Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

Sixty days later, the seventy-third half-hour (give or take) instalment from a sixty-fourth anime series (TV and OVA), with a “short TV episode” and a theatrical short added in too, brought me to the end of my offbeat odyssey. It did take me a while to decide on my final sample. Last year’s anime did seem easier to feel altogether confident about than 2019’s had at the end of its year, but I suppose things were different when it came to the thought of picking one single (first) episode to represent the year, be impressive in itself, and perhaps even serve as the more positive kind of “the adventure will continue” stopping point.
( A hard-rocking choice )
( Bonus summary and directory )

When I started watching Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (although I needed to be reminded of and pointed to it by a screenshot and positive comment on my reading list before scrambling to catch up), its first episode alone started leaving me with the hopeful feeling I was already ahead of 2019 so far as “really impressive new anime” went. Unfortunately, before it had quite finished streaming I’d stuck myself in protective isolation and just might have worked myself up to worries the series would be the last great anime ever. After lapsing into staying three months behind to make sure shows were complete before watching them (and beginning to watch some notable titles from years past I wasn’t quite sure “saving for later” was quite wise any more), I did find reassurance of a certain sort in series like Deca-Dence and Appare-Ranman! For now, though, I’m returning to a show there’d been certain “it seems like it was such a long time ago” comments about mere seasons later.
( Easy breezy )

A lot of titles from 2018 got onto my list of “personal standout anime” made up just a year later. Even at the time I was drawing it up, though, I did wonder if I’d relaxed my standards after the thinner years just previous for the sake of presenting an impressive-looking retrospective near the end of the decade. At the time it wasn’t hard to make a top pick, but as I sorted out I’d get to this year this time around on a weekend I did start wondering about making a double feature of it. The only nagging problem was the B-title that kept coming to mind threatened to feel “brought up for the wrong reasons, especially when associated with something so impressive.” In the end, however, I forced back my misgivings and went straight from A Place Further than the Universe to Harukana Receive.
( From snow to sand )

Not every one of the series I’ve sampled over the past fifty-plus days are undeniable enduring classics; some just represent a year nothing else has really grabbed me from. After going all the way from “the only show I could watch subtitled” to “series I wasn’t pointed to years after the fact,” I suppose I’ve had to confront the difference between “never quite escaping criticism” and “perhaps never quite on everyone’s watchlist.” Now, though, I might have run into “a show that was a three-month’s-wonder, and that’s that” in returning to Flip Flappers.
( Flip flap flip flap )

After a few years when looking back turned up a satisfying number of anime series I was ready to go back to (although picking what series to sample wasn’t that hard the past few times), my list has thinned out a bit again. However, Shirobako showing up seems to more than compensate for that. While this is one recent series I have got around to rewatching on Blu-Ray after seeing it streaming (which means I’m getting that much closer to way things are now), returning to its first episode was fine by me.
( Starting out at Musashino Animation )

Although much bogged down by spam comments now, the concluding post of a “golden anniversary of anime” weblog (which I know might provoke present insistences animation had been made in Japan for decades before Mighty Atom, and for that matter that show had been preceded by shorter segments of domestically produced animation on Japanese TV) is still up and covering 2012. That post tied into an impression I still have of the weblog’s composite take on things darkening as it approached its concluding point; it spends a good deal of time dwelling on “little sister fantasies” series. I suppose it’s not quite fair to bring that up and then comment how, with the benefit of some years of hindsight, I came up with a good-sized list of personal standout series; for that matter, I haven’t watched the shows the post worried about (although one unfortunate element of that was who’d licensed them).
( The awakening beat )

Getting to 2010 brings me to the end of my previous effort to “sample a little bit of anime from each year I had some from.” (Back then I was marking a merely personal anniversary connected to joining my university’s anime club by setting up a “club show” of several titles, or indeed a movie every so often, every few weeks. The shows stretched into the first months of 2011, at which point I realised I hadn’t managed to watch a single series from the previous year yet in those days just preceding widespread legitimate streaming. I wound up picking Squid Girl for my sample, and pushed on into the rest of that uncomplicated but amusing comedy series.) That does, though, also bring me to the beginning of some “personal standout titles of the past decade” retrospectives when it sort of snuck up on me (if, perhaps, in an effort to find something other than widespread fears to dwell on) that I’d actually enjoyed a good bit of anime from the ten years then ending. I’d wound up watching Sound of the Sky again afterwards; now, I’m sampling a different series.
( Meeting the jellyfish princess )

A day after Valentine’s Day, I’m getting around to the first episode of a romantic comedy that’s been well-regarded for some time (so long as it’s compared more to “recent anime” than to some of the other series I’ve sampled over the past forty-five days). Had Toradora! been made one year earlier than it actually was the alignment would have been that much more perfect, but as I hadn’t been anticipating it as I pondered various titles I’m happy with how things turned out.
( Taking on the Palmtop Tiger )

Having tried to quick-step year by year “through anime” once before, I had my previous set of episodes ready to hand as I considered what shows to sample this time, but did keep thinking that to make too big a deal of “back then I watched that, but now I’m watching this” could get tedious. Still, when I got what to sample from 2006 I did reflect on having previously returned to an episode of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, if not its first (or even its other first, which only brings to mind all the indignation from those who’d picked up on the show straight off, settled on a particular “fansub” group, and wound up complaining the licensed release over here hadn’t been put together with the utmost care the series obviously demanded). Now, I just seem stuck with the impression of once having seen a comment that show might now be in a “you had to be there” place, and how I’d just about been there only for later jumping through the “watch it in this order if you want the real experience” hoops to not have left as much of a mark on me as with its early fans. I suppose it’s a little too tempting now, even after having read the trailed-off series of original novels in translation, to wonder about the series further marking “anime not quite getting clear of high school.” It might not have been only because of that, though, that this time around I scheduled a different series called Strain (or Soukou no Strain, or Str.A.In: Strategic Armored Infantry). Not only is it “science fiction set in the future and outer space,” it lets me go through a decade by the calendar and still include a mecha series.
( Joining the science fiction army )

Pushing further into the first decade of the millennium, my latest choice from among my options for one year gets entangled with “titles that were merely popular in their time.” For that matter, there seemed to have been mixed feelings towards My-HiME from the start, with insinuations of this “high school girls in mecha-beast and supernatural-power battles” series having meandered into a corner it left only by pulling a moth-eaten rabbit from a hat. I recall a few more enthusiastic comments noting it having been made by the animation studio Sunrise only to promptly proclaim it “an effort to make up for the Gundam Seed subfranchise,” and that didn’t help me very much either.
( Carry on restarting )