Winter 2007 mid-season review
I had a few options of possible post topics this week, some based on discussions I’ve been having in the Shuffle! board and Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! thread on the ASuki forums, and even a possible semi-facetious ed piece on Marimite being a moe anime. They’ll make for possible future post topics. This, on the other hand, is something I’ve been meaning to do in a while. Standard deal for something like this: what I’m watching, and a short bit on what I think so far. No definitive judgements on series though… I still think it’s pointless to make total calls without seeing the whole thing.
An optimistic outlook on modern anime
Over the course of this week I had a discussion with a fan of old-school anime about modern anime and its current fandom. Most people who have follow my reviewing and other written trails on the internet on anime have probably guessed that I’m heavily into newer anime. In fact, I’d approximate that at least 95% of the anime I watch is less than a year old. Why my watching habits have gone in that direction is beside the point right now, and is maybe a topic for discussion in the future.
Though we both eventually came to the same conclusion and outlook on the issue, we both saw things from slightly different angles, largely, I’d speculate, due to our differing backgrounds in anime. My acquaintance has been, in a sense, captured by an era gone by, back in the 80s and 90s when mecha and action series were far more prominent, and when plot-heavy stories made up the majority of top calibre anime. I, myself, am a fairly recent entrant into the world of anime, and only began watching it incessantly during my undergrad years… during which time a large percentage of my ‘diet’ consisted of slice-of-life, romance, drama and shoujo (I was captured by shoujo very early in my anime “career” thanks to two particular series: Fruits Basket and Kare Kano)… in general, character-focused series. To put an exact number on it, I’ve been watching anime for just over four-and-a-bit years, and, even from very early on hot-off-the-shelf series made up a portion of that watching.
Objectivity, and the role of “bias” in review writing
So, it’s Sunday night and Roger Federer has just won the first slam (of what should be four) of the season. And I’m sitting in front of my computer trying to invent something to write about. See, I made this promise in my first post in this new blog to update weekly, and I only function properly if things are done regularly. So, earlier I chose Sunday night to be the weekly appointment for writing these entries. The problem: I have nothing to write about.
- Shiniciro Watanabe and a Love Letter to Jazz
- The Darker Side of Eroge Development
- The Country of Chihaya
- Is Spring 2012 the Best Season in Years?
- The Nihon Revue, Episode Eight
- Spring 2012: First Thoughts
- So, Gundam AGE Got (A Lot) Better
- Key Fans Are Too Entitled
- Will Eureka 7 Ao Repeat the Failures of Last Exile Fam?
- What I Learned By Watching Anime This Week! #3