General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Discuss works of media, like films, television programmes and novels.

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General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by gotMLK7 »

So some of you may recall that I like to do countdowns. I made them for my YouTube channel for a while and I made a thread a few years ago now for them in the Video Games subsection. Well, I figured that it was about time to make a similar thread for a wider variety of categories!

So this is a thread where you can post your personal countdowns regarding media in general! Whether it be movies, comics, books, anime, western cartoons, web originals, etc., etc., this is the place to post your Top Tens or Top Fives or Top Twenties or Top Whatevers! If you just feel like being analytical of things you take interest in for no real reason and want to throw the ideas out there somewhere but are too lazy to make a YouTube video about it *cough*, this thread is the place for you. Have fun counting things down for your own amusement!

(isthisthreadanexcuseformetothrowtopstensaboutcartoonsandanimesomewherebecauseimtoolazytomakemorevideosrightnowmaaaybeee)
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Hersh/Fiendy has credit for the amazing GiGi pics and enigma has credit for the adorable Kenshin Mega Man sprite!

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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by Lind »

Top 10 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Characters. Note that this is in terms of personal favouritism rather than how good I think the characters are.

Note that there will be some spoilers regarding which characters are in which arcs, which, given the high death toll of the series, spoils certain characters surviving certain arcs.
Spoiler : 10 :
Robert Edward Orville Speedwagon
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Part 1: Phantom Blood -------- Part 2: Battle Tendency

"I'm Speedwagon, the meddler." -Robert E.O. Speedwagon

"EVEN SPEEDWAGON IS AFRAID!" -Jonathan Joestar
Spoiler : 9 :
Norisuke Higashikata IV
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Part 8: JoJolion

"The dick is extremely important." -Norisuke Higashikata IV
Spoiler : 8 :
Jean-Pierre Polnareff
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Part 3: Stardust Crusaders -------- Part 5: Vento Aureo

"My name is Jean-Pierre Polnareff. You killed my sister. Prepare to die." -Jean-Pierre Polnareff
Spoiler : 7 :
Diego Brando
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Part 7: Steel Ball Run

"BLOODY COUNTRY-F***S! I'll climb to the top of society... if anybody gets in my way, I'll put them through HUMILIATION worse than getting stew in their shoes! I'll slash through their pride and SCATTER IT ON THE GROUND!" -Diego Brando
Spoiler : 6 :
Jolyne Kujo
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Part 6: Stone Ocean

"If you wanna go, I'll gladly accept. This is American style. French style. Japanese style. Italian, specifically Naples style. The world's fingers for "f*** off"." -Jolyne Kujo
Spoiler : 5 :
Gyro Zeppeli
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Part 7: Steel Ball Run

"Tell him to eat s***, Johnny." -Gyro Zeppeli
"Tell him yourself." -Johnny Joestar
"Eat s***, a**hole! Fall off your horse!" -Gyro Zeppeli
Spoiler : 4 :
Yoshikage Kira
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Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable

"Back when I was a kid... you know Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", right? I saw it in an art book. When I saw Mona Lisa's hands, folded by her knee... How do I say this? It's a bit crude, but... hehehe... I got a boner." -Yoshikage Kira
Spoiler : 3 :
Joseph Joestar
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Part 2: Battle Tendency -------- Part 3: Stardust Crusaders -------- Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable

"OH NOOOOOOOOOOOO" -Joseph Joestar

"Your next line will be [insert opponent's next line here]" -Joseph Joestar

"OH! MY! GOD!" -Joseph Joestar

"The Joestar family has one secret technique... a last resort, for when all else fails. WE RUN!" -Joseph Joestar

"This guy has more catchphrases than I can possibly hope to remember." -Lind
Spoiler : 2 :
Johnny Joestar
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Part 7: Steel Ball Run -------- Part 8 - JoJolion

"Let's... go home..." -Johnny Joestar
Spoiler : 1 :
Funny Valentine
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Part 7: Steel Ball Run

“Suppose that you were sitting down at this table. The napkins are in front of you, which napkin would you take? The one on your ‘left’? Or the one on your ‘right’? The one on your left side? Or the one on your right side? Usually you would take the one on your left side. That is ‘correct’ too. But in a larger sense on society, that is wrong. Perhaps I could even substitute ‘society’ with the ‘Universe’. The correct answer is that ‘It is determined by the one who takes his or her own napkin first.’ …Yes? If the first one takes the napkin to their right, then there’s no choice but for others to also take the ‘right’ napkin. The same goes for the left. Everyone else will take the napkin to their left, because they have no other option. This is ‘society’… Who are the ones that determine the price of land first? There must have been someone who determined the value of money, first. The size of the rails on a train track? The magnitude of electricity? Laws and Regulations? Who was the first to determine these things? Did we all do it, because this is a Republic? Or was it Arbitrary? NO! The one who took the napkin first determined all of these things! The rules of this world are determined by that same principle of ‘right or left?’! In a Society like this table, a state of equilibrium, once one makes the first move, everyone must follow! In every era, this World has been operating by this napkin principle. And the one who ‘takes the napkin first’ must be someone who is respected by all. It’s not that anyone can fulfill this role… Those that are despotic or unworthy will be scorned. And those are the ‘losers’. In the case of this table, the ‘eldest’ or the ‘Master of the party’ will take the napkin first… Because everyone ‘respects’ those individuals.” -Funny Valentine
Last edited by Lind on Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by Topaz »

It is my opinion that "I played a little trick on you!" should be added to Joseph's quotes. Because I spent the latter half of Part 2 waiting in excitement for the next little trick.
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by gotMLK7 »

Top Ten Favorite Anime Protagonists
The main character of a series is always the most interesting part of the show, right? Well...no, not really. In fact, anime seems to exist in this weird dimension where more often than not the protagonist is...well, the most boring character. Half of the time, the protagonist of an anime is likely to be a normal schoolboy that's just surrounded by a bunch of girls that are in love with him for no obvious reason, which is really a shame, since there's plenty of room in the genre to make really cool and interesting protagonists. So, I figured I'd take a look at some of my favorites.

Now, what do I consider a protagonist exactly?

It's certainly not "the hero of the story" or "the most advertised character". I'm looking at the characters the plot seems to center around the most and follows the general perspective of most compared to other characters, or the character that we sort of go through the experience with most. For example, even though L is considered the good guy in Death Note, I would count Light as the protagonist because the story follows and focuses on him, and even though characters like Firo from Baccano! and Chiyo from Azumanga Daioh are sort of the most advertised from their series, the setup of the plot doesn't lead to any of their characters really being a single central protagonist. So I'm working on some pretty strict guidelines here, which made choices more difficult than you'd imagine for me.

Other rules for this? One per franchise, of course. Anime movies are permitted as well as anime. All based on my own opinions so make your own list if you disagree with me because...well, that's why we have this topic. That's basically it. Also, warning, there will be spoilers for several series, so keep that in mind when reading, and I'll try to keep you warned.

Now, with that out of the way, let's do this.
Spoiler : Honorable Mentions :
Quick mentions to the characters that were CONSIDERED for the list:

Madoka Kaname (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)
Tohru Honda (Fruits Basket)
Satsuki Miyanoshita (Ghost Stories)
Squid Girl (Squid Girl)
Jimmy Kudo/Conan Edogawa (Case Closed)
Jinta Yadomi (Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day)
Yuzuru Otanashi (Angel Beats!)
Eren Jaeger (Attack on Titan)
Spoiler : 10 :
This spot in particular was difficult for me to decide, even more so than number 1. Figuring out who deserved to be on the list most out of that big list of honorable mentions was NOT easy. But eventually, after debating with myself for a bit, I eventually decided on this character. A character who...doesn't really do much, come to think of it.
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"If I settle down anywhere...I would no longer be a traveler."
Kino (Kino's Journey)
Kino is a very odd protagonist, really. She's essentially The Doctor from Doctor Who if you replace time-travelling police box with a talking motorcycle and made him not actually intervene as much in the places he goes. The concept of Kino's character is that she is a traveler, going from country to country in a setting where different countries have VASTLY different cultures while riding on her talking motorcycle, Hermes, and staying in each country for no more than 3 days before heading off to the next one. This essentially makes up the plot of Kino's Journey, which just follows Kino in her travels and focuses on the differing cultures of the many countries she visits along the way.

Kino herself is a very unique protagonist compared to most. She doesn't travel like The Doctor to go fix the problems of everyone in every single country. More often than not, she won't intervene at all unless she absolutely needs to. She becomes almost morally gray at times for not trying to stop something that's obviously inhumane because that's how the country works and thrives and to stop that from happening is to go against her duty as a traveler, and staying any longer than 3 days means that she might settle down and accidentally cease he journey. She's a very philosophical character, often pondering the meaning of different customs and ideals with Hermes, and is a very intelligent character for sure. She also falls into a very small pool of bad@$$ female protagonists, as despite her calm demeanor and her general passive nature, she's a master sharpshooter and can fight off dozens of skilled warriors armed with swords or bombs with just her persuaders and a few knives (which she has shown to have maybe five of at least hidden amongst her clothes), without even having to actually kill anyone.

Kino's Journey spoilers ahead

Kino's backstory is interesting. Before she was a traveler and heck, before her name was Kino (it is hinted that her name may have been Sakura or Lily in the past), she lived in a country where, when a child turned twelve, they would get an operation that would turn them into a pleasant adult that can do work with a smile on their face. A day or two before her twelfth birthday, the girl met an older traveler named Kino that was working on repairing a motorcycle, Hermes. When the girl expressed interest in maybe becoming a traveler herself instead of getting the operation, the entire country turns against her and her father tries to kill her with a knife (supported by all of the adults in doing so, as this is apparently their law). The man named Kino protects her, however, and dies in her stead as the little girl gets on the completed Hermes and escapes the country. The girl took on the name Kino in his memory and began her own travels, eventually meeting a woman that would act as her master in firearms and going on her titular journey.

Kino's development over the series is...well, admittedly little. The story focuses mostly on her travels and how she deals with the situations she's in without meddling too much. For the most part, she really doesn't do much in these countries, as she believes it's her duty as a traveler to not intervene in customs she does not understand. However, the final country she visits reminds her much of a more pleasant version of her own home country, even meeting a young aspiring tour guide named Lily. Kino almost caves in and settles down here, the first time she's considered doing so in the entirety of the series, due to how homely it feels, but the people of the country demand she leave in 3 days regardless. After she leaves, she sees that a volcano has erupted and swallowed the village in lava, an event they knew was coming but embraced as a result of their pride in their culture, leaving the usually stoic Kino heartbroken as she realized she couldn't even help. For a character that had been established as very serious, calm, and almost poetically philosophical, It was a big moment for her character.

As far as protagonists go, Kino's definitely an interesting case. She's a stoic young woman that knows how to handle herself in a fight and, despite her lack of intervention, always seems to leave an impact wherever she goes. The only problem with her is that she doesn't have too much going for her in terms of personality, as her calm demeanor and lack of interaction leaves her with a fairly unmemorable one. If you've noticed me explaining more what he does than who she is, hen that's because there isn't really much to who she actually is, as he's very simple as a character. However, for simply how interesting a character she is to focus on, I felt she deserved a spot on this list.
Spoiler : 9 :
This next one's an odd case, since I actually like this character because of how...well, unlikable he is.
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"There's no doubt about it. This...is a conspiracy...!"
Tatsuhiro Sato (Welcome to the NHK)
This is definitely an odd choice, I won't lie. Because, for many, MANY reasons, I really shouldn't like Sato. I mean, he's literally designed to be the bottom of the barrel, and his purpose in the story of Welcome to the NHK is to essentially be the biggest loser around. He's a hikikomori, a heavy smoker, a slob, a jerk, a conspiracy theorist, and even a pervert (though he at least isn't gropey like most anime perverts, just sorta imaginative). So why do I like this guy?

Well first, a quick explanation. Welcome to the NHK is about this guy, Sato, and his position as a hikikomori, or shut-in, and how he is approached by a girl named Misaki, who tries to make a contract with him to go through tutoring sessions to cure him of his hikikomori tendencies. The series features both Sato's attempts to ignore Misaki and to actually try and get himself cured, as he tries things like making an eroge game with an old high school friend, trying online gaming, attempting to figure out why Misaki's so focused on him, and more.

The interesting part about Sato is less about him being a likable character per se and more him being an interesting character. He is meant to be an unlikable protagonist. Not like Light Yagami level unlikable, mind you, but he's definitely portrayed as a character most people might see as a loser. He's paranoid about the world, believing that the NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, or Japan Broadcasting Corporation) is the head of some huge conspiracy trying to keep people as hikikomori and shut-ins for the rest of their lives (insisting it's the "Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai", or Japanese Hikikomori Association). While this seems rather odd, it's presented in a mostly realistic manner, and Sato actually feels like a rather relatable character despite his occasionally exaggerated tendencies.

I think Sato's strength lies mostly in his development over the series. As the concept of Welcome to the NHK is essentially getting this man into a healthier lifestyle, it's obvious that he's going to develop over the course of the show to come out of his shell a bit. The show actually does this rather well, as Sato doesn't just immediately get better, and he doesn't just completely get over all of his issues. It's a very gradual process that occasionally has big dips as he tries his best to actually get into a position he can be proud of. You can tell that he genuinely wants to improve his lifestyle, but his paranoia gets the best of him when he's starting to make big steps towards improvement, and sometimes he just gets sucked back into the lifestyle on accident when he discovers things like dating sims and MMORPGs. However, you can tell as the series goes on that he's improving his ways in more ways than one, and he grows as a character a lot.

His personality is a mixed bag for me, really. While, as I said before, he's rather unlikable in many ways at the start of the series, he's also a rather entertaining character. Much of his dialogue is his own inner monologue as he debates things with himself, and he tries to think things through in his own corrupted ways. Half the time, this involves hallucinations of his furniture trying to convince him that he's trapped in another conspiracy and the like. You can also see in his thought processes sometimes why he'd make decisions that he makes, and it adds to his relatability when you can actually tell where he's coming from sometimes in his ideas. Though...his tendencies to be very impulsive and not speak up for himself often get him into very difficult situations. His being voiced by Chris Patton in the dub helps as well, as he managed to do a great job as Sato.

Sato's definitely not the first person to come to mind for an ideal protagonist. He's basically the character people refer to whenever the term "hikikomori" is brought up, and he's a character you find yourself cheering for maybe only half the time. However, I find him to be a very well-written and realistic character, and for a non-typical protagonist, he does very well in his role.
Spoiler : 8 :
This one makes me scratch my own head a bit as it's from my most recently finished anime and arguably she might not even qualify as a protagonist, but I think she fits my definition due to the particular amount of focus on her and for how entertaining she was. So, without further ado...
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"Miyuki-san, those aren't called faults, people call those 'Moe' points!"
Konata Izumi (Lucky Star)
Konata is...well, I won't lie, of all the characters on this list, she's the least analyzable. Lucky Star is a slice of life anime in the same category I put Azumanga Daioh and Nichijou, as shows that just focus on the friendship between a group of quirky high school groups and other than that has no real plot whatsoever. There's no overarching character arc for Konata, and there's not really much in terms of development for her character. She's not as complex as Kino or Sato is, and she's only protagonist by a slim margin due to the nature of the show (most antics generally involve Konata in the show and she's generally seen as the central character so that's why I count her). What puts her at number 8 if she's so simple a character? Well...relatability and enjoyment, really.

Thanks to being raised by her rather...odd father, Konata's most notable trait is that she is a major otaku. She lives and breathes anime, manga, and video games. She constantly makes references to anime, accuses people of being certain anime tropes (insisting her best friend is a tsundere), and is just generally a big geek about things. And BOY does she take this stuff seriously. She works at a cosplay café, gets people cosplay for their birthdays, the like. So...what's so special about her again? Well, Lucky Star takes place in a sort of meta universe where the characters, despite being in an anime, all watch real anime and make references to things that only happen in stuff like anime, with Konata at the head of it all. She's always there to throw in a good reference or two, doubling as the series' protagonist and comic relief at the same time. However, it's not like Family Guy where because she makes a reference to something it's immediately funny. It's more like in the way an actual friend of yours would casually reference something only they'll likely understand in the middle of a conversation, so it's actually pretty funny when she casually goes on a tangent and gets called out on it. She's also incredibly small in stature for someone that's 18 and is incredibly lazy about school, but aside from that, there isn't a lot to her character.

I think what Konata's biggest strength is that she's a funny character in a show where, really, most of the screen time is people talking. Just...talking. The first half of episode 1 is literally a discussion between her and her friends about how they prepare and eat different foods. If you're going to be the main character of a show with THAT little plot, you'd better be entertaining, which Konata thankfully is. She's also a rather relatable character, in my opinion. As a bit of a hipster geek in my friend circle, I know what it's like being that person that makes random references people around me don't get, and I've had plenty of silly conversations about how things work just like she does with her friends. She's a very realistic character for the most part; not in the same sense as Sato exactly, but she's very believably someone you'd hang out with at school, and I like that about her.

Like I said, there really isn't much about Konata to analyze. As far as backstory goes, aside from her mom dying when she was young, there isn't much to work off of. She doesn't really develop, she doesn't have too many emotional moments, and she's not really complex at all. However, Konata's the kind of character that I would love to know in real life, and I think that's what pushed her above Kino and Sato for me, because. She's a very simple character, but for the series she's in, she's incredibly effective. Also, she's voiced by Wendee Lee in the dub and Aya Hirano in the original, which, given the superfluous amounts of Haruhi Suzumiya references Lucky star makes, works just perfectly.
Spoiler : 7 :
Take the guns away from Kino and put her in a reverse harem comedy situation and what do you get?
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"Listen, senpai, I don't really care whether you guys recognize me as a boy or a girl."
Haruhi Fujioka (Ouran High School Host Club)
Ouran's an odd little anime. It's a satire of sorts of the general reverse harem formula, where a group of handsome, wealthy boys all form a "Host Club", where they serves the pretty girls of their academy as multiple archetypes (such as the twins, the shota, the handsome charmer, the strong silent type, and the intelligent one), but then when they're not charming women they're basically just a silly group of guys with a ton of money. Then there's the main character and newest member of the Host Club, Haruhi. The most notable fact about Haruhi is that...well, she's not exactly a handsome man. She's a girl.

After accidentally breaking an expensive vase in the Host Club's meeting room, Haruhi is roped into becoming a member of the club in order to pay off her new debt and serves as a host for the girls of the school, getting popular quickly. However, this was before the Host Club actually realized Haruhi was a girl, since she looked rather masculine without a school uniform (she's middle class at best and could not afford the uniform) and with her hair cut short. She rolls with it, though, and the Host Club becomes tasked with keeping Haruhi's gender a secret as she stays with the club to pay off her debt.

What's interesting about Haruhi is that she really doesn't care what gender she's actually seen as. She doesn't seem to really want to be a man, but she doesn't really care if that's how people see her as, either. She's very indifferent to the gender divide, which is where much of the interest in her character comes from. She's very casual about it and doesn't actually look at people for what gender they are (which makes sense given that her father's a frequent cross-dresser) and she's actually a natural at charming girls even though she doesn't realize she's doing it; she's just talking to them naturally. Even though the majority just sees her as a really bishonen boy, she just doesn't seem to be bothered by it. Kino similarly was often confused for a boy and didn't care about it, but with Haruhi, the fact has a bt more attention with it given that the fact Haruhi's actually a girl is essential to the show's premise.

In terms of personality, Haruhi plays the role of the "straight man". She's by far the most normal of the show's cast, and she's often the first to question why the club would do something ridiculously stupid. As a result, the contrast between her and the boys becomes incredibly amusing. She's also rather naïve to social skills, being more of a book-smarts person, and her awkward disposition leads her to be more blunt than she intends to be at times and she often misses the point of what's happening, usually oblivious to when people are flirting with her. In comparison to other romance comedy protagonists, she's rather unique, as she really isn't looking for romance of any kind and doesn't even seem to notice it or even care about it. She occasionally has tender moments with some of the members that crush on her, but she seems to not even think about it later on anyway. Seeing a female anime character as independent as her (without making a point of just how independent she is) is really shocking, especially in a romance anime, so she's a very refreshing character for sure. Being Caitlin Glass in the dub certainly helps.

Haruhi is by far one of my favorite female anime characters, as she reverses so many tropes that anime likes to shove down our throats with most of its women and provides an excellent comedic foil to most of the cast of the show.
Spoiler : 6 :
I literally watch this anime just to put this character on this list. And really, after watching it, I don't think people can realy complain that he's on here. He's so legendary a main character that not putting him here almost seemed criminal to me. And so...
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"I'm just an old-fashioned cowboy."
Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
Honestly, him only being number 6 shocked even me. Spike Spiegel is the main character of Cowboy Bebop, one of the most famous anime in the entire American anime community, often considered the best anime of all time and one of the anime to watch before you die. I watched it recently and I can totally see why. It's full of action, charm, adventure, and has one of the coolest main characters in well...anything.

Spike Spiegel is a bounty hunter aboard the spaceship the Bebop, working with his partner Jet Black and the recent additions to the crew Faye Valentine and Radical Edward to collect bounties placed on the many different criminals and outlaws of the universe in order to get the money they need to...well, eat, for one. With his skills with firearms and martial arts and his spaceship, the Swordfish, Spike hunts down bounties and looks cool while doing it. He's also voiced by Steve Blum, who, if you know me at all, is one of my favorite male VAs in the business, and honestly, if Spike had any other voice, he wouldn't be half as cool. Blum works so perfectly for this character that the dub of Bebop literally set a standard for dubs to follow it.

Spike is an incredibly laid back character. He constantly has a cigarette hanging from his mouth, his posture makes him look like a limp scarecrow half the time, and his hair is practically a nest. He lazes around the Bebop waiting for cases that interest him, often skipping out on one if it's something boring to him. But when he's having fun with a bounty, he gets playful and confident. He practically dances around his enemies' punches when he fights, and he has no qualms with being smug towards a criminal. When he gets serious, though, he's just an unstoppable bad@$$, and his intimidation factor really increases. He takes his job lightly enough to be entertaining and fun to watch, but seriously enough to not look at him as a total slacker or a loser. Plus, he's just plain cool in combat.

Cowboy Bebop spoilers ahead.

His backstory's surprisingly complex. When he was younger, Spike was a part of the syndicate known as the Red Dragons. However, he met another syndicate member named Julia and fell in love, and the two made plans to escape the syndicate together after Spike faked his own death. However, another man with feelings for Julia, Vicious, discovered this, and after some complex love triangle stuff, the two were mortal enemies, Spike lost an eye and had it replaced with a fake, and he made an attempt to find out what happened to Julia and wake up from what he felt like was a vivid dream as he became a bounty hunter.

Years later, in the epic finale to the show, Real Folk Blues, Vicious has taken over the syndicate through a coup, Julia is killed and died in Spike's arms, and Spike is pissed and armed. Spike actually goes to confront Vicious directly, fighting his way through dozens of Syndicate mooks single-handedly, before the two confront each other and fight to the death at the top floor. They strike each other at the same time, and as Vicious dies instantly, Spike has the time to go back down the stair quietly, look at the room of shocked mooks, point his fingers at them, and say "Bang." before dying from a smile and waking up from this "dream" of his. Really, this was the moment Spike became an amazing protagonist. He died in a way only a character as cool as him could die, and it was by far one of the most memorable deaths in anime I've ever seen.

If I have one complaint about Spike, it's that he doesn't grow much over the series. We see him serious at the end as things all come to a conclusion, but aside from being a cool dude for the majority of the show, his personality doesn't develop much. However, what we got of Spike Spiegel definitely sets him up as one of the coolest anime characters ever, and while he isn't the most complex, I loved every minute of him being on-screen, even to the end. See you, space cowboy.
Spoiler : 5 :
Given the name pf this show...this one might get confusing.
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"And so begins my never ending hell, thanks to the eccentric Haruhi Suzumiya."
Kyon (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya)
Yes, despite the show being named after Haruhi Suzumiya, I don't see her as the protagonist of the series. That would be Kyon, the rather ordinary high school boy that just happens to be roped into the antics that come with knowing Haruhi Suzumiya. Putting him above someone as legendary as Spike Spiegel when he's by far the most standard main character on this list is a bit odd, I'm aware, but I have my reasons for enjoying Kyon as much as I do.

The plot of this show is basically that an eccentric high school girl, Haruhi Suzumiya, is essentially the unknowing god of the universe and can twist reality based on her whims without even being aware of it. Given that she's into stuff like time travellers, espers, and aliens, this creates some rather interesting situations, as those are the kind of people that suddenly find hemselves surrounding Haruhi as they attempt to keep her entertained enough so that she doesn't unknowingly get bored of the universe and end up rewriting the whole thing and essentially resetting reality. And then there's Kyon. Normal, average Kyon. Normal characters being thrown into odd situations is not a new concept. It's been done my tons and tons of anime. But Kyon is certainly a notable example of this archetype, because for one reason or another, he's the one normal human that Haruhi seems to care for or even bother talking to, and he's been roped into the role of trying to keep her from getting bored enough to destroy everything as a result.

The main appeal of Kyon comes from the fact that he's basically the snarkiest character in the entire cast. He seems to have some sort of sarcastic response to everything, and considering he's the guy in charge of monologue the narration, this is definitely a good thing. Kyon's dialogue is incredibly entertaining, and the fact that he's voiced by Crispin Freeman in the dub definitely helps this fact. While he's certainly not initially happy to be stuck in this situation at the beginning of the show, he starts to grow more attached to Haruhi and the SOS Brigade over time, though he's still as snarky as ever the whole way through. He's also the only person that can actually talk back to Haruhi and give her crap about what she's doing when she's clearly over-stepping her boundaries, so he's got more guts than one might expect from his character.

The Dissapearance of Haruhi Suzumiya spoilers ahead.

While he certainly develops in the series, it's in the movie, The Dissapearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, that Kyon shines the most and where his development really peaks. I won't spoil ALL of the facts of the movie, but during it, Kyon has to really think about whether or not he actually enjoys his time with Haruhi and the SOS Brigade when he's thrown into an alternate universe where Haruhi ISN'T the unknowing god of everything. Of course, he chooses his original universe, and in the climax of the movie, has a very dramatic inner conflict with himself where he finally breaks free of his mindset of complaining about everything and admits that he had a lot of fun with the Brigade. He also threatens to destroy the universe using Haruhi if an extremely powerful alien hivemind were to hurt his friend...and it actually works. Shockingly bad@$$ for a guy that says he dishonored his family for missing a baseball.

Kyon, while filling the role of the "relatable everyman" of the cast, manages to really shine in the show despite being the only normal human in a main cast of eccentrics and supernatural beings. I found him constantly amusing and never got tired of his sarcastic commentary on the ridiculous nature of the situations Haruhi put him in. He may not be a bad@$$ like Spike Spiegel, but he was surprisingly interesting and his personality really made him stick with me in the end.
Spoiler : 4 :
Of course I'm the kind of person to follow up a bounty hunter and the best friend of the god of the universe with a middle-aged working man.
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"It's getting to the point where I'm losing track of whether I'm raising Rin, or whether she's raising me."
Daikichi Kawachi (Usagi Drop)
First off, getting this off my chest. I'm totally ignoring the manga with this one. The manga goes a way that I'd rather it had not gone. This section refers ONLY to the current anime adaptation of Usagi Drop, okay? Okay.

Moving on, we now have Daikichi Kawachi, by far the most normal character on the list. Like, literally, if there was one person that could probably exist in real life on this list, it's Daikichi. He's a very ordinary man. He has an ordinary job, a fairly ordinary lifestyle, an ordinary appearance, and has no real special abilities, talenets, or anything that makes him particularly stand out by himself.

Instead, he has Rin.

Usagi Drop revolves around a little girl named Rin, who is believed to be the illegitimate daughter of Daikichi's grandfather. Her mom is a no-show and her father has now passed away, so the question of who will take care of her becomes a tough one amongst Daikichi's family. Everyone seems to give her good looks and she is mostly silent and stand-offish around them all, and nobody in the family wants to actually take care of her. Then in comes Daikichi, a man with no prior experience raising children that's currently in his thirties, as he stands up and casually asks Rin if she wants to live with him almost on a whim. She accepts, and the story proceeds as Daikichi tries to learn how to take care of Rin, how to keep her happy, and what changes he needs to make to his own mediocre lifestyle to reflect this sudden change.

Daikichi's likability definitely comes with his behavior towards Rin. Where the others write her off as odd and don't even seem to consider taking the responsibility of raising her, Daikichi just walks up to her and asks her to come along. He has to change a lot about his lifestyle to start taking care of Rin, but he does so with few complaints, including taking on a lower paying job just to be able to leave work on time to pick her up from school on time, getting help to take care of her when she gets sick, and even offering to adopt her just so she doesn't feel awkward for having a different surname as him in school. The sacrifices this guy is willing to make is just so respectable. And I think that's what I like most about Daikichi. I respect him. He's another "everyman" character, but he isn't a pervert or a complete loser or just selfish like most are. He's a genuinely nice guy that's a bit in over his head but is willing to make the sacrifices he needs to in order to give this little girl that he's only just met a happy life. And, of course, he ends up learning just as much from the experience as Rin does from him.

There isn't a whole lot to Daikichi's character, but like I said, he's a character I can really respect. He could have easily fallen into a cliché archetype with his set-up, but he instead became a very kind, caring, and selfless character. I ended up really liking this character and his interactions with the most adorable child in anything ever, Rin, and was really glad to have watched Usagi Drop. And not read it. Seriously let's not talk about that part.

But what's even tougher than raising a child by yourself...?
Spoiler : 3 :
...Why, raising two werewolves by yourself, of course!
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"...If you could only be one thing...would you be people? Or wolves? I want you to have that choice..."
Hana (Wolf Children)
This is the point where things got really difficult, guys, Picking my three favorites were easy, but deciding their order was a struggle and a half. It took me a while to find the right balance, and finally, I decided how it would go. These top three are very slim in their distances apart from each other, so keep that in mind.

Now, if you've spoken to me on xat recently, you might know that I totally adore Mamoru Hosoda's movie Wolf Children, and that it's become my favorite movie of all time. From the mind behind The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, this movie revolves around Hana, a young woman that meets a young man at college and falls in love. Though it's not until later that Hana learns that this man actually can transform into...well, a wolf. This doesn't stop them, though, and Hana accepts this almost immediately, and the two have two children together. But when her love dies, Hana is left alone as an unexperienced mother that must raise two children that can transform into wolves. Not exactly an easy job.

The movie follows Hana in her attempts to raise these children and give them a happy life, regardless of whether they want to grow up to be wolves or people. Of course, I end up liking her for many of the same reasons I liked Daikichi. She's here in one of the most difficult positions a young woman like her can be in; having to be a single parent, having to hide her children's abilities when they don't realize the consequences of them, and having to try and keep a steady life. Hana really pushes it the extra mile, though. She surrenders all her free time to these children, exhausting herself and having to make decisions when she isn't sure what to do, having to take care of the children when they can't be brought to a hospital easily, having to feed them and deal with them running around the house as wolves, having to deal with landlords complaining about dogs in the apartment, and having to move out of her home and quit school just to give these children a happy life.

