Visual Cohesion and Flow in Animation

Text version and links:

Awesome EDs, ~2011 Edition

A couple of years ago I posted my “top 10 unskippable EDs”—titled that way because I used to skip EDs a lot of the time. Now I don’t do that unless it’s really bad. Anyway, all the embedded videos are broken in the old post and I watched a *lot* of anime in the past two years, so here’s a new list of memorable EDs.

TO BE ON THIS LIST I had to like the ED as a whole, meaning song and video both. There are some ED songs that I liked where the video is unmemorable (think Mawaru Penguindrum’s “Dear Future”—amazing song, boring vid). Some also might be awesomely bad.

These videos are alphabetized by the shows they came from. And no, I have absolutely nothing better to do, and yes, I’m very tired right now.

When You See It, You’ll Shit Bricks – Look-Alike Roles

One of my most memorable moments as a fan came last October while watching Beyblade: Metal Fusion dubbed on Cartoon Network early one morning. The character whose image you see above, named Daidouji, was on the screen, and I joked that “he looks like he’d be played by Koyasu Takehito in the Japanese version.” Realizing that Koyasu is in everything and it might not be such a stretch, I then researched the matter and was stunned to find that he was, in fact, voiced by Koyasu.

The only thing I had to go on with this guess was the character’s appearance. Koyasu just happens to have an assload of characters that look exactly alike. Check out a few of these to see the image I had in my head when I pinned him as the voice of Daidouji.

Manga Pages: Soul Eater Not! chapter 1

I’m not dead! I’ll be slowing down, though; I was on a manga binge when I started this blog, doing a post every three days, so I’ll be cutting back significantly with two posts a month—still better than dead, right?

Ookubo Atsushi‘s Soul Eater is one of my favorite manga, but it’s no secret that it’s gone downhill since entering the third major arc. Anime Kritik theorized that Ookubo had generally stopped caring about his story, and before he could take another breath, Soul Eater Not! had been announced.

Details and Symbols: Soul Eater's Sun and Moon

Soul Eater is Ookubo Atsushi‘s labor of love, and he’s packed it full of fun little details, references, and symbols. Among those details are the stylized, demonic sun and moon that can be seen almost constantly throughout the manga.

 

First panel on page 1, and most common appearance of the moon.

 

14 Shows With Kickass Character Designs

In a visual storytelling medium such as animation, character design is incredibly important, especially in this modern era where character goods make up a huge part of the anime market. Viewers have to be able to connect with a character design on some level in order to be able to connect with the character on some level. Many people let characters design largely factor into their willingness to watch a series, and I can’t say that I’m different – only that I’m very open to a wide variety of designs that will not limit my viewing too much. That said, even I have things that I find hard to watch when the designs repulse me enough (mostly graphically violent 80s and 90s OVAs), and of course, if I adore the designs in a show, it can do a lot to enhance my viewing experience. This post is about the shows that do this for me.

It is not, however, a post about individual character designs that I like. Indeed, there are a lot of shows that produce a single object of my adoration, or perhaps even a handful, but who do not extend this visual pleasure to the rest of the cast. One thing about the anime being produced today in the name of selling character goods is that most shows try and appeal to a broad range of people. For instance, while I love the designs of Lynette, Sanya, and Hartmann from Strike Witches, I am not as much a fan of the other designs, as they don’t hit into my ‘strike [witches] zone’. Even in a case like Bakemonogatari where I love most of the designs, I am still turned off by enough characters that I cannot truly say that I ‘love the character designs in Bakemonogatari.’ Therefor, I present this as a list of my favorite shows wherein I loved the designs of the entire cast.

Shana is one of my favorite designs, but I don't care for most of the other characters in the series.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

10 Badass Anime Swords

Back in 2003 when I was fairly new to anime, I was all about swords. The shows that introduced me to the medium usually involved samurai and lots of fighting, so I considered the blade to be the ultimate weapon. I had always wanted to own a samurai sword back then, but my two younger brothers were cause for my mother to disallow it. I own a (rusty-ass) samurai sword now, and while I’m a bigger fan of guns these days, I still have a great love for the good-ol’ badass blades. I also just figured out how to break my posts into multiple pages and wanted to do a cracked.com-style post with it, so here goes my top 10 Badass Anime Swords!

Pages: 1 2

200 (+) Anime Worth Taking With Us Into the Next Decade

The Reason a Phrase Like "Shounen" Exists is So You'll Stop Bitching About Shows That Weren't Meant For You

There's a good reason this shit is in a "shounen" magazine

People love to bitch about anime, as is made evident by the fact that blogs and /a/ exist. It’s understandable that people want to talk about anime that they don’t like, to possibly exercise the frustrations of having sat through a disappointing show. I know what it’s like when a show suddenly goes down hill or a character gets on your nerves in a show you like and you want to complain. However, it bothers me to see people complaining about things that they were never meant to like in the first place.

My Top 10 Unskippable EDs

I think I’m going to start doing highlight posts on some of anime’s greatest OPs and EDs, since it’d likely be a lot of fun. As a way to sort of kick that off, this post is about some of the best EDs I’ve seen. EDs have a high tendency to be slower than OPs and feature less exciting videos, so I’ve had a long-time habit of skipping boring EDs after each episode, especially because I hate seeing the next episode previews. However, these are some EDs that are too great to skip. Now, while I never skip the ED when I like the song, it’s also rare that I stick around for the video, so to make this top 5 listing, it has to be a great song AND vid. Shows like Lucky Star with a different ed every ep don’t count.