What Let’s Plays, Podcasts, and Slice-of-Life Anime Have In Common

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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.

Digiboy’s Character Database of Love – 25. Rail Tracer & 26. Yunocchi

This is the thirteenth post in Digiboy’s Character Database of Love. I finally burned through all of the character submissions by ghostlightning and robert weizer—if you’d like to submit a character to the database as well, send me an email about it.

Digiboy’s Character Database of Love – 23. Miyako & 24. Takamura Mamoru (from guest-writer Robert Weizer)

This is the twelfth post in Digiboy’s Character Database of Love.

Digiboy’s Character Database of Love – 19. Sae & 20. Myung Fang Long (From Guest-Writer ghostlightning)

This is the tenth post in Digiboy’s Character Database of Love.

On the Negative-Second Day of Kurisumasu My Imouto Gave to Me: A Bunch of Shows that Didn’t Air This Year

This is a prequel to my upcoming “12 Anime Moments, 12 Days of Kurisumasu” posts. Today, like ghostlightning did, I’ll be looking at my favorite moments from the shows I watched out of my anime backlog.

This year, I spent a lot more time watching anime that actually aired this year than I ever have before. It was mostly a reaction to not having watched anything last year. However, that’s not to say that I ignored my backlog—this was the year of Finish or Fail, after all. Despairing over the overly crowded nature of my “On Hold” list, I sought to complete as many of the shows on there as I could, and I didn’t do terribly. Here are some of my favorite moments from series I finished.

This post is full of debilitating spoilers for most of the anime herein, so don’t read about shows you haven’t seen.

Mouth of God: Mangaka Avatars In Anime Adaptions

Bad things happen when a manga author doesn’t like the adaption of their work. Kare Kano, GAINAX’s promising shoujo romcom adaption, was hamstrung when Tsuda Masami complained that it focused too much on comedy instead of romance and refused to allow another season, which lead to Anno Hideaki‘s departure from the studio. The project was left in shambles, culminating in one of anime’s most disappointing endings. Toriyama Akira said of Dragonball Evolution that he wasn’t sure what it had to do with his original manga at all. These disapprovals by original authors can range from hazardous to depressing, which is why it’s refreshing to see a manga author give their thumbs up to an anime adaption.

Rikudo Koushi, mangaka of Excel Saga

Holy Shit, I Knew Bakemonogatari Sold Really Well But…

These SHAFT show DVD/BD rankings are ridiculous! You always hear about how well Bakemonogatari sold, but it’s hard to get a real perspective on it until you see something like this. Another source provides the following data.
(2004年) *2,015 月詠 -MOON PHASE-  (Tsukuyomi -Moon Phase-)
(2005年) *7,980 ぱにぽにだっしゅ!(※BOX合算 10,219) (Pani Poni Dash!)
(2006年) **,*** REC
(2006年) *8,516 ネギま!?  (Negima!?)
(2007年) *5,885 ひだまりスケッチ (Hidamari Sketch)
(2007年) *4,165 ef – a tale of memories.(BDBOX含まず)
(2007年) *7,077 さよなら絶望先生 (Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei)
(2008年) *1,405 ef – a tale of melodies.(同発BD含まず)
(2008年) *5,451 俗・さよなら絶望先生 (Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei S2)
(2008年) *8,120 ひだまりスケッチ×365 (Hidamari Sketch x365)
(2009年) *3,389 まりあ†ほりっく (Maria Holic)
(2009年) **,246 夏のあらし! (Natsu no Arashi)
(2009年) *4,221 懺・さよなら絶望先生 (Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei S3)
(2009年) 75,416 化物語(〜5巻) (Bakemonogatari (just the first 5))
(2009年) **,*** 夏のあらし! 春夏冬中 (Natsu no Arashi S2)
(2010年) **,*** ひだまりスケッチ×☆☆☆ (Hidamari Sketch Hoshimitsu)
(2010年) **,*** ダンズインザヴァンパイアバンド (Dance in the Vampire Bund)
(2010年) **,*** 荒川アンダーザブリッジ (Arakawa Under the Bridge)

Staggering! I think it’s interesting how the second and third seasons of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei didn’t sell as well as the first, though the above chart leads me to believe that the OVA sales are what prompted further seasons to be made. I wonder why it is that the Natsu no Arashi sales seem to have been incorrectly marked, since there is no way it only sold 247 copies, especially with them making a second season and all, haha. I also think it’s interesting that ef melodies and Maria Holic sold poorly because I thought those shows sucked, so it looks like the consensus was pretty widely reached, hehe. Will be interested to see if Hidamari Sketch s3 continues what appears to be an incline in DVD sales over each season~

Responding to Some Amazing Hidamari Sketch Posts by Cuchlann (Part 2)

(Part 1) On the title: long and silly story short, this is a response to a post by Cuchlann, not a post by 8c. Anyway, everything I said last time about taking too long to post on Hidamari, other people got there first, blah blah, only this post is about a year old and only surfaced to me now. Well, let’s open it up!

Responding To Some Amazing Hidamari Sketch Posts by 8c (Part 1)

One of the greatest sins of my blogging career has been that I’ve never properly posted about Hidamari Sketch (and similarly, one of the greatest sins of my anime-watching career has been that I never watched any of it past the first season/read more than 1 volume of the manga) – Both of those in spite of considering it one of my alltime favorite anime, it having formally introduced me to favorite director Akiyuki Shinbo, and it being a large part of re-introducing me to anime. Well, you know what they say, the early bird catches the worm – I kept my mouth closed so long that someone else spoke out before me, and now I’m actually glad that I never said anything, because 8c knocked it out of the fucking park!