But she never complains. She always finds a way to still smile. Even when life seems to kick her down in her attempts to raise the two, her only regret is that she couldn't teach them all that she wanted to. She still loves these children for all the trouble they give her and she is willing to put up with the hardships she needs to deal with to give them happy lives. She starts growing crops, she gets a new job, and more. She makes sacrifice after sacrifice and she never seems to have a problem with it. Even the times she does break under pressure, they all make sense, and she always manages to snap back to a smile over time. Even in the end - which I won't dare spoil - she manages to smile while making the hardest decision of her life.

Just like Daikichi, Hana's a character I can really respect. She's a very sympathetic character and, by all means, she has the right to complain every now and then. But her complete trooper attitude and her ability to constantly smile even in the hardest times, coupled with Colleen Clickenbeard's perfect performance as her in the dub, pushes her over the edge for me into being my favorite character in any movie I've ever seen.
Spoiler : 2 :
ROW, ROW, FIGHT THE POWER!
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"That's Tengen Toppa! That's Gurren Lagann! Mine is the drill...that CREATES THE HEAVENS!"
Simon the Digger (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann)
This guy. Oh man this guy. I didn't expect Simon to be as good a character as he was watching Gurren Lagann, but I was pleasantly blown away by that.

Many of you probably know that Gurren Lagann quickly became my favorite anime after I finished it recently. A lot of that was thanks to this guy here, Simon. Simon lived with his "bro", Kamina, in an underground village in a world where humanity was driven underground by a man known as the Spiral King. Kamina, the epitome of all things bad@$$ in anime, gets Simon's help when the latter finds a small drill that allows him to control a small mech that was buried underground, Lagann, and the two bust out onto the surface world. Together, they hijack another mech and combine into Gurren Lagann, and continue their quest to reclaim the surface in the name of humanity.

At the start of the series, Simon's nothing to write home about. He's a wimp and a coward, relying on Kamina to do everything and being too scared to really stand up for himself. He's seen by the others as pathetic and not fit to pilot a mech as powerful as Lagann. He can even be a little annoying with how pathetic he can be, to the point where Kamina was initially seen as more of the protagonist of the show. However, over time, Simon starts to grow stronger and more confident, due in part to Kamina's many manly speeches. Eventually, he actually grows into a complete and utter bad@$$, probably the biggest one in a show full of them. Of course, this doesn't really start until...

MANY Gurren Lagann spoilers ahead.

....Kamina dies. Simon goes into shock for a while, and basically goes crazy blowing up the enemies. Team Dai Gurren doesn't think he's fit to serve as leader, but after an eventual epiphany, Simon suddenly gains a bolt of courage and evolves into bad@$$ mode. He starts shouting Kamina-style speeches at enemies, starts going in with Gurren Lagann to lead the charge against the enemies, and even fights and kills the Spiral King. After a time skip 7 years into the future, he's the leader of the entire human society on the surface of the earth, and is even ready to be married to his love interest. However, when trouble calls in the form of the moon preparing to crash Majora's Mask style, he's thrown into a lot of controversy and serious situations...until he finally gets Gurren Lagan backs and becomes perhaps the biggest bad@$$ in all of anime. I won't spoil the conclusion of the show, but let's just say that Simon ha become a VERY cool character and that the speeches he gives are awe-inspiring, and had me so hyped I could barely stay in my seat.

Simon isn't exactly remembered as the highlight of Gurren Lagann, but I find him vastly underrated. He develops a TON over the course of the series in a very satisfying way. He starts off as a wimp that can barely handle a single gunman opponent, but by the end of the show, he's leading humanity towards victory against probably the most dangerous enemy I've seen in an anime, and becomes an incredibly motivational character. His growth into a bad@$$ is incredibly satisfying to watch and is well-done, in my opinion, and he left a huge impact on me as a character. Not to mention this is the best performance I have EVER heard out of Yuri Lowenthal, who played both the wimpy kid Simon and the awesome adult Simon perfectly. In the end, Simon is one of my favorite protagonists because he's not just a total bad@$$ and a hero, but he's one that grew from a very unexpected source, and the development was great to see. I mean, just who the hell do you think he is?
Spoiler : 1 :
Deciding between this character, Hana, and Simon was incredibly difficult. Hana's a character I really respect, while Simon's a character that I simply love to watch. I chose this character as number 1 because I felt he best encompassed both of those traits for me out of the three of them. I found myself respecting alot of his motivations and seeing him as a legitimately good person, but was also immensely entertained by his performance the whole way through. I'm sure there'll be people that disagree with me here, but I just found this character to best encompass what I like in a good protagonist. So, ladies and gentlemen.....
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"You are speaking to Member 001! Lab founder, evil genius, and mad scientist extraordinaire! 'Tis I...Hououin Kyouma!"
Okabe Rintarou (Steins;Gate)
Yes, after recently watching Steins;Gate, I hve decided that Okabe Rintarou, or "Hououin Kyouma", as he likes to call himself, was my favorite protagonist in anime. Technically he started as a visual novel character, but I haven't played the visual novel, so that's irrelevant to me, really. But now, what is it about Okabe Rintarou that makes me really like him this much as a character?

Steins;Gate is an anime that deals with time travel. Okabe and his "lab partners" (aka a hacker and a childhood friend into cosplay) accidentally create a time machine of sorts using a microwave, making them able to send things like texts back in time. As their lab grows and they run more and more tests, they expand the potential of this time machine, and craziness goes down over time as everything grows more and more complex for them.

Okabe Rintarou, an 18-year-old self-proclaimed mad scientist, is INCREDIBLY entertaining to watch. He's an eccentric and a half, insisting that people call him "Hououin Kyouma" and that he's being chased down by an organization after his intelligence, and he heads the "Future Gadget Laboratory" (aka a room rented out to him by a repair store owner) as he tries to create an assortment of odd inventions. He delivers his lines as if everything he says holds great importance, and while he's great in subs, I adore J. Michael Tatum's portrayal of him in the dub. He's hilarious in how oblivious he can be, and he never ceases to make me laugh in all of his melodramatic ways. Of course, he's also a nice guy deep down. While he loves to pick on his tsundere "assistant" Kurise, he has a deep connection with his childhood friend, Mayuri, and it's clear that he wants her to be happy. Despite his campy nature, there's a deeper level to him that I can truly respect, just like in Hana and Daikichi.

Major spoilers for Steins;Gate ahead.

The part where he shines most is after Mayuri is killed by people desiring the time machine. Okabe manages to use the time machine to send his consciousness back in time to go save Mayuri. However, time seems fixed on having her die at a certain time no matter how hard he tries to prevent it. He ends up going back in time over and over and over again, being the only one to remember what happened every single time, practically going mad just to protect his friend. He eventually reveals that he made up everything about the organization and Hououin Kyouma intentionally, just to keep life interesting for Mayuri after she almost gave up on it once. He starts trying to undo every major change to time he and the others made with their time machine, insisting on getting some sort of finality for each person they did a favor too so that they can make the decision to undo the mistakes themselves, never telling Mayuri what he knows. He keeps doing this over and over again, bearing with the pain of his knowledge as he tries to reach a happy ending for time where hopefully everyone lives.

It's this almost noble mentality Okabe has that makes me like him most. He tries his hardest to make his friend happy and save everyone, and he alone has to suffer the memories of going over the same span of time over and over and over again. It's clear that he wants to have a happy ending to this story, and as he develops into someone who gloats less and is willing to sacrifice everything for his loved ones and go the extra mile to make others happy before the world has to be reset. The lengths he goes to are downright honorable, and by the end of the show, I felt myself cheering for Okabe the whole way, making him the highlight of the show for me.

Like I said, Okabe encompasses everything I like in a protagonist. He has an entertaining personality, a respectable mindset, great interactions, great voice acting, and a lot of good character development. Like I said, I'm sure there are people that will disagree with me on this choice, but hey, that's what this topic's for anyway. Regardless, Okabe Rintarou is my favorite anime protagonist so far, and whether or not that will one day change...well, we'll see.
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Hersh/Fiendy has credit for the amazing GiGi pics and enigma has credit for the adorable Kenshin Mega Man sprite!

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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by Lind »

Copying you.
Top Ten Favourite Anime Protagonists
Spoiler : 10 :
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Youko Nakajima (Twelve Kingdoms)
Youko Nakajima isn't always a likeable character, but god damn is she a believable one.

It’s very rare to find a character who you initially want to backhand into submission, who promptly develops so well that they scale the ranks of your favourite characters. Youko Nakajima is one of those characters. Early on, she is horrifically whiny, insecure, spineless, and self-pitying. And then she’s thrown into a strange world full of monsters and other strange creatures. She doesn’t take well to it, to say the least.

What’s weird is that, even before she truly develops, Twelve Kingdoms actually fleshes her out as one among that rare breed of characters who, despite being utterly hateable, is still a good character. It takes a few episodes, but we quickly come to understand that Youko is only the way she is due to a crippling fear of being judged. She’s constantly been acting up to the way everyone wants her to be, due to overly expectant parents. She has been totally, and utterly repressed her entire life.

What’s even more interesting is that her development isn't even a point A to point B thing. She only really starts to develop when she gets betrayed by her friend… at which point her cluelessness turns to cynicism, and then anger. It’s only after she finally comes to trust Rakushun, her new companion, that she really begins to adjust to her surroundings, and finally become a competent and adjusted individual, and then a confident warrior, poised to do what is right and take the throne that was rightfully hers.

But even following that, the first arc, which would be an obvious point at which to end a character's development - IT KEEPS GOING. Just because she's the Queen now doesn't mean she's suddenly perfect, and Twelve Kingdoms really thinks through all the struggles of someone who ascends the throne without knowledge of their own country through.
Spoiler : 9 :
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Taichi Keaton (Master Keaton)
Taichi Keaton, AKA "Master Keaton" (oh hey that's the name of the show), is an archaeologist, former MI6 agent, university professor, and insurance worker. No, really, all of those things.

The way Keaton is characterised is quite interesting, because by making him so incredibly capable they ran the risk of making him implausible and overpowered - but fantastically, they used this to their advantage, showing the drawbacks that being so worldly actually has for him - in particular, how it affected his marriage and his relationship with his father. It really says a lot that the more flawed as a person Keaton became, the better we understood him as a character, and the more likeable he became.

In the hands of a lesser writer he would be a Gary Stu, but in Urasawa's hands, it's refreshing to see someone so utterly ordinary and yet extraordinary at the same time.
Spoiler : 8 :
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Watashi (Humanity Has Declined)
Take the guns away from Kino and put her in a satirical, off-kilter comedy and what do you get?

Watashi (which means "I", or "Myself" or something along those lines in Japanese - we never actually learn her name) from Humanity Has Declined is what we get.

Watashi is a good fit to the show she's from - she looks and sounds sweet, but in reality she is sarcastic, witty, cunning, and just the teensiest bit evil.

Most things about her are unknown - though we get a bit of backstory about her, it doesn't tell us that much, and if anything it raises further questions. Her Kyon-esque wit and snark leaves us with some great one-liners... which, while good lines on there own, work so much better simply because her unreadable mask of a perpetual cheerful tone makes sure you never expect any of the darker or more mocking things she says.
Spoiler : 7 :
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Kyon (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya)
Going from Kyon-esque wit, to... well, Kyon.

I'm not really sure what I can say about Kyon that hasn't already been said. The show was f**king omnipresent in the mid-to-late 2000s, and as such every detail about it, and Kyon, has been discussed to death - including the popular theory that I personally love about Kyon being the god, not Haruhi. Which, with the existence of Disappearance, has only become more plausible.

But in short, Kyon singlehandedly elevated The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya from one of the few good moeblobs to almighty king moeblob, and to this day I consider it one of few anime by my mortal enemies Kyoto Animation that actually lived up to the hype. Sure, it was well-written, the characters were great, the premise was fantastic, but there's no denying that Kyon's wonderfully snarky narration was the winning factor.

CRISPIN FREEMAN
Spoiler : 6 :
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Kaiji Itou (Kaiji)
Kaiji is extremely prone to being too trusting. He gets backstabbed more times than I can even remember. He goes through the same cycle so many times: gullibility, despair, and an awesome comeback.

But in the long run, Kaiji just does not learn from his mistakes… and that’s a part of why we love him. We’ve already had a character on here who is great because of how well his faults are developed, but here we have a character we actually enjoy for his faults. It’s very endearingly human of Kaiji to be so helpless.

Of course the other half of why we love Kaiji is because when he makes his comeback then god have mercy on your soul.

It’s this exact combination that has formed the phrase “MoeGAR”. It’s a perfect description of Kaiji. Pure adorable manliness.
Spoiler : 5 :
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Joseph Joestar (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)
Joseph Joestar is perhaps the quintessential JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure character.

While Joseph is a dead ringer for Jonathan in appearance, you would never mistake one for the other – they’re polar opposites in terms of personality. Where Jonathan was noble, gentlemanly, and generically heroic, Joseph is brash, loud, and not afraid to pick a fight.

On top of that, he’s not just willing to fight dirty – fighting dirty is his defining character trait. Not that he is without a sense of honour, though – his reasoning for picking fights is always noble (well, almost), and does not hesitate to put himself in harm’s way for a loved one.

While this does, to some degree, make him sound like a standard idiot hero shonen protagonist, the key factor that sets Joseph apart from the ilk is that his attitude is misleading – he’s incredibly smart and quick-witted, and always prepared. Joseph is a big fan of Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War”, and it shows in his continued pragmatism in combat and his constant trickery.
Spoiler : 4 :
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Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
Obvious? Yes. Obvious for a reason? Dear gods, yes.

Shinichiro Watanabe is a genius.

Seriously. In Spike Spiegel, he has managed to create arguably the coolest character in existence, the best example of the badass with a dark and troubled past, and a brilliant landmark in characterisation techniques… and he makes it all look effortless.

In Spike Spiegel, Bebop displays a masterclass in the balance between telling us as little as possible whilst telling us just enough. The result of this is a character who is developed, but still leaves so many questions, all of which are better off not answered… Spike is the kind of character for whom this would just ruin the mystery.

Interestingly, unlike most didactic characters, you don’t even really need to understand Spike in order to enjoy him, seeing how he is the perfect mesh of historical pop-culture coolness, landing somewhere between Clint Eastwood and Arsene Lupin III and covering a vast array of badass coolness inbetween. He’s enjoyable on a level as simple as that, but is also extremely well-developed.

It’s really hard to name a character who just plain works as well as Spike does.
Spoiler : 3 :
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Light Yagami (Death Note)
There is literally nothing I can say here that will not start an argument.
Spoiler : 2 :
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Kino (Kino's Journey)
Kino is an utter wellspring of depth, bringing an oddly neutral sense of philosophy into every episode. A lot of people would claim that Kino is soulless, but I think there’s clear evidence to the contrary. While it generally is her principle to merely observe and avoid interference, she occasionally feels obligated to help people, for example in episodes 2, 7, and 13. You can also clearly see her struggling against it and judging the culture she is introduced to in episode 12, which I think was excellent buildup for episode 13.

On top of that, Kino is one of those rare characters who is wise beyond their years where you can honestly feel the weight of their wisdom behind them. Kino’s drive is quite clear; to observe and find out more about the world, and you can feel every bit of the experience she’s had in the way she talks.

If there was a fault with Kino during the series, it would be that what we see of her 12-year-old self and the 15-year-old self we see in every other episode leaves quite a big gap that leaves you to wonder where she gained all her skills. However, the OVA “Life Goes On” bridges that gap excellently, showing how Kino came to become as excellent of a Gunslinger as she is now. You can also see her personality in it being in something of a formative stage between one and the other. There is a clear difference between her personality in the series and her personality in the OVA, and she leans more towards flashback Kino, but you can see that she is starting to change.
Spoiler : HONULABURU MENSHANZU :
Tatsuhir Satou (Welcome to the N.H.K!)
Nana "Hachi" Komatsu (NANA)
Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura)
Kiichi Goto (Patlabor 2)
Haruhi Fujioka (Ouran High School Host Club)
Natsume Takashi (Natsume Yuujinchou)
Guts (Berserk)
Kusuriuri (Mononoke)
Kyouko Mogami (Skip Beat!)
Ginko (Mushishi)
Spoiler : 1 :
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Yang Wenli (Legend of the Galactic Heroes)
Yang Wenli is absolutely amazing. He is simultaneously the most normal and yet the most abnormal protagonist any anime has ever had. I think LotGH's masterstroke in Yang is that because there are so many characters, and subsequently so many angles to tell the story from, that they don't really need any one character to take the perspective of. In that way, Yang is just another human caught up in this war, and has a set of reactions that are uniquely his, and not just to demonstrate the ways the author wants us to feel about the plot.

What's also impressive about Yang is that he is a man who is able to think on a perspective greater than himself, and rather than focusing on thing in the present, as he is a historian, he tends to focus on the future - and how the present will be viewed when it is the past. A lot of which depends on who wins the war. Another notable trait of Yang, and perhaps his most "heroic", despite him actively decrying hero worship, is his total lack of pride, and attempts to view himself objectively - because no matter how just he may be, the fact is that he has killed millions of people.
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by enigma »

Top 10 Mascot Characters


What is an anime without a mascot character? ...Still an anime. Really. Mascot characters aren't, like, a make or break an anime thing. In any case, the mascot character has become a staple of anime, and so I have taken the time to provide you with my top 10. Make note this is only personal opinion. But if you don't exactly share my opinion 100%, then you're wrong and a dummy. Absolutely.

Also note, that my definition of mascot here is a "non-human character that represents the series/people commonly think of when thinking of a series." Now, then. With that said let's jump right in! Also, do note that I'm not going to be warning you of spoilers but I will note what series each character is from so if you plan to read/watch that series, close it immediately. (None of these characters are spoilers themselves, though one of them has an image that may be slightly spoilery.)
Spoiler : Number 10 :
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Maromi (Paranoia Agent)
"You're thinking too hard. Take a rest. Take a rest. Take a rest..."

Honestly, at first, I wasn't planning on giving Maromi a spot on this list. Because, frankly, they don't do very much in the series. What changed my mind (besides a desperation to fill spots) was noticing a certain trend that appears later on in the list that, personally, I feel Maromi was sort of already doing and was doing the best. And that's to do with what Maromi "means".

Maromi's role in Paranoia Agent is to essentially be Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Pikachu and more. Essentially, every popular mascot character. Ever. But what makes them so interesting is what the show uses them to say. Throughout the series, Maromi grows in popularity and becomes bigger and bigger as, in tandem, the character of Li'l Slugger (a paranormal figure on roller-skates who viciously attacks people who feel "cornered" with a golden baseball bat) grows. As the series goes on, we find out that Maromi and Li'l Slugger are sort of one and the same. They're both excuses, escapes. Maromi soothes you and provides an escape into escapism and fantasy. Whereas Li'l Slugger provides an escape into running from your problems, by heading into bigger problems that make those other problems insignificant. And, by the end of the series, these methods of escape both go out of control. And this is where we best see Maromi's meaning, as they "transport" the protagonist(s) into a fantasy world where everything is happy and great and they don't have to confront the problems now destroying the city they live in.

As a means of criticising escapism and mascot characters, Maromi performs their role brilliantly. And so, despite not doing much, I am happy to give them the 10th spot purely based on how well they performed their role within the story.
Spoiler : Number 9 :
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Doraemon (Doraemon)
"You think too much, Nobita. You can’t be the most useless person in the world. There is always someone inferior.”

Originally, I was planning to give Doraemon the 10th spot as a recognition of their popularity and impact as a phenomenon of sorts (I typically feel spot ten should just go to the most popular of characters). In the end, due to my inclusion of Maromi, they have been moved up a spot. But that's fine, since I must say that Doraemon is a fun enough character to be deserving of a boost up.

Doraemon is a character who is presented with two jobs. That of a mentor, of sorts, or a helper and that of a companion. In the first role, Doraemon's main job is to help his owner, Nobita, be...Well, less of a loser and to look out for him. He does the latter quite well, constantly being there to help the kid out. The former? Well... Let's just say that his methods (specifically, the inventions he uses) tend to have comical side effects. As for being a companion... I feel that Doraemon sort of develops subtley over the series. He begins as simply providing his inventions to Nobita. However, as it goes on the two do gain quite a nice relationship, growing quickly to become best friends.

Overall, Doraemon does his job/role nicely enough and he's a quirky, fun enough character to deserve a spot on the list.
Spoiler : Number 8 :
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Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro)
"To-to-ro? You're Totoro!... I bet you're Totoro... "

Honestly, everything I write here basically equates to "I love the totoro movie and totoro is super charming and cute and I want to hug him". So... Uh... Personal opinions, yay~!
Spoiler : Number 7 :
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Paya-Tan (Dai Mahou Touge/Magical Witch Punie-chan)
Sadly, I couldn't find a quote. So, I may as well give as fun fact. Did you know his last name is Livingstone?

Paya-tan is sort of an interesting character to look at. I think what personally got me to include them is something as simple as them being directly acknowledged as a "necessary mascot character" in the episode they first appeared. That and how heavily it both invokes and subverts mascot tropes with Paya-tan being intentionally designed to be super cute looking and to act extremely cutesy. And is also involved heavily in war with a massive kill count, constantly attempting to murder it's owner, being an all around secretly violent sociopath... Maybe it's my own personal enjoyment out of seeing happy fluffy things acting dark and out of the norm to a comedic effect, maybe Paya-tan really is as funny as I find them. In any case, they've made it onto the list.
Spoiler : Number 6 :
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Sgt. Keroro (Sgt. Frog/Keroro Gunso)
"An alien? That's ridiculous! I'm just a normal Pekoponian frog creature that talks because of magic wonder dust."

Besides the fact that Keroro is a hillariously lovable jerk, there is another reason they've specifically gotten onto the list. And that's with how he plays with the mascot formula. There is no doubt that Keroro feels like a typical mascot character. They're a cute, goofy. cartoony animal-esque creature which looks good on phone straps and as a plush toy. However, they have a personality that completely subverts the norm of mascot characters. Mascot characters are, typically, cheery and happy characters who act adorable and friendly. Keroro is a slob, an otaku, a greedy money-grubber and all around pathetic guy. He fits more into the character type of the "gross"comic relief character, rather than the cute mascot. Heck, descriptions of the character go out of their way to describe him as slimey and gross. It's even common for him to be drawn with creepy expressions that emphasise teeth and saliva in a semi-realistic, human style. Which is, well, fitting considering he's an alien invader here to kill all humans and take over earth.

So, by all means, Keroro doesn't follow the typical formula for the cute mascot character. And yet, they still feel like one and are, in fact, quite popular with a lot of merchandise being made of them that emphasises that "mascot" nature.

So, for playing with the formula and experimenting to such a high degree, while still managing to keep the mascot flavour... Keroro deserves a spot on this list.
Spoiler : Number 5 :
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Teddie (Persona 4)
"BEAR-SONA!"

Teddie takes the number 5 spot, simply because it's not common for a mascot character to have development. And while Teddie's personality stays mostly the same, he does have his own trials and tribulations to go through. He starts off not knowing who he is and is distrustful of strangers. And then, through the series, he makes friends and comes to confront who he really is, eventually becoming his own person. He even goes through his own trials and tribulations different to the main groups, and actually manages to defeat a nice enough number of enemies. These aren't things typically afforded to the mascot character, so it's nice enough to see. And refreshing enough to get them put on the list.
Spoiler : Number 4 :
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Dung-Beetle/Koyemshi (Bokurano)
"There are many people who say that there's a god somewhere up there but, god is nothing more than a formula. Just a part of some law of physics that we have yet to understand."

A mascot character that is intentionally meant to be hated, rather than adored, AND has depth to them?!

Dung-Beetle is a sarcastic, sadistic, seemingly manipulative asshole. He's built to be someone you hate, someone you despise. And he does that well. However, through the series we start getting more and more of why he is how he is. And, while it isn't enough to make him fully sympathetic, it's enough to make the reader feel they understand him a bit better. Long story short, Dung-Beetle used to be a kid forced into the whole "mecha death fight" thing, just like the protagonists of the series. He was one of the last alive, and was turned into...well, the mascot character you now see and made to act as a "mentor" for the next group of kids. And one of those kids, just happens to be his sister who got to move to the world of the protagonists as well. So, he's not exactly enjoying himself, so it's no wonder he's such a jerk. But, purely the level of making the mascot character intentionally unlikable and with a nice, healthy layer of depth to them is a pretty fresh thing to do. And a good way to land on this list.
Spoiler : Number 3 :
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Monokuma (Dangan Ronpa)
"You're at a picnic and you find a dead body! XD "

Monokuma is a mascot character of pure evil. His one goal? Despair. His job? Getting kids to murder eachother. Why he's on this list? The cleverness of the subversion/parody.

Monokuma is so well designed to mimic the typical mascot character that it actually works to make him even more unsettling and vicious. For example. He uses puns and silly jokes frequently. He's designed to look extremely fluffy and round. Hell, even being a stuffed plush pushes him well into that area. He pushes how "cute" he is at certain points.

In fact, his very concept of a robot bear (especially with his overly round design) feels reminiscent of the extremely popular mascot of Doraemon. He even has the same voice actor for crying out loud!

In my humble opinion, Monokuma works really well as a dark parody of the generic/typical mascot character. And the fact that he's so delightfully evil further pushes them as a mascot to be placed on this list.
Spoiler : Number 2 :
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Kyuubey (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)
"Of course you can, just make a contract with me, and become a magical girl. "

Well, it's one thing to make an evil mascot. It's another to then make them a hyper-competent, hyper-intelligent, sociopathic, threatening villain. I'd say one of the hardest things for someone to do is to take something cute, and without changing anything about them switch them from something adorable to something creepy and threatening. Kyuubey does this quite well. Without changing his expression or tone of voice or even how they act, they go from being a typical magical girl mascot animal to becoming one of the most well-known and popular villains in anime. Most of the way this is acheived is through new information revealed and through the use of context. Still, there's quite a lot of clever design elements that help make Kyuubey an unsettlingly effective villain. For one, there's the obvious "red eyes, take warning" but there's also the small subtle things. Like how Kyuubey's expression is constantly frozen and never changes, hinting towards it being fake and insincere and to Kyuubey not feeling any changes in whatever they feel (aka. nothing).

To Kyuubey's credit, he is also effective in his plans, so it's not like they're a simple or incompetent villain. And there is the fact that he's cold and logical, making them quite clever and strategic. Which leads into the fact that he is actually working towards a goal, and that goal does make sense to him, so unlike the vague "despair" of Monokuma, he has motivations for everything he does beyond being evil for evil's sake. Overall, he plays his role well and is just generally a well designed character.


Oh, and just as a fun fact. Did you ever realise that Kyuubey... Is just the guy from the electricity company? Essentially the Homer Simpson of his planet.
And the number 1 Mascot Character is.....
Spoiler : Number 1 :
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Koro-Sensei (Ansatsu Kyoushitsu)
“The happiest moment you can have as a teacher is when you’re uncertain and your Students… Provide you with a clear answer from the very teachings you have given them.”

Koro-sensei (a pun on unkillable, korosenai, and teacher, sensei) is an unstoppable alien force which plans to destroy the earth, unless he can be assassinated before that "due date" by the students of the ordinary and plain class-E. He's also the greatest fictional teacher ever.

Yes, from the start I've had Koro-sensei pegged as my number 1 mascot character. To begin with, I will start by saying that Koro-sensei is an extremely charming and likable character. He constantly works hard to teach and look after the students of Class-E, while actively encouraging them to aim to assassinate him. And, really, it's this dynamic which most pushes him to the top of this list. Koro-sensei is both our primary antagonist... And yet, sort of one of our protagonists? In the story, we want our protagonists to succeed and to see them kill the unkillable Koro-sensei before the world ends. But, at the same time, over the course of the series Koro-sensei becomes almost a friend to the reader. And the harder you think about what the good guys winning really means, the sadder the inevitable becomes.

Though, I should mention, Koro-sensei plays the role of a formidable opponent extremely well too. He's extremely fast, extremely smart and extremely powerful so he sets a challenge for both our protagonists AND the reader. To work out how he could even possibly be defeated. And people do come close often enough to make that challenge feel possible. That, and his numerous human flaws (things like his want to show off to his class and such) keep him from feeling like an overpowered jackass.

