2008 in Review: Anime
Next in the series is anime. Yeah, anime! That thing that keeps the majority of seiyuu employed. I do watch some of that stuff sometimes…
Honestly, 2008 wasn’t a great year for me anime-wise. There was nothing that gave me a rush of blood to the head quite like Gurren Lagann, Denno Coil or Minami-ke did in 2007. I can count more than a dozen shows (Macross F, Hidamari, Chi’s Sweet Home, Kaiba, Xam’d, Skip Beat! etc) that I gave up halfway through because I figured I didn’t want to waste any more time on them.
I was also pissed off that anime got taken off Nico Nico Douga, since that was where I watched most shows last year. I’m not particularly hung up on video quality – I loved HorribleRaws!
Sadly most of my random awards this year are like, from the same few anime. Yeah, I didn’t watch much at all…
Natsume Yujincho
Nyanko-sensei + female Natsume + sexy animal youkai = win. Yes, yes I’m a sucker for slice-of-life stuff with a supernatural feel and Natsume Yujincho played right into my hands.
Only halfway(?) to the finishing line, but you can already tell that that this an absolute winner. Having to wait ’til April for the next installment is killing me… are you not enjoying the Time of Eve? (that cheesy line had to be said).
Director Yamakan’s massive ego threatened to derail the train at certain points and the ’serious’ parts felt terribly draggy, but Kannagi still has three of the funniest episodes (eps 6,7,10) of anime made in 2008, and some of the best one-liners (It’s a Sony!) that we’ll still be quoting years down the line.
‘Tis the last season of ARIA *cue collective weeping from legions of ARIA fans* I can’t believe we’ll never see Akari + co gracing our screens ever again *goes off to get another bucket and a box of tissues*
Ga-Rei -Zero-
Like most others I was drawn in by that shocking first episode, then it started falling apart faster than a Made-in-China bicycle before getting it together again for a (sort of) rousing finale. I’ll still take away fond memories of homosexual jokes, innovative weaponry and exorbitant amounts of chest hair.
The ending was a little botched but the ride to get there was a fun all-singing, all-dancing, all-tsunloli extravaganza. Episode 6 was the most fun 23 minutes of anime I watched in 2008, deliberately bad singing included.
The best and funniest anime I watched that I never want to watch again. A single portion of humping of Tokyo Tower lewd, politically incorrect dumbass-ness is quite enough for me. But man, it was a wild ride. Krauser is the 2008 style icon.
Pales in comparison to last year’s Lovely Complex, but adequately filled my 1-shojo show quota per year for 2008. God, episode 14 (the wedding one) made me squeal like a little girl.
A half-decent half-movie with lovely Inoue Marina Kyoto-accent goodness. Looking forward to the next installment assuming it sees the light of day..
I was a Hiromi shipper all the way. HAHAHA (waves finger triumphantly at all the chicken-obsessed-weirdo loving fanboys).
Eh, I didn’t really know what to expect going into this – but it was quite a fun ride. I did want more military action than love comedy though – the title does have the word ‘war’ in it after all. Good but not great, definitely not something I’d want to watch a second time.
Plenty of style, plenty of bloody action, crap story (if you can call that a story), crap characters, weird ‘ending’. Every episode was still riveting regardless, and it’s the only anime that made me squeamish & wanting to look away from the screen.
Kyoran Kazoku Nikki
Ceased being funny by episode 12. I still crown it ‘best anime to feature a wobbly jellyfish’.
Nowhere near as good as Someday’s Dreamer – I hated all the characters in this one, the kids were all too emo and only the fruity teaching assistant was cool.
Pink-haired swordsmen are the rage these days! There were some good moments, but most of them came in the first 13 episodes and everything after the halfway mark was garbage.
Hands down the best comedy of 2008.
Was amusing, for about 5 minutes. I preferred Season 1. They need to kill the series now, it’s getting tiresome.
Had a disturbing lack of manly Minami brothers but I laughed a few times, especially when elongated mammaries made an appearance. Hated Fuyuki to death.
