Wrapping up the Winter Season, or Confessions of an Anime Masochist

Best show of the season; hands down.

Figured I would get this out there before we get half-way through spring, and I spent too much work on it already to just casually throw it away.

So some of you may or may not know, I watch a fair amount of anime, both good and bad. During this past Winter season I followed nineteen shows, not counting OAVs and Movies. If the number seems like a lot, that’s because it is. If it doesn’t seem like a lot, get a life. You can’t have mine because it doesn’t exist. Nine and a half hours of anime per week, and I didn’t watch it during the week, I mostly watched it over the weekend. So I’m going to attempt to list some pros and cons of each show. I say attempt because I expect the formula to fall apart pretty quickly as soon as I get to a show I want to talk about with some length. Also I am going to list notable vocal performances if applicable since I am a seiyuu nerd. I’m not going to attempt to list them in any order but alphabetical, anything beyond that would be utterly impossible for me.

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.

I’m Making “Seiyuu Cards”

Ridiculously attentive readers may have noticed the “Seiyuu Cards” page I put up a few days ago. This idea bubbled up out of my desire to easily compile the roles that I care about from different creators without having to wade through ANN or MAL pages. Originally this plan was to include all creators, and may yet still, but for now I’m focused on seiyuu.

Making these seiyuu cards is fun for me because I lack the words to talk about seiyuu regularly. It’s not easy to put into words why, for instance, I love Hanazawa Kana’s performance as Nessa in Fractale so much, beyond “she’s so adorable!” Any other aspect of the series I could break down intricately, and I feel like my inability to talk about seiyuu betrays the depth at which I care about them. These days, seiyuu alone can be my reason for watching a series (see Fractale again).

Click to enlarge

The Secret Santa Files: Mystery, Drama, and Baseball!

My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas. We did growing up, but none of us are Christians, so it didn’t make sense to keep it up once the kids were grown. Instead, we celebrated Festivus in 2008, The Feast of Winter’s Veil in 2009, and this year I invented my own winter holiday called Agarwood Day (details in future). Each time, I’ve made up a series of themed activities to participate in, and we have a lot of fun.

I’ve Finally Fallen For Hanazawa Kana

Glasses and ponytail! *dies*

The first roles that I would’ve heard Hanazawa Kana in, had I been able to ‘hear‘ seiyuu at the time, were Kajiwara Sora in Sketchbook ~full color’S~ and Potemayo from the eponymous anime, both of which aired in late 2007. The irony there is that the former is a character who’s too shy to speak aloud—so all of her dialog is mental narration—and the latter is a 2-foot moeblob who can only say two syllables per breath and mostly makes noises. —Not exactly roles that tell you if an actress is going to be good, in spite of being leads.