On top of that, his insistence and encouragement towards the class to kill him both sets up conflict for the reader and a sort of mystery. Why DOES Koro-sensei want his class to kill him? Or, does he not want them to kill him but just likes showing off? He doesn't seem like he underestimates the class... For a charming, quirky comedy manga it's surprisingly good at making you think, especially in relation to the number 1 mascot character of this list... Koro-sensei.
And that concludes my list of the Top 10 mascot characters. I hope you enjoyed it, whether or not you agreed with me. Just remember! It's all personal opinion. Still, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by DLA »

Top 10 Favorite Top-Hat-Wearing Villains
What self-respecting villain doesn't wear a top hat? Well, many of them, actually. However, many of my favorite villains wear top hats, and so I decided to make a list of these villainous men with good taste in headgear.
Spoiler : Honorable Mentions :
Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls)
Hatter (American McGee's Alice)
Spoiler : 10 :
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Mr. Poe (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
You may be thinking, "Detective, Mr. Poe isn't a villain! He didn't do anything!" And you would be right. He didn't do anything, which is why I consider him a villain. For those who haven't read the books, he's a banker in charge of finding a good home for the Baudelaire orphans and managing their fortune. He completely fails at the former, ignoring their cries for help when they say Count Olaf is around and he clearly is, not being able to see through any of Olaf's paper-thin disguises, and stands around doing nothing but coughing and being unhelpful. Lemony Snicket says this was intentional, and because of this I consider the guy a villain. He's supposed to be helpful but is completely useless, and sometimes even causes more trouble. He never listens to the children, even when they're falsely accused of various crimes they clearly didn't commit. And so, because he never feels like doing anything and is almost as bad as the likes of Count Olaf and the hook-handed man, he's number 10 on this list.
Spoiler : 9 :
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Jeeves Weevil (Courage the Cowardly Dog)
This being a DLA list, of course there was going to be a Courage the Cowardly Dog villain somewhere. The main characters are driving and accidentally hit this guy, and of course give him dinner. He acts really polite and helpful, basically acting as a butler, but then starts sucking the life force out of Eustace and Muriel. Pretty disgusting, I know. The reason this guy is higher up than Mr. Poe is because he's actually a villain, and a manipulative one at that. More than creepy when I was a little kid. Because of this, he's number 9 on this list.
Spoiler : 8 :
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The Penguin (Batman)
No top ten villains with top hats list is complete without Mr. Cobblepot, though I'm not sure how many of those lists exist besides this one. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, also known as The Penguin, is a self-proclaimed "gentleman of crime", who uses various trick umbrellas as weapons. Some of these include a sword umbrella, a flamethrower umbrella, a machine gun umbrella, and a helicopter umbrella. He also uses trained birds and has a submarine that looks like a penguin. He is an interesting villain, due to being one of the few Batman villains who is sane, and in some stories he is an information broker. He's a fascinating villain, has a great evil laugh, and thus is number 8 on this list.
Spoiler : 7 :
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Masked Gentleman (Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask)
Masked Gentleman isn't my favorite Layton villain, but I still think he's pretty interesting. He terrorizes the city of Monte d'Or with his trickery, including making people disappear, turning people into stone, turning people into horses, and making paintings come to life. His theme music is pretty awesome, though his identity was predictable(not going to say here to avoid spoilers). Definitely not the best Layton villain, but he was still interesting.
Spoiler : 6 :
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Count Cannoli (Wario: Master of Disguise)
Okay, so I'm probably one of the few people on AAO who has any idea who this guy is. Well, let me give you a little bit of background. Count Cannoli was a rich gentleman thief also known as The Silver Zephyr who could change his costume with the power of his magic wand that just happens to be alive, Goodstyle. Sound ridiculous yet? That's because it was all happening in a TV show. Wario used a helmet to get him inside the show, and he took Cannoli's magic wand, preventing him from transforming and leaving him basically powerless. Cannoli pursues Wario through the game trying to take his wand back, but he does it in awesome mechs. The Mad Hat mechs look pretty cool, but are pretty easy to take down. The guy can also get pretty annoying at this one point where if he so much as gets near you, you lose. Definitely not the best, but he was still an entertaining villain for the game.
Spoiler : 5 :
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Count Bleck (Super Paper Mario)
Bleh heh heh heh heh heh... Of course Count Bleck had to be on here somewhere! This guy was awesome! He had an awesome evil laugh, awesome theme music, and a boss fight that was at least a little bit of a challenge, unlike a certain other boss fight in the game (most people who have played it will know what I'm talking about). He managed to get together one of the funnest teams of henchmen in video games, and was quite entertaining through the whole game. His cane and monocle are also awesome, but this is a list of top hat wearing villains, so I won't talk about those as much. Overall, this guy was a pretty great villain.
Spoiler : 4 :
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Kaitou Kid (Case Closed/Detective Conan)
Most of you could have probably predicted this guy would be on here. Kaitou Kid is a master thief and magician who steals diamonds and other gems, leaving a calling card before he commits the thefts. He has a gun that shoots playing cards, a hang-glider cape, and smoke bombs, and is a master of disguise. I haven't seen much of him, which is why I haven't written much on him here, but from what I have seen, he's a fascinating villain, and that's why he's number 4 on this list.
Spoiler : 3 :
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Mumbo (Teen Titans)
I didn't watch much Teen Titans when it was still around, and I don't remember a lot, but one of the most memorable parts of the show for me was this guy. Already a magician villain sounds a lot of fun, and the first episode I watched with him confirmed this for me. We discover he has an entire world inside his hat, mainly filled with clones of his. This episode was really fun for me because of all the crap this guy manages to pull with his magic, usually leading to hilarious results. I went into that episode not really knowing what to expect since it was one of the first episodes of Teen Titans I watched, and I finished that episode having enjoyed it a lot. This guy was really a fun villain, and because of that, I've given him number 3 on this list.
Spoiler : 2 :
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P.B. Winterbottom (The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom)
Everyone's (or at least mine) favorite pie-stealing crudstache, P.B. Winterbottom basically causes utter chaos in the city he lives in, breaking the clock tower, causing a fire in the bakery, and messing up the sewer system, and why does he do all this? To steal pies, of course! Winterbottom is one of my favorite examples of a villain protagonist, using his time travel clones in order to retrieve pies he can't normally get to, and trying to get the Chronoberry Pie. By the end of the game, he's fixed up all the problems he caused, and finally gets the Chronoberry Pie he had been chasing, but at this point doesn't care any more and just walks away, unknowingly leaving one more time travel clone. Though he is the protagonist of the game and he does eventually fix things up, he's still a bit of a villain, and is one of my favorites on this list. What could possibly top a pie-stealing gentleman thief with time powers and a magician with an entire world inside his hat?
Spoiler : 1 :
This guy. Okay, so if I had done this list before recently, this guy wouldn't be on here. I remember about a week ago, Got told me there was a character in this anime he was watching that reminded him a lot of me. I decided to check it out, and I discovered this magnificent guy.
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Mad Pierrot (Cowboy Bebop)
I had never seen Cowboy Bebop up to now, and I only checked it out to take a look at this guy. Top hat, gun cane, crapton of weapons. Already this seems awesome. The fact that he can fly and has a force field is also a bonus. But then we get the backstory, and that makes him so much scarier.

Major spoilers for the Cowboy Bebop episode "Pierrot Le Fou" ahead.

We find out this guy isn't just some regular old man. He was some guy that was being experimented on to become the ultimate killer, with the previously mentioned force field and the ability to fly. The experiments drove him completely insane and caused his mind to degrade into a child-like state. He tracked down the people responsible for the experiments and killed them all, then trying to kill the main character, and inviting him to an amusement park, trying to kill him again several times until crushed by a giant mechanical dog. It's a shame he's only a one episode character, because he seemed really interesting. I don't know how I didn't know about this guy until now, but because of this. he's number 1 on this list.
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The Final but not so ending chapter.
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by Lind »

TOP 10 ALBUMS

Restricting myself to one album per band/artist.
Spoiler : 10 :
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Weezer - Pinkerton
Highlights: Tired of Sex, Across the Sea, Butterfly
Spoiler : 9 :
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The Beatles - Abbey Road
Highlights: Octopus's Garden, I Want You (She's So Heavy), Here Comes the Sun, Carry That Weight
Spoiler : 8 :
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Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Highlights: Break My Body, River Euphrates, Where Is My Mind?
Spoiler : 7 :
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Metallica - Master of Puppets
Highlights: Battery, Master of Puppets, Orion
Spoiler : 6 :
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David Bowie - Low
Highlights: Breaking Glass, Warszawa, Subterraneans
Spoiler : 5 :
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King Crimson - In The Court of Crimson King
Highlights: 21st Century Schizoid Man, In The Court of the Crimson King
Spoiler : 4 :
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Jeff Buckley - Grace
Highlights: Grace, Last Goodbye, Hallelujah
Spoiler : 3 :
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Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
Highlights: Singapore, Jockey Full of Bourbon, Hang Down Your Head, Downtown Train
Spoiler : 2 :
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Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade
Highlights: Something I Learned Today, Broken Home Broken Heart, Chartered Trips, Pink Turns To Blue
Spoiler : HONOURABLE MENTIONS :
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Screaming Trees - Dust
Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones
Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come
The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Big Black - Atomizer
Nirvana - In Utero
At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command
Spoiler : 1 :
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Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica
Highlights: Ella Guru, Moonlight on Vermont, My Human Gets Me Blues, Pena
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by gotMLK7 »

As many of you know, I spent my summer vacation largely binge-watching anime this year. I ended up watching 14 anime in full, and I greatly enjoyed...most of them. But I had to ask myself the question, what was my favorite? My least? Well I think it's time for...

The Top 14 Anime I Watched This Summer Break


I'll be counting down all of the anime that I watched and finished during my summer break in 2014. I won't be counting any of the shows I saw before I graduated from high school or after I started college (so sadly I can't add Madoka Magica, Welcome to the NHK, or DuRaRaRa). It'll be from my least favorite show I watched to my favorite. I'll be giving a quick summary of the show's premise, the pros and cons of the show in my opinion, my favorite and least favorite aspects of it, and my final thoughts. It's a pretty straight-forward rule set, so let's get started.
Spoiler : Number 14 :
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"What's the difference between the real world and the virtual one?"
Sword Art Online
Yes, predictably, the 2012 hit Sword Art Online was my least favorite show that I saw this summer. This is one of two that I watched through with my sister and we went in expecting it to be bad from reviews, but I don't think we were prepared for a lot of what this show through at us.

Summary: A boy named Kirito enters the world of a virtual reality MMORPG, Sword Art Online. However, the game's creator traps all of the players within the game and forces them to play the game. If someone beats the final boss of the game, they'll all be released. However, should anyone die in the game, they are killed in real life. Kirito makes it his goal to beat the final boss and get out of SAO, and along the way he meets other players in the game and grows extremely powerful. Will he be able to escape this virtual world with his friends when so many people are already dying?

The Pros: This show had a lot of potential to be great, in my opinion. The animation is very crisp and the character design is mostly quite nice. The action scenes are stylish and exciting. The dub has a great cast, in my opinion, with the recent master of protagonists Bryce Papenbrook as Kirito, a decent Cherami Leigh performance as the love interest Asuna, one of my favorite voice actresses Cassandra Lee Morris as Leafa from arc 2, and basically the entire cast of Madoka Magica is in there somewhere. I loved the voice acting so that was nice. Also, a great Yuki Kajiura soundtrack always helps a show. Some of the side characters were pretty cool, too, with special mention going to Klein for just sort of being likable and not being totally screwed up. Which brings me to...

The Cons: Oh jeeze. Kirito, the protagonist, really ruins a lot of the show. He's bland with little backstory (at least very little relevant backstory), and he attracts women like the main character of an ecchi show despite doing next to nothing particuarly charming. He's a bland character whose very presence just sorta makes other characters around him worse. Speaking of which, the cast developed horribly, as most female characters were there to fall in love with Kirito and be swiftly ignored for the rest of the show, and the main romantic interest had just an annoyingly rushed romance with him. Which brings me to the pacing, which was a major downfall to the show. Everything that felt like it should have been shown was summarized or shown only briefly (they defeat most of the bosses off-screen) and what WAS shown felt like total filler (why introduce characters like Lizbeth and Silica if they're not going to contribute to the plot at all?), and time passage was poorly shown; 2 months passed between the first and second episodes and it felt like a day went past. The emotional response to the scenario was well-done sometimes and other times it felt just bizarre. There was a second arc halfway through the show that introduced a new MMO that felt totally pointless and just did a lot poorly, including the most awkward romantic sub-plot I've seen in a mainstream anime. The villains of BOTH these arcs were terrible, with the first one having no good motivation and the second one being so ridiculously despicable that he felt like a parody of a villain. Add in unnecessary fanservice and the like and you get a show that can be really hard to stomach at times. The show had a lot of potential to be good but my god was it really dropped the ball too often to actually enjoy in full.

High Point: The English dub cast, particularly Cassandra Morris for making Leafa more tolerable given the role the story gave her.
Low Point: Kirito.

Final Thoughts: Sword Art Online is a show that could have been great but did a lot of what it should have done completely wrong. When I have to look at things as "Man I would have liked that if it weren't in SAO", there's a problem. So yes, this was the worst anime I watched during the summer, but on the bright side, it's the only one I have mostly negative feelings about.
Spoiler : Number 13 :
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"Hey Mom...I met someone. She's strong...and she's beautiful...and she's a boy."
Princess Jellyfish
The other show I watched alongside my sister. This show was always one that looked like it would be amazing to me and seemed like it would be an instant classic, but when I sat down and watched it through...I admit that it didn't live up to my expectations.

Summary: Tsukimi is a jellyfish-obsessed girl with crippling social anxiety, living with a "sisterhood" of similarly anti-social women that hate handsome men, glamorous women, and a majority of society in general. However, a boy named Kuranosuke, the son of a wealthy businessman that enjoys dressing up in drag and acting as a woman, forces himself into their life as he tries to help them out and befriend Tsukimi and the group. Drama follows as the overly outgoing Kuranosuke and the awkward sisterhood interact and as life just gets more complicated for each of them.

The Pros: The show is not bad, I will say that. It has a lot of good in it. Kuranosuke and Tsukimi are pretty good characters with good designs, and they were interesting to watch. The animation is nice, too, and it makes characters rather unique; Tsukimi doesn't look like a generic anime girl, she actually looks like an awkward young woman. The music was pretty nice, too, with special note going to the rather mellow opening, which is also hilarious in its spoofing of famous movies. The show is very calm and pleasant for the most part, and is a nice little story to relax and watch. It also doesn't disrespect the aspect of a character dressing up in drag, and it's not played for laughs too much or anything. It's a decently realistic tale that doesn't disrespect drag culture, so that was nice to see.

The Cons: The show didn't seem to ever go all out with what it could have done. It underused a lot of what it had. The sisterhood characters could have been hilarious and interesting, but they were each pretty much one trick ponies that relied mostly on a single joke (though the Three Kingdoms obsessed character voiced by Monica Rial was at least entertaining to watch) and the show honestly could have cut them for the most part. The romantic sub-plots didn't make much sense, either; it hinted towards one relationship but then sort of hinted at a different one and none of it ever got resolved by the time the anime ended. That's another thing, actually, since it had the most obvious "now read the manga" ending I think I've ever seen, and the story felt very incomplete. I don't know if there's another season planned, but without it, the show just kind of ended on an anti-climax and felt like all of the questions asked and the possibilities opened up just amounted to very little in the grand scheme of things. There was also one character that I really hated from this show and she just struck me as despicable, to the point where she just never got any entertainment out of me despite the heavy focus put on her at times that I felt derailed the show.

High Point: Kuranosuke, who was entertaining, well acted by Josh Grelle, and was probably the most interesting character of the show.
Low Point: The ending, which left far too much unresolved without a second season.

Final Thoughts: Princess Jellyfish isn't a bad show, but I get the impression that it's better to either wait for a new season if possible or read the manga for it. While I did generally enjoy it as a whole, a lot of aspects of it weren't to my liking and it generally disappointed me for what I felt could be the next Ouran High School Host Club.
Spoiler : Number 12 :
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"Tell me, Satan, why would the King of Darkness work part-time at a MgRonald's?!"
The Devil is a Part-Timer!
This is a show where what you see is what you get. You want an anime where Satan works at a fast food joint? You're going to GET an anime where Satan works at a fast food joint! And you know what? I'm oddly okay with this.

Summary: In another dimension known as Ente Isla, the Demon Lord known as Satan Jacob rules with an iron fist, until a hero known as Emelia fights him and forces him to flee to another world, where he ends up in Tokyo, Japan, as a normal human being. Satan, now going by Sadao Mao, gets a job at the fast-food joint MgRonald's to pay for the dingy house he stays at with one of his demon generals, and he gets into danger and antics as he juggles getting back to his own dimension, plans to conquer Earth, attacks by the dangerous beings from Ente Isla, and trying to beat the sales record for black pepper fries.

The Pros: It's good when a comedy is funny. This show knows exactly what it is. As a result, it loves to throw around jokes poking fun at the situation of how a demon king is working at a crappy job and living in a crappy house and the like. The characters are all a ton of fun, with Emelia/Emi being hilarious when she lets the human world get to her, Chi being adorable and fun, and the generals, particularly Alciel and Lucifer, getting a ton of laughs. The action can be pretty good, too, though that's often not the focus of the show. The show knows what it wants to do and it does that, and it ends up very enjoyable as a result.

The Cons: Nothing the show does is particularly terrible, but nothing it does is particularly outstanding, either. It never pushes the jokes too far and could have really embraced the concept even more than it did. The plot's not bad, but it's not particularly fantastic, and honestly the show's more enjoyable for me when it focuses on Sadao's job than when it focuses on the Ente Isla stuff. It also has a mediocre final episode that felt like it had way too much filler for a finale, though I suppose a season 2 isn't impossible for it.

High Point: The humorous dialogue between the characters.
Low Point: The filler in the last episode.

Final Thoughts: This show didn't do anything terrible and it didn't do anything amazing. It merely existed to be enjoyable. And it was. It's by no means a must-see anime but it was entertaining enough to watch. It's just a fun little show that was worth watching if only to use as an example of how silly anime can be.
Spoiler : Number 11 :
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"If I settle down anywhere...I would no longer be a traveler."
Kino's Journey
This was an interesting little show. There were a lot of aspects of it I wasn't too fond of, but a lot of it was done really well, creating an anime that amounted to something almost poetic in nature.

Summary: A young woman going by the name Kino travels to the many different odd countries of her world with her talking motorcycle Hermes. She spends 3 days in each country, then leaves for the next one, trying her best not to meddle in the ways of each land. The show follows her many travels, sometimes connected and sometimes disjointed, as she goes on her long journey.

The Pros: The tone of the show is, like I said before, rather poetic. It has an intelligent atmosphere and gives some excellent commentary on the real world through the commentary it gives on the exaggerations of the different countries Kino visits. It's very slow paced and takes its time in giving you its messages. Kino herself is a rather interesting character, too, and seeing these countries with her really does feel like you're going on a journey yourself. The countries are all very intriguing, and whether their tales have happy ends or sad ones (usually the latter, really) you'll be very sucked in to the settings shown. Its strengths lie in its subtlety and its pacing, and the atmosphere it creates is a very nice one.

The Cons: The show can be a bit too down for my own liking at times, and more often than not a story arc ends very bittersweetly, which usually works in its favor but can feel a tad excessive sometimes. Also, while it's good at developing its countries for the short amount of time each one has, the overall world isn't developed much at all. Why are all these countries so different? What is this world like? why are travelers and talking motorcycles considered a natural part of life? A lot of these questions aren't answered. Kino's left a little too mysterious, too; her backstory is interesting but much of it is glanced over, and her motivations aren't always explained well. The dub, while not terrible, can also feel pretty low-budget; many background characters are voiced by a few people, which isn't too distracting for some of them, but with a voice as notable as Vic Mignogna being heard for 6 different characters, you can really start to tell some corners were cut here and there.

High Point: The countries visited in each episode.
Low Point: The lack of a developed world beyond that.

Final Thoughts: If you're looking to watch something subtle and poetic with a nice and slow pace, Kino's Journey is a great place to check that out. It's not exactly my cup of tea completely, but it's interesting enough and I'm glad I watched it in the end.
Spoiler : Number 10 :
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"Ya know how in manga and anime they've got really smart characters and really stupid characters and they're both going to the same school?"
Lucky Star
I love myself a good slice of life comedy anime, and Lucky Star didn't disappoint. It's not really my favorite of its kind, but it was certainly a charming little series that was very fun to watch for its sheer simplicity.

Summary: A complete otaku girl named Konata attends school with her friends, a pair of very different twins and a wealthy moe girl. High school antics ensue.

The Pros: The show is freaking hilarious. Between references to other anime (most notably to Haruhi Suzumiya, which even shares the same main voice actresses in both the dub and the sub), jokes poking fun at actual anime tropes, and the reactions to the anime-obsessed main character, this show exists primarily for big anime fans, and if you've been a fan of them for quite some time, the show becomes very relatable. The characters are all fun as well; they're incredibly simple, but they play off each other well and lead to some funny conversations. It's a really mellow show, too, so it's easy to watch when you don't want to be on the edge of your seat and just need something really chill to watch. Stylistically it feels a lot like newspaper comic strips, where characters just have conversations with some jokes thrown in for most of the time. It's not grand or epic, but it doesn't have to be.

The Cons: If you don't like slice of life you will HATE this show. There is literally no plot. It's just high school. Episodes don't really focus on one thing, there isn't much resembling a character arc anywhere, characters don't particularly develop, and nothing really happens outside of stuff just happening. I actually fell asleep watching the first episode the first time I tried the series because the first 8 minutes of it were the characters talking about how they prepared and ate certain foods. This show is less a coherent plot and more just a collection of events in the lives of this group of friends, and if you want something with more meat to it? Yeah this is not the place to go.

High Point: The extra segment at the end of each episode, LUCKYYYYYY CHANNEL!
Low Point: It starts with 8 minutes of talking about how to eat a chocolate cornet.

Final Thoughts: Lucky Star was a great slice of life comedy that was a lot of fun to watch, though as a story it's admittedly weak. If you want a good comedy where nothing really happens, check it out, because it's got a lot of heart and a lot of spunk despite it's lack of general substance.
Spoiler : Number 9 :
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"These three are my fellow Light Music Club members!"
K-On!
Another slice of life with little to no plot? Yeah I kinda like those, sue me. This is the last anime I saw before starting college and the most recent show I finished, so it's freshest in my memory. And for an anime with a lot of mixed opinions on it...Yeah, I really liked it.

Summary: Yui Hirasawa is a ditzy girl that wants to try something new as she enters high school. She ends up joining the Light Music Club with three other girls (Ritsu the tomboyish drummer, Mio the shy bassist, and Mugi the quirky pianist) as a guitarist...but she doesn't know how to play guitar. So she and the rest of the Light Music Club have to practice and practice to get through school, find new members, and become a great band...after some afternoon tea time. Hijinks ensue over the course of the girls' time in high school, all the way up until they finally have to graduate.

The Pros: It's cute. Like really cute. The animation is very "moe" in nature and is very crisp and easy on the eyes, with emphasis put into movement and expression. It fits the light-hearted nature of the show well, and that nature is also very nice to see. It's just a pleasant show to watch. Conflicts aren't that massive, but they're fairly relatable and fun to watch the band get through. The characters are also all fun to watch, and they bounce off each other really well. It helps that I love the dub cast of this show, too, with my favorite group of female VAs (Cassandra Morris, Cristina Vee, and Cristine Cabanos) all making an appearance here, as well as Stephanie Sheh really matching Yui well in one of her better voice acting performances. And of course I enjoyed the music in this music-themed show, with the high-tempo upbeat Yui songs fitting the pleasantness of the show and the more intense Mio songs playing in the endings just rock. It's just an overall pleasant experience from start to finish.

The Cons: Again, it's a slice of life, so nothing really happens in it. Granted more happens than in Lucky Star, but nothing too grand happens past rock concerts, tests, and school. Also, the abundance of moe can definitely throw people off and make them see it as just pointless fluff with little substance...which I can sorta understand, yeah. Characters don't develop too much even when you really want them to, and I'll admit that the fifth band member Azusa kinda annoyed me at times since she sort of insisted on being the straight-man a little too often for a while. A lot of it doesn't feel like it'll have high consequences, so it's not really tense much, and when it actually did get tense once in a while, it kinda fell flat at the end. Also nitpick here but they didn't dub the songs in the English version despite having Cristina Vee as one of the vocalists in the band when she can actually sing really well, and the dub also has some awkward moments where they make English language jokes in the original that they didn't really bother to change (The movie has an awkward moment where Ritsu tries speaking English while speaking English and the English-speakers are said to be speaking Japanese and...yeah).

High Point: Ritsu Tainaka, the drummer and comic relief that had some really great moments (and just happens to be voiced by Cassandra Morris~).
Low Point: Whenever the band made an embarassing screw-up during a performance. Those moments grate in me in shows.

Final Thoughts: K-On! was a show that was full of heart from beginning to end. It was a great way to finish off vacation and relax before school, and despite its abundance of moe-ness and lack of complexity, I thought it was a good show for any slice of life fan, and kept me smiling the whole time.
Spoiler : Number 8 :
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"I think it's time we blow this scene...Get everybody and the stuff together...Okay, 3, 2, 1, let's jam."
Cowboy Bebop
...So the show that I constantly recommend, praise, and call one of the best anime of all time is only at number 8 on this list. Hm. Yeah. This requires some explanation, I feel.

Summary: Spike Spiegel is a bounty hunter with a mysterious and dark past. It's his and the other bounty hunters' jobs to find crooks throughout space, capture them, and turn them in for massive cash rewards. Spike and his partner Jet Black, as well as the mysterious woman Faye Valentine and the eccentric girl Radical Edward, chase down these crooks across the galaxy with their spaceship, The Bebop, and try to make a living in this cruel world while slowly coming to grips with their pasts.

The Pros: This show has everything. The fight scenes are quick, smart, and stylish. The cast is witty and all interact very well, and have complex backstories that made them who they are today. Spike Spiegel himself is one of the coolest protagonists like...ever. The music from Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts is one of the best OSTs I've ever heard in an anime, with special mention going to the jazzy opening theme, Tank!, which is infinitely catchy. The show could be dramatic when it wanted to be, and could even get creative in its narrative to go for more obscure framing devices, as expected of Daisuke Shiwatari. The animation holds up shockingly well for a show from 1998, too, and it has a distinctively American feel to it. Which is good, since the dub of this show is fantastic, and actually set the standard for anime dubs (even sub fans watch Bebop in English), with Steve Blum's Spike and Wendee Lee's Faye being two amazing performances for an anime that old, and the rest of the cat holds up perfectly, too. Not to mention that the finale of this show was freaking amazing, with an incredible conclusion that I don't want to spoil here. The show just has everything, and practically revolutionized anime in some ways.

The Cons: I don't actually have anything in Bebop I particularly dislike. I suppose I found Faye kind of obnoxious at times, and the episodes being mostly unrelated to each other made some a lot more boring than others. Radical Edward was also very drastically underused in her character arc, and she didn't develop much despite being a very interesting and fun character. Outside of those issues, though, I don't really have much to say regarding cons of the show. I know other people have some issues with it, but there's very little in this show that particularly bothers me.

High Point: Spike Spiegel. From his personality to his fighting style to his development, he was just awesome.
Low Point: Radical Edward's send-off. It was just kind of confusing and anti-climactic.

Final Thoughts: I see Cowboy Bebop as the Citizen Kane of anime. Not exactly that it's the undeniably best anime ever, mind you, but it's an anime with a huge impact on the anime that follow it and goes down in history as an important show for its medium. It's a show that I have very few problems with and think did so many things right. However, Citizen Kane is not my favorite movie, just as Cowboy Bebop is not my favorite anime. Objectively, I think it could be the best, but in my opinion, the pros of the next 7 anime just made me love them even more than this masterpiece.
...Yes I put K-On! and Cowboy Bebop right next to each other, sue me.
Spoiler : Number 7 :
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"Don't let anybody tell ya there's no future in a life of crime, because some rackets can last forever!"
Baccano!
Jazzy action shows seem to be a theme now. While Baccano! isn't quite as grand or complex or Bebop, it sure is one fun ride.

Summary: It's the 1930s in New York City, and several bizarre events all seem to be unfolding within the Big Apple at the same time. An immortality elixir is being juggled between alchemists, crooks, and even the mafia. Several different hijackings of a single transcontinental train, the Flying Pussyfoot, are causing a tragic confrontation on the rails. A pair of thieves are spreading joy in their own special way. Throw in assassins, psychopaths, gore, and mafia wars, and you have the biggest racket New York has ever seen.

The Pros: The cast makes this show, no doubt. Each character is quirky and memorable in their own special way. Whether it be the sadistic Ladd Russo, the calculated Claire Stanfield, the highly emotional Graham Specter, the cowardly Jacuzzi Splott, the cold Chane Laforet, the hot-headed Firo Prochainezo *INHALE* or perhaps the most entertaining of them all, the thieves that live in their own little world Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent, the cast never fails to entertain. Add to it the fact that the show has a ton of constant energy and you've got one fun show on your hands. The soundtrack is jazzy and upbeat, with particular note going to the opening theme Guns & Roses for how well it fits the show's tone. It also has one of the best dubs in all of anime, often put on the same level as Cowboy Bebop as a must-watch-in-dub show, featuring very well-done New York accents for the characters that need them and a fitting amount of energy put into every performance, and the hammy talents of J. Michael Tatum and Caitlin Glass as Isaac and Miria certainly don't hinder the show at all.

The Cons: The show is told out of order. In fact, it shows the outcome of the climax in the very first episode of the show. It works well for the most part, but it can be admittedly confusing and frustrating to follow at times. It's also incredibly gorey, which isn't something I'm too fond of, especially in the case of Czeslaw Meyer, an immortal child that gets some of the most brutal scenes in the show that just make you cringe to watch. If you've got a weak stomach for blood and the like, it's definitely something to avoid. The ending's also kind of mediocre, as the main plot finished up a couple episodes before the show finishes and leaves with a few episodes that essentially serve as an epilogue and introduce a new character as a villain of sorts that really doesn't serve a purpose past giving a final fight and another eccentric cast member to replace a different one.

High Point: The many antics of Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent.
Low Point: The rushed ending to the show.

Final Thoughts: Baccano! is a show that's constantly upbeat and constantly full of energy. It rarely slows itself down and it rarely lowers the volume, and it just loves to embrace its own madness. It's a show that practically defines the term "eccentric", and if you're ever looking for some fast-paced fun, I'd always suggest this show in a heartbeat.
Spoiler : Number 6 :
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"Rin! Want to come with me?"
Usagi Drop
D'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw.

Summary: Daikichi is a middle-aged man living by himself whose grandfather just passed away. He attends the man's funeral along with the rest of his family and meets a young girl named Rin, who is believed to be the illegitimate daughter of Daikichi's grandfather. With her father gone, her mother out of the picture, and nobody in the family wanting to take care of the odd little girl, Daikichi decides to take it upon himself to take care of Rin in her time of need, even if it means changing his entire life to make her happy.

The Pros: The show is freaking adorable, for one. Everything from the soundtrack to the animation emphasize how light-hearted and cute everything is. It uses soft lines and bright color schemes for everything to almost give it a childish glow of sorts and it works very well for the tone of the show. The plot itself is simplistic but effective, and it works as a nice realistic yet optimistic look on the world of raising children. The characters are all great, too. I've mentioned before that Daikichi is a very respectable character and is one of the straight up nicest characters I've seen in an anime protagonist role. He always gets a smile out of me because even when he's down or angry he has a very genuinely caring nature about him, and he never dips into "perverted old dude" clichés or anything like that. Rin is amazing, too, as she's not only a well-written child character, but is one of the cutest characters I've ever seen in a show. Just look at her. She's just so huggable. The show is just generally pleasant to watch, and it always put me in a nice mood when I watched it.

The Cons: The biggest problem with this show is less part of the anime itself and more a problem with the manga. The anime's ending is mediocre, not answering a lot of questions and leaving it open as a "read the manga" ending. That's bad enough, but...the manga ending kinda ruins the show a little if you watch it knowing that ending. It's an ending that goes a direction that negates a lot of the messages that the anime itself gives off, and one where knowledge of it makes character interactions a lot more awkward and generally makes the entire thing feel less genuine. It's not necessarily a problem with the anime per se, but it puts a huge damper on things. So avoid knowledge of the manga ending as long as you can if you want to take this show for what it is. Aside from that, the boy was kind of annoying at times, there was a lot of "will they won't they" that was never resolved, and there's no dub to speak of as of yet.

High Point: The relationship between Daikichi and Rin.
Low Point: The impact the manga ending has on the high point.

Final Thoughts: This anime was adorable and heart-warming from beginning to end. It was a feel-good show that was perfect to watch just to unwind and see something pleasant. It's a really good anime...just skip the manga.
Spoiler : Number 5 :
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"I'm not interested in ordinary people, but if any of you are aliens, time travelers, or espers, please come and see me. That is all."
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
I had actually been a "fan" of Haruhi Suzumiya years ago, but only due to things I had looked up about the show after seeing the Hare Hare Yukai. I actually had legos of the cast back when I made a hobbie out of making minifgures of anime characters before I had even seen a full episode. But it took me until summer vacation to finally watch this show in its entirety, and it was my first anime binge-watch of the summer vacation. And it was totally worth it...mostly.

