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.

Ai-pon and Spectrums of Cute.

Today I’m gonna talk about this little lady and her characters:

I just want to squeeze her cheeks if that's all right.

The Bakemonogatari Girls Tried To Kill Me In My Sleep – From the Dream Diary of Digital Boy

At any given time, the amount of anime culture that i consume is directly reflected by it’s presence in my dreams, and when I’m ‘in deep’ like I have been the past couple of weeks, then I’m bound to have some crazy-ass anime influenced dreams. Last time I was turning into one of the Strike Witches, which was a pretty cool dream, but I knew that this couldn’t last because 99% of the dreams that I have are nightmares. Sure enough, last night I had a nightmare wherein the Bakemonogatari girls tried to kill me.

I am fairly certain that this dream had a pretty long beginning, but I can only remember about from the point that it started to become anime relevant – though it actually began as some sort of Kanon parody. At the earliest point that I can remember, I was standing around in a Gamestop store, just because I was bored. However, at the back of the store, I noticed a rather large special edition game container. This was, apparently, my friend Derrick. Derrick hates being stuck at home and really loves video games, so I guess my brain combined that into a character who loves to hang out at Gamestop, since it was apparent that this wasn’t the first time that I’d found him crammed into this special edition game.

They want me dead! Art by oimo http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=oimo

LEGEND OF THE GALACTIC HEROES FANS: I GIVE YOU THE REINHARD COOKIE (+ Anime Cakes)

Today is Funeral’s 22nd birthday, and for the past 5 days or so, he’s been cramming down Legend of the Galactic Heroes. 25 episodes in, he’s saying that he’s ‘more into it than he can remember being for anything’ and is already considering it among his top favorite anime of all time. When it came time for my mom, who designs cakes and cookies for all of our birthdays, to make him a birthday cookie, he didn’t even suggest any of his other obsessions throughout the year, such as Inglourious Basterds or Green Lantern, but went straight for Reinhard von Lohengramm. The rest, my friends, is legend.

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

Clannad – Kotomi Arc – Before Yesterday, I Saw A Rabbit, Yesterday, A Deer, And Today, the Interior of Digiboy's Anus

If there’s one thing that can absolutely be said about Ichinose Kotomi, it’s that she has amazing feet. Her feet (as well as her knees) are plastered all over the arc, even in the parts where she is a little kid. Damn, those lolicons at Kyoto Animation know how to get my jeans tight. (protip: I never wear jeans.)

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.

Clannad – Fuuko Arc – The Hardest I've Ever Cried During an Anime (AND Anime Moments That Briefly Made Me a Woman)

(PLEASE NOTE: The first person who says anything along the lines of ‘wait till x episode, it’s x’ will be fucked in the lung by a tentacle monster. I already know all of the spoilers for this show, I already know where I’m gong to cry, shut the fuck up. I fucking hate those comments. Incidentally, if you haven’t seen Clannad, don’t fear spoilers. They’ll just make you want to watch the show more.)

Que Waterworks

Surprisingly Insightful – Anime Insider vol. 64, January 09

There were three initial factors that got me into anime – Ninja Scroll, Cowboy Bebop, and the very first volume of Anime Invasion, which has a list of everything deleted from the dubbed DBZ, a lost of all the Gundam shows, a Macross episode guide, and more. The magazine later changed it’s name to Anime Insider and over the years I grew to consider it a magazine for anime n00bs. However, when I picked up the latest volume, I was actually impressed by the content.