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.

I Like GONZO (Just A Bit Less Than Old American Anime Magazines and ADV)

I love talking about studios, whether I’m giving some less–respected ones the credit they deserve or driving the ones I hate as far into the ground as possible. It’s hard to call Gonzo a less-respected studio because in reality they’ve been one of the best-loved studios in anime for over a decade, but I’ll be giving them some love anyway.

art by ryuuzaki ran

If You Want To Diversify Your Anime Viewing, Stick To Shows With 11 or 22 Episodes

Much like the episode 8 phenomenon I pointed out some time ago, there’s something that most 11 and 22-episode shows have in common besides their odd length. At least nine times out of ten, a series with one of these rare episode counts is bound to be among the most unusual anime on TV.

I first noticed this about 22-episode anime after seeing Texhnolyze and Red Garden, two of the most unusual anime ever made, which for a long time were the only 22-episode anime I’d even heard of. The 11-episode phenomenon came to my attention after Kuuchuu Buranko and Youjohan Shinwa Takei. If you’ve seen any of the four anime I just mentioned, you’ve probably already begun to understand the significance of this phenomenon.

And these episode counts *are* exceedingly rare. Performing a MAL search of TV anime by episode count, there’s only about 1 page worth of either number out of over 100 pages. That almost every anime with 11 or 22 episodes is distinctly unique says to me that it’s being done on purpose. One common trend in the recent shows with these episode counts is belonging to the noitaminA time-slot, which is itself dedicated to unique anime; however, it is neither the case that all of the shows in this phenomenon are from that time-slot, nor that everything in that time-slot is 11 or 22 episodes long.

Here are examples of some 11 and 22-episode anime that I particularly enjoyed.

Kuuchuu Buranko (11 eps)

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

(Videocast) Released and Relinquished LIVE! Our Panel on Video

Okay, so here’s the panel in video in 6 parts. It’s an hour long, so be ready for some time. It takes a couple of minutes to get started and it only progressively gets better. Also the last five minutes were cut off from the tape running out, but they can basically be summarized as ‘GIANT ROBO IS AMAZING’. Anywho, lets go.

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.

Unrepresentative Studio Screw-ups

I am of the mindset that an opinion should be made based on research in any situation. I hate to hear people bitch that ‘all mecha sucks’ when they’ve seen exactly two shows from the genre (this seems to be the case for many.) I am sick of people calling a show ‘cliche’ when the show is intended to be homage or parody. These are all things that a little research would show to anyone. Whether or not you like the show is based all on you, but before you open your mouth to the world, you’d best know what you’re talking about. That’s why I’ve gotten rather tired of people making uneducated remarks about studios, especially those that supposedly ‘suck.’