The year of Our Madokami two-thousand and fifteen has come to a close, which means bloggers and critics across the internet have an excuse to post countdown listicles! And being incredibly lazy myself, I am no exception. Overall, 2015 was a huge improvement over 2014. Last year I struggled to even round out a top ten list, and ended up with some of the lower spots going to the few shows I’d actually finished that weren’t actively bad. This year, I struggled to trim the list down to just ten. I said in last year’s post that you’d have to stay tuned for Parasyte and UBW, but it turns out I’m a liar. After some late-game stumbles and a stacked Winter season, neither one is making a showing after all. Woops. Even KimUso and MonMusu, shows I thought were rather solid, didn’t make the cut this year. It feels a little like watching your favorite sports team end a losing season with a blowout win. Anime really needs to spread the good shows out a little better. Anyways, before we get into the nitty gritty, I’ll go over the typical disclaimers: First of all, this is my list; my totally biased, inherently subjective list. If Your Favorite Anime didn’t make the cut, I probably didn’t see it, or didn’t like it. Sorry. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am down in the comments. Second, only series that ended in 2015 were eligible for this list. This list also does not include films, as I find they are just too different in terms of structure and production to be meaningfully compared to TV series. OVA series will be counted, but on-disc bonus episodes will not be considered in the rankings. Lastly, there may be stray Spoilers wandering about these paragraphs, so read with caution. With all that in mind, let’s get started with…
Tag: GatchaCrowds
Redcrimson’s Top 40 Anime Series
Here it is at last, everyone’s favorite aniblog staple! The venerable Top Anime List! I’d originally intended this to be a 6-month anniversary post for the blog, but it ended up being a much more massive undertaking than I’d intended. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it turns out I just can’t shut the hell up about shows that are this good. This list is probably the largest single post I’ve ever written about anime, so I hope it’s at least a worthwhile read!
First Impressions: Summer 2015
The Summer season is in full swing, and… it’s pretty average. Which may actually be a blessing in disguise since I got totally burnt out trying to cover the insanity of Winter. I ended up taking all of Spring off, which Euphonium almost immediately had me regretting. I would have liked to write about that show more, but I just couldn’t drum up the motivation. To try and combat the problem, I’m probably going to be nixing weekly write-ups in favor of a first impression/midseason/final impressions format, with extra stuff like reviews and editorials in-between. I still haven’t got the whole blogging thing ironed out yet, so I want to experiment with some stuff. At least until I can find a schedule I can function on, and still produce content I’m actually happy with. But enough about that, let’s get on with the cartoons!
Anime Review: Gatchaman Crowds
Hajime Ichinose is a normal, albeit mildly eccentric high school girl with an obsessive passion for stationary and scrap-booking. One day while preparing for lunch on the school roof, she is approached by an enigmatic figure who tells her that she is to become “the wings that protect the Earth”. The creature rips a strange notebook out from Hajime’s chest and declares her a Gatchaman, a secret warrior for justice that defends the Earth from alien threats. Hajime takes this revelation with about the same nonchalant exuberance with which she approaches basically everything else. Little do the Gatchaman know that their bubbly new recruit and a mysterious lurking darkness are about to challenge everything they’ve ever believed, and the world itself is never going to be the same…
Redundant Colors 