Ending was lacking. And they replaced the fire extinguisher scene with a punch, which doesn’t please me (since that was the only thing from the manga I remembered). Pretty tame for an H anime.
Best anime about bicycles ever. Or maybe not. It’s more like a 20-minute slice-of-life show about a kid who lies to his mum so he can get a new bike. Also contains probably the weirdest deus ex machina I’ve seen in an anime yet.
Crap, crap, utter crap… oh wait, the tsundere song was awesome. Also, I saw some of Chihiro’s subs for this and they were hilarious, and made the show infinitely better.
Started off dreadfully (raburabu?) in 2007 and I had lost all the Shana loving by the time things picked up in the second half earlier this year.
I think I might be the only person who bothered to watch this. And it would be better if I remained the only person who bothered to watch this. It made me want to gouge my eyes out.
and:
Yay! I’m the only one who thinks this show sucks balls:
Toradora!
Didn’t finish Macross Frontier either. I yawned a lot during that.
I’ve never really been in tune with whatever most of the anime blogosphere is watching (ie anything that has mechs, moe or moe mechs) but I am happy to see some of my favourite anime of 2008 racking up the sales. ARIA The ORIGINATION, for example, is the strongest-selling of the franchise’s three seasons – all of the DVDs broke the 10k sales barrier. Natsume Yujincho too, has been selling fairly well as has Kannagi and other shows in a similar vein (Spice & Wolf, Hidamari Sketchx365).
Still, fanservice-friendly anime like the first season of RosaPants, Kanokon, To LoveRu, Strike Witches and Sekirei are also selling by the bucketload while stuff like true tears, kure-nai, Druaga, Vampire Knight and KimiKiss languish down at around 2k sales per volume. I had some extra time on my hands & compiled a quick list of the average DVD sales (total sales of all DVDs divided by number of volumes) of some of the anime I watched this year:
1. Code Geass R2 (4 volumes so far) – 30,977 [DVD5 sold 17,072 in week 1]
2. ARIA The ORIGNATION (7 total volumes) – 13,067
3. Kannagi (1 volume so far) – 13,539 [DVD2 sold 10,337 in week 1]
4. Natsume Yujincho (2 volumes so far) – 11,553 [DVD3 sold 7,125 in week 1]
5. Toshokan Senso (5 total volumes) – 9,977 [DVD5 still charting]
6. Shakugan no Shana II (8 total volumes) – 8,670
7. Zoku Sayonara Zetsubo-sensei (4 total volumes) – 5,340
8. Minami-ke: Okawari (4 total volumes) – 4,710 [Minami-ke: 10,537]
9. true tears (7 total volumes) – 2,079
10. kure-nai (6 total volumes) – 1,922
11. Kyoran Kazoku Nikki (5 volumes so far) – 1,473
Some shows like Geass and Macross F were sold in Blu-Ray format but no accurate sales figures are available. Also, some of the anime deemed 雑魚 (small fry), ie. didn’t sell enough copies to make the charts:
Shigofumi, Hatenko Yugi, Nabari no O, Kaiba, Allison to Lillia, Special A, 20-menso no Musume, Real Drive, Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto~Natsu no Sora~, H2O
And the other awards…:
Epic throwing of the shit bag into the river [Kurozuka, ep8]
It’s a bag of shit, just a huge bag of shit. And they spent an epic 10 minutes discussing a bag of shit.
♡ + ♡ ≠ (ﾟωﾟ) ?
Nagi of the Year:
Because she/it is 1000% more sparking than used goods, legendary wizards or blonde loli tsunderes.
Babupappunabuuhoohoo. They sure look like baseballs…
Yomi & Kagura – sisterly Pocky raburabu! Too bad one of them’s dead.
No prizes for guessing who’s seme and who’s uke in the fledgling Daitetsu-Jin relationship.
