2008 in review: anime
I’m not counting Rose of Versailles because I haven’t finished it. I think I blogged everything fairly extensively, so just a few brief comments each.
Favorites:
Blue Seed: An excellent blending of scifi and Japanese mythology. The animation is dated but still pleasant, and the characters and plot are surprisingly well developed and complex for what initially seems to be a standard shounen anime. A few scenes at the beginning are a bit odd, but not many. And it has a trigger happy woman in a pink sweatsuit.
Haibane Renmei: A slow but touching anime with amazingly beautiful watercolor backgrounds about winged women in an apparently isolated city. Anything more than that is rather spoilery, but a must for the slice-of-life crowd.
Madlax: A sometimes incoherent but largely captivating plot involving amnesia, assassins, Important Books, and girls with guns. And the occasional oddly named villain. It’s really all about whether or not those things appeal. “I’ve been a bad little girl, Friday Monday,” is a strangely awesome line once you’ve watched it. Plus lovely music and backgrounds.
Slayers seasons 1-3: It amazes me that a show where every main character is irritating on an individual basis can make them all so wonderfully likable in combination. A fairly standard comedic D&D fantasy series on paper, in practice it’s…still a standard comedic D&D fantasy series, but a surprisingly good one that has fun playing with the tropes, especially with the female characters and making them much smarter and more capable than they really have any business being. I knew I would love it forever in the first season, when Amelia, the youngest character, which normally never bodes well in anime, finds herself in a firefight, ducks under the fire, crawls over to hide behind the guy whose skin is made of rock because he makes a good human shield, and then takes off as fast as her legs can carry her when told to run.
Really really liked:
Claymore: An excellent adaptation of one of my favorite manga series of the year. The anime falls apart at the end (it’s not so much that they changed the outcome of the arc as it is that the manga version also served as closure for that part of the story, and the end not only made sure later parts of the manga couldn’t happen, but didn’t even provide a conclusion) but also breezes through the earlier slow parts of the manga, and has excellent seiyuu.
Ergo Proxy: Despite an irritating tendency to beat the viewer over the head with its ideas on existentialism, this is a pretty interesting post-apocalyptic cyberpunk with one of the more interesting heroines I’ve seen in recent anime, and some nifty gender reversals with the leads.
Gundam Wing/Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz: Insane, suicidal teen mecha pilots who are terrorists. My enjoyment of this series, I think, far exceeds its actual quality, yet the crack was some of the best I’ve seen in anime. Though I’m sure it wasn’t quite meant that way. Thanks to the movie, I now associate chess with sex. Possibly permanently. However, I will never understand what made the creators think the main pairing was a good idea.
Last Exile: The main thing that kept this out of the first category is the insufficiently described ending. Oh, sure, once you visit the wikipedia page, it all makes perfect sense, but you still have to visit the wikipedia page. A beautifully animated steampunk anime with engaging characters and an interesting world. And, a quasi-love triangle in the second half that manages to not annoy me.
Super Gals seasons 1-2: I ended up not liking the second season as much as the first and really disliking a character who started out as one of my favorites, but I will forever the first season of this series. Who knew materialistic Shibuya gals could be so badass?
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle: Tokyo Revelations: I can’t help it. I get to see some of my most precious bits of angst from the manga animated, and well animated at that. Really, my reaction to this storyline in both forms is probably proof that I have an evil soul.
Rest(good or bad):
Big O Seasons 1-2: The mecha Batman of anime. For better or for worse, it had me contemplating human/robot sex. I don’t know. Fun, stylish noir, but also a bit too caught up in being stylish.
Bleach Season 1: Uhm…good adaptation of the earlier manga volumes. Pretty much all there is to say.
Gokusen: Badass Yakuza heiress superdork teacher. Could have been longer, and I really need to read the manga.
Hakkenden: Interesting, if dated, adaptation of a famous Japanese legend. Unfortunately, the animation completely falls apart about halfway through. It recovers, but the second half is never as strong.
Melody of Oblivion: Starts an overly fanservice-y but likable and interesting shounen, soon becomes and endless barrage of creepy misogyny in its fanservice. By the end, I wanted to scrub my brain. A lot.
Noien: Aus and time travel and endless angst. Interesting visuals, but it never really grabbed me the way I thought it would, and the characters weren’t as interesting as they could have been.
Saiyuki Reload: Gunlock: I think the animators were determined to make sure it was the last Saiyuki series. Entertaining in it’s badness though, especially if you listen to it with the English dub.
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle: The Princess in the Birdcage Kingdom/xxxHolic: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Nice little OVAs that serve as decent entries to the two series, but not a lot else.