(W)ringing out the year

As it turned out, I marked this new year in somewhat grander fashion than quite a few before it. To “stay up until midnight” hasn’t fit with my usual schedule. (When I was working rotating shifts, I did stay up well past midnight to not get out of bed afterwards until sometime between the “late afternoon” and “early evening” before my first night shift. I was never quite sure, though, if this helped me stay up all through that shift or just made me tired all the way through it). However, seeing notices that davemerrill would be offering a three-hour “Anime Hell” via streaming video to close out 2020 got my attention. One day (even if it’s better to not anticipate a specific day and resent having to adjust your schedule in the face of reality), that presentation will be happening at regular anime conventions my usual schedule won’t mesh with. I therefore wanted to pack another experience in now.

Having watched other presentations earlier in the year, some of the content was becoming familiar; getting to see the assorted strangeness again was welcome enough. (So far as familiarity goes, I’d previously seen the “Animator Expo” shorts that keep showing up in the presentations; they weren’t the only “longish bits of recent-looking animation from Japan that managed to fit in with the general madness” shown, anyway.) That I was able to keep watching three hours of bizarre commercials and short clips, and laughed at points without the prompting of an in-room audience, must mean everything came together well; it has been practiced, of course.