Summary: A girl named Haruhi Suzumiya enters high school and startles everyone with her eccentricity and her constant search for the paranormal in life to prevent herself from getting too bored. A normal high schooler known as Kyon ends up befriending her (somewhat begrudgingly) and is forced into Haruhi's club dedicated to finding the extraordinary, the SOS Brigade, alongside other odd members; the shy and delicate Mikuru Asahina (a time-traveler from the future), the calm and composed Itsuki Koizumi (an esper from a secret organization), and the quiet and emotionless Yuki Nagato (an alien scouting for a hivemind). It's through these three that Kyon realizes that Haruhi Suzumiya is the unknowing god of the universe, and her boredom can result in the complete destruction of it. Now Kyon is roped into Haruhi's games as he tries his best to keep her from accidentally destroying everything alongside the SOS Brigade.

The Pros: The premise of this show is freaking phenomenal. A time-traveler, an alien, an esper, and a high school boy hang out with the god of the universe, who's a really bored high school girl looking for the kind of people she isn't even aware constantly surround her. That is freaking brilliant. The characters are all great, too. You'll either love or hate Haruhi herself, as she's entertaining but also kind of a heartless jerk at times, but the show at least doesn't treat her like she's NOT a jerk, and she's fairly interesting at the very least. Kyon is an amazing protagonist despite how normal he is, if only to play the straight man to the whole world' insanity. He also makes the most of being played by Crispin Freeman in the dub and really steals the show. Koizumi and Mikuru aren't anything to really write home about, but Yuki Nagato's very interesting and she actually gets a lot of development come the movie finale for the series. The music's fantastic, supplying two of the most famous anime songs of all time, Hare Hare Yukai and God Knows (which Wendee Lee actually sang in English in the dub, and did so fairly well even if it didn't match the lip flaps), and is full of other great songs like Super Driver and Tomare. The show also loves to throw really risky moves to see what sticks, which sometimes does and sometimes doesn't, but it's interesting to see a slice of life that can truly be called unpredictable. Not to mention that the show's movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, is simply fantastic. Also there's a scene in a murder mystery episode that references Ace Attorney like a billion times and it's amazing (especially seeing that both Haruhi Suzumiya and Athena Cykes are voiced by Wendee Lee). The show crushes expectations and supplies an experience that really gives twists and turns that are just constantly interesting to watch...except for...well...

The Cons: Endless Eight. Endless freaking Eight. The characters are stuck in a 2 week time loop thousands of times, and despite the fact that the story arc is named after the eighth month of the year, August, the anime decided to take it literally and repeat the same exact episode with minor changes to scenes and completely new animation eight times in a row. I understand the purpose of it and it's honestly kind of genius, but imagine having to wait eight weeks wanting a new episode and getting literally the same story each and every week. It's the most tedious thing I've ever seen in an anime, regardless of how neat a concept it is. There's also the episode "Someday in the Rain", which shows the episode with a handful of camera angles of mostly just Yuki reading while we hear the action outside of the room, and while it's an idea very reminiscent of the movie Rear Window, which I love, the execution is just boring and honestly put me to sleep watching it. Also, as previously mentioned, Haruhi can be kind of a huge jerk at times, and sometimes it's harder to forgive her actions. Plus, although Kyon bounces off of everyone really well, the rest of the cast feels alien towards each other; I cannot remember a time where Haruhi and Yuki felt natural together and I don't think Koizumi ever even spoke to Haruhi for more than a minute. As a result, the comradery of the SOS Brigade is nowhere near as fun as, say, K-On!'s Light Music Club.

High Point: Crispin Freeman's performance as Kyon in the dub.
Low Point: Endless Eight.

Final Thoughts: This show was worth watching if only for how interesting it was. It constantly surprised me and was just a joy to watch, even if I had to sit through some real crap at times to get to the good parts. It also had both a great movie and a hilarios series of chibi shorts that actually kinda developed the characters' personalities a bit despite them being flanderized for comedy. Overall,despite its problems, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was a fantastic show and simply a joy to watch.
Spoiler : Number 4 :
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"Menma! We found you!"
Anohana: The Flower We Saw that Day
This is the one anime I can remember that made me actually cry. Yeah this one was really really good.

Summary: A group of childhood friends nicknamed the "Super Peace Busters" grew apart after one of the kids, Menma, died in a accident by the river they hung out near. Five years later, the kids are high school age and have gone their separate ways and stopped speaking for the most part. One of the kids, a now hikikimori Jintan, is shocked when he is suddenly visited by the ghost of Menma one summer. He's the only one that can see her friend, and she insists that he help her grant her forgotten wish so that her spirit can move on. Jintan starts going to new lengths to try and grant her wish, eventually having to face his old friends and have them all come to terms with their issues that have grown since Menma's death and rekindle the friendship of the Super Peace Busters.

The Pros: The emotions run very high in this show, and they're done very well. Each of the characters are very complex, and even though they each seem to have their own jerky moments, they're a very well-written cast and each one feels very realistic for the position that they're in. The handling of their reactions to news of Menma's ghost is also really amazing, and you can really feel the pain that everyone goes through when they're thrust into a situation that seems like it should be happy and taking but ends up very bitter and emotional. The animation is fantastic, becoming as smooth as a rotoscope when the show really wants to emphasize the beauty of a scene, and the coloration and designs are incredibly nice. The opening and ending themes are gorgeous, and both reflect a strong nostalgic and bittersweet sense that fits the show's atmosphere. And of course, the ending is one of the best I've ever seen and got me to actually cry watching it. It's somewhat predictable to a degree but the emotions of the scene are so perfectly captured that it still catches you off guard.

The Cons: The pacing and foreshadowing can be weird sometimes. I mean it usually works well but there are times when you have to stop and question why some plot threads had to be dragged out longer when it becomes apparent how much simpler they could be, particularly regarding the revelation of Menma's existence to the others. The scene was well done but directly after it just felt like, "...Wait it could have been that easy? Why did nobody try this earlier?!" The show also has no dub which is a real shame, as a good dub cast can really make this show perfect, especially since the subs I watched it with had a tendency of cutting off early and vanishing before I could finish reading it. Aside from those points, though, I have little issues with this show.

High Point: The conclusion.
Low Point: The moment after Menma's existence was first proven.

Final Thoughts: This was the most emotional anime I've ever seen. It was completely beautiful, from start to end, and it did the idea of a bittersweet story like this incredibly well. It had the occasional hiccup and inconsistency, but the rest of it was just amazing, and seeing the ending even now nearly makes me want to cry all over again.
Spoiler : Number 3 :
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"El. Psy. Congroo."
Steins;Gate
Oh yes, we're getting to the big ones. I've already mentioned that this show has my favorite anime protagonist of all time, but I haven't gone much into the rest of the show, and as you can see by this being above even Anohana, you can probably tell that I freaking adored this show.

Summary: Okabe Rintarou is a self-acclaimed mad scientist, living in his crummy apartment he has dubbed the "Future Gadget Laboratory" with his friends Daru, an otaku hacker, and Mayuri, a simple-minded cosplayer. After Okabe finds the murdered corpse of a fellow scientist, Makise Kurisu, he sends a text to Daru, who has connected his phone to one of their experiments, and ends up sending the text back in time and changing the future to one where Kurisu survives her fate. But as the Future Gadget Lab begins experimenting more and more with this accidental time machine, they find that they have weaved themselves into a dramatic mess of world lines, and Okabe must use this machine to fix the time-stream and reach a world line where everything ends up fine...a timeline he dubs "Stein's Gate".

The Pros: Unsurprisingly, I really love this show's protagonist, Okabe Rintarou. In both dub and sub, he's hammy in his delivery and is an incredibly entertaining character, but he's also a very caring character and goes to extreme lengths to try and reach the happy ending he wants to reach. The rest of the cast is also very interesting in entertaining, and Okabe bounces off of them really well. The opening to the show, Hacking To The Gate, is one of the best I've ever seen, with awesome visuals and a freaking amazing song to accompany them. The writing is brilliant, both in the overall plot of the show and in the dialogue (I watched the dub, which was good at both the emotional bits and at being hilarious). It was perhaps the best use of time travel I've ever seen in a show, going deep into the "how" of time travel and using it in ways never seen before, rather than the usual use of time travel just resulting in "let's go to different time periods and have antics ensue". The plot has a billion intense twists and turns once it gets going, and it really stacks all of the drama and mystery on top of each other, resulting in a complex yet constantly interesting story that doesn't disappoint in delivering some really powerful scenes.

The Cons: The story takes about 12 episodes to actually kick into full gear; the first part of the series is mostly build-up and establishment to the point where crap hits the fan at full force. If you don't mind a slow pace, though, it's not that big a deal; I almost liked it more when it felt like a time-travel-based slice of life than I did when it was intense at times. Plus the science talk of it probably doesn't hold up amazingly well and there are some points in it where you kind of have to question the sensibility or the purpose behind it. Plus, the romance in it I found slightly sub-par, and while its ending was good, the last two episodes did sort of feel awkwardly tacked on to the previous one.

High Point: The wonderfully hammy Okabe Rintarou.
Low Point: The introduction to episode 25. It just felt out of left field.

Final Thoughts: This show was incredibly smart, witty, interesting, constantly dramatic, and just did an overall amazing job at what it set out to do. It's a great story about time travel and its consequences and I loved every minute of the show. And I'll be humming "Hacking To The Gate" for weeks just thinking about this show again.
Spoiler : Number 2 :
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"For centuries, only dragons and tigers have been considered equals..."
Toradora!
And now we reach Toradora!, my favorite romantic comedy of all time, even managing to surpass Ouran High School Host Club, which was the show that really got me into anime in the first place. This show left a huge impact on me, and was probably my favorite emotion-based anime I've ever seen. It somehow only lands at number 2.

Summary: Ryuji Takasu is a high school boy that people tend to distance themselves from due to the thug-like look he naturally has in his eyes, despite him being a genuinely nice guy. Ryuji bumps into a girl named Taiga Aisaka, nicknamed the "Palm-Top Tiger" due to her small stature yet fearsome nature. Ryuji ends up finding a love letter Taiga wrote to his friend Kidamura, and after a rather violent misunderstanding, Ryuji finds himself helping to take care of Taiga as they each try to help each other in their love lives. The two grow closer and closer as they deal with more and more hardships, and as their relationship strengthens and they learn more about themselves and each other, they begin to question who it is they really love.

The Pros: The chemistry between Ryuji and Taiga is freaking brilliant. It isn't really too big a spoiler that they're the main romantic couple despite the fact that they're working towards helping each other get with different people, and you can tell right from the start that they're great for each other. The development of their relationship is just amazing, and they have a very genuine connection that just feels very sweet the more you see them stick up for one another, and seeing the rest of their class open up to them and see them as more than just scary people. The show's also famous for making Taiga a good tsundere character, and yeah, she definitely is. She may go between violent and sweet, but it's not like she's like that to the people she likes; she just needs time to open up to people, and her backstory more than justifies why she's so violent in the first place. Not to mention that the very recent dub cast her as Cassandra Morris (squee) in perhaps her greatest role yet, and the emotions of the performance are just perfect. All of the characters are used rather well, and it's a rather believable love story that isn't afraid to show certain aspects in a more realistic way than others might. It's full of sweet moments that just touch the heart, including perhaps my favorite kiss scene in any form of media. It's actually stopped me from watching anime for a while because it was so good I had no idea what I could follow it up with. The animation style was nice, the music was effective, the characters were great, and my god the emotional scenes were just heart-wrenching. It's an amazing romance and a hilarious comedy, and hey, it even got a great dub.

The Cons: The pacing can be off at times. Some things can be seen as filler and some aspects of how the relationship finally comes together seems a bit awkwardly rushed. The final scene of the show in particular was kind of weak, with a sort of cliffhanger that got resolved immediately and felt somewhat random and pointless. That was one of my very few problems with the show, though. Aside from that, one of the characters could be kind of a pain and some aspects could have been written a bit better, but that's about all that bothered me.

High Point: A tie for me, between the character of Taiga Aisaka and the kissing scene.
Low Point: The very ending that felt kind of out-of-place.

Final Thoughts: This is my favorite romantic comedy of all time, and probably my favorite love story in general. I cannot sing this show's praises enough. It's not just my second favorite summer anime but my second favorite anime in general. Only one show actually beat it out for me and...yeah if you spoke to me around the time I finished it you know exactly what it is and probably knew from the start of this list.
Spoiler : Number 1 :
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"JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE?!"
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Yeah, this is my favorite anime of all time. It's just the most satisfying thing I've ever watched in my life. It just has an aura of awesome that not even the amazing romance of Toradora! could touch. It does everything I want an action show to do and does it as well as it can. This isn't a show that is trying to entertain you. This is a show that demands you be entertained. And my god I love it.

Summary: Simon the Digger is a boy living in an underground community with his older brother figure Kamina, in a world where all of humanity is forced to live under the surface of the planet for reasons they aren't quite sure about. Simon finds a mysterious robot in the shape of a large head while digging underground one day, though, as well as the key to activate it. When a massive mech called a Gunmen falls into their community, Kamina and Simon defeat it and escape with the help of a surface-dwelling sniper girl named Yoko in the mech Simon found, dubbed Lagann by Kamina. The three escape to the surface, hijack another mech that they dub Gurren, and begin to lead the human revolution against the oppressors keeping them from their destiny on the surface, fughting off Gunmen, Generals, and more as their army grows larger and stronger in their battle to reclaim the planet in the name of humanity.

The Pros: This show is just freaking staisfying. The action scenes are incredibly over-the-top and deligtfully grand, and the show has a habit of escalating in everything it does. They start with a small mech, get a bigger mech, get a mech battleship, get a moon-sized mech, pilot a mech with a mech with a mech, and everything just keeps growin until it literally reaches a galactic scale, where fight scenes are bigger than the cosmos themselves. Every character is hammy and eccentric to the point where Baccano! gets a run for its money. Simon gets great development, Kamina is one of the most famous bad@$$es in all of anime with his many speeches about manliness and catchphrases ("Don't believe in yourself, believe in me! Believe in the Kamina that believes in you!" "What does that even mean?!"), Yoko is a shockingly strong female character despite her obvious role as fanservice and can be rather complex, the rival character Viral has a great design and goes through a lot of great development, all of the villains are awesome in their own ways, the side characters are all fantastic (with special mention to Kittan, who by the end of the series might even be a bigger bad@$$ than Kamina), and they all just work perfectly together. The animation is (mostly) fantastic, with a slick art style and tons of movement and shading to emphasize just how cool the show knows it is. The music is just awesome, with the opening Sorairo Days being used really well and themes like Nikopol and ESPECIALLY Libera Me From Hell (a mix between Latin choir and rap that shouts the phrase "ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER" a lot) that just make a scene instantly more awesome the moment they play. Even the drama can be pretty good at times, as the show can demonstrate that it can be semi-serious at times and do it decently well. It also has some of the greatest dramatic echoes and monologues to ever appear in a show, and it can actually legitimately surprise viewers at times, being rather famous for one particular character death nobody saw coming when it came out. The show just radiates an aura of awesome and does everything you want it to do right, until it finally reaches the climax to end all climaxes, which does its best to outdo literally any other finale that an action show has ever seen with just how grand a scale it has going for it. Dub's great too.

The Cons: It really is pretty stupid when you think about it. It's not an intelligent show by any mean. It has a bit too much fanservice at times, particularly in its bath-house filler episode, and Yoko kinda makes things awkward at times with her refusal to wear a shirt. One character, Nia, is inserted very awkwardly into the show, and another character, Rossiu, gets really annoying at a point in the middle of the series when it gets just a bit too serious for its own good and kind of slows down from its constant escalation. Episode 4 was guest-animated and...yeah not gonna lie it's very jarring and looks kinda crappy compared to the rest of the show. But you know what? Screw it. It's a good sign when a show can have a lot of flaws like this that I can clearly see are there and still make me adore it this much, so for all I care, the cons are like annoying flies buzzing around my ear that I can just swat away if need be. The good stuff is just that awesome.

High Point: The entire final act of the show, spanning several episodes and featuring a bad@$$ moment for basically every single cast member.
Low Point: Episode 6, the bath-house filler. Yeah I did not need to see that.

Final Thoughts: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (it's too good to shorten to just Gurren Lagann) is my favorite anime of all time. It does so many things right that, even though it's RIDICULOUSLY stupid at times, it just gets you pumped. I was practically pumping my arms in excitement watching this show. It was the most exhillerating show I've ever seen, just constantly keeping me energized and constantly doing more and more awesome things to make it even more massive in its scale. It was not going to leave you unsatisfied, it was determined to give you a freaking EXPERIENCE. It's dumb, it's weird, it requires you to turn off your brain a bit. But it was the best anime experience I can recall, and for what it is, it is by far my favorite anime of all time, and my number 1 anime that I watched during summer break. Row Row, Fight the Power!
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Hersh/Fiendy has credit for the amazing GiGi pics and enigma has credit for the adorable Kenshin Mega Man sprite!

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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by Lind »

To celebrate the eve of Peter Capaldi, I present my Top 10 Modern Doctor Who Episodes!

I'll probably do a classic list as well in a few months, once I've seen more of it.

Spoiler : 10. :
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School Reunion
School Reunion could easily have just been a fanservice episode for classic fans, with the reintroduction of Sarah-Jane Smith, often considered the all-time greatest Doctor Who companion, and her shooty-dog-thing K-9.

But rather than just making this a nostalgia-trip, School Reunion had a masterstroke in tying the Doctor's past with Sarah-Jane in with his current relationship with Rose, playing off Rose's doubts about whether the Doctor truly needs her, and delving into the not-often-discussed angle of why the Doctor goes through so many companions... and even gives Mickey Smith some development along the way. This episode is a showcase for some of the best characterisation the series has to offer, from every single recurring character in it.

Also, Anthony Head makes a great villain.
Spoiler : 9. :
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The Eleventh Hour
Introductions are difficult. Rose was a lukewarm introductory episode, and The Christmas Invasion, whilst okay, kept The Doctor offscreen for most of the episode, making it not much of an introduction. The classic stories also did not do a great job of introducing the Doctors, more often than not (strangle your companion, why don't you).

So it's impressive how INSTANTLY perfect Matt Smith seems as The Doctor. Tennant at the peak of his game is a hard act to follow, but Matt Smith pulls off all of his loony rambling every bit as well if not better, with an added touch of alien weirdness not seen since Tom Baker.

While the previous two Doctors worked best at their most vulnerable, the 11th worked best at his most bombastic, and there is no better example of that than The Eleventh Hour's climax...

"Hello. I'm The Doctor.

Basically...

Run."
Spoiler : 8. :
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Blink
Yeah, I know, everyone puts this on their list, but it deserves it.

There's nothing I can really say about Blink that hasn't been said - it's the instant that Moffat, for better or worse, built his proof of concept for his entire writing style, which is never better than when he is creating twisted, convoluted messes of jumbled-up timestreams.

But more importantly than that, the star of the show here is the Weeping Angels, easily the best monster that modern Doctor Who has created, bar none. Every single Angel-centric episode of DW has been great, but the original beats out the other two by a fairly small margin.

Also, wibbly wobbly timey wimey.
Spoiler : 7. :
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A Good Man Goes to War
"Demons run when a good man goes to war."

Steven Moffat's stories often do a good job of setting up the premise and escalating it, but a lot of the time he can't follow his good ideas through to the end, resulting in several episodes that wet the bed towards the end of their run. So it's fitting that one of the best episodes he ever wrote was one that started off with a strong promise, and spent the entire episode laying on twist after twist after twist, constantly adding more setup onto itself with every passing minute - and it all ends on a twist that is surprisingly satisfying.

Also, a Victorian era lesbian lizard-lady. Why is this so sexy. This shouldn't be sexy.
Spoiler : 6. :
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Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
The regeneration story of the 9th Doctor, and simultaneously one of the best 9th Doctor stories and THE best regeneration of the modern Doctor Who, if not of ALL Doctor Who (I haven't seen The Caves of Androzani yet, which is usually regarded as the best, so don't quote me on that).

It's the perfect conclusion to the 9th Doctor's story arc, with him finally managing to forgive himself for the Time War and start to carry on with his life - perfectly demonstrated by his admission that he would rather be a coward than a killer - two things that he had previously struggled between.

It's also a fantastic escalation of shocking twists - not too unlike A Good Man Goes to War - that refuses to let up, with reveal after reveal after reveal piling up, and the identity of the mysterious Bad Wolf that had been behind the scenes of the first series finally being revealed.

It would be a couple of places higher, but... well, the reality TV references have not aged well, to say the least.
Spoiler : 5. :
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The Day of the Doctor

It's fitting that this episode aired in cinemas on release, because for the sheer scale and brilliance of it, it certainly seems like a Doctor Who movie. Er, not like THE Doctor Who movie, mind you. That was kind of a mess.

Anyway, Day of the Doctor finally addresses the one great big plot point that had been dangling over the head of the series since the moment it was rebooted - the Time War, and the Doctor's final choices in it.

It's the first episode of the rebooted series to feature multiple Doctors in one place and time, which was always a brilliant feature of the classic series, and brings back the old staple of how they never like each other.

Impressively, Day of the Doctor strikes a good balance between all three Doctors, rather than focusing more on one than the others, providing some great moments for both previously established doctors (it's a machine that goes "Ding"), but more importantly, fleshing out John Hurt's "War Doctor" as a great doctor in his own right, with just a short amount of screentime, managing even more than Paul McGann did in the same circumstances.

The reintroduction of the Zygons was great, and the schemes they used were clever in their own right, and a great setup for the rest of the story, with everything neatly falling into place without seeming contrived. The parallels between the Brigadier's daughter whose name I forget and the Doctor's actions in the Time War are also a clever touch.

The peak of this episode, though, has to be the doctor's final decision, and the conflict between his three selves.

The best episode of Matt Smith's run, without a doubt.
Spoiler : 4. :
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The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
The first Doctor Who story Moffat ever wrote, and still his best.

Introducing Captain Jack Harkness is a reason to laud it in of itself, but then there's one of the most clever and iconic monsters in the series - a scared, mutated little boy who's just looking for his mother, and infecting everyone he touches in the process - the innocence of the Empty Child somehow only made it scarier. The end is result is one of the most suspenseful stories Who has to offer.

But even more than that, the conclusion in which, for the first time in the series, EVERYONE survives, provides a hard-earned and much needed hope spot for the bleakest of Doctors - and his utter glee at the fact that, just this once, everyone lives, is one of the 9th Doctor's greatest moments, and yet further reason why Christopher Eccleston is my doctor.

That, and the dancing.
Spoiler : 3. :
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Human Nature/The Family of Blood
What made the RTD era so great - and, inversely, why the Moffat era is not great - is that it was willing to make The Doctor vulnerable, and willing to demonstrate that he was not, by default, a good person.

Human Nature is one of the best examples of this. It's also quite possibly the perfect David Tennant episode, playing off of how human the 10th Doctor always felt by having him reborn as a human, and showing his new struggle between the life he has, and the life he could have had.

Impressively, it has a very long conclusion, reaching finale after finale, and yet somehow managed to build up all of its themes and plot threads so well that it never feels overwrought - it earned every bit of it.
Spoiler : 2. :
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Midnight
Like with Human Nature/The Family of Blood, Midnight works because of its willingness to make The Doctor vulnerable, and admit that he is not some kind of messiah figure who saves the day every time no matter what.

But Midnight takes it so much further. It is, frankly, a downright nasty episode, and by far the darkest that Doctor Who ever went. There is no happy ending. The Doctor does not win. The Doctor doesn't save anyone. The Doctor does not, in any way, succeed in this episode, just barely managing to survive by sheer luck.

The monster in Midnight is, frankly, terrifying. Not only is its scheme unsettlingly clever, turning the Doctor's own cleverness against him, but to make it even scarier, we never even find out what it is or why it's doing anything it is - all we get are hints. Nothing is scarier than not knowing, after all.

But the most terrifying part of Midnight isn't the monster. It's the humans. Five scared humans, panicking, desperate to save their own lives no matter what they have to do.
Spoiler : HONOURABLE MENTIONS :
Dalek

The Girl in the Fireplace

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords (would totally have been in the top 3 if it were just the first two, but Last of the Time Lords is freaking awful and ruins it.)

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Vincent and the Doctor

The Lodger

The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon

The Angels Take Manhattan
Spoiler : 1. :
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Turn Left/The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The conclusion to conclude all conclusions, fittingly concludes this list.

While I know Turn Left is usually considered a separate story of its own, I think that the two are so dependent on each other that it's not entirely fair to judge them as separate entities.

With Turn Left, it does a fantastic job setting up the incoming apocalypse by way of an alternate universe - but alongside that, it shows us in unflinchingly horrific detail just what would have happened if Donna and the Doctor had never met. The importance of both characters has never been more clear. It also serves as a fantastic character development piece for Donna - who had already taken leaps and bounds in that respect since her first appearance in The Runaway Bride - and firmly takes her from "good" to "probably the best companion ever".

Once the scenario is set up, all hell breaks loose in the biggest way imaginable. The Stolen Earth is DW at its most bombastic, and quite possible the most ambitious it will ever be, for all of Moffat's time-twisty story arc attempts. Every single companion and recurring character from the entire modern series reunites (even those stuck in the parallel universe!) in a story where literally the entirety of reality (and every other reality, just in case things weren't bombastic enough) is at stake.

That such an ambitious story could possibly work is hard to believe, but it pulls it off without a hitch, capping off Donna's story arc almost perfectly (and though the ending is debatable, the implications made in The End of Time redeem it), and giving apt resolution to every character.

Also, Julian Bleach's take on Davros is downright unsettling, which makes me all the more excited that he might be coming back in the next series.
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by Ferdielance »

Top Six Computer/Video Game Boxes/Covers
I tend to prefer the box art for older games. Recent boxes tend to be too logo-cluttered, which is not the fault of the designer at all - publishers and developers all need to be credited, ratings need to be shown, and so on - but it's hard to make their design look unified.
Spoiler : 6 :
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Infocom's Deadline was packaged not in a box, but a sealed file folder containing autopsy data, photos, crime scene diagrams, testimony, and a game disk. Nobody's ever made a game package quite so immersive since.
Spoiler : 5 :
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Sometimes it's better to keep it simple.
Spoiler : 4 :
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Look! A design that includes negative space and open washes of color! Uncluttered, not too loud.
Spoiler : 3 :
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I never even played this, and the cover makes me want to. Gorgeous, adventurous, sweeping. This is what an RPG cover should look like.
Spoiler : 2 :
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A fantastic example of setting up a premise simply and clearly with a cover. Also, trolling.
Spoiler : 1 :
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The atom bomb in the background becomes an artificial sun, throwing a shadow across a sundial marked with Greek letters, alpha to omega. A cardboard replica of that sundial was packaged in the game box, and is both an ominous warning and a valuable clue.

Trinity is not a happy game.
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by gotMLK7 »

So back near the end of August, I posted a list. The Top 14 Anime I Watched This Summer Break. It went through all of the anime I binge-watched from the start of summer vacation to the end of it, and it worked as a nice little review list of all the anime I went through during that timeframe. So I decided to do that again, even if I finished it far later than intended. Ladies and gentlemen,
The Top 17 Anime I Watched Fall 2014
Yes, going from the first anime I watched after the last list ended up to the last anime I finished before the end of November, I'm counting down my favorite anime from least favorite to most favorite. This was a hard list since there was nothing I disliked as much as SAO (though I did start a couple and haven't finish them) and nothing I loved as much as Toradora! or Gurren Lagann. Also, this is only shows I've finished, so while I got nearly halfway through Space Dandy this season, I never finished it, so sadly I can't include it. Also this list is COMPLETELY subjective. Some of my lower ones I admit are probably higher quality than some of my favorites and some closer to the top I have seen described by multiple people as total crap. But hey, it's all my opinion, so I can't really help it if I like something that's not quite as good as I want it to be. But with all that out of the way...let's get to the list!
Spoiler : Number 17 :
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"I thought going to high school would make me popular...but no."
No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!
or preferably
WataMote
We start off this season with one that got a very recent dub that I decided to check out after hearing about it from some of the manga fans. While by no means a terrible show and not even one I particularly hate, WataMote suffers heavily from its concept, which made it very hard to sit through from beginning to end.

Story: Tomoko Kuroki is a high school girl, and not a particularly popular one. She's an awkward otaku with social issues and isn't what most people think of as pretty. The show is a slice of life that follows her painful attempts to get some recognition and be a cool girl, and all of her plans to do so end terribly, causing awkward antics at her dispense constantly.

Pros: The best thing the show has going for it aside from its awesome opening is its protagonist, Tomoko. She's a very different kind of protagonist, like a mix of Konata from Lucky Star and Sato from Welcome to the NHK!, and she by far has all the best moments in the show. Well, that's probably because she's the one character the show constantly focuses on, but still. Also notable is her portrayal in the dub by Monica Rial, who does a stellar job as the character. The animation captures the story nicely as well, with crisp colors and some really unique visuals, particularly in the rather nice hexagonal lighting scenes are generally filled with. And again, that opening is great, and the ending's nice, too.

Cons: Sadly the cons stem mostly from the show's premise. It follows Tomoko in her embarrassing attempts to get popular. Sometimes it's pretty funny, as this is a comedy. But other times it's just...painful. Like really painful. Like jesus I know I'm supposed to be laughing but the storm of humiliation going on just makes it hard to watch. I'm one of those people who don't like watching characters being humiliated, so this show was hard to get through. And given the antics Tomoko goes through, some of which being kinda creepy and sexual, I ended up skipping scenes entirely at times. My favorite parts of the show were when Tomoko was happy, and those moments were very rare. Also, outside of Rial, the dub acting's rather weak. But then again, every character who isn't Tomoko barely has any presence so it's not that big a deal. Like I can't remember a single other character's name in the show. The animation, while nice, does sometimes do its job too well when it wants Tomoko to look ugly or overly awkward, which is a bit too often for my liking and makes the show unpleasant to look at at times. All around, while the show means well and can be fun to watch, it's just so painful sometimes that I can't get myself to sit through it, and it's probably the only show I didn't talk about much to other people after finishing it.

High Point: The opening, same name as the show's full title.
Low Point: The bus scene.

Final Thoughts: WataMote isn't really a...terrible show. I wouldn't even call it a bad one, really. But it's one that was sorta disappointing to me and honestly just flat out hurt to watch. It had the potential to be hilarious and even interesting, but its execution just realy made it hard to watch, and I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth despite the pros it offered.
Spoiler : Number 16 :
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"There was surely no such thing as a life without any regrets at all."
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
This show was definitely one of those "high quality anime that I just don't like as much as I feel I should" kind of ones. It's definitely a well-made anime and I don't have a ton to complain about as far as its actual quality goes, but this was one that just didn't interest me as much as I wanted it to.

Story: Balsa is a spear-wielding freelance bodyguard who is hired to protect the young Prince Chagum from the assassination hit ordered upon him by his own father, the emperor. Prince Chagum, infected with what seems to be the egg of a powerful and dangerous water spirit, is an important piece in determining whether or not the kingdom survives. The two go on a perilous journey as Balsa vows to protect the young prince, and they try to find a way to not only keep themselves safe from assassins but also from the mysterious spirit dwelling inside of Chagum.

