2016: My Fourth Quarter in Anime

Over my last few "quarterly reviews" of anime watched I did start dwelling on how, for all that these three-month intervals correspond to the way new anime series roll out, I was playing less and less of the modern game of watching those series through online streaming. It wasn't the obvious and oft-proclaimed tragedy of "falling out" with anime itself given the slightly-older to "older" series I was watching, but the whole situation of "this first description didn't grab me the way it did others; this description did seem sort of interesting but I don't have a subscription to the service it's on; the stiff price I know this series will be ultimately be sold for if at all somehow still places a shadow over it; I took a chance on this show but it's not much fun watching it when everyone else winds up complaining a few episodes in" felt far from ideal.

If not in the very nick of time, though, the past three months were different at last, as several descriptions caught my attention. The new alliance between the online streaming service Crunchyroll and the more traditional disc-producing company Funimation could have helped put more options within my casual reach. More than that, I managed to stick with the shows I started, even if there were still problems with "the real jackpot is when your sagacity is shown by everyone else liking what you do," and added ambiguities about how slow the particular message board I've focused on for a long time has become, at least when it comes to week-by-week discussions. It is somehow different to "watch a show by myself at my own pace" (even if that pace may only be twice as fast as "once a week"), anyway.
( Streaming, part 1: WWW.Wagnaria and Izetta: The Last Witch )

( Streaming, part 2: Brave Witches and Keijo!!!!!!!! )

( Two different takes: Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans and Turn A Gundam )

( Two takes on something else: Animation Runner Kuromi and Shirobako )

( Catching up to the crowd: One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100 )

( To round things out: Symphogear G and Princess Tutu )

2016: Journal in Review

Getting through this year happened to mean I've accumulated ten years' worth of posts to this journal. Some months short of that early in the year, though, the steady routine of coming up with still more posts seemed to become enough that I started up a "Tumblr" with the thought it just might provide an easy source of post-like substitutes. After a little while of that, however, inspiration seemed readier to hand again; I haven't stopped lining up covers of old computer magazines elsewhere, though, even as I put together another look back at the first line of the first post of each month.
( A year in twelve sentences )

See you in the new year!