Takako from Kannagi. This is the first time I’ve been able to strongly identify with any anime character, particularly her yuri tendencies. My aim for 2009 is to produce Takako-proportion nosebleeds.
Lydia (Tytania) would be totally fine.
Miyokichi (true tears) would be my knight in knitwear.
Nyanko-sensei would be my pillow of choice, he has a bigger mochix2ponx2 than Aria-shachou.
Sebastian is actually pretty good at all this butlering lark (unlike Kogarashi) and I know for sure he can make a decent cup of tea.
%^&^%KEMEKO$%^&%$&^ MY EYES. My eyes, no amount of washing out with Clorox® will save my dear eyes.
Here’s hoping 2009 will be better!
Even if you say you don’t like the shows a lot of ani-bloggers write about, I think your taste isn’t really all that different.
Oh yes Hiromi.
Hiromi and Kallen’s ass ftw.
What omo said.
And am I the only person that watched and enjoyed Quiz Magic Academy? D:
Well, Kagura and Yomi still knew each other for what, 3-5 years before all the shit started going down, so there were still plenty of opporuntities for hentai fun. This wasn’t Big Brother; the camera wasn’t following them 24/7…
Kallen scenes were great
. True tears was alright I guess. For me, I think Allison to Lillia, Clanna and Kannagi were the best of the year
Oh there’s definitely a couple of bloggers I know who write about slice of life or mindless action kinda stuff (but rarely both) that appeals to me, but I honestly find it easier to relate to real-life friends who primarily watch Naruto & Bleach.
I can also list a lot more shows that seemed to invade my Google Reader feed a lot that I hated – CLANNAD, ef, Spice & Wolf, Strike Witches, Nogizaka Haruka, KimiKiss, Gundam 00, Shugo Chara, Shigofumi, Mnemosyne, Real Drive, Index, Lucky Star, Chaos;HEAd and so on.
In short, I hate animu and should go watch the news instead. HAH.
And yeah TheBigN, you’re probably the only person that watched and enjoyed Quiz Magic Academy D:
That shit bag scene in Kurozuka was bizzare. They were over-dramatizing on Yagami Light levels. I looked for some kind of meaning in all 10 minutes and then when it was all over I realized I was riveted to a scene about disposing of a bag of crap…and was confused.
[...] would have to be Natsume Yuujinchou, which seemingly hit low on the blog radar, but did make it to various [...]
Kure-nai was great, good but could’ve been better (as most people also said). As someone who read the novel (at least the first volume) and found it riveting from start to end, I highly recommend you to give it a read.
Also,here’s to hoping a Nyanko-sensei plushie is in the works!!
Quiz Magic Academy…I think I actually saved the video of it that was on niconico before it got deleted….orz
Just saying Happy New Years to everyone here cause I can’t be bothered to be online during it
Cheers for 09!
Ah, the infamous s**t scene from Kurozuka. It’s ironic that I cringed at that 10-minute scene more than I did at all the blood and carnage in that series.
I also came to hate Code Geass with a burning passion for many reasons. DX
There weren’t a lot of shows that I really liked in 2008, but my favorite out of all of them would have to be Kuroshitsuji.
I hate Toradora! too :3
Anyway, despite being an active fansubber I watched less shows than last year.
I don’t remember Shana 2, because I left it after first 2 eps. *yes, had to watch them because I karafxed first 2 songs ~_~*
Kannagi is win, definitively my number 2 anime of 2008. Natsume is number 1 :3
You have some shows listed here that I didn’t bother to watch. will do so *I have free time anyway
Akemashite omedeto! and have a good 2009!
Thanks j1mOne, since your tastes is pretty much polar opposite of mines, shows on your hate list might be shows that I like. At least I liked Kannagi and Eve no Jikan and didn’t like Code Geass and Gundam 00.
I tried watching Natsume Yujincho but episodes 1-4 were quite boring. Is the pacing, feeling, and plot gonna be like that for the entire 2 seasons? Its highly rated on some websites so I was thinking it might pick up for me.