Pros: The animation in this show is gorgeous for one. Colors are mostly cool, muted colors, but the characters are well-detailed and are very distinct from the typical anime art style. The fighting choreography is amazing, too, with fight scenes that flow well and are incredibly well planned and full of motion. The plot itself is also very well-done and well written. In general the production quality is just stellar, with a good dub and good visuals and good writing in general. Say what you want but this is a very well-made show.

Cons: But oh my god does it have to be so boring? A LARGE portion of this show is devoted to characters sitting around just talking about the plot. Now I'm not against a slow pace or anything, but holy crap there is just so much time devoted to sitting around spouting exposition in this show. I tabbed out waaay too often in this show, because I knew I wasn't missing anything by watching it when I could just listen to it and get the gist of the scene. It's a huge flaw for the show, as it puts a damper on the high production quality when much of that beautiful animation is spent staring at people sitting around talking. It's not too big a deal for a shorter show, but it's hard to sit through 26 episodes of it. Aside from that, characters aren't that memorable. I liked Balsa and Shuga and some others but I didn't care too much about many of them. I'd forgive that though if it weren't for the stupid amount of time the show spent on expositing.

High Point: The fight between Balsa and the band of assassins near the beginning.
Low Point: Any scene with the Star Diviners meeting up, or as I like to call them the Slow Exposition Brigade.

Final Thoughts: Moribito had the potential to be fantastic. Everything needed to make a great show is there. But my enjoyment of it was sucked out far too often by its slow, sloooow exposition. It's like a really detailed painting of a flat desert landscape. It's really, really impressive and clearly took a lot of effort, but you'd get bored of it pretty easily if you just kept watching it. While the show as a whole was very good, the scenes that comprised it were just too boring to be too memorable for me.
Spoiler : Number 15 :
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"Do you find this difficult to understand?"
FLCL
FLCL, or Fooly Cooly if you want to be phonetic about it, is basically the epitome of Gainax insanity. At only 6 episodes long, it's barely a full anime, and it's one of the most insane experiences in animation I've ever experienced. I...think I liked it? But with this show it can be legitimately difficult to tell.

Story: Hoo boy here's where things get tough. A seemingly alien girl named Haruko Haruhara drives up to a boy named Naota Nanbada on a moped and hits him upside his head with her guitar. From then on, Haruko butts into Naota's usually normal life and he starts getting into weird situations, mostly caused by Haruko, including having giant robots come out from the injury on his head and dealing with the advances of his brother's girlfriend. Antics ensue as things escalate with massive battles, government agents, a random South Park parody scene, and a whole load of WTF.

Pros: It's the concentration of everything you'd expect from Gainax, the guys who brought us Gurren Lagann and Panty and Stocking. It's a ton of outlandish insanity all concentrated into a short 6 episode series. The animation is fantastic, with a sort of muted pink aesthetic to its coloration that I really like and a willingness to throw whatever visuals it wants at you, including going into manga format at one point and yes, going into an unprompted South Park style in the middle of a scene. Characters are simple but decently memorable, particularly Haruko for her sheer insanity. The dub is a strange case because it's not exactly "good" but it somehow fits FLCL perfectly and I can't imagine it being dubbed any other way. And best of all, the soundtrack is freaking fantastic. Like seriously, this show could be just its album and that would be all you would need, because the OST in this show is one of the best I've ever heard, with a ton of memorable songs regardless of its short run time.

Cons: WTF is it? I don't know. The plot is so asinine it might as well not exist. Some of the characters can be annoying; Naota at times is a pain, Haruko kind of exists in this bridge between hilarious and insufferable, the brother's girlfriend Maimimi does her job well if she's supposed to be a pain to watch, and don't get me started on Naota's creepy dad. There's little to no substance in the show and if you want to watch anything remotely intelligent you probably won't find it in FLCL. I mean it's got the Gainax staple of making no sense but delivering such nonsense in a way that feels kind of poetic, but whereas Gurren Lagann had enough time and development of its insanity to kind of take a message from it, I don't think FLCL really does. You can pick up a moral or two somewhere in there but it's not really anything that the creators felt like they wanted to focus on. It's just insanity through and through. Some jokes hit and others miss completely, it somehow gets a little TOO insane at times to the point where the little plot it has becomes hard to follow, and it's just...weird.

High Point: The soundtrack.
Low Point: Implications left by Mamimi and Naota's dad regarding their...romantic interests.

Final Thoughts: FLCL is best seen as a long music video. Great animation, interesting and weird visuals, and an amazing soundtrack. But there is little to no content in here, so enjoying it as a full show is just a little difficult to do for me.
Spoiler : Number 14 :
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"It can get so dreary down there below the clouds."
Last Exile
Same case as Moribito with this one. This is very clearly an incredibly well-made anime that has a lot going for it for sure. However, I just didn't have a ton of fun actually watching it. That's not to say I didn't sufficiently enjoy the things I liked, but this one really is a case of "I liked it less than I feel I should have."

Story: Claus Valca and Lavie Head are the pilot and navigator of what's called a vanship in a steampunk world where the skies are home to war and adventure. Seeking to finish their deceased fathers' mission by flying their vanship into the "Grand Stream", these two end up involved with a large airship known at the Silvana when they begin caring for a young girl named Alvis Hamilton and become a part of its captain's conflict with the Guild, the rulers of the skies. With their vow to protect Alvis, their relationship as friends is tested by the war as they're thrown into the war and the search for something mysterious going by the name of "Exile".

Pros: The animation in this show is amazing. With its distinctive steampunk designs and its surprisingly good use of CGI despite being from as far back as 2003, the visuals are definitely going to be the first thing you notice in this show. I'm also quite fond of the characters. Particularly, I enjoy Lavie the navigator, as well as side characters like Captain Alex Row, the pilot Tatiana Wisla, the rifleman Mullin Shetland, and the oh-so eccentric Guild member Dio Eraclea and his partner Lucciola. They're all fun and interesting and I had trouble actually choosing my favorite. Music is very unique, particularly the rather trippy sounding opening. The emotional investment is strong, too. And the dub is just great, with special mention to Joshua Seth as Dio, Kari Wahlgren as Lavie, Karren Strassman putting her evil on as the Guild Maestro Delphine, and the gods of cool voices themselves Crispin Freeman and Steve Blum as Alex Row and his friend Vincent Alzey, which made the scene of the two sitting down to coffee together just all the more awesome. The show is dripping with quality production that can make any anime enthusiast happy.

Cons: I think what really killed this show for me was the plot itself. If you've seen this show and read my summary and went "That's kind of a vague description isn't it" that's because I'm not entirely sure all that actually happened in the show. It's one of those complicated plots where you can easily pick up bits and pieces but if you aren't paying attention to every second it just loses you. And it's hard to pay attention to every second in a show as slow as Last Exile. There's plenty of fast parts, but sometimes it just felt like it slowed down so much that it became kind of hard to focus and actually tell what was important or not. Plus, a lot of characters felt underused, particularly the rather generic and forgettable protagonist Claus. I can't say there's as much bad in this show as there is good, but something about its slow tone and kind of confusing story just made it really difficult to have fun with it. There's definitely plenty to love, but I just really couldn't get into the plot enough to enjoy it as much as I wish I had.

High Point: The aesthetics of the CGI vanships and the design of the settings in general.
Low Point: The rather slow nature of the plot.

Final Thoughts: I cannot say that I dislike Last Exile. I certainly can't say it's bad and quite frankly I wish I could put this higher. But something about the tone and the general slowness of the story put me off for some reason and just kind of bored me. It's like a really talented storyteller is constantly falling asleep in the middle of his story, so even though you know what he's reading is good, it's hampered by how tired looking at him makes you. It's really difficult to explain exactly why I didn't care too much for this show, but I just didn't particularly have a blast watching it.
Spoiler : Number 13 :
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"I'm going to beat the s*** out of Satan!"
Blue Exorcist
Alright we're getting more into the ones I really actively enjoyed now. Blue Exorcist was a show I decided to check out because I liked the dub cast of it and for no other reason, but I was rather happy with what I got out of the experience. It's rather generic and forgettable if I'm going to be totally honest, but it's a show where I had a lot of fun watching it.

Story: Rin Okumura discovers one day that he and his twin brother Yukio are the sons of Satan, yet he's the only one who seems to have gained demonic powers, gaining a tail and power of blue flames that is sealed by a katana his adoptive father kept in his church. When Satan kills said adopted father, Rin vows to become an exorcist himself and defeat Satan, and he joins the exorcist-in-training class at True Cross Academy to do so. With his brother as his teacher and a bunch of Satan-hating exorcists surrounding him, Rin must make friends with the others and keep his powers at bay as he tries to become a full-fledged exorcist to beat the s*** out of his father.

Pros: First off I just want to say how amazing hearing Bryce Papenbrook repeatedly say "I'm going to beat the s*** out of Satan" is. On that note, as I mentioned I watched this for the dub, which shared many VAs with SAO, which I praised the dub of, so you know that I approve of this one as well. The show itself is also a lot of fun. The characters are all fun and I really like the class at True Cross Academy, especially the stereotypical tough guy that turns out to be an amazing student and priest Suguro, and Rin is rather fun as a super-powerful shonen protagonist. The action scenes are rather fun, with priests pulling out shotguns being a thing and some generally neat battles. The comedy's great, which is good since this show is surprisingly comedy for at least half its air time, potentially even more so than action. It's basically all you want in a fun shonen series without the hassle of there being 50+ episodes of it to sit through, as the series is thankfully merciful at 26 or so episodes.

Cons: Sadly, in the end Blue Exorcist is a rather generic shonen. It doesn't do anything to really stir things up and never really stuck out with anything in particular. It's shonen tropes all the way with maybe just a bit more comedy and a lot of characters that actually do fairly little fighting, making it rather weak as an action show at times, which is what I picked it up for. The ending was a bit of a disappointment to me as it felt like it needed a season 2 to follow it up but hasn't actually gotten one. The movie didn't end it any better, as it was basically a filler story movie that I could predict the ending of a mile away and was just generally predictable throughout. I think Blue Exorcist's biggest problem is just that it's rather forgettable. Nothing in it is something I couldn't find done better elsewhere and often I forgot I had even watched the show. I liked it, I did, but it's so easy to just sorta...forget happening.

High Point: The True Cross Academy students.
Low Point: The predictable filler nature of the movie.

Final Thoughts: Blue Exorcist is a show I suggest if you feel like watching a shonen without actually sitting through 50 or even 500 episodes just to see something enjoyable. It's incredibly basic and quite frankly easy to forget when you look back on it, but for what it is it's not like it hurts to watch or anything. It's good fun for the time you spend watching it, and then it's up to you later whether you'll actually remember it fondly or poorly...or just not at all.
Spoiler : Number 12 :
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"You are terribly good natured."
Spice and Wolf
A classic romance anime with a famous female lead and often considered a classic by anime fans. I've already made a full review of both seasons of this show so I'll try to make this segment quick, but while I didn't absolutely fall in love with this show like many others, I've gotta admit that it's a really nice little romance anime. With economics.

Story: Spice and Wolf revolves around the two main characters, Lawrence and Holo. Kraft Lawrence, a travelling merchant, finds a girl with wolf ears and a bushy tail stowing away in his cart. She introduces herself as Holo the Wise Wolf, a legendary figure who would bring prosperity to the wheat crops during a village's harvest, though her believers have diminished over the 600 years in which she helped them. Holo manages to convince Lawrence that she is indeed the wolf of legend, and she accompanies him in his travels as she makes him help her reach her homeland of Yoitz in the north. The story follows their travels as they get in and out of danger, all the while trying to make a profit in the merchantry business as hints of a romance begin to bloom between the two.

Pros: The main characters in this show are simply delightful. Kraft Lawrence and Holo the Wise Wolf are a great couple of characters, and they're probably the main reason to keep watching the show. Both being expertly dubbed by J. Michael Tatum and Brina Palencia certainly helps. The show is fairly simple and cute, and I'm actually really fond of the way it goes really in-depth into the economy of the world they've built. It establishes itself rather nicely and heck, merchant economics can be pretty interesting sometimes! It's slow, but it isn't exactly a bad kind of slow; it works well with the pacing of the story, and it all tie together rather well for the tone of it in general. The soundtrack is rather nice as well, particularly the first ending theme "The Wolf-Whistling Song". The romance, while mostly hinted through the series, is rather nice, too, and the general chemistry within the cast works rather well. For a simple how, it all works nicely.

Cons: This show really needs to be continued, for one, as the ending and in fact the entire last arc is rather weak. You can't go anywhere S&W related without seeing someone mention a need for a third season, and yeah, it really does need one. Also, the show's aforementioned slow pacing can really drive some people off from it, and perhaps worse is that you really need to pay attention to the merchant talk or you'll get lost completely. Don't pay attention to what they're saying for a little bit or fail to process it and the whole arc might become partially incomprehensible. There were also times, particularly in season 2, where I felt Holo and Lawrence's relationship felt really...off. Like the lengths they wen to regarding the other just felt uncharacteristic of them based on what we knew of them. The visuals are also not my favorites, making the show feel a tad older than it actually is and not showing a ton to interest you. Unless you like seeing Holo naked in which case don't worry she's constantly naked for some reason Holo please put on a freaking shirt. It's mostly nitpicks that bother me personally, I suppose, but they add up a bit and just make the show a taaaad less enjoyable than I felt it could have been.

High Point: The interactions between Holo and Lawrence.
Low Point: The final arc.

Final Thoughts: Spice and Wolf definitely deserves the praise it receives but it's by no means the perfect anime. It has problems and turn-offs that could easily drive the average anime viewer away. However, I find it difficult to actually dislike the show and don't think I've met anyone who has actively told me they did; in the end my problems are just a bunch of nitpicks and I can imagine anyone liking this show. Give it a shot if you want a little romance and a lot of monetary lessons.
Spoiler : Number 11 :
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"He comes for people who've been driven into a corner and have nowhere to go...!"
Paranoia Agent
Perhaps the most famous work of the late great Satoshi Kon, Paranoia Agent is a psychological thriller that dives into the human mind and what rumors and paranoia can do to people, and it definitely leaves an impact on any viewer who decides to pick it up.

Story: Tsukiko Sagi is the character designer behind the popular "Maromi" character. When she's unable to meet her deadline for her next character concept, she finds herself attacked by a boy wearing golden roller-skates and wielding a gold bat, who comes to be known as "L'iL Slugger" (or "Shonen Bat" in Japan), but there is little evidence of the attack left. Soon after, different people across Japan begin to encounter L'il Slugger, who seems to attack people who feel trapped or stressed by their lives, until the attack somehow brings some degree of relief to them. Between more rumors spreading, detectives on the case, and mysteries everywhere, one question is at the center of it all: Who or what is L'il Slugger?

Pros: This show nails the psychological elements Kon is known for. It's deep and thought-provoking, and the writing's great. It really feels like a dip into the human mind and seeing the many different reactions to something like a supposed wish-fulfilling serial attacker. The animation, while old, doesn't feel dated, and has an element of distinction and detail that is often present in Kon's work. Animation is fluid and expressive while incredibly distinct, looking like no other anime out there and feeling very non-cliche. I also really liked the pair of detectives in the show and their story arcs; they both go through a lot and they're by far the most enjoyable characters in the show. Plus the trippy opening fits so well for the show.

Cons: How much you like PA will depend on how much you like psychological stories, particularly rather cynical ones. I'm not a fan of stories where every character is unlikable, and while that isn't totally true here as there are some stand-out characters like the detectives and the suicide pact group, most characters do have at least some baggage that makes it difficult to enjoy them, and some characters are just flat-out disgusting. Also, that aforementioned suicide pact group might tip you off a bit to this show's tone, especially since their episode is the most light-hearted episode in the series. There's also nudity, pedophilia, prostitution, incestuous implications, and just general unpleasantness all around. It's a dang well written show, that's for sure, but you kind of have to look past the fact that everyone and everything it throws at you will likely be terrible and possibly very disturbing. So yeah, I have to actually give a warning about this show that anyone sensitive to the themes I mentioned above should steer clear of this show, as it could easily disturb you.

High Point: The episode "The Holy Warrior".
Low Point: The character of Masami Kirukawa, who brings forth some of the most uncomfortable elements in the show.

Final Thoughts: If you like psychological thrillers with big plot twists and deep writing and the like, you'll love Paranoia Agent. It's the kind of show that knows what it wants to do and does it well. But if you want something happy or...not disturbing, you won't want to go near it. It's an acquired taste, but if you can get used to its flavor, you're sure to adore it. I just didn't quite get used to it enough to put it higher.
Spoiler : Number 10 :
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"A hero will never give up, never hide, never be defeated, never accept evil."
Samurai Flamenco
...This is a really really weird one, I'll admit. I can't for the life of me say this anime is better than a lot of the shows before it, I will admit. I'd sooner recommend Last Exile or Moribito or Paranoia Agent to people than I would Samurai Flamenco. But there's just something so...amusing about this show. It definitely left an impression on me and was just generally fun to watch.

Story: Masayoshi Hazama is a male model who has dreamed of becoming a sentai super hero and becoming a hero of justice. Alas, he has no powers, but that doesn't stop him from donning an outfit and attempting (and initially failing) to fight evil by himself as the hero Samurai Flamenco. However, he meets others who help him out, like the helpful police officer Hidenori Goto, the so-called "Flamenco Girl" Mari Maya and her band, and more. Over time, he begins to grow as a vigilante despite his rather weak nature.

I'm going to stop right here and say the rest of this episode spoils episode 7 and onward of the show, so if you want to go in blind stop here and skip to the high point, but if you don't mind the spoilers keep reading. I do need to address these spoilers to fully discuss the show, though.

Eventually Masayoshi discovers the existence of real, dangerous monsters and even aliens, and Samurai Flamenco becomes the hero that must fight to defend the entire planet, with new weapons, new tactics, eventually a full team of Flamengers (Flamenco Rangers) complete with Megazords, and more. Will Masayoshi manage to live his dream of being a real sentai hero or will everything fall apart?

Pros: If you like sentai or ever enjoyed Power Rangers, this show is BEAUTIFUL. It goes over all the tropes and parodies everything, without even explicitly making fun of it. It's a sentai satire that both makes jokes about it and pays homage to it and it's definitely a fun show if you like that kind of stuff (having been raised on Power Rangers, I adored it). Characters are rather fun, particularly Masayoshi and Goto, who are the most interesting and the most enjoyable members of the cast for me and stand out in general. I also will give a shout-out to the first major antagonist King Torture, who was surprisingly good for a purposefully generic villain. I'm also rather fond of the animation, which is very nice and crisp and 2013y. Music's also notable, with one of the few shows where I love both openings ("Just One Life" by SPYAIR followed by "Ai Ai Ai ni Utarete Bye Bye Bye" by Flow) equally, and there's even a cheesy theme song for the Flamengers that sounds exactly like a cheesy sentai opening song. The show even manages to deconstruct sentai to a degree and in several ways sheds some interesting light on the genre...though in others it just full-on follows the heart of the genre and plays it completely seriously. Heck, I've seen a convincing argument that this show's actually rather intelligent in its weird almost avant-garde way of presenting its story. But to me it's just a fun show in the end, and if you like sentai (which I certainly find enjoyable) it's just a blast.

Cons: ...But. If you DON'T like sentai...then this is one of the dumbest shows with some of the most wasted potential you may ever sit through. At episode 7, the series changes from a light slice of life about a guy trying to be a real superhero to just flat-out being a superhero with real monsters just coming right out from nowhere. The change is ridiculous and the entire series completely changes from that point on. That's why I mentioned it in the plot section, because people who go into the show without knowing the change will happen suddenly question what stupidity the show just pulled off. And yeah the transition is pretty terrible. Plus a lot of characters aren't developed too well or are downright annoying, particularly Mari/Flamenco Girl, and a lot of the villains go by so fast they either are very unmemorable or make no sense (I reeeeally don't understand Beyond Flamenco). The tone is all over the place and the show never stays consistent with itself for very long. It's an incredibly stupid show and only sometimes impresses with its deconstruction and certain ideas. If you don't take that transition well and learn to adapt to every curveball the show throws you, you will find yourself disliking it very quickly.

High Point: The sentai homages and deconstructions.
Low Point: The transition at the end of episode 7.

Final Thoughts: I liked this show but probably for more personal reasons than others. I enjoy sentai tropes and I love Power Rangers and I wrote a whole dang NaNoWriMo book based on a sentai-themed roleplay that I created and have kept going for over a year. I freaking adore this stuff. To me this show is one that I liked and ranked high because it was just enjoyable for me. I'll admit that Last Exile and Moribito and Paranoia Agent are better shows, but Samurai Flamenco was fun, dangit, and I'm glad I watched it.
Spoiler : Number 9 :
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"Everyone is connected."
Serial Experiments Lain
Let's follow up fun with complete mindscrewery, shall we? A classic from 1998, it was the OP for this show that got me watching it, and let me say, this show threw me through more than a few loops. But those loops are exactly what makes Lain stand out from the crowd.

Story: The "Wired" is a virtual reality world that contains the entirety of the world's human communication and networks, as well as the internet and cyberspace, essentially being the pinnacle of technological connection and information. The show follows an odd girl, Lain Iwakura, and her experiences with the Wired after she and her junior high classmates receive a message from a girl who had already committed suicide through the Wired. Lain begins looking into the Wired and delving deep into what it is, as bizarre events and mysterious people begin to take interest in her. As the questions of who Lain is, what's happening in the Wired, and what is even real or fake arise, the only thing known for sure is that in this world, everyone is connected.

Pros: This show is often noted for having themes of the world's reliance on technology and the internet back in 1998 before the internet really took over, and you can tell a show is smart to some degree when it can predict trends like this that actually end up coming true. And yes, this is a rather smart show, with deep symbolism and interesting messages that can make you think sometimes. The visuals are a little dated but are striking nonetheless, with plenty of memorable images and great designs and interesting setups and more. The show's great at making you feel constantly unnerved. Whereas previous shows on this list were watered down by their slowness, this one is only enhanced by it, as every moment in the show gives you a sense of uneasiness, and the show ha a vey distinct tone you can't find replicated elsewhere. The OP, Duvet, is beautiful in both animation and music, making it a favorite of mine. The lead character Lain is one of the most bizarre yet intriguing protagonists you can find, and you'll find yourself questioning her more and more as she descends deeper into the Wired and her psychological state is explored more and more. Plus, the mindscrews can get really neat and become incredibly enjoyable sometimes. The show just does everything it wants to so beautifully well, and it stands the test of time despite its rather artsy, avant-garde approach to things.

Cons: That being said, WTF IS HAPPENING IN THIS SHOW? I've never had so much trouble describing the simple premise of a show before! The show is often considered a mindscrew, and yeah, I wouldn't have liked it as much if I didn't have a Wikipedia article open the whole time just so I can read what's actually happening in every episode. It's hard to tell what order things are happening in, if something's really happening or not, what something's supposed to mean, what something's supposed to be, anything. It's so avant-garde that it becomes almost unintelligible without doing some kind of research. Plus the symbolism takes a jump off the deep end sometimes. Like why did Lain's head appear on a cartoony alien's body? What even WAS that? It's so frustrating because when you know what's happening it's really good, but at times it dips so far into pretentious territory you just have to stop and look things up just so you know what's actually happening. Those who want a simple story, be warned, you will NOT enjoy Lain.

High Point: The beautiful opening, Duvet.
Low Point: Lain's head on an alien out of nowhere.

Final Thoughts: The only thing really hampering Lain for me was just the sheer difficulty I had following it. It's impossible for me to accurately describe the plot and I'm sometimes unsure if the show can itself. But, for an avant-garde and psychological mindscrew of a show, Lain more than delivers and was an incredibly interesting watch.
Spoiler : Number 8 :
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"They would normally be completely isolated as latent criminals, but we allow them into the outside world for a single purpose: to flush out and hunt down criminals just like themselves."
Psycho-Pass
A show with its second season currently airing, but this section will only cover the first. Psycho-Pass is an interesting and fun show that, while flawed, presents a cool setting with interesting ideas and is just generally a good watch.

Story: The law of the world is ruled by the SYBIL System, a system that determines a person's criminal tendencies based on their state of mind and punishes them as latent criminals based on that. Akane Tsunemori is the newest inspector to a team of Enforcers, criminals who are brought onto the police force to eliminate other criminals using guns that read a person's crime coefficient and using their experience in duty. One of these Enforcers is Shinya Kogami, a former inspector who became a latent criminal due to his obsession with a case involving the mysterious criminal Shogo Makishima. When Makishima makes his move and begins to support latent criminals o try and beat the system, it's a battle between the forces of a corrupted law against the dangerous revolutionary in an investigation that will bring forth a war of both peace and morality.

Pros: The setting the show sets up is a rather good one. Everything's explained well enough so that you don't get lost within the show's set of rules and it's all a rather interesting way of going about things. The style of the show is really slick, with some incredibly cool sci-fi visuals and effects accompanied by a good soundtrack and high quality animation. Most of the cast is rather good, with Akane getting some great development over time and the crew of Enforcers being fun in their own rights (old cyborg man ftw). But best of all is the villain, Shogo Makishima, who is not only a really interesting and morally questionable villain, but is also rather charismatic and memorable, and supplied a lot of my favorite aspects of the show. The different plots that the show goes through with different latent criminals trying to escape the system are interesting to watch and enticing to figure out how they're doing it and how they'll be stopped. Plus, the second opening, "Out of Control", is amazing, with a cool song and brilliant visuals. Dub's excellent, too; shoutout to Robert McCollum for his awesome work as Kogami and Alex Organ for his on Makishima. The show oozes style and feels very well put-together the whole way through.

Cons: The show has a tedency to be really...blatant with its messages. I mean you can probably assume from the get-go that SYBIL isn't exactly a good system, so the impact is lost when it tries to make you question it. It doesn't do a great job at trying to convince you of its benefits, that's for sure. Also some characters are incredibly underused or just uninteresting, and for a major character Kogami is really boring to me, being the typical "obsessed cop" kind of guy. Akane also takes a while to really get particularly interesting herself. Plus the show just doesn't really suck you in to the world it's built. I mean yeah it's a great setting, but it never feels real, it just feels like something they created and are showing you, not something they expect to really engage you in. Also for as good as the second opening is, the first is honestly one of the most annoying I think I've ever heard, with an attempt at interesting visuals and a different sounding vocal style that, at least to me, just grates at the ears with its high pitch and is just plain boring to watch. The base of the show is so strong and it does a lot of things very well, but it never feels real and is just a bit too heavy-handed with itself, so it's hard to get TOO into it.

High Point: The villain, Shogo Makishima.
Low Point: The rather blatant moral.

Final Thoughts: I liked this show, despite its lack of subtlety. It's stylish and neat and was definitely a fun watch. I don't know how Psycho-Pass 2 is as I've heard mixed opinions, but I might check it out one day, and I definitely give this show a recommendation to anyone curious enough about it to try it.
Spoiler : Number 7 :
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"Why did I dream of building a giant robot? Because I love giant robots! And I hope that you do, too!"
Robotics;Notes
A good concept can take a show far. While Robotics;Notes didn't quite do exactly what I hoped or expected it would with its premise, it did what it wanted to do well and lived up to the excitement that its premise, and its predecessor Steins;Gate, gave me.

Story: Science has advanced enough to the point where the ability to build giant robots has become a reality, a trend that rose in popularity after the airing of the popular (yet unfinished) mech show Gunvarrel. Two high school students, Kaito Yashio and Akiho Senomiya, who were old friends alongside Akiho's older sister (a robotics enthusiast) decide to reform their school's robotics club thanks to Akiho's persistence, and work on gaining more members and support so they can build their life-size giant robot in the project titled Gunbuild-1. But as Kaito discovers a mysterious AI and reports from a man warning of a tragedy, questions arise. What do the reports mean? Why did Akiho's sister distance herself from them? Why did the Gunvarrel show never finish airing? And most importantly, will the Robotics Club really succeed in building their giant robot?

Pros: God I adore this premise. A high school club gets together to build a giant mech? That's a brilliant idea for a story. And for the most part the show delivers. I love watching the process of building their model of Gunvarrel. It takes the process seriously and goes pretty in-depth about the process despite it being fictional, something I also complimented Steins;Gate for, which this takes place in the same universe as. The way that halfway through the show the tone suddenly takes a tense and dramatic turn is also something seen in its predecessor, and it did its job at gripping me into the show and really rose the stakes of everything. The animation's fantastic, with nice designs and really smooth visuals, and I ADORE Gunvarrel's design. The characters that get development are incredibly enjoyable, particularly Frau Koujiro, the tech-savvy internet talking hikikomori. There's also a nice sort of mystery element to the show. But for the most part it's just the idea that makes me enjoy this show as much as I do. Clubs working towards a goal is a common trend in anime but one that is about building a robot and playing that straight is just the kind of thing I absolutely adore about the genre. The parts where they work on the robot are my favorite parts of the series.

Cons: The dramatic plot feels rather...tacked on. It doesn't make sense at times and requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Plus the villain, who I enjoyed watching the show, felt a lot weaker afterwards when I realized I wasn't entirely sure what the motivation behind their scheme was. A lot of it, while adding great drama in the second half, just felt like it was slapped together. I almost wanted it to be a mech-building slice of life, really. The characters could be really weak at times, too. Half of the Robotics Club were really generic and didn't stand out much to me, particularly Jun the karate girl, who was added into the cast and never actually DID anything. She had an episode about her backstory and then it was resolved and that as her whole character arc. A lot of it felt like there was more there in the original visual novel that was poorly explained in the adaptation. Really my biggest issue with the show is that it didn't do as much as it could have with the premise, leaving out potential for great characters to fit in the rather confusing dramatic elements of the plot.

High Point: The scenes in which Gunbuild-1 is being developed.
Low Point: The lack of defined motivation for the villain.

Final Thoughts: Robotics;Notes is not as good as Steins;Gate. That being said, it's an enjoyable show in its own right. The premise is amazing and the execution isn't half bad. It could have done a lot more with that premise in my opinion, but for what I got, I was very satisfied.
Spoiler : Number 6 :
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"The world isn't as bad as you think."
DuRaRaRa!!
Continuing the trend of successors to anime from my previous list, we have DuRaRaRa!!, the successor to the famous Baccano!, which I placed high up on the summer list. How does this story, set in modern Japan rather than 1920s America, hold up in comparison to that?

Story: The Japanese city of Ikebukuro has become the home to an interesting web of events. Average boy Mikado Ryugamine moves to the town to go to school with his friend Masaomi Kida, along with an odd girl named Anri Sonohara. Meanwhile, an "invisible" gang known as the Dollars is the talk of the town, despite nobody knowing anything about that, after the fall of gangs known as the Blue Squares and the Yellow Scarves. Also meanwhile is the events surround Celty Sturluson, a Dullahan riding on a motorcycle in search of her missing head. There's also the mysterious chess-like tactics of the information broker Izaya Orihara, as well as the violent man with superhuman strength named Shizuo Heiwajima who hates his guts. Plus, there's the mysterious slasher, going around town attacking people with a sword. All these events and more begin to tie together and connect, and only time will tell just what is happening at the center of them all in the town of Ikebukuro.

