krpalmer: (anime)
It would be nice to end this personal look back at ten years of anime watched with some sort of “happily ever after, at least for now” proclamation. However, when I turned to a list of titles for this year I couldn’t seem to see many that grabbed hold of me again. For previous years I’ve been able to fill out my choices with series I’ve seen some time after their initial streaming. There could be the chance of that given I don’t have subscriptions to every streaming service and didn’t quite muster the resolve to go looking for limited theatrical screenings, and yet that doesn’t help here and now. That’s not to say the only titles I watched and quite liked this year came from years previous (even as I did revisit a slew of older series and saw some vintage titles for the first time); I did get caught up in the second Mob Psycho 100, the fifth Symphogear, and the third Chihayafuru series. Having managed to keep from padding out previous posts with “sequels,” though, I can wonder now “and how many things from over here start with familiar names these days?”
ExpandWhat choices there are )
ExpandStrange looks ahead )
krpalmer: (anime)
One reason I wound up thinking I’ve had a pretty decent time watching anime over the past decade could be having enjoyed quite a number of new series just last year, a bounce back from three-fourths of the year previous to it having passed without managing to settle on anything new streaming. As I got closer to setting down a few words about each of the shows in that list I did get to wondering if some of them were a bit less profound than the series that had to surface from my memories, just perhaps connected to some of my top picks from years previous not having been seen at the time of airing. Still, at least a few titles from last year had a fair impact on me.
ExpandMy top pick )
ExpandA very strong runner-up )
ExpandA mixed bag of honourable mentions )
ExpandMore honourable mentions )
krpalmer: (anime)
My memories of “anime in 2017” include leading off my first three “quarterly reviews” of that year dwelling on how, for one reason or another, I hadn’t been able to watch any new series streaming. Another memory, though, is of heading off concerns there at last by picking up on some shows at the end of the year. That gave me something to look for in a list of series, but I did also happen to turn up a title or two I hadn’t seen “straight off.”
ExpandHonourable mentions and a top spot competition )
krpalmer: (anime)
The list of anime series from 2016 I first resorted to again seemed a bit light on eye-catching titles; I went so far as to ponder whether a “sequel-spinoff with new characters” and a “short episode series” (short enough I’ve found the time to watch it again) could fill things out without stretching my vague, self-defined rules too much. Going from a list of series to a list of movies, though, did turn up a juxtaposition I somehow hadn’t expected to see, and that surprise gives me a bit more to talk about.
ExpandMovies and series )
krpalmer: (anime)
Looking at a list of anime series from 2015 didn’t provoke a lot of “yes, that was a good one” thoughts from me, and I couldn’t quite settle on a “best in show” choice from the shows that did catch my eye. Instead of “worrying in retrospect,” though, I did consider how I’d spent part of that year watching long series from past decades to commemorate personal ten, twenty, and even thirty years-since marks for me; that might have stuck in my memory better than many of the shows I did see streaming at the time.
ExpandThe lasting series )
krpalmer: (anime)
In looking at a list of anime series from 2014, I did come to the thought there weren’t as many “personal standouts” for me then as in the years just prior. (It was the year I’d bought a budget video streamer to attach to my TV and blur the distinction between “trying out things” and “buying them for real,” too, although I’ve hardly got past “buying affordable releases on assorted thin whims for the sake of free shipping” and then not getting around to them.) However, I did see a title on the list that marked a clear favourite for the year and stands out in the decade itself (although I’m leery of pushing one single thing up to the top of that whole expanse of time).
ExpandThe honourable mentions )
ExpandAt the top of the year )
krpalmer: (kill la d'oh)
2013 marked fifty years since Osamu Tezuka adapted his Mighty Atom manga to animation on television, and I did spend part of that year keeping up with the posts on a weblog that marked the anniversary by looking at all the years in anime since. So far as the conventional wisdom sloshing around went, there remained outcroppings in those commemorations of “anime just isn’t what it once was”; for that matter, too, I did eventually take in a stronger reminder or two there had been animation in Japan before Tezuka, perhaps in advance of criticisms he put the industry on a path to overworking underpaid artists. (However, his work in comics may do more to protect him in the estimation of others than William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s work in theatrical animation did to protect them against judgments of their own television work from the 1960s.) In getting past that anniversary year, though, I can look back and think some series from it have wound up impressing me, even if I can’t quite single one out as better than all the others.
ExpandMy selections )
krpalmer: (anime)
By 2012, I was well settled into the new age of online streaming of anime series as they aired in Japan, even if my concentration on those series streamed by Crunchyroll was almost exclusive, influenced then and for years to follow by the disdain others showed for Funimation’s competing service. That has had its own effect on what series I’ve watched since, although in looking over a list of titles from 2012 I did get to thinking that while I could make quite a list of “personal standouts” I’d only seen two of them as they were airing. One of those two, though, just happens to be my top pick for that year.
ExpandThe top pick )
ExpandTaken seriously )
ExpandTaken absurdly )
krpalmer: (anime)
While the rhetoric that “you’ll grow out of anime if you know what’s good for you” may have faded into the background for me with time, at the start of 2011 I was a little conscious I just might be about to change everything. Having enjoyed crossing the Atlantic by ship two years before (too busy along the way to watch very much anime), I’d booked a cruise that would start in Japan and make a few stops in the north of that country on the way back across the Pacific. It would be far from an “anime fan pilgrimage” of the sort English-speaking fans talked about, but there did seem the possibility that in experiencing Japan as a normal country, it would be impressed on me at last “animation” of the sort being exported across the Pacific was hidden in a few disparaged nooks and crannies; maybe manga was a bit more respectable, if you were reading the right titles.
ExpandWhat actually happened )
ExpandQuite honourable mentions )
ExpandThe real personal standouts )
krpalmer: (anime)
It was a bit of a surprise to all of a sudden think “I’ve seen some pretty decent anime series made in these past ten years; maybe I could even set down a few thoughts about them.” The surprise came from the awareness I’d started watching “anime known to be anime” a decade and a half before the beginning of those ten years, and had been interested in a specific vintage and genre of “anime not known to be anime” for a decade before that. Observing other long-time fans, I have to admit to sliding into the supposition they show a focus, small or strong, on works from (or ultimately before) their formative years with a hard-to-miss undercurrent of “anime isn’t what it once was.” For that matter, this very year I spent a lot of time returning to my own “anime not known to be anime” (along with works I could connect to them); finding time to watch more recent series again seems much more of a challenge, just as I’m somewhere between selective and cautious settling on new series to watch and haven’t yet seen some much-talked-up shows of this decade for a variety of reasons. Even so, that much shifting back and forth between “new anime” and “old anime” can seem a somewhat rare ability to me, although of course it could well be a small thing to boast of. Still, once I’d gone through the perhaps-incomplete source of some Wikipedia categories I could find at least a few possibilities to bring up for each year of the decade, and more surprising than that I could find some “first place standouts” among those standouts.
ExpandThe first place standout and some very honourable mentions )

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