easy. Hetalia Axis Powers, for being one of the few anime that can make me fall out of my chair from laughing, trumps everything else this season comedy wise, even if it is a bit inconsistent.

Worst Descisions:

A year of dumb decisions don’t you agree. I’m torn between giving third spot to either the first episode of Mazinger Z (who the hell thought it would be a good idea to provide a mish-mash of everything to come as a first episode?) and the choice to leave Cencoroll as just that one-episode anomaly when it clearly needed a proper airing to get anywhere close to its potential. Second place goes to the combined intellect of Shaft deciding to announce that they would air the final three episodes of Bakemonogatari on the internet when they hadn’t animated them yet…yeah, really smart there Shaft. First place is painfully obvious. Endless bloody Eight.

Most Memorable Quotes

3rd place:

I sealed it with fire!

I think I’ve mentioned this episode of FMA twice before already but who cares! It deserves even  more. Episode 19 of Full Metal Alchemist:Brotherhood was the turning point of that series. No longer did it live in the shadow of the original. Finally it had produced something far better than even the first season could achieve. One of the best episodes in anime history, with one awesome scene after another until the sheer awesomeness exploded with this line. Mustangs GAR shot through the roof and FMA:B was never the same again.

2nd place:

It would be great if that became popular

What?

Senjogahara Fascination

Sometimes when watching an anime you find yourself wondering whether the creators do this stuff on purpose. It’s as if they knew exactly how popular Senjogahara would be and knew all they needed was a handy catchphrase. Anime Fandom had been enthralled by this character and nothing said it better than this quote. And it did become popular, oh boy weren’t we all fascinated. I never said it when it aired but I fully support the Senjogahara Fascination Movement.

1st place:

Noblesse Oblige. Please continue to be the Messiah

There are some quotes in anime history that become synonymous with the anime itself. All you need to do is say that quote and everyone in the vicinity will nod in unison as they remember the awesomeness that was the anime in question. Even so, I’m struggling to think of one better than Juiz’s famous line in Eden of the East. Whether you’ve just asked for missiles to hit Japan or just to make the Prime Minister say ‘uncle’, the response will always be the same. Order received. Noblesse Oblige.

Hey, where is that anime?

I fall quite nicely into the moe-haters category. That said, I don’t think K-ON deserved the amount of abuse it got from certain sections although that doesn’t change the fact I thought it was dull and repetitive. Shojo is not a genre that has ever interested me and I totally fail to see the appeal of Kimi ni Todoke. Combine cuteness and shojo together and you could probably guess that I didn’t like Kobato. Canaan was terrible and anyone who thought that was a good show needs their head examined. Maria Holic looked pretty but never made me laugh. Umineko was entertaining, although for the wrong reasons more often than not. Summer Wars is actually a decent movie and probably the best anime that didn’t get a mentioin in this post.

Wish for 2010

Well my wish for 2009 was that Shangri-la would be a hit and turn Gonzo back onto the trail of glory…errr…yeah, that didn’t turn out so good. Because of that, I’m a bit wary of making some wishes for 2010 but here it goes. First, I hope that Crunchyroll will improve its subtitles and at least equal the quality of fansubbers. I hope that Brains Base’s first foray into making an anime 24 episodes, Durarara, will sell well enough to make them into a true bigwig in the anime industry and hopefully for Shaft to follow suit and also make longer series. Mark my words, these two will the the next two great anime studios. Finally, I hope that Break Blade will be a success and more companies will follow the Kara no Kyokai route of making these uber-long, straight to dvd episodes as the reign of the tv anime slowly dies out.

Overall Best Anime:

1o: Cross Game

To be quite honest, I think some people are over-rating this anime slightly to show off their elitism by proclaiming their love of an obscure series. Now that’s not to say this isn’t a good anime. I’m really enjoying watching the characters personalities bounce off each other, especially the best tsundere of the year Aoba. Herself, Azuma, Kou and the rest of them, ah I’m really going to miss them once the series ends. It’s slice of life done right and it’s a real delight to watch. But please don’t go around flaunting your knowledge of this anime as if you’ve unearthed an absolute gem. It’s a very well-made series but no masterpiece.

9: Hetalia Axis Powers

In some quarters of anime fandom, 2009 has been the year of Hetalia. In fact I’m not sure if many people realise how big an impact this series has made. From the realms of an obscure online webcomic, Hetalia has risen to become one of the top-selling dvds in Japan over the course of the year, with a third season and a movie just announced, and that’s not even getting into the realm of the copycat series. It isn’t the most consistent anime (understatement of the century) but when gets it right it is the funniest anime ever created. At least, that’s my minds telling me when I’m curled up on the floor in pain from laughing so hard.