Pros: DuRaRaRa!!'s biggest strength is in its cast. The show has an incredibly large crew of characters but most of them are actually incredibly memorable in their own right, and get some time in the spotlight to some degree. You have characters like Izaya Orihara, the infamous troll; Shizuo Heiwajima, the toughest guy in Ikebukuro; Celty Sturluson, the Dullahan in search of her own head; the tough Russian sushi salesman, Simon Brezhnev; Kyohei Kadota and his crew of friends, Shinra and his rather, the motorcycle cop Kinnosuke, the list goes on and on. The story isn't quite as out of order as Baccano!'s but still has a very bizarre way to tell its story that makes it interesting to watch, and a lot of the show's plot twists legitimately surprised me thanks to the roundabout way of showing off the characters. The animation is nice and stylish, with less emphasis on shading on the characters and some cool action scenes. In general it's a show that has a lot of style and personality to it; it's got the same kind of feel to it as graffiti art does, and it's that distinctive style and flair that makes DuRaRaRa!! really stand out, especially with so memorable a cast.

Cons: The three main characters (Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri) take a LONG time to get interesting, and even then they were some of the weaker cast members in my opinion despite being at the heart of the show, especially Mikado. The show's disjointed narrative works less than it does in Baccano!, and it also does a weaker job at actually meshing the supernatural in with the normal, particularly when it comes to the "slasher" subplot that seems to come right the heck out of nowhere. A couple characters (hi Seiiji) can be really annoying, too. Plus, the story is kind of weird at times in general, and the ending is actually an OVA that opens up more plots than it closes (only remedied by the FINALLY upcoming second season). It's a weird show that feels like it's trying to do what Baccano! did but doesn't quite hit the notes that made what Baccano! did work, and while it's still a very enjoyable show, it's a lot weaker in its identity and isn't quite as good at what it clearly wants to do.

High Point: Any scene featuring Izaya and Shizuo on screen at once.
Low Point: The ending being an OVA.

Final Thoughts: DuRaRaRa!! is a really stylish show with a great cast to support it. Is it as good as Baccano!? Not really, but its energy and its characters makes it just as enjoyable as its predecessor regardless. It's a fun show through and through, and it's just an exciting watch in general.
Spoiler : Number 5 :
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"Your next line is..."
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
This is the show that probably had the longest lasting impact on me in this list, effectively dragging me into the fanbase of a manga running since the 80s and making me reference it almost daily since finishing it. So what's the deal with this show exactly? Note that this is only the first season covering the first two arcs and I'm considering Stardust Crusaders as a separate show that I have yet to see.

Story: There are two story arcs covered in this season of the show. The first is Phantom Blood, the story of Jonathan Joestar, an English gentleman from the 1880a, and his newly adopted brother, Dio Brando. Dio plots to usurp Jonathan's spot as the heir to the Joestar family, but instead discovers the power of an ancient stone mask that gives him vampiric powers, forcing Jonathan to learn the martial art of Hamon to learn how to fight and defeat his evil adopted brother. The second is Battle Tendency, following Jonathan's grandson Joseph Joestar in 1938 New York City. When ancient beings known as the Pillar Men, the source of the stone masks that transformed Dio, are unearthed and revived, they seek to find a special stone to amplify their powers and turn them into the perfect beings. Joseph takes on his grandfather's duty and trains his own Hamon alongside Caesar Zepelli to defeat the Pillar Men and save the world.

Pros: The show defines "stylish", with bright colors that change to reflect the scene and a lot of unique visuals that capture the manga's charm. Most of the good comes from the second arc, Battle Tendency. It features Joseph Joestar, one of the most entertaining shonen protagonists I've ever seen, with his incredibly odd yet ingenious battle tactics of trickery that are just a joy to watch unfold. It also has two great openings, with Battle Tendency's Bloody Stream being my all-time favorite anime opening for how completely freaking AWESOME it is. Plus, the characters and villains are a ton of fun. The first arc also has Dio Brando, who, whether it's on purpose or not, is one of the most entertaining villains I know. The show in general is INCREDIBLY quotable, with about as many memes tied to its fanbase as Doctor friggin' Who. Most of all, though, it's just a ton of fun. Despite being a 2012 anime it has all the charm of the 80s manga it was based on and it captures the JoJo energy well. It has the ridiculous characters, the insane fight scenes, the hammy acting, the fabulous poses, the incredibly muscular men, the cheesy one-liners, the silly powers (Caesar Zepelli fights with BUBBLES), the unnecessary Engrish, and all the awkwardly hilarious stuff you would want in a series like this. As far as shows that are just flat out fun go, this is one of the best.

Cons: But oh my god Phantom Blood is so boring. Often considered one of the worst arcs of JoJo's 8 arcs by its fans, the first arc sees a generic plot, not particularly fun fight scenes, very boring designs, and one of the most bland shonen protagonists I know with Jonathan Joestar, who's basically Kenshiro with "GENTLEMAN" written on his forehead. It's actually after Dio becomes a vampire and stops just being a petty dog-burning @$$hole that it just gets generic and boring for me. Also, the laws of Hamon are very poorly defined and it just basically does whatever it wants whenever it wants. Also, if you don't like the ridiculousness of it it'll push you away quickly. There definitely needs to be some sort of mutual understanding between you and the show, because this show isn't going to challenge your mind, it's just going to give you a fun setup and story (later JoJo arcs like Steel Ball Run are more known for their writing but that's not animated yet, and even that has men transforming into dinosaurs). Between the dull first act and the ridiculous nature of the show it's easy to be driven away early from this show; you have to stick with it to the end to really get into it.

High Point: Joseph Joestar.
Low Point: The second half of Phantom Blood.

Final Thoughts: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a show that takes a while to hit its stride, until the three Pillar Men arrive in Battle Tendency I'd say, but once it hits that stride it's one of the most enjoyable shows you can find. It got me to actually start reading the manga and even buy the PS3 game, and it's just a fun fanbase to be in. The show might test you a bit, but if you stay with it, you won't regret the amount of fun you'll have with it.
Spoiler : Number 4 :
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"Let's all go back home together!"
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
And now on the opposite side of the spectrum we have Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, a show that's a contender for one of the most emotionally driven I've ever seen. A very realistic tale of tragedy, this show came before the actual earthquake hit Japan, and seeing it now can really open one's eyes to how tragic disasters like these are.

Story: High schooler Mirai is forced by her mother to take her little brother Yuki to a robotics expo in Odaiba, much to the rather apathetic Mirai's chagrin. However, while there, Tokyo is hit by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake that practically destroys the town, putting the siblings into massive danger while all alone. However, a very kind courier named Mari realizes they're all headed in the same direction and decides to help them get all the way back to their home in Setagaya. Together, the three brave aftershocks, the despair of the destruction, the collapsing ruins of Tokyo, and the harshness of their new surroundings as they cross the wreckage of Tokyo to try and get back home safely.

Pros: This show doesn't romanticize natural disaster. It's all presented incredibly realistically and incredibly emotionally. It shows how people will help each other but also how selfish people can be, and it isn't afraid to really touch the effects a tragedy like this could have. For a modern disaster tragedy, it's amazing. Its characters are also rather good. Mirai starts off annoying but her experiences change her in huge ways and develops her in great ways, and Mari is an amazingly nice person from beginning to end even through all the struggles she has to go through. Yuki's presence in the story as an innocent yet not completely oblivious character is also very necessary for the dynamic, especially to conflict Mirai's initial pessimism. The story handles its emotions well and knows how and when to really sting you. The ending episodes in particular are painful to watch once you realize what's happening and result in one of the most agonizing drama I've seen in anime. The show knows exactly what it's trying to do and does it well, and everything is presented so realistically that it's easy to see it all actually happening in the real world, and that's perhaps what I most respect about this show. Plus, despite its tragic and realistic nature, it isn't entirely cynical, and there's a light at the end of the tunnel; that's something I can really get behind.

Cons: I mentioned that Yuki's a necessary character but even I'll admit he could be pretty annoying. He was the standard child character that was overly positive and was more there for the plot to work than to actually be a distinct character. There were some moments that felt like they could be cut out or just felt like filler, like the robotics boy that appeared late in the series then didn't do much. And, as previously mentioned, Mirai was annoying until she actually developed her personality. Aside from that though there really isn't much I have to complain about with this series. It's an emotion-charged show that handles its emotion really well, so I have little to complain about on that front. It's not at the top because it doesn't quite hit the same enjoyment level as my top 3 but for what it is there isn't a whole lot I feel the need to complain about in it. Dub could be better I guess with a ton of reused voice actors (everyone sounds like David Matranga I wear), but that's about it.

High Point: The handling of the earthquake.
Low Point: The random robot kid that appeared for a single episode.

Final Thoughts: If you want a realistic and sad story, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is for you. Aside from its emotional aspect it doesn't have a ton to make it stand out, but in that regard it's an excellent show, and I'd easily recommend this to anybody, just to see that anime isn't all tropey nonsense and can really reflect real life when a story is put in the right hands.
Spoiler : Number 3 :
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"Bird, GO!"
Gatchaman Crowds
I've already reviewed Gatchaman Crowds in full so I'll try to be brief again, but let's just say that this reboot to the classic Tatsunoko anime Gatchaman is one of the most enjoyable and colorful shows I could ask for.

Story: Hajime Ichinose is a girl selected by the mysterious being known as J.J. to be a part of the secret superhero group known as Gatchaman, given an item called a NOTE that gives her the power to transform into a powerful being. Hajime and five other Gatchaman are tasked with keeping the planet safe from danger, but Hajime's philosophy doesn't quite match up with the others. At the same time, a boy named Rui is running a phone app known as Galax to make assisting and contacting others easier with the intention of "updating the world", but also controls a mysterious power known as CROWDS given to him by the alien Berg Katze to "help" in his plans. As the duties of the Gatchaman, the spread of Galax, the sinister plans of Berg Katze, and the eccentricity of Hajime all intertwine, the fate of the world is thrown into question as things begin to go downhill for it.

Pros: The presentation of this show is fantastic. From the bright and colorful designs of the characters to the incredible use of CGI for the Gatchaman forms to the high-energy and unique soundtrack to the brilliantly memorable opening CROWDS, the show's style is just a joy to watch from beginning to end and doesn't look quite like any other anime. The cast is memorable, each with distinct designs and personalities and abilities that are just fun to watch even when they aren't as developed. The villain, Berg Katze, is by far the funniest anime villain I've seen, reminding me of Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls in the way he just casually torments the heroes like it's a big joke while still somehow being incredibly threatening. Even the story is taken seriously enough to have a few more layers of depth than you might expect from a show like this, and it serves as almost a deconstruction of the typical Tatsunoko superhero show, which is almost ironic since it's a reboot of Tatsunoko's Gatchaman. It tends to set up a trope and then find a way to tear it apart, usually through the eccentric protagonist Hajime's interesting views on combat. The action scenes are great, too, and everything is just so much fun in this show. In general it's just hard to not enjoy this show for me. It has the sentai tropes I love from Samurai Flamenco but with a more coherent story and more memorable characters and better presentation. It's no masterpiece but for what it is, things just blend so well in its favor.

Cons: Like I said, it's no masterpiece. If you don't like the tropes of characters like Hajime or Rui you will hate the show, as the former is unbelievably "genki" and the latter is very preachy. The characters, while memorable, don't have a ton of time or emotion put into some of their story arcs, and the mentor J.J. is particularly boring. The dub, while giving great performances like David Wald as Katze, has a lot of weak acting in it for some of the main characters. The plot can be a little weird and poorly explained at times, things are just shoved aside when the show wants them to be (particularly the initial antagonists known as MESS which are never heard from again after the second episode). It just sort of does whatever it wants to get its story through and while it works a lot, it just kinda falls flat other times. Also, while I believe it's getting a second season, it felt like it tries to tell a complete story in 12 episodes and rushes a lot of plot threads that could have been done better over 26 episode initial run. It's a flawed show, but a lot of the flaws you just have to sort of get used to, really.

High Point: The visual and musical presentation.
Low Point: The pacing.

Final Thoughts: Gatchaman Crowds is the kind of show I love. Its pacing was wonky but it was a very appealing show that flipped around a lot of expectations and just managed to remain consistently interesting and unpredictable. It was a joy to watch and while it's hard to find exact ways to describe it, it's a show I'd recommend to anyone looking for a short action show with some interesting ideas.
Spoiler : Number 2 :
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"The tiny bird flies in the blue sky..."
Black★Rock Shooter
This is gonna turn some heads, I just know it. Yes, above classics like FLCL and Paranoia Agent is Black Rock Shooter, a 2012 8-episode anime based on a mediocre OVA based on a famous Vocaloid song that people generally either describe as "pretty cool" or "terrible" in my experience. Yet here it is at number 2. What is it about this show that made me put it so high on my list when it isn't even that well-received a show?

Story: There exist two worlds. One is the world we know, where high schooler Mato Kuroi meets a new girl, Yomi Takanashi, and tries to befriend her, but runs into problems with Yomi's unsettling childhood friend, high emotions regarding her own best friend, an odd student counsellor, and more. The other world is a dark and twisted place, where girls that greatly resemble the girls of the real world fight to the death with their insane weaponry, and where Mato's counterpart Black Rock Shooter battles constantly. As the girls of the real world face more and more pressure, their counterparts fight more and more, and as mysterious connections pop up between the two worlds, the question is, what is this second world, and how is Mato tied to all of it?

Pros: If there's one thing people can agree on with this show it's that it looks FREAKING GORGEOUS. Like wow, the use of CGI in the other world is so good I don't even know what is and isn't CGI at some points, it looks fantastic. All of the designs are brilliant, my favorites going to the other world characters Chariot and Strength, and the fight scenes are some of my favorites in all of anime, with awesome choreography and incredibly weaponry ranging from giant metal gun hands to giant exploding macaroons (it makes sense in context, kinda). The color choices are just so beautiful and I couldn't stop watching it. The normal world doesn't look half bad itself, and is the source of all the characterization. And I actually really like these characters. The show does a good job at delving into their psyche, making everyone halve pretty gray morality but still having likable moments, and there was just something about them that I really enjoyed. The show's good at showing emotion on people's faces, too, so that helped out a lot. I even liked a couple of the plot twists the show presented. There's just something about it all that really stuck with me. The emotional presentation, the fantastic artwork, the interesting characters, all of it just stuck out to me, even know I know it didn't for others. It's a lot like FLCL to me in its short visual-and-music-based methods but trying to tell a full story rather than trying to just be interesting, and for me it succeeded, and I just couldn't help but adore the uniqueness of this show and its style because of it.

Cons: This is objectively one of the most flawed anime on my list, sadly. The other world is poorly explained and just sort of accepted. The ending story stuff is rather rushed and things just sorta go on fast-forward at times. The high school segments can be VERY melodramatic and problems that seem simple kind of explode a bit. The psychological aspects are rather superficial and leave a lot to the imagination rather than deeply explaining or diving into things. A lot of things are resolved easily. Character motivations don't entirely make sense unless you look really deeply into them and try to create your own conclusions. In general it's like a lighter version of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, trying to do the same psychological spin to the story but not fitting it in as well with its awkward pacing and making up for it with visuals. It's rather "style over substance"; the effort for substance is there but is very surface-level in presentation.

High Point: Animation in the BRS world.
Low Point: Psychological simplicity.

Final Thoughts: I tend to look at shows with "intention" sometimes. This is one of those times, where I like to look at the show with the intentions it had and kind of fill in the blanks where the show doesn't fully explain things. As a result, I ended up really loving this show. Like a lot. I fully admit it's a very flawed show and mostly recommend it to others for the fight scenes, but if you're the kind of person that likes to look into simple stories and fill in the holes, you'd like the plot, I think. This is a very subjective pick, I will admit, but really this list is entirely just based on my own impressions and opinions, so yes, I feel no guilt putting Black Rock Shooter as high as I did, and hope to find others who like it as much as I do.
Spoiler : Number 1 :
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"I ask you. Are you worthy...to become my master?"
Fate/Zero
This show. Holy crap, this show. I know in the last section I mentioned this all being my opinion, but I think that Fate/Zero is objectively one of the best anime I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, I'm making that statement. It's an anime I have no qualms with calling "epic" as it perfectly captures that grand scale and the powerful quality of this show. I adore this show and it's easily one of my new favorites, and it's by far the best anime I watched during Fall of 2014.

Story: A prequel to Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero follows the 4th Holy Grail War, a tournament founded by three families in Japan that puts seven mages against each other to see who will gain a wish from the elusive Holy Grail. Instead of fighting directly, though, these mages summon servants, historical figures of legend that fight under their orders in seven distinct classes (Saber, Archer, Rider, Lancer, Caster, Berserker, and Assassin), and these Servants fight each other for their masters. Last one standing wins the wish from the Holy Grail for their Master. But this war sees many dangerous and diverse masters, including the hitman Kiritsugu Emiya (with servant Saber), powerful priest Kirei Kotomine (with servant Assassin), aristocrat Tokiomi Tohsaka (with servant Archer), student Waver Velvet (with servant Rider), slowly draining Kairya Matou (with servant Berserker), serial killer Ryunosuke Uryu (with servant Caster), and nobleman Kayneth El-Mello Archibald (with servant Lancer). The battle between these masters and their servants will serve as one of the deadliest Holy Grail Wars to date, but in the end...only one can win the prize.

Pros: First thing's first: despite being a prequel, no info of Fate/Stay Night is required to enjoy this show (which is good since its initial anime adaptation is generally disliked). Now that that's out of the way, HOLY CRAP THIS SHOW IS GORGEOUS. The animation is movie-level quality, with an excellent pallet, unbelievable flow in motion, beautiful artwork, and as a running trend some of the best incorporation of CGI I've seen in an anime. The studio ufotable made a name for itself with this animation. Plus, you have an opening by LiSA and a soundtrack by Yuki Kajiura, both sure to always turn in very exceptional music that fits beautifully. And the show's premise? Amazing. It started as a light novel prequel to a visual novel of the same premise, yes, but the execution of that premise could not be done more perfectly than it was in Fate/Zero's anime. The characters? Well I can't call them all likable but I struggle to think of one that isn't well-written. Their development is great, their use in the story is great, and everything about them just feels like the creators knew what they were doing. It helps that every character is paired with a servant that provides an excellent foil to them, such as the noble Saber and the morally gray Emiya, or the wimpy Waver with the mnaly-man Rider, or the dull Tsukiomi with the pompous Archer. Every relationship is set up meticulously for the greatest effect on their development and it's all excellent. Battle scenes? My god, this has some of the best. Showcasing great choreography, interesting ideas, beautifully overpowered abilities, and just oodles of excitement. The story has dramatic twists and turns that work excellently, the themes are all interesting, it never gets particularly anime tropey. It's a serious story but has some decent comic relief (mostly with my favorite character Rider and Waver). Everything that went into this story just works so well. Even the dub is amazing. It's a fantastic series through and through.

Cons: There is so few things I can think of for this section. I guess I disliked how much this show seems to hate kids, tormenting Sakura Matou and killing off dozens of children, but it at least helps you despise the characters written to be despised. Magic's kinda weird and not too amazingly well-explained. Some characters are very obviously going to die even if you don't know the story of Fate/Stay Night. And the first episode that sets everything up is long and boring. That's it. And those are boring. That's really all I can think of that this show didn't do well. Like I'm sure there's more but I'm too blown away by the quality that I don't even notice the bad stuff much. I'm really stretching here guys, it's hard for me to find things that stuck out as bad in this show to me.

High Point: The set-up of the Holy Grail War itself (so basically the premise itself).
Low Point: The first episode is twice the length of a normal episode and is mostly exposition.

Final Thoughts: Watch Fate/Zero. Unless you're squeamish to child death (which there's a lot of here) there's little reason to avoid this. You don't need to know Fate/Stay Night, though the same company is remaking the Fate/Stay Night series with the same high-quality animation. I haven't seen it yet but you KNOW I plan to. This story, its execution, its characters, its animation, all of it just shot this up to one of my favorite anime of all time. As far as Toradora! or Gurren Lagann? Not really. But honestly, this has fewer issues than those two. I'd put this as an instant classic along the same kind of quality as Cowboy Bebop. Cowboy freaking Bebop. It's one of the greatest anime I've ever seen and would recommend it in a heartbeat, and it was by far the best anime that I watched in the Fall of 2014.
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Hersh/Fiendy has credit for the amazing GiGi pics and enigma has credit for the adorable Kenshin Mega Man sprite!

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NihilisticNinja
Posts: 1012
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by NihilisticNinja »

Whee, thought I'd do one of these. Maybe more in the future if I get inspired.

Top Six Magical Girl Anime Protagonists


Although magical girl anime is pretty niche and typically have relatively small casts, the fact that magical girls typically work in teams (usually of 2 or more) and typically have an incredibly diverse set of personalities to play off each other, the character pool for magical girl anime is surprisingly diverse and has various interesting (and often deep) characters. So I'm going to list off my six favorites- the ones that are the most entertaining, that I can empathize with the most, and are the ones that I feel best encapsulate what MG anime is all about.

Since otherwise basically the entirety of this list would be Sailor Moon and Nanoha, I'm going to limit myself to one character per franchise. Alright, let's begin.

(Mild-to-major spoilers for the following shows contained within: Sailor Moon S, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fresh Pretty Cure, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Cardcaptor Sakura, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.)
Spoiler : 6 :
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Sakura Kinomoto- Cardcaptor Sakura.

Despite the fact that this is a list of top magical girl protagonists, there aren't many main characters on it- as in the character whose perspective the viewer typically sees the story from, and the character that the story typically revolves around. That's because magical girl MCs tend to be kind of samey; the girl with no idea what they want to do with their life, but are incredibly compassionate and supportive. They typically are relatively poor at being a magical girl at first, but grow into their own and become a leader worthy of respect. They can be great characters and there are plenty of them I like, but there aren't many that I could in good conscience put in a Top X list, because they're all basically the same and somewhat interchangeable. There are two exceptions, and Sakura is one of them.

Sakura Kinomoto is a very energetic, cheerful, optimistic, and kind girl, who often has a tendency to be clumsy or come across as somewhat clueless, with occasional perceptive moments. The whole story is essentially about her journey as a magical girl as she attempts to collect the Clow Cards and master their abilities, making friends along the way.

Sakura's energy and cheer are both entertaining and somewhat infectious, and just make her a blast to watch. She isn't that deep a character- though she does have more to her than the synopsis above might indicate- but she doesn't need to be. She's charming and always entertaining, and basically carries the show, making it a really fun and entertaining ride the whole way through.
Spoiler : #5 :
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Higashi Setsuna/Cure Passion- Fresh Pretty Cure


For the first arc of the series, Setsuna is not primarily known as Setsuna. Rather, she is called Eas, and is one of the main villains. Relatively intelligent and cunning, Eas ends up attempting to get close to the Pretty Cure by disguising herself as v them. Her main goal is to steal their transformation devices, leaving them essentially powerless to stop her organization and its nefarious plans. However, her various attempts repeatedly fail, and she slowly becomes more and more attached to the girls that she is supposed to be fighting against. This ends up culminating in a final confrontation where Setsuna "dies", but is reborn as Cure Passion.

Honestly, in many ways, Fresh Pretty Cure is Setsuna's story. It's a story of a girl who has been brainwashed to serve evil, but eventually manages to overcome it through getting close to people that she begins to care about, and slowly rebuilding herself bit by bit. She learns how to make friends and really appreciate the people in her life, and basically grows as a person- probably grows the most out of everybody in the cast.

It helps that she was always a pretty interesting character. Even as a villain she was continually entertaining and fun to watch, and after being reborn she grows pretty quirky and entertaining, and her character development is gradual but incredibly heartwarming. Easily the best character in Fresh and one of my favorite antagonist-turned-protagonists in a magical girl series... ever.
Spoiler : #4 :
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Kyouko Sakura- Puella Magi Madoka Magica


Kyouko has lived an incredibly hard life. She originally thought that being a magical girl would be a good thing- she could use it to help her family and protect them from the shadows. But after learning about her secret life, her father ended up murdering everybody else in her family, before committing suicide. This also caused her friendship with Mami Tomoe- the only real friend she had- to shatter.

Thus, Kyouko left the city of Mitakihara and began working solo, quickly growing embittered and cynical. She developed a social Darwinian mentality- only the strongest could survive, and idealists were just idiots and suckers- people that didn't get it, the way that she did. She began letting familiars run rampant and feed on humans, so that they would turn into witches and she could collect their grief seeds, believing that the end justifies the means.

Kyouko and Sayaka's interplay really carries the second half of PMMM. The way that their ideals clash and cause them to fight and argue with each other is much of what makes the second portion of PMMM so good. Kyouko acts like an awful person at first, that is true, but she has the charisma to be able to say horrible things and remain entertaining- and you always get the feeling that she never quite means them, because she really doesn't. Not deep down.

Kyouko has a fantastic character arc- the way that she grows as she interacts with Sayaka, and essentially regains the optimism that she had banished for so long, is relatively fast-paced but still mostly believable. The ways that she changes and grows is relatively heart-warming and makes her final fall and death all the more tragic.

Kyouko is an interesting, complex, and very compelling character, and her presence alone makes PMMM a show worth watching.
Spoiler : #3 :
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Utena Tenjou- Revolutionary Girl Utena


Utena Tenjou is a naive and courageous girl, who seeks to emulate a prince she met in her childhood. But instead of doing that by becoming a princess worthy of being rescued by him, she does it by taking on the mannerisms of a prince herself. She wears the boy's school uniform (There's technically no rule against it, after all!) and takes on various masculine traits. And most importantly, she always leaps in to help save the damsel in distress.

Utena is a really interesting magical girl protagonist. She starts out as something of a reluctant hero- she had absolutely no idea what she was getting into at first, and only jumped in because she saw a girl in danger. But she ends up embracing the role and fighting her hardest. She grows throughout the entire story in an incredibly compelling way, and continually remains really entertaining to watch.

But one of the best things about her is the kind of dichotomy that exists within her character. She is a very brave girl, who continually tries to act as the hero and save people, and mostly has the skills and strength to back that up. But she is also incredibly naive and trusting, which ends up being a critical flaw, and in some cases is basically a hair's breadth away from becoming a damsel in distress in need to rescue herself.

It'd be really easy to screw this up and make it a story that reeks of misogyny and about how a woman foolishly thinks that she can do a man's work and pays the price. But Kunihiko Ikuhara pulls it off basically flawlessly; he makes her weaknesses feel realistic and human, and are what really gives her depth as a character. She struggles against them and is eventually basically able to either overcome them or work around them, and we are always excited to see her succeed.

Utena is a fun character with a good amount of depth and charm, and one of my favorite characters in a show with an ensemble cast full of interesting and deep (though not always pleasant) people.
Spoiler : #2 :
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Haruka Tenoh/Sailor Uranus- Sailor Moon


Haruka Tenoh is essentially a magical girl that thinks she's in a completely different show. She and her comrade Michiru (Sailor Neptune) are two magical girls who are fighting to, in essence, stop the end of the world. As a result, she think that she's completely justified in essentially ripping out people's souls, and only giving them back if they are worthless towards accomplishing her goal. She's bitter and cynical and (like Kyouko after her) is essentially the embodiment of the "Ends justify the means" mentality, believing that anything she does is perfectly acceptable given what's at stake. She and Michiru rejects offers of aid from the protagonists, believing that the idealism of the Sailor Senshi cripples them and prohibits them from doing what has to be done.

However, when she's not playing the role of Sailor Uranus, Haruka can come across as a completely different person. She's cold and distant, sure, but she can be cheerful and playful and overall perfectly pleasant when she wants to be. Of course, on some level it's all utterly shallow- she has no interest in friends or interpersonal connections, believing that the mission she's on takes precedence and being willing to step on anything or anybody that gets in her way.

Uranus has the potential to be quite a bland character- her unwillingness to build connections and help others essentially turning her into a one-note caricature. But it's really her relationship with Michiru that defines her and gives her life. The two girls have a deep bond of trust and camaraderie, united in their belief that basically only they can fix everything. She shows a different side of herself when interacting with Michiru- a compassionate, caring, and human side that she otherwise keeps locked away.

After her introductory season her role in the story becomes somewhat stale and repetitive, the writers obviously not having a clue what to do with her or what direction to take her character. But she never really loses her charm and manages to remain a somewhat compelling, and continually fun to watch. And the way that her character evolves throughout her debut season, as she grows to respect the Sailor Senshi's desire to help people and eventually understand that idealism is not inherently a bad thing, displays some of the essence of what magical girl anime are all about.
Spoiler : Honorable Mentions :
Rei Hino- Sailor Moon
Hotaru Tomoe- Sailor Moon
Homura Akemi- Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Fate Testarossa- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
Duck/Ahiru- Princess Tutu
Natsuki Kuga- Mai Hime
Tsubomi Hamasaki- Heartcatch Pretty Cure
Tsubasa Kazanari- Senki Zesshō Symphogear
Spoiler : #1 :
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Hayate Yagami- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.


Okay, raise your hands if you saw this one coming.

When we are introduced to Hayate Yagami, she's a quiet and sickly child. Her family died when she was young, and for much of her life she lived alone. She doesn't really have any friends, and her only family are the Wolkenritter- constructs that protect a magical item that she possesses. However, she remains content, and only wishes to live a happy, peaceful life.

However, the Wolkenritter are far from satisfied. Hayate's magical item- the Book of Darkness- is, unbeknownst to her, slowly draining her life energy and continually causing her to get weaker and weaker and sicker and sicker. Thus, they make an attempt to feed the Book of Darkness the souls (more or less) of mages, hoping to fill all its pages and cause Hayate to become the true Master of the book. This would hopefully help fix Hayate's condition- or at least stop the Book from continuing to slowly kill her.

Honestly, for most of A's what makes Hayate endearing is her undying optimism and kind-heartedness. She has lived a lonely life, but she refuses to let herself to consumed by cynicism and simply tries all the harder to be a kind and caring person. She doesn't want others to get hurt, even for her sake- likely not wanting for others to have to suffer pain and lose loved ones the way that she has. Instead of letting tragedy change her into somebody she doesn't want to be, she uses it as a way to mature. And in the climax of the story, even when she's lost practically everybody she cares about, she paves the way for the story's happy ending, continually believing that there must be a peaceful solution where everybody can co-exist and nobody has to get hurt. Honestly, in many ways Hayate is a living embodiment of the show Nanoha. Through her kindness she changes people for the better, and she continually tries to do her best to find solutions where everybody can be happy instead of hurting others. Even when violence seems like the only option.

In many ways she's very similar to Nanoha, but is stronger in many respects as well- the tragedy that Nanoha has had to face typically hasn't impacted her life, per se. And all the tragedy that she has had to deal with always seems to have a nice, neat solution where everybody ends up happy and changed for the better. People she cares about have been hurt and it has caused her pain, but she's never had to deal with living alone, or losing somebody that she deeply cares about. Hayate hasn't had that luxury, but she merely uses it to grow into a stronger person rather than give into the inevitable despair.

