Table of Contents: Girls und Panzer – 0:10 Kids on the Slope – 1:01 Maoyuu Maou Yuusha – 1:16 Chihayafuru 2 – 2:22 Psycho-Pass – 2:49 Minami-ke Tadaima – 3:14 Moyashimon Returns – 3:39 Urusei Yatsura – 4:03 Poyopoyo – 4:22 Gintama – 4:47 Robotics;Notes – 5:14 Extras – 5:24

A blowout isn’t just about the final score. It doesn’t turn on a choice of strategy. It’s not when two opponents start out trading even blows only for one to decisively pull away after a series of power-ups. It’s not when one person gets his ass kicked, learns a new technique, and comes back a [...]

Table of Contents: Angel Heart – 0:18 Ashita no Joe – 2:01 Hunter x Hunter – 3:54 Initial D – 4:45 Mysterious Girlfriend X – 5:00 Polar Bear’s Cafe – 5:36 News & Extras – 6:18

Intrigued by the power of the fade-in? Shakugan no Shana III has all your answers. If an ending transition exists, Shana III has used it (spoiler warnings): 1. No fade-in, standard ending sequence: episodes 5–7 and 9. The kind of ending you’ll find in most shows, and, unfortunately, the only kind of ending you’ll find [...]

City Hunter is an episodic action–comedy about a man named Ryo Saeba. Let me stress that Ryo is a man. I don’t mean this simply in the sense of man vs. woman. I’m talking man vs. boy, man vs. male, and man vs. neutered, androgynous wimp. City Hunter was made back in the 80s when [...]

I once complained that Candy Boy had a misleading title. The upside, which I failed to appreciate at the time, is that it was the good kind of misleading: the kind that surprised you with lesbians. Yuru Yuri’s deception isn’t so generous. It has yuri in the title, another word that’s 3/4 yuri, and a [...]

I’d failed in my three prior attempts to put up with Luffy’s carefree idiot schtick as he lucked his way through needlessly close battles against weak opponents. Since then, like an indefatigable shonen hero, I’ve once again leveled up my ability to tolerate shitty anime, this time by quitting anime for a year. With my [...]

I didn’t think I’d have to write a post about this show. Then again, I didn’t expect Polar Bear’s Café to be getting such a massive free pass even by the standards of itiswhatitisism. As with so many “slice-of-life” anime that’ve come out over the past half-decade, the jokes suck. Sometimes it’s due to poor [...]

Aoi Hana once inspired me to draw a distinction between real lesbians and super lesbians, mainly because the “lesbians” in Aoi Hana were constantly crying instead of groping each other. Not only was I hoping for another kind of waterworks, the horrendous cry/grope ratio was only one of several criticisms I had of the show. [...]

I used to think that any anime with giant robots would be better off without them. This is no longer the case. But Baka-Raptor, why would you ever bother watching The iDOLM@STER? It all started back in 2006 when a reader called Genius Sage submitted the following idolm@sterpiece to my challenge. Like all respectable artwork, [...]

Higurashi can make as many filler episodes as it wants. Lazy premises, cheesy jokes, plot holes, rampant pedophilia—who cares? I will watch every one, buy all the merchandise, and then burn it when I find out the seiyuu aren’t virgins. Only Higurashi can get away with an opening theme called Happy! Lucky! Dochy! The Higurashi [...]

Die already Two things irk me about this scene. First of all, words beginning with a vowel should be preceded by the indefinite article “an”. Second of all, anime characters talking about how they’re like anime characters is lazy, cheesy, unclever bullshit. It happened all the fucking time in the Daily Lives of High School [...]

There are many things that visual novels, light novels, manga, and other non-animated works can do better than anime. Action is not one of them. Action is meant to be watched, not interpreted. Nobody wants to read a fight or piece together still shots of a sporting event. Not only is it oxymoronic for “action” not [...]

**Spoilers for Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night** Masters in Fate/Stay Night Name Gender Competent? Emiya Shirou Male Matou Shinji Male Souichirou Kuzuki Male Kotomine Kirei Male Tohsaka Rin Female Ilyasviel von Einsbern Female Caster Female Masters in Fate/Zero Name Gender Competent? Emiya Kiritsugu Male Kotomine Kirei