8: Ride Back

Yes, the ending was a total let-down and really overshadowed the rest of the series. I keep having to remind myself that when I was watching Ride Back for the first 3/4 of the series, I found myself honestly thinking that I couldn’t see any other series this year topping it. I drooled at the animation and more than anything in the world I wanted one of those Ride Backs for myself. It awakened a fanboy inside me that I never knew existed. A fanboy of motorbikes with arms!

7: Pandora Hearts

One of the best cast of characters ever. In fact, the only anime I can think of with a better cast is School Rumble. Alice, Break, Gilbert, Oz, ah I loved them all. And that’s just the main characters! How could anyone forget the most fabulous character of the year, Jack Vessalius, or the slightly crazed character of the Chesire Cat. Another anime that ended on a bit of a whimper but boy did I enjoy the ride it took me on.

6: Trapeze

I’m unsure what title I should give this anime. Should I call it my sleeper hit of the year? Or the totally incorrect pre-conceptions of what it would be about (I was really expecting some depressing stuff). In fact, I think the most suitable title for this anime would be the feel-good anime of the year. Never did an episode end without succeeding in plastering a giant smile across my face. I wasn’t able to give it any awards, although I was sorely tempted to give Irabu one of the best male-characters award. That guy is such a total nutter. Or maybe Fukkuichi. He was awesome.

5: Darker than Black: Meteor of Gemini

This season of Darker than Black easily matched its predecessor. The linear storyline suited the pace of DtB better than those double-episodics. However the biggest difference was the change in Hei. I never liked Hei last season. I thought he was a prick being portrayed as someone we should look up to and that never sat well with me. This season he was a prick, shown to be a prick but did the whole ‘gradual healing and gaining respect’ progress that when he finally turned back into normal Hei, I found I had grown extremely fond of the guy. Shame the ending was a bit…yeah…wasn’t a great year for endings was it.

4: Spice and Wolf II

I didn’t think my love for Horo could grow anymore. Pfft, in comes Brains Base, knowing a business opertunity when they see one, and make this fantastic sequel to the first anime I ever watched as it aired in Japan. I could watch Horo and Lawrence flirt away in their unusual, bickering way for another 10 seasons and not get bored. I’d probably just love Horo even more than I already do. And here’s a surprise, an anime with a good ending! So join me folks as we pray for yet another season of Horo…and Lawrence too I guess. It’s not that I don’t like you Lawrence, I think you’re a great character in your own right. But face it, you’re in an anime with Horo. You never stood a chance.

3: Bakemonogatari

I had never really loved a Shaft production before. However I could see the potential in there and I knew it would be only a matter of time before they produced something I loved. Every season I looked at the most recent Shaft production and thought ‘will this be it?’. It wasn’t Maria Holic, it wasn’t Natsu no Arashi, and then came Senjogahara and I was hooked. Such intelligence and wit in the writing, I’d never seen anything like it before. We were all fascinated. Well, I certainly was and if you weren’t well then sucks to be you. Mwahaha, go my biased views go!

2: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Have I mentioned episode 19 yet? Like, several times? Before that, FMA:B was just not needed and, while still certainly entertaining, never really in with a shout of being remembered with much fondness. But then in came the story that we had yet to see, the pacing finally slowed the fuck down, and we were treated to Brotherhood. I’m going to stand my ground on this one: Brotherhood is equal to the original. No better and no worse. Quite frankly, that is one of the highest praises you could give an anime.

1: Eden of the East

Not really a surprise this is top of the list is it. If you are surprised then you haven’t read the rest of the post yet so go back and read it now. If you had read the post and were still surprised to see this up here then you need to drop everything and go watch this now. For Eden of the East is the best anime of 2009. Noblesse Oblige. Please continue to be the Messiah. Now bring on those movies!

Hetalia hasn’t made me laugh properly in a while now. In some ways this is because it’s a comedy that’s coming to the end of it’s tether. This usually happens with any comedy, even great ones like Cromartie or Hare+Guu. The thing is that these episodes are only 5 minutes long so they really shouldn’t be running out of material already. So it’s not because Hetalia is getting old yet. It’s because it isn’t even trying to be funny anymore. It’s busy being ‘cute’ and I just don’t like cute. Don’t give me bloody moe and don’t give me chibi’s, give me Germany trying to train Italy to become a world beater and failing miserably.

The episode continued the story of Liech and Swiss, which was never funny in the first place. It’s not exactly touching either. What made the America’s storage cleaning sorta work was because we knew the characters already so it was seeing a different side to them. We’ve only seen Austria appear in one episode where he played the piano in the middle of the sea and as for Switzerland…the only time he’s appeared was for about a millisecond in the first episode where he yelled at Japan.

I guess I just need a break from Hetalia. Of course now would be the ideal time since the first season of Hetalia is finishing but instead of a little break they’ve decided to air the second season straight away. I suppose it is an Internet release so they don’t have to worry about getting a TV spot or any of that but a break from Hetalia for a few months would have done me the world of good. In the end it comes down to those Koreans again…heh heh heh.