StrikerS did a lot of things wrong, but their choice of how to characterize Hayate post-timeskip is not one of them. Grown-up Hayate is a strong woman, who has changed a good deal. Her shyness has basically disappeared, and she's grown into a playful woman who isn't afraid to embrace her childish side at times, but can still be perfectly serious when the situation calls for it. She's quite intelligent and embraces her role as head of Riot Force 6, acknowledging that she has to be more mature in order to handle the responsibilities that she possesses, but refusing to allow that to cause her to stop being the kind of person that she wants to be.

Hayate can come across as a somewhat simplistic character, but she actually does have a good deal of depth if you look for it. She's a strong person that will do whatever it takes to protect the people that she cares about, while striving to keep everybody else happy as well. She's a person that has had to face adversity in her life, but has refused to let that consume her and continually cling to optimism and believe that everything can work out in the end.

In many ways, she's the quintessential magical girl character.

(Also she's ridiculously OP as a magical girl. Did I mention that? Because she really, really is.)
"With good friends by your side, anything is possible. If you really care for each other, it makes everyone stronger! Then you'll have the will to succeed! The world is filled with painful things, it's sad sometimes, and you won't be able to handle it by yourself. But just know: If there's someone that you love, you'll stay on the right path. And you won't ever give in! As long as you keep that person in your heart, you'll keep getting back up. Understand? That's why a Hero never loses!"
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by DLA »

After months of procrastination, finally got around to doing this, it's...
My Top Eight Most Aggravating Bosses in Video Games
Boss battles. Inevitably, you'll encounter them. Sometimes they're easy, other times they're hard, and some times, they're just plain annoying for one reason or another. Here I'll talk about the eight most aggravating boss battles I've encountered in video games. But first, a disclaimer: By aggravating, I don't exclusively mean difficult bosses, though that can be part of it. Some of these bosses aggravate me because they're too easy, and some aggravate me for other reasons entirely. This disclaimer might have been entirely useless, but let's begin. As this is a boss battle list, it will contain spoilers. Spoilers for both games in the American McGee's Alice series, the Batman: Arkham series, Super Paper Mario, Wario: Master of Disguise, and the No More Heroes series.
Spoiler : Number 8 :
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March Hare and Dormouse's Mecha (Alice: Madness Returns)
The majority of you probably haven't played this, so I'll provide a bit of backstory. In the first game, Wonderland is corrupted and the Mad Hatter is evil and does experiments on the March Hare and the Dormouse. In the second game, Wonderland is still corrupted and they take control and have really annoying factory levels. Dormouse has fire everywhere, March Hare has giant metal fists.

Once you beat both levels, you go into the core between the two factories, and you find this. Giant threatening-looking mech with a heat drill and a metal fist to make use of their main weapons. At this point, I was looking forward to fighting it. That teapot in the background is thrown at it by the Hatter and it collapses instantly, killing them both. I might be cheating since this isn't really a boss battle, but it was intended to be at one point. Apparently they ran out of time, which I can't really blame them for, but I was still disappointed by what could have been an awesome boss fight.
Spoiler : Number 7 :
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The Joker (Batman: Arkham Asylum)
This is one you hear about fairly often, and it's not as bad of an offender as some of the others on the list, but it's still pretty bad. Let's try an experiment. Close your eyes and picture youself playing the Batman game, with its creepy atmosphere and subtle touches that make things unsettling(like the rat in the air vent, but that's a list for another day), and progressing through the story as the suspense and creepiness slowly build up. Then picture the game throwing all subtlety out the window and giving you this for the final boss. Basically, the Joker injects himself with Titan, a chemical that give the person who uses it super strength and the power to look really messed-up.

What I expected of a Joker boss fight was a bunch of traps and tricks as weapons, with him running all over the place like the maniac he is, and some grunts showing up occasionally. Instead we got this, a musclebound mutated monstrosity which was relatively easy to take down. The battle consisted of beating up grunts, waiting for the helicopter to distract him, pulling him down, running in circles, then doing the same thing two more times until he runs out of health. Not as big of a disappointment as others on this list, but still not very good.
Spoiler : Number 6 :
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Super Dimentio (Super Paper Mario)
My complaint about this one is a complaint you probably wouldn't expect from me: too easy. Dimentio, the master of dimensions and one awesome evil jester, fuses with Luigi to create this thing. The battle theme is pretty great, the design isn't too bad, but the battle is far too easy to win, especially for the final boss. You can defeat him rather quickly using Bowser and the fairy thing that makes you flat, and I even beat him without taking any damage.

And that's my problem with the fight. Dimentio and Luigi(or rather, Mr. L) are good boss battles when alone, and they're both great characters. So why is it that when they fuse, they succeed at everything except presenting a challenge like a final boss fight should? The dimensional trickster either got tired and lost a bit of his power or just decided to let the player win, which would be interesting in a meta sense but not make much regular sense. This boss fight was even easier than the Joker's, which is why I dislike it. The music is still undeniably cool, but the fact that you barely get a chance to listen to it isn't cool.
Spoiler : Number 5 :
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Terrormisu (Wario: Master of Disguise)
If you know me well enough, you probably guessed this would be on here. Wario: Master of Disguise was one of my first video games, and I enjoyed it so. I played through the first three levels, got stuck on the fourth one for several months, beat that one, got stuck on the next level for nearly a year, then played it all the way through. It still remains one of my favorite games to this day, though I know it's not exactly a popular game. But the final boss, oh dear, the final boss.

I tried it one time. I raged. I didn't try it again for a year and a half. The first phase is easy enough. Shoot the thingies, then when the room fills up with water, shoot torpedoes at the mask with Pirate Wario. The second phase is horrible. Masks show up in groups of three, and you have to shoot a laser in a way that will make it bounce off all three masks while the masks are shooting crap at you. If you don't do it, they mock you with a dumb smile and spikes come out of the floor, which can damage you if you don't know they're coming and move to avoid them. Reflecting the laser off the masks requires perfect positioning. Even to this day it gives me trouble.

The third phase merely involves jumping on platforms, shooting fire at a mask, and hiding at the edge of the screen to avoid fireballs. As a whole, the fight isn't too bad, but the second phase is just so badly designed. I count each one as a separate boss myself because the other two aren't too bad and I don't want the second phase to ruin them for me, but for the purposes of this list, it's one boss like the developers intended.
Spoiler : Number 4 :
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Voracious Centipede (American McGee's Alice)
Another disappointing one from the Alice series, he's a nasty bugger to be sure(See what I did there? Bugger? Ha ha ha... I'll stop now). I should provide a bit of backstory for this guy. He's called the Voracious Centipede, as you could have guessed from the above, and he's a centipede, but he's not really voracious. If he were, he'd try harder to eat you, which he only does twice during the battle. The guy only has one weak spot, which he only shows when you're a very specific distance away from him. Too close, and he'll charge you with his helmet, which can be ridiculously hard to avoid, especially at close range. Too far, and he'll just spit acid at you.

He also shoots little spiders, but those aren't much to worry about. What you do have to worry about is the weak spot, and when I say weak spot, I mean the only place you can hit him that will do any damage. As I said before, he only shows it when you're a very specific distance away, and even then, there's no guarantee he'll show it, so you can end up like I did and have most of your runs be running away from his acid spit while at less than a third of your health, and not have him show the weak spot at all. Or, you can have a run like the one where I finally beat him, where he did nothing but show the weak spot in the first minute of the battle and take like four or five hits to get killed. If there were anywhere else you could hit him, if he showed the weak spot more frequently, heck, even if the hitbox were a little bigger, this boss fight would be fair. But nope, you could end up being the unlucky sap who ends up having to chase him around for hours before he exposes the weak spot once. Anyway, I'm ranting at this point, let's move on.
Spoiler : Number 3 :
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Ryuji (No More Heroes 2)
Ah, Ryuji. On Sweet, you were super easy, except maybe the motorcycle part. When I decided to try Mild like everyone else did, you became a massive pain. The motorcycle part, in which you have to bump his motorcycle off a cliff, is difficult because your motorcycle can't turn for crap. Once you get past that, the real battle begins, and for the most part, once you get the attack pattern down, it's simple.

But don't get too comfortable yet, because once you do, enter the dragon. He summons up some magical laser dragon from hell that homes in on you and deals immense damage. He starts spamming this right when he's at death's door, so even if you have him at 1 HP left, two or three hits from the dragon and all your hard work was for naught. Once you beat him, Sylvia, who works for the assassin rankings and is one of the game's worst characters, just up and shoots him, not letting you kill him. Travis, the main character for those who don't know, then says that Ryuji was an honorable warrior or something along those lines. I don't buy that for a second after he summoned up that dragon. What would otherwise be a great boss fight is ruined by cheap AI.
Spoiler : Number 2 :
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Deathstroke (Batman: Arkham Origins)
If you talk to me enough about video games, eventually I'll talk about the Batman: Arkham series and how much I love those games. If you talk to me even more about them, I'll talk about how I think Arkham Origins is the weakest game in the series. This is part of why. For starters, most of the fight is quick-time events, and I don't think many people like those.

Strike two on the fight is the fact that most of the fight you just have to counter, and you have to get the timing exact, without countering too late or too early, in order for it to work. And it sometimes just flat-out refuses to let you attack, instead sending you into an animation where Deathstroke does an unblockable attack on you.

Strike three is that this fight is just the Ra's Al Ghul fight from Arkham City but watered down. The boss fights in these games aren't exactly anything special except two of the fights in Arkham City and range from fun but average to kind of crap. But this is freaking Deathstroke. If you don't know much about him, I suggest you look up some information on him, but I'm pretty sure all I need to say is that in pretty much everything else, he's a master assassin who's nearly killed Batman a couple of times and was one of the main things being advertised about this game. And they gave him this cheap crap for a boss fight. I think Arkham Origins is the weakest game in the series. This is part of why.
Spoiler : Number 1 :
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Jasper Batt, Jr. (No More Heroes 2)
Raise your hand if you saw this one coming. If you didn't raise your hand, I talk about this one all the time how could you not. This is another one you see fairly often, and for good reason. If I were to write my own dictionary, this guy would be one of the pictures next to the word "anticlimatic"(There's another picture that would be next to it, but that's a list for another day). You go up to the top of Pizza Batt Tower in search of the guy who killed your friend, and this is who you find.

This little kid orchestrated the guy's murder as revenge for killing his dad and brothers, which were random grunts in the first game. He then shows the severed heads of Henry, whose character I dislike but not massively, Shinobu, who's kind of cool but has crappy projectiles and platforming, and Sylvia, who I actually wouldn't have minded him killing. Then the battle starts. The difficulty of his battle ranges from insanely easy to difficult. The first phase has him driving around in a tricked-out floating racecar desk. It's actually a fun fight, and if he had been a midgame boss using only this phase, he never would have been on this list.

The second phase, where he basically does the same thing the Joker does earlier on this list, is the worst thing ever. You have to stay away from the windows at the back of his office at all costs, because if you're there when he uses the charge punch, you're screwed. There's also the triple punch, which is the cheapest attack I've ever seen. It's difficult to dodge, and if you get caught in it and get knocked down, he'll just keep spamming it and you're pretty much screwed. The triple tornado punch is also a pain the butt, but not as much as the triple punch.

The third phase is just ridiculous. He turns into a giant and starts shooting lasers and whatnot, and it's fairly easy. I would have been fine with Alice being the final fight in the game and then nothing else. That's how bad he is. I'm aware that he's supposed to be a metaphor for the fact that revenge isn't all it's cracked up to be, but he's still an aggravating and disappointing boss fight, and in my opinion, the most disappointing aggravating boss.
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The Final but not so ending chapter.
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Re: General Media Top Tens! (Animation, Movies, Books, Etc.)

Post by gotMLK7 »

It's that time of the season again, folks!

....Or it would be if I actually watched a significant amount of anime in Winter instead of just like 3! Yeah this is the smallest of these lists I've done so far despite being the longest period of time covered, whoops. So now it's that time of the...like...half a year, folks! The time where I look at the recent anime I've watched and count them down in order from what I liked the least to what I liked the most. It's time for...

The Top 12 Anime I Watched...Uh...Since The Last One!


Few things to go over before we get started. One, only shows I watched from start to finish! Some have movies I've yet to see but so long as I watched the show itself in full, it counts. Despite me starting K, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, A Certain Magical Index, Love Chunibyo and Other Delusions, The Irregular at Magic High School, Vampire Knight, The Tatami Galaxy, and many many more these past few months, they will not count since I've yet to see them in full; this includes currently airing anime, for the record, so no Vampire Holmes or Plastic Memories or the like. Second, this is all incredibly opinionated. It is not ranked by popularity or objective quality but by my own personal enjoyment with pros being things I liked and cons being things I didn't, so if you disagree with me just remember I'm not stating that it is this way for everybody who views these shows. Third, none of these shows are ones I absolutely despise nor are any of them ones I fanboyingly adore. I had a rather middle-of-the-road experience this past half year, characterized by my first extended venture into more subbed shows than dubbed ones and by shows that were fairly close to each other in terms of enjoyability. There were ones I loved for sure but none have quite reached the levels of other tops like Toradora, Gurren Lagann, and Steins;Gate, and nothing that I've disliked more than the likes of SAO (those are ones that I haven't finished after all).

With all that fluff out of the way, let's get onto the countdown!

Spoiler : Number 12 :
Kotoura-san is a strange one for me. I actually adored certain aspects of it and had very high hopes for it when I started it. And while those hopes weren't exactly...DESTROYED by the end, I was left a bit disappointed that the level of quality I had hoped it would have didn't stay consistently through the show's short run.

Story: Haruka Kotoura is a girl born with ESP, and has always had the ability to read people's minds. Growing up with this power made making friends tough, however, and her ability to hear people's secrets made her ridiculed and even abandoned by her parents. She closed herself off from other people as a result, until she transfers to a new high school and meets Yoshihisa Manabe, who seems largely unfazed by the fact Haruka could read his mind and promises to stay by Haruka no matter what. Eventually she joins Yuriko Mifune's ESP Research Club, and the group expands as people help show Haruka that she can have friends and have fun despite her strange ability.

Pros: The show's foundation is really strong with a great concept. A group largely dedicated to researching and assisting a girl with a power that's almost treated as a strange disability at times is a great premise for a slice of life. And sometimes the show delivers on that premise. The beginning of the show is fantastic in covering Haruka's pain and backstory with one of the heaviest intros I've ever seen in a comedy show. The art style is a memorable take on the general slice of life style with a soft color palette and heavy use of gradients. There's a lot of memorable emotional scenes, too, particularly involving the ESP or Haruka's mother, or the characters' backstories in general. Haruka's a great protagonist, too; she's the kind of awkward girl you'd expect from this kind of show but with enough personality and conflict that she actually stands out as interesting amongst other SoL protagonists. It's a cute-looking show but there's a surprising amount of maturity in the way it handles a lot of its running themes, and I enjoyed the show most when it focused on these aspects.

Cons: However, that maturity is a double-edged sword. The show does not look like the kind to have a bunch of pervert jokes but the humor is practically built upon them. Manabe in particular is mostly unfazed by Haruka reading her mind because he always has perverted fantasies about her and he thinks her seeing those is kinda hot, and a lot of the show's humor centers around this perversion. Plus Haruka's grandpa is the typical pervy old man creeper that I thought had been an outdated trope since Master Roshi. Episode 1 is a whiplash from the first half showing Haruka's pain through the years to Haruka being creeped out by this kid having weird sexual fantasies all the time in typical anime comedy, it's very jarring. When the show tries to be serious it's great but when it tries to be funny it just falls flat on its face almost every time. And the cute art style really only emphasizes how unpleasant that aspect is. The plot whips around a lot, too, going to really stereotypical and outlandish SoL tropes that just never fit in to what's going on in the show, and the final arc spanning the last few episodes is such a strange and out of place climax that I really don't know what to think of it. I mean it wasn't terrible but it took up so much time and felt so unnecessary, it spent time on what felt like a different show and made the climax of the show feel so odd. It felt like it could have focused just more on wrapping up the character arcs instead of throwing in some weird crime show plot into it. This general lack of focus, mixed in with a few mediocre characters like the grandpa or Manabe, and the sheer amount of unneeded fanservice, a show that could have been great got really bogged down and lost in mediocrity. It never knew what it wanted to be and got lost and unable to find its own identity.

High Point: The first half of the first episode.
Low Point: Creepy pervert grandpa.

Final Thoughts: I really wanted to like Kotoura-san more than I did. And I didn't hate it, to be fair. But when a show opens up with some really interesting emotional set-up that juxtaposes its adorable art style and then spends much of its time making pervy jokes and showing off the small main character in sexualized fantasies it just takes one step forward and two steps back. If I could get a show like the emotional parts and heck, even the romance parts of Kotoura-san and get rid of the poor comedy, lack of focus, and just pervy stuff in general it'd be amazing, but sadly that show isn't exactly what Kotoura-san itself is, and it suffers for that.
Spoiler : Number 11 :
A prequel to the manga "Ga-Rei", I watched this one mostly to fulfill a desire for something action-filled as it was rather famous for its fight scenes. It's another strange one that, like Kotoura-san, I feel rather guilty putting it on so low on the list. However, despite its many high points, there were aspects of it that kept me from getting as into it as I wanted to and made some parts of it feel a bit like a chore to get through.

Story: Set before the events of the manga "Ga-Rei", the show follows Kagura Tsuchiyama and Yomi Isayama, two swordswomen and heiresses to their exorcist families that work for an organization dedicated to eliminating paranormal threats. The two act as sisters and grow closer and closer together, but an evil entity causing trouble for the organization's interference makes things more difficult for the two, and turns the closest of friends into the bitterest of rivals in a tragic tale that sets the grounds for the main series.

Pros: I looked into this for its swordfighting and that was worth the watch if anything was. The fights were filled with interesting weapons and great choreography, credit going to Kagura's sword Michael 12 for having a gun-sheath and being just straight up awesome. The music adds to these scenes with a fantastic OST (and a rather good dub from Funimation to boot). The characters are generally pretty good, with special notice going to Kagura and Yomi for their fun sisterly relationship for most of the series that really made the show for me, and for the quirky members of the organization (the leader in a wheelchair and her assistant being personal favorites of mine). The plot's interesting for the most part and the first episode especially pulls an interesting twist that people who went into the show back when it first aired had no way of seeing coming, making for an interesting beginning to the series. The show is rather high quality overall in production and story-telling and is definitely one that a lot of people love and I can easily see why; even for how low it is on the list there's a lot of stuff I really liked in this show and can easily suggest it to most people.

Cons: What bugs me is how much this show just feels like a prequel. Ironic since I put Fate/Zero atop this list back in Fall, yes, but that had more of its own self-contained story aside from the setup for the tragic past in Fate/Stay Night. Ga-Rei: Zero feels like it's all just build-up to the inevitable tragedy. The reactions and the banter are nice for what they are but you know exactly where it's going to go in the end, which the show even shows you by flashing forward in episode 2 to the tragedy the show builds itself up to, which I felt hurt the show in a lot of ways since it took out the dramatic tension and made it more a sense of knowing irony the whole show. Side characters felt like they existed to either be explained for the manga or to be killed off. All the good points of the show just felt weakened when you were waiting for that scene in the start of the show that you knew was going to happen at some point and that everyone's lives would start to suck. It's a good show by itself but the lingering thought of "HELL'S TOTALLY GONNA BREAK LOOSE MAN" throughout the whole show just made it less memorable to me. Also there's the occasional unnecessary fanservice (random makeout scene between Kagura and Yomi for no reason and a random bath scene that shows the two girls topless because these are both necessary scenes in this tragic plot) that breaks tone and the non-action animation's nothing too impressive with an okay art style and not many interesting backgrounds or color schemes. Also the big bad is clearly just hanging around until he's needed in Ga-Rei and the central antagonist's personality gets a tad grating at times. I'd love to put this show higher on the list for what it does right but I forgot I had watched it almost immediately after finishing it so I can't say it stuck with me much.

High Point: Kagura and Yomi's relationship.
Low Point: Sudden naked bath scene for some reason!

Final Thoughts: This show is pretty good, I advise checking it out. But if it feels incomplete or like it's just building up to a sad ending the whole time...well, it pretty much is. It'd be fantastic on its own but the connection it has to a manga that doesn't even have its own anime adaptation and the framing that makes you see the ending coming from the start makes the show feel awkward and makes the whole thing just feel like a waiting game to see how it will get to the inevitable tragedy. It's worth the watch but your mileage may vary on how memorable it is in the end for you.
Spoiler : Number 10 :
I enjoy cute shows. It is a guilty pleasure, I admit, but shows often written off as just being moe trash is stuff I'll more than likely enjoy simply because it puts me in a pleasant mood. That's where Kyoto Animation comes in, with its fame (and infamy) coming from its tendency to make incredibly well-animated but incredibly cutesy slice of life where little happens in terms of plot and a focus usually on just sorta being pleasant. Tamako Market, while being in my opinion one of the weaker KyoAni shows, is one I will admit I enjoyed for what it was despite my checking it out for basically a single voice actress.

Story: Tamako Kitashirakawa is the daughter of a family running a mochi shop in the Usagiyama Shopping District, and is very friendly with the many other shop-owners in the district. One day, she meets a talking bird named Dera Mochimazzi, sent by the prince of a distant land to find him a bride. He ends up freeloading at Tamako's home and getting fat on mochi, and the rest of the series follows Tamako and her friends from both the school and the shopping district in their day-to-day lives, as Dera slowly tries to get back to work on his initial mission.

Pros: Well it's adorable that's for sure. If there's one thing KyoAni does well it's making a fantastically animated slice of life that just makes you feel nice and happy. The OP alone is so sweet it could give you a sugar rush. The characters are fun for the most part, with fun personalities and the group of people at the shopping district all just feel like a pleasant neighborhood and each have distinct personalities and seem to have their own lives going on in the background of the show even if they're never particularly focused on. My favorite part of the show is Tamako's friend Midori Tokiwa, who has an excellent character arc in two episodes largely devoted to her and is basically the only lesbian in a comedy anime I've ever seen written really well. Plus she's voiced by Juliet Simmons, more famously known as the YouTube English cover singer JubyPhonic, one of my favorite YouTubers and basically the reason I watched the show at all after she revealed it was her, and she gives a good and natural performance for a SentaiFilmworks dub (Dera's Jay Hickman performance also is good). The show's shockingly progressive between Midori's characterization and some other things (like the flower shop owner that looks and dresses like a woman but is voiced by and seems to biologically be male that is never made fun of or anything, it's just a thing everyone accepts and never comments on). There's even the occasional well written philosophy from Dera or the nice comedy from side characters. It's just a freaking cute show with a lot of pleasant feelings going on all around. And I haven't seen the movie "Tamako Market: Love Story" but I do plan to at some point, as the main romance in the show was cute enough for me to want to come back to it.

Cons: Yeah the plot's dumb. The Dera stuff comes up once in a while and doesn't fit in to the show's setting or tone, and when the stuff with the prince himself comes in it's just silly and unfitting. All the stuff about the other country just seems ridiculous in the long run, it's not painfully stupid but it's unbelievably pointless and doesn't add much to the show's strengths at all aside from an excuse to introduce Dera and a later character Choi into the cast. There's also a lot of unmemorable characters in the show, which is odd given my tendency to really like KyoAni's casts. Characters like Choi, Kanna, and Shiori are just kind of there and don't really do much; Kanna doesn't even have an episode devoted to her and is just kind of Tamako's eccentric friend that never seems to ever have a purpose in the story at any point in time. I mean she's funny but she never DOES anything. The dub acting's mediocre in places, too. There's standouts and you get used to the odd mixing that comes with any Sentai dub but Tamako's VA Margaret McDonald sounds like she's shouting all her lines unnecessarily and never changes her tone of voice, it makes Tamako come across as more annoying than she should in the dub. It's not a terrible dub, there's standouts like Hickman and Juby, but it's the kind of awkward one would expect from the standard SentaiFilmworks dub. "Awkward" is a god way to describe the show's flaws, really, as it's just this awkward mess of unneeded plot and pointless characters and odd dubbing that kinda just makes it not quite as fun as other KyoAni shows.

High Point: Midori's character arc.
Low Point: The Dera plot.

Final Thoughts: I think the best way to suggest watching Tamako Market is to watch K-On! first. If you like that and finish both seasons and the movie and want more of the cute stuff that had, watch Tamako Market. It's like K-On! Lite with a really similar art style and tone. And since I really liked K-On! I enjoyed Tamako Market, but admittedly it had a lot of weird fluff to it that kinda bogged it down to something less cohesive. It does have one of my new favorite anime characters in the form of Midori Tokiwa, but for the most part it's just cuteness and good feelings that gets you really craving mochi with a pretty stupid plot device.
Spoiler : Number 9 :
Oh hey another KyoAni show what do you know! But rather than their typical slice of life comedy of nothing happening, Beyond the Boundary has the added bonus of an actual focus on plot and fight scenes! While it certainly suffers from glaring flaws, the show has a lot of interesting ideas and I found it rather enjoyable for the most part.

Story: High schooler Akihito Kanbara one day finds the girl Mirai Kuriyama on the roof of his school, and when he goes to plead to her to not jump off, she stabs him with a sword made from her blood. He survives, however, due to his apparent immortality brought on from being half-demon. Mirai, an Exterminator who uses her clan's cursed blood to vanquish demons, attempts to kill Akihito several times as "practice" to improve her morale, but she's shrouded largely in mystery. As Akihito tries to befriend her and an incredibly powerful demon approaches and joined by several fellow Exterminators, the two develop their relationship as the world is thrust into peril and the mystery of what Mirai is doing in this city unfolds.

Pros: HOLY CRAP THIS SHOW IS GORGEOUS. KyoAni is famous for its animation quality so this shouldn't be a surprise but this may be the most gorgeous show it has under its belt. The animation is constantly smooth with a beautiful (often largely pink) color scheme and lighting that makes even simple shots eye-candy. When the show has a fight scene, it always looks stunning, with constant flow and detail put into every frame. If you just want something pretty to watch look no further because it doesn't get much better than this. The main characters are fun, Mirai in particular being good albeit quite the moe-blob, and some side-characters like the constantly sarcastic Mitsuki or the deadpan Sakura. The designs and concepts are fun as well, particular mention to Sakura's amazing gun chainsaw spear of doom. The show has a solid beginning and end (there's a hiccup at the very end but it's more a nitpick than something that kills the ending for me) and was best at those points. This also has a movie I've yet to see (as I don't believe it's been released for home yet) so I haven't seen the epilogue of sorts and can't comment on that, but I was largely satisfied with the climax. It's also just nice to see KyoAni tackle something with a plot focus rather than one focused on just slice of life and going outside their comfort zone, it's a very refreshing show in that regard with a rather neat plot.

Cons: Sadly, this show suffers most from the typical moe tropes that bog down some KyoAni shows, ironically. Some characters have very specific traits they rely on for like half their dialogue (like Akihiko having a thing for girls in glasses or the obnoxious Hiroomi with an imouto complex that he never shuts up about). There's also some very unnecessary stuff around the middle of the series that gets really tropey, particularly the filler episode where the group has to distract a perverted demon with a full-on idol performance that, while played in a way that pokes fun at idol shows, is very clearly there to just have the girls singing and dancing as idols for no reason. It's ironic that one of the more original KyoAni shows suffers most from this tropiness, seeing as its premise and style would generally be the least inclined to follow them. The villain's rather mediocre and probably is addressed more in the movie or something given how little focus he got in the show itself, it felt like his whole plan either wasn't explained or I missed it. The show just has tendencies to lessen its drama and action with very stereotypical anime stuff that just feels awkward and unnecessary, like they're scared the show's plot isn't enough to carry it (note that this is based on a light novel so I don't know how much is present in the book and how much is just the anime).

High Point: The animation.
Low Point: Episode 6, "Shocking Pink", the idol episode.

Final Thoughts: For animation alone this show is worth a watch, it's one of the most visually stunning anime I've seen of its kind. That being said it suffers from a lot of anime tropes that feel unneeded in the kind of show it is, and it's easy to be put off by it for the clicheness of it all. However, I really liked the good aspects of the show and enjoyed it despite its flaws. It was a fun show and made me excited for the future of the series, and I'll be watching the movie when I can to see where things go from here.
Spoiler : Number 8 :
Note: Trailer used due to unavailability of OP, though the OP song plays in the background at the 40 second mark.

We're starting to get to the tougher area of the list where I have no idea how to rank them. Here we are with Shinichiro Watanabe, famous creator of Cowboy Bebop, and his take on the slice of life romance genre with something truly special. This show is actually amazing and from an objective standpoint is probably one of the strongest on this list, and I don't even have much wrong with it outside of less personal connection than others on the list. That being said, this show was just great.

Story: Kaoru Nishimi is a high schooler in 1966 that moves to Kyushu to live with relatives and attend a new school on the honor role. Suffering from nausea in public and rather introverted, Kaoru tries to go to the roof for self-comfort, but encounters Sentaro Kawabuchi, the thug in his class and a skilled drummer, and an eventual friendship grows. As Sentaro show himself to be rather kindhearted and close to the girl Kaoru likes, Ritsuko Mukae, he introduces Kaoru, a classical pianist, to jazz music at Ritsu's family record store. Kaoru begins to open up to Sentaro and to Ritsuko, and a story of friendship, love, and jazz begins to unfold.

Pros: I know I use the word "gorgeous" a lot but man this show is gorgeous. It has animation unlike any other anime I've seen, with such fluidity in its movements that I've mistaken it for real life footage for a brief second at one point. Whenever someone plays an instrument you can expect not only great music but the most fluid instrument-playing animation I've ever seen, even better than Beck and K-On!. Oh yeah and awesome music indeed given the wonderful Yoko Kanno is on this project, being the most famous anime composer in the west with her work on Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, and Wolf's Rain. And of course Watanabe doesn't disappoint with his camera work, musical implementation, and general level of quality expected from his work. The characters are mostly great, particular mention going to Sentaro and Junichi, and the story, while not anything too extraordinary, is very effective, and concludes in one of the best finales to an anime I've seen in a long time. The show is just full of quality work and effort on the creators' parts, it's one of the best presented shows I've seen and handles things very naturally and handles them well.

Cons: Jeeeeeesus christ the dub though. I'm usually forgiving to SentaiFilmworks, I really am, but this was the first time EVER that I willingly switched to subs for a show all out in dub, because the voices just do not match the visuals. I mean Chris Patton's okay as Kaoru and David Matranga's perfect casting for Jun but nothing seems mixed properly or matches the voices and Andrew Love just does not sound right as Sentaro. It's one of the worst dubs for a recent show I've ever seen and I'm VERY forgiving towards dubs. Aside from that my issues aren't too much. I'm not too fond of the protagonist, Kaoru, as I found his behavior rather obnoxious at times, but he was passable most of the time. The romance I thought was mostly good but hiccupped a few times in melodramatic ways that kinda got on my nerve. There were a few characters that got more screen time than I'd care for that I didn't really like, notably Yurika Fukahori and Seiji Matsuoka, both of whom were rather irritating to me in terms of personality and occasionally actions. Most of these are rather minor things and all they did really was make me not quite as interested in this show's plot compared to ones higher up, though, so these are all mostly personal nitpicks on my end.

High Point: The "music battle" in episode 9 set to Miles Davis' "Four".
Low Point: The dub.

Final Thoughts: Kids on the Slope is a freaking fantastic show that a spot at number 8 really undermines in the long term. I recommend this show to anyone interested in music anime, romance anime, slice of life anime, period anime, or just generally Watanabe's work, because it really is a fantastically made show. The only reason it's so low is that I personally enjoyed the next few shows more than it, but keep in mind that it's still a great show in its own right and is definitely worth a watch, and perhaps you'll be more personally attached than I was.
Spoiler : Number 7 :
YES THIS IS THE LAST KYOTO ANIMATION SHOW. For now. I'm a fan of the company's work, okay, sue me. Hyouka is an interesting case as, while it is the typical slice of life setting, it's a lot more somber in tone and actually incorporates mystery elements into its formula, something not seen in slice of life in general. It's a very different kind of KyoAni show despite being in many ways typical, and the result is a very interesting blend of genre you likely won't see anywhere else.

Story: Houtaro Oreki is an apathetic boy with a creed to never expend more energy than he absolutely needs to. His older sister tells him to join her old Classics Club as he enters high school to keep it from going under, though. In reluctantly doing so, he meets Eru Chitanda, a strange and ditzy girl whose curiosity makes her latch onto ideas until she knows the answer, and Houtaro finds himself unable to deny this curiosity. As a result, Houtaro finds himself having to go out of his way to satisfy Chitanda's mind whenever she's puzzled as he solves small mysteries around school and remains a member of the Classics Club with Chitanda, his "database" friend Satoshi Fukube, and their manga-loving acquaintance Mayaka Ibara as they go through high school and work on their club anthology, "Hyouka".

Pros: Well it's not KyoAni if the animation isn't ridiculously high quality. Hyouka has largely normal settings but tends to drift into the fantastical occasionally, using visual metaphors to express Kotoura's emotions or his trains of thought that add a lot of gorgeous art styles and interesting imagery into what would normally be an average setting, further helped by the show's use of strange camera angles that keep the image interesting even when little is happening. The main cast is a ton of fun, each getting a further look into their character past the surface layer and having a good amount of depth to them, making the Classics Club one of my favorite KyoAni protagonist groups. From Houtaro's intellect and deadpan attitude (with signs of growing empathy over time), to Satoshi's shocking amount of development for the typical "fun friend" character type, to Chitanda's perkiness driving the show forward, to Mayaka's bitter retorts and realistic and natural personality. The mysteries in the show, while never too complex or high-stake (no murders here) are always interesting and fun to try and work out with Houtaro. The long-running arcs in particular that go around 5 episodes long are always a blast, my personal favorite being the Student Film Mystery arc where they try to work out the solution to a class film with an unfinished script. The more somber tone is also a nice change of pace for the company's work, and the show sticks far less to typical KyoAni moe tropes than others and likes to keep thing more natural with less explosive comedy. It's just a nice, relaxing experience that keeps your brain active and gives you some fun characters with interesting arcs throughout. Also the second ED, Kimi ni matsuwaru Misteri, is one of my new favorites.

Cons: KyoAni generally tends to end a series, but not really. The first season will end vaguely or leaving more to follow, then later a movie or second season will conclude the show more satisfyingly. Hyouka does not have that yet. It ends where it ends and where it ends is not a great place to end. The second to last episode is one of my favorites but the last episode just feels anticlimactic and like it doesn't wrap up the character arcs as well as it could have. It's not a terrible episode but when the show's strengths are in its longer running arcs, ending it with a rather out of the blue one-shot episode just doesn't feel right, it feels like there needs to be more afterward. It's not the worst ending I've ever seen but it just leaves you so unsatisfied. The one-shots in general were never quite as strong as the longer arcs. Also while I like the mysteries, the show presents them in ways where it feels almost too difficult to solve until Houtarou finds the very last piece of evidence before making his deduction so there's rarely the time or evidence to come up with the solution on your own (or maybe I'm just stupid). And some mysteries are very contrived for the sake of having a mystery despite being incredibly obvious or unimportant in the long run (looking at you, pool episode). But for the most part I just feel the show ended too soon for its own good, unable to really end the excellent character arcs fully and just sorta being summed up with, "Oh wait it's over already?"

High Point: The Student Film Mystery arc.
Low Point: The ending.

Final Thoughts: If you want to watch KyoAni's beautiful animation but are sick of high school girls sitting around doing nothing all day, check out Hyouka. It's a very interesting spin on the typical slice of life genre and doesn't feel like the typical kind of show you'd expect from this company. It's got great characters and a mellow feeling that keeps you invested enough to pay attention but relaxed enough to cut loose. Fingers crossed it gets a sequel movie, though.

Yes, this is the last entry that's predominantly slice of life, you may rest easy now.
Spoiler : Number 6 :
Hey, it's Yatterman Night! Never heard of it? That makes you everybody but me! This Winter 2015 show is one that went under the radar for a ton of people. It follows Tatsunoko's trend of "let's reboot an old franchise and then deconstruct it completely" that they showed with Casshern Sins and Gatchaman Crowds, in this case the target being the story of Yatterman, a hero that rode around with a giant robot dog, but now starring the descendants of the villains from the original show, the Doronbow Gang. Think a serious season of Pokemon that starred Team Rocket and had Ash depicted as the villain.

Story: Long ago, the heroes Yaterman-1 and Yatterman-2 defeated the Doronbow Gang, a team of thieves (Doronjo, Boyacky, and Tonzra) working under the alien Dokurobey. The Yattermen now seem to rule the Yatter Kingdom, where they are trusted despite seeming to be dictators that use force and fear to rule. Leopard, a nine-year-old descendant of Doronjo, tries to get the Kingdom's help when her mother falls ill. However, as she and her family is exiled since the defeat of Doronbow, she is attacked at the walls with no help in sight. Angry at Yatterman for being so cruel, Leopard takes up her ancestor's title alongside Tonzra and Boyacky's descendants Elephantus and Voltkatze, forming a new Doronbow Gang set to defeat the evil Yatterman and punish him with a "forehead flicking". As they make their way into Yatter Kingdom and meet new allies and enemies along the way, the true nature of Yatterman slowly begins to unfold.

Pros: First off, this concept is brilliant. It reverses everything you'd expect from Yatterman (especially after a more true-to-nature reboot in 2008) and turns it into a tragedy of sorts. The main cast of Doronbow and the two they meet later (Galina and Alouette) are very fun with great dynamics, Leopard being very fun for a child protagonist and having to shoulder a lot of tough stuff along the way. The animation is gorgeous with a lot of flow and muted colors, and just watching Leopard walk as her hair waves around is great to see. The drama in the show is great, with some moments that genuinely made me gasp with how well they were handled. There's a lot of fun action scene as well, especially near the end of the series. The show obviously has a lot of heart to it, and it all feels like a fresh take on an old Tatsunoko classic while still being a love letter to the original. Plus, there's a ton of classic Tatsunoko references every way you turn if you know your history. The final plot twist is also worth noting, as it actually shocked me when it happened but made so much sense in hindsight that, despite needing some background knowledge to fully grasp, made it really stand out to me. All this plus a satisfying if bittersweet conclusion creates something special out of something that was initially very silly, and makes a generally tragic and heartwarming story out of it all in the end.

Cons: The show requires a LOT of Yatterman knowledge going in. It doesn't make sense unless you do at least a little research on the 1977 series (or at least the 2008 remake) without spoiling the plot of this one, so you know who the backstory characters are and what their shticks were. Also, the series tends to rely on the original's style of comedy way too often, which is really outdated and even awkward at times now (seeing as the villains in the original were rather perverted and Doronjo had a tendency to get stripped a lot, it makes things rather awkward from time to time when they try to stick to the tone) and conflicts with the more serious nature. The show also gets really formulaic in the middle for some reason, relying heavily on old Tatsunoko reference subplots that don't really progress the main story at all and just make the show feel really repetitive and redundant from episodes 5 to 9 (episode 7 in particular being the worst of these past two complaints). There's also the very awkward final battle that isn't really finished animation-wise that had to be edited together hastily in a way that awkwardly repeats animation over and over, though the finished parts look nice and supposedly this is an issue with broadcast schedule that will be fixed in official release.

High Point: The final plot twist.
Low Point: Episode 7, "Dream Sea".

Final Thoughts: I adore what this show tried to do. Did it always succeed? Not, it's rather weak in the middle. But the parts where it succeeded in the beginning and the end resonated a ton with me, and as someone who mains Yatterman in Tatsunoko vs Capcom, I loved seeing a series I was somewhat interested in get such a fresh take. Tatsunoko's shows nowadays really need more attention, because despite this show's flaws it does a ton of interesting things that kept me invested and satisfied, and I dare say it's even better than the source material it was born from.
Spoiler : Number 5 :
Note: Used a Toonami ad instead of the first OP for sake of questionable shots that may not run entirely with site rules on what's appropriate. Google the OP yourself if you're curious you lazy fools.

Kill La Kill was the biggest thing to come so far from Studio Trigger, the baby studio of the famous Gainax, and created by people that previously worked on my all-time favorite action anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. While I wouldn't say the 2013-14 series "saved anime" like many claimed it did (or that anime needed saving in the first place), this recent powerhouse of a series was a ton of fun to watch and wins the "most pure, mindless fun" series of the list.

Story: Honnouji Academy is a high school set under the iron-tight regime of Satsuki Kiryuin and the Elite 4 Student Council, and where people wear powerful "Goku Uniforms" that give special powers and strength to those whom Satsuki believes deserve them. Her regime is left unchallenged until the arrival of Ryuko Matoi, a girl with a giant half-scissor blade that is looking for her father's murderer and believes Satsuki's behind it when she transfers in. Ryuko is taken in by the eccentric Mako Mankanshoku's family, and as she investigates her father's death site finds a sentient school outfit named Senketsu, which allows Ryuko to transform into a stronger (yet revealing) form by using her blood. With her scissor blade and Senketsu, Ryuko fights back against Satsuki's regime and the Goku Uniform wearers in this clothes-based empire as she discovers that not all is as simple as it initially seems with this school.

Pros: As expected from the creators of Gurren Lagann, the show is stupid amounts of fun. It escalates and escalates in ridiculousness and scale until you never know just how seriously to take its plot or if they're making stuff up on the spot, but you're also okay with it because it works and goddangit look at the explosiveness of everything on screen. Fight scenes are insane with everything from giant flying musical amps shooting music notes to a man that gets stronger through the power of masochism. The characters are all great fun (with one exception but we'll get there) from Ryuko and her constant hotheadedness, to Senketsu the straight man (or outfit), to the Elite 4 and their fun designs and personalities, to the ever-energetic Mako Mankanshoku and her family, to the ludicrously strict Satsuki, to the somehow terrifying Nui Harime, to whatever the crap you call that dude from Osaka. Everyone's memorable and just a blast to watch. The music composed by Hiroyuki Sawano is one of my favorite OSTs in all of anime, with DON'T LOSE YOUR WAAAAY running through my head for hours after watching the show, and all the character themes just adding a ton of personality to the show. The dub is great, too, with everyone being cast perfectly and a fantastic script in general. Everything in this show just seems determined to be fun and exciting, with the occasional interesting concept about clothes metaphorically representing oppression if you want to look deep into a show named "Kill La Kill". But for the most part it's just exciting, blood-boiling action and over the top amounts of personality. It's the exact kind of show you turn to when you just need mindless fun and awesome designs, fights, and characters.

Cons: While I respect the fact that it's not pointless to the plot, the amount of fanservice is pretty ludicrous. Like just...so much naked. I mean there's a ton of naked men too, pretty much everyone is naked at some point in this series, and it never does show any detail in it, but it does get uncomfortable with just how often there's somebody scantily clad with their chest wiggling around in a fight. Especially with a character named Ragyo that comes in later and does a lot of inappropriate stuff that's very uncomfortable and honestly makes me have to give this show a trigger warning before watching, be ready to skip scenes between her and Satsuki because they just go too far. Also pfffft what's with this show's budget. Trigger's known for rather low-budget animation thanks to the likes of Inferno Cop or Ninja Slayer that are the animation equivalent of playing with action figures with no articulation, and while KLK never gets THAT bad and compromises with a good art style, the awkward stillness of the animation makes itself apparent a LOT. Like you'll notice it eventually how much people just slide across the screen for some reason. Plus, the show is pretty stupid, as expected, so...don't expect a lot of intellect in this one. It's honestly a miracle between the weak animation and the stupidity of it all how this show got as explosively popular as it did, really, but it kinda just runs on absurdity.

High Point: The ever-eccentric Elite 4.
Low Point: Any scene with Ragyo alone with Satsuki.

Final Thoughts: Kill La Kill was stupid fun and it knew it was stupid fun and I'm okay with it being stupid fun. There are shows you watch to stimulate your brain and then there's Kill La Kill. Yes it shoves far, FAR too much nakedness in your face (at least it's note gender-biased on the nudity) and has animation like a Flash animation sometimes but it has so much personality in it that it's just a blast to watch, and great for those who loved Gurren Lagann as much as I did.
Spoiler : Number 4 :
You want to point to Studio Trigger for saving anime? Point your finger towards Little Witch Academia if anything. Premiering as part of the Anime Mirai 2013 film project, it's almost a shock this and Kill La Kill are from the same studio since LWA is one of the most polished anime I've ever seen, even if it's only a 26 minute movie (with an upcoming sequel). I debated putting this on at all since it's not a full series, but screw it, I'm going to talk about this amazing short film dangit and you can't stop me.

Story: In a world of magic, Akko Kagari, a girl who was inspired by a performer witch named Shiny Chariot as a child, joins a magical academy training young witches in their magic. She's made fun of there for being inspired by somebody who gives off such a wrong impression of witches, but she sticks to her resolve and wants to become a powerful witch like Shiny Chariot was. When the class is given an assignment to retrieve treasures from a dungeon and things go wrong, Akko has to save the school from destruction with her friends and prove that her faith is not as ill-guided as it seems.

Pros: Where do I even start. The animation and design in this is fantastic, with incredibly fluid if cartoony animation that reminds more of a Disney film than an anime (Director Yoh Yoshinari being a huge fan of western animation). Everything just flows amazingly and the character designs are all a wonder to look at with one of my favorite art styles yet. Every shot astounds me in one way or another, whether it be an amazing magical spectacle or just a character moving around naturally, it's all great to see. The characters are all a blast, with Akko and her friends Sucy and Lotte and her bully Diana being all incredibly memorable for how short they were actually on the screen. The story is simple but effective and works for what the short film is. And the pacing is shockingly good, hitting every point it needs to to make the story work and the characters memorable and never wasting even a moment of its time without feeling rushed. It made 26 minutes feel far longer than it was, and not because it was slow or monotonous but because there was so much happening in that timespan that seemed to fly by so naturally time-wise that it felt it couldn't all have possibly happened in such a small amount of time. The film's soundtrack captures the magical feeling the story gets across and adds even more heart to the presentation than it already had. It's a shock that Studio Trigger, infamous for some of the lowest quality animation around, created one of the most beautiful animations I've ever seen.

Cons: I honestly don't have any big complaints. There's a lot of suspicious similarities to Harry Potter from a Witch school to a Sorceror's Stone and a failed broomstick scene. Those are weird I guess. Diana's friends were a little annoying. Honestly this film is so short I don't have anything hugely against it, the only reason it's not number 1 is because it's so short and doesn't have more to stick with me. If this quality were in a show with heck even 6 episodes a la FLCL it'd easily be number 1. When "it needs more" is the best complaint I can come up with there's not much point in dragging this section out more.

High Point: The animation.
Low Point: The length.

Final Thoughts: Little Witch Academia 2 is slated to come out this year and thanks to Kickstarter will be 40 minutes long instead of 26. I will watch this sequel so hard my eyes will bleed from the intensity at which I stare at the screen. I love this movie and all I could ask from it is that there's more. It's cheating a bit to put it on a list with series but it's practically an episode and it's just as high quality if not moreso than a full series is. So go watch Little Witch Academia you fools. The worst that could happen is that you don't enjoy half an hour of your life, and even then I don't expect the majority to be dissatisfied with this short but beautiful piece.
Spoiler : Number 3 :
The other anime I watched to completion from Winter of 2015, Death Parade is based on the Studio Madhouse short film Death Billiards, which premiered with Little Witch Academia for Anime Mirai 2013. By the end of its run Death Parade earned a spot as one of my new favorite anime, with a healthy mix of a dark story, optimistic themes, heavy emotions, and an excellent premise that I just adored.

Story: There is a bar called Quindecim, where people who die at the same time as each other go to be judged in the afterlife for the destination of their souls: reincarnation or the void. This is decided by the two playing a game hosted by the deadpan bartender Decim and his assistant, an amnesiac human that has yet to be judged known only as the black haired woman. The deceased compete in a bar game in which they are pushed to the extreme through special conditions such as points hurting each other, and their behavior and memories are examined by the arbiter Decim to decide their ultimate fate. However, the deceased does not know they have died until the end of the game, nor how the rules of Quindecim work. The show follows both the stories of the many visitors of Quindecim as well as the development of Decim and the black haired woman as the entire system they follow is brought into question.

Pros: Gotta get it out of the way, the OP is like one of the best ever. It juxtaposes the usually dark tone of the show but in a good way, and it's just so darn fun and catchy. The presentation is as high quality as one would expect from Madhouse, with memorable designs and visuals complimented with very cool tones that set the show's atmosphere amazingly. I also adore this premise. The concept of a purgatory of sorts in a bar where games like darts or air hockey are the means to which you are judged is such an interesting idea that I've yet to really see from anime. The highlight of the series is the many stories that come from the patrons of the bar and how they ended up in Quindecim, and what they're really like and where they'll go. The series is good at developing these characters quickly and giving them fleshed out stories depite usually being there for only one or two episodes. The main characters, Decim and the black haired woman, are also great in their own right and I adore their character development and their interactions over the series, Decim's development being some of my favorite of a character in recent memory. I love the show's themes as well, as I'm always fond of shows that can look at humanity and the ups and downs of it. The show's ability to mix tones is also something I like, able to go from dark and twisted to cute or even funny depending on who happens to wander into the bar next. It's all a mix of creative ideas that mesh together well and culminate in a climax that, while not perfect, I absolutely adored.

Cons: The plot is a bit awkward here as much of it is left unresolved and in the background. The show likes to make you fill in blanks yourself and in doing so creates a big conspiracy amongst the afterlife higher-ups that doesn't really get resolved by the series finale. Many characters can be rather confusing in their motivations (particularly Ginti) and occasionally you get some rather contrived logic cropping up in the characters' backstories. It all makes the show one that feels great as a character study and as an episodic series but a little weak as an actual full point A to point B plot. I have no issue with ambiguity, but it really is a shame they set up a very interesting plot and just sort of ended the series before it seemed it would escalate and never showed the results.

High Point: The deceased's stories.
Low Point: The unresolved plot.

Final Thoughts: Despite being incredibly recent, Death Parade easily became one of my favorite anime upon finishing it. I love the concept and what it brings, I love the cast, I love the presentation, and I just love what this show tried to do in general. It's a shame its plot didn't fully resolve itself, and I do wish that had been handled better, but for what it is I adored what was there, and I'd gladly rewatch the series through just to enjoy it and its ideas all over again.
Spoiler : Number 2 :
With the popularity of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the magical girl genre had a resurrection of sorts in anime. However, alongside (if not outweighing) the standard shows a la Shugo Chara and Sailor Moon came magical girl shows that like Madoka tried to subvert tropes and tones and show a different side to the genre. Some did so comically like Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! that took the same setup and tone and used boys instead of girls, and some tried to do what Madoka did and make something with a darker or more serious tone. Yuki Yuna is a Hero is in the latter category, but with more optimistic themes than the average series of this kind. While it's far more obscure than Madoka, not only do I personally enjoy this show more than Madoka (which I already really liked), but this is the first show since Anohana to make me cry. So yeah, I really really liked this one.

Story: The Sanshu Middle School Hero Club is a club dedicated to helping those in need. The members, Yuna Yuki, Mimori Togo, Fu Inubozaki, and Itsuki Inubozaki, follow their personal creeds as they try to help everyone they can as "heroes", but when a mysterious phenomenon forces them to fight against massive monsters known as Vertex trying to destroy their world. Using powers granted to them through their phones by the god Shinju, the girls transform into powerful "heroes" that are tasked with protecting their world from the Vertex. While they come to accept their roles and continue their fight, they come to discover that there's more consequence to this life than they thought, and that being a Hero isn't as glorious as it may initially seem.

Pros: I think what got me most invested in this show in the long run was that despite the inevitable dark turn it took it managed to remain optimistic. As someone who loves positive themes and stories about human triumph, the themes in this show really resonated with me and I loved the anime more than I already did for sticking with them. And of course I loved the anime before these themes all carried through, what with a cast of characters that I adored and some gorgeous presentation. The main characters have a lot of chemistry as friends and are all rather interesting to some degree, with Yuna being a great protagonist, Togo being interesting in her backstory (and for being probably the first wheelchair-bound action character I've seen that didn't have something like a high-tech chair or the like to make up for the disability), Fu being a very fun and increasingly complex character, Itsuki having an interesting character arc through the series, and the last character to join the main cast Karin Miyoshi being not only a fun and interesting character but also...well I won't spoil it, but let's just say she's the one that got me to cry in my favorite scene of this show. The art style's nice and memorable despite being very "anime girl" thanks to great use of color and design, and the world where they fight the (impressively CGI'd) Vertex are just beautiful with their heavy use of watercolor aesthetics and vivid colors. The fight scenes are some of my favorites from a magical girl anime, with each of the characters having some great weapons and coupled with strong choreography. Plus, the emotional scenes of the show (particularly heavy in the second half but still present in the first) are excellently handled in my opinion and ware what had my eyes glued to the screen, only emphasized by some equally enjoyable comedy or slice of life and action scenes. It's good at the tones of the different scenes it tries and doesn't feel like it would be the same if it didn't do all of them as well as it does. Some truly excellent foreshadowing in there, too. The show is fun, beautiful, and emotionally heavy in execution and has interesting rules and backstory behind it, and creates a roller coaster of an execution that ends very satisfyingly in my opinion. There's a work in progress dub that will be out in full in August, and while I watched the subs out of impatience, the dub is rather good from what I've seen, particular mention to Sarah Anne Williams as Karin and Erica Mendez as Fu.

Cons: If you've seen or even heard of Madoka Magica the parallels become fairly obvious rather quickly. From a the similar setup to similar designs and aesthetics mixed with the "serious take on the magical girl genre" concept it's hard not to talk about Yuki Yuna without mentioning Madoka Magica, and Madoka certainly overshadows Yuki Yuna between the two, and the nature of Madoka and its popularity makes it hard to go into Yuki Yuna without expecting the same sort of subversive trends that had, making it a tad more predictable than it'd be had it been made a few years earlier. There's also some rather forced melodrama in some areas that make the otherwise well-handled emotional scenes feel a bit more contrived than they really needed to be (particularly one small but rather forced moment in episode 9). While the CGI on the Vertex are good, there is definitely the occasional uncanny model being used for one of the Heroes when they're flying about in a fight. In general the show could easily come across as "trying to be Madoka", and while I do enjoy this show a bit more than Madoka, it's very hard to shake the feeling that it's trying to impact the same audience or that it's trying to do the same kind of thing that did.

High Point: Karin's big scene near the end.
Low Point: Contrived scene in episode 9.

Final Thoughts: Wow I really had to keep high and low points really vague to avoid spoiling this show jeeze. Anyway Yuki Yuna is a Hero is an overlooked gem in the post-Madoka magical girl age. It does a lot of stuff Madoka did which is hard to ignore but with its great cast and themes and being able to get me to cry pushed it into one of my new favorite anime. I adore how this show handled its story and I'd say it's my favorite magical girl anime to date. It may not be the most talked about show in the world, but it holds a special place in my heart.
Spoiler : Number 1 :
And so we come to my favorite anime of the past year, Katanagatari. This is a rather obscure 2010 anime adapted from a light novel by the same author as the famously avant-garde Monogatari series, Nisio Isin. It's a strange show that seems to do whatever it feels like sometimes whether it be having a 45 minute runtime per episode, to changing the art style on a whim, to just directly tricking the audience with its formula. This show is a strange experience that doesn't conform to standards or expectations in the slightest, and honestly when I first watched it...I didn't expect it to be my favorite anime of the past half a year. I thought it'd rank high, but not number 1. But I realized that I couldn't forget about it. It stayed on my mind and was always what my mind would return to even after finishing a different anime. It stuck with me and made me think. And it was when I realized that this series resonated with me and challenged me more than anything else I saw this series as one of the most memorable shows I've seen in this entire past year that I realized yes, Katanagatari would have to be number 1. This is a strange show, but it was what won it out for me.

Story: A legendary swordsmith, Kiki Shikizaki, once crafted twelve Deviant Blades, nearly perfect swords with strong "poisons" that made their wielders rely on and not wish to surrender them. Years later, the self-proclaimed "strategian" for the shogunate, Togame, goes to an island where the son of an exiled war hero lives to recruit him in finding the Deviant Blades so that she may present them to the shogunate for a promotion in the ranks. This young man, Shichika Yasuri, is the seventh head of the Kyotoryu school of Japanese sword martial arts, and has trained his whole life in his family's technique of "Kyotoryu", a sword-fighting style that involves not using a physical sword but treating one's own body as a sword. When the simple-minded Shichika agrees, the two spend the next year searching Japan for the twelve Deviant Blade wielders, finding out how to defeat their skilled and eccentric wielders and get all of the swords back intact for the Shogunate. Alongside the Maniwa Ninja Corps also looking for the words, the mysterious schemes of Togame's rival Princess Hitei and her right-hand man Souda Emonzaemon, and more, Togame and Shichika's journey only becomes more and more difficult as the months go by.

Pros: The show's setup is one of my favorite kinds, where a single warrior has to fight a collection of varied and eccentric opponents one by one to reach their goal. The kind of premise from series like No More Heroes or Scott Pilgrim. It's just a great outline in general. And the 12 swordsmen of the Deviant Blades are definitely one of the series' biggest highlights, with each one being memorable in their own right (some more than others but that's a story for a different countdown) and feeling like fleshed out characters despite only getting a single episode of screen time for the most part. Even more minor characters like the side plot of the Maniwa Corps is full of memorable characters, and of course the protagonists Shichika and Togame are great. And the characters' fighting styles and weapons are all interesting, to the point where the show is largely about just figuring out HOW to beat the enemy and developing the enemies. It really doesn't waste its cast. The show's presentation is amazing as well, with one of the most unique art styles I've seen in a while, with a lot of focus being put on various kinds of eyes and strikingly memorable designs. No major character looks generic. And the music is one of my favorite OSTs from my favorite composer, Taku Iwasaki (responsible for other favorite OSTs like Gatchaman Crowds and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann), with an interesting mix of music that seems to combine classical Japanese samurai style instrumentation, techno, and rap. The OPs aren't special with the exception of the one that aired with the television rerun of the series performed by Supercell (as linked above) which is one of my favorites of all time, but the ending songs actually change with every episode, an INCREDIBLY rare thing for anime to do. The dialogue (which there is a lot of) is fun and full of personality, and helps the characters feel very real even if the show doesn't. The fight scenes, while surprisingly short and rare, are usually a blast, with some truly excellent choreography and unique techniques and weapons (one of the Deviant Blades is literally a samurai robot for an idea). The writing and themes are intriguing and thought-provoking, even if I can't go into them without spoilers. And god can this show handle its emotion. I choked up several times, even if just waiting for the inevitable, and had it not been for bizarre circumstances (ie a huge bug landing on my face and freaking me out killing the mood) I honestly would have cried at the ending. Speaking of which, this series has a freaking amazing final episode, with a lot of bittersweet emotional rollercoastering and one of the greatest fight sequences I've ever seen in anime. Plus, just the weird things this show does always keep you on your toes. It trolls the viewers by showing viewers things in an episode preview that doesn't actually happen in the next episode, it changes the art style for episode 7 for no explained reason (and it's an important episode, too), and it basically does everything in its power to make sure you can't predict what it will do next, keeping you on the edge of your seat as you just wait for what the show decides it wants to do next. It's a bizarre and memorable show with so much going for it that it's hard to believe it's such an ignored show by the anime community.

Cons: It's far from perfect. As an adaptation of an Isin light novel, a man famous for his verbose writing style, it spends a LOT of time talking about things, which is fine as long as the dialogue is interesting, but it takes up the majority of 50-minute episodes, and even happens in the middle of a high-stress battle. The most frustrating thing the show does is not utilize its amazing action scenes more, as they're honestly some of my favorites in anime when they occur but can last literally seconds sometimes after an entire episode of buildup. I mean I love the dialogue in this series, but when the time is extended to twice that of a normal anime episodes, they could at least pace the climaxes of the episodes better. The show is bittersweet in almost everything it does, never truly wanting to let you feel completely satisfied, which is intellectually stimulating but also the most frustrating feeling on the planet. And there's fanservice that really pushes the line between "character building interaction" and "tasteless nakey shots". Not to mention some frustrating moments like in episode 9 where Togame just keeps walking on awkward moments between Shichika and the woman he's training with that look sexual out of context and freaking out without telling him like a cliche sitcom. "Frustrating" sums it up nicely, really. You just want to yell at the show for doing what it does sometimes and you're not entirely sure how much of it is on purpose for the sake of the theme or not.

High Point: The final battle.
Low Point: Awkward moments in episode 9.

Final Thoughts: Katanagatari is an endlessly frustrating show. It goes out of its way to spite expectations. But that's what made it really stick with me in the end over everything else. It frustrated me, but in a way that made me think more about it. It's a fun show for its setup and its cast and its style and its dialogue and all that, but it's also a smart show that gets you to look at things differently as it endlessly trolls you for thinking you know where it's going. It's frustrating, but that's what I love about it. It's an overlooked series but not one you simply forget. It crafts a story I adore and then shatters every idea I had of it going in. I couldn't get this show out of my head for one reason for another, whether it be remembering how awesome the characters were, relistening to the ost, or thinking why it made the decisions it did in design. It's not a show for everybody. It's easy to get annoyed at it for the stuff it pulls. But I not only loved it, I thought it was one of the most interesting and unique anime experiences I've ever had. I looked everywhere for something like this and couldn't find it. There's only one Katanagatari, and there's nothing that can take its place for me. It's a unique experience, for better or worse. And for me, it was not only for better, but it was my favorite anime I've watched in the first half of 2015.
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Hersh/Fiendy has credit for the amazing GiGi pics and enigma has credit for the adorable Kenshin Mega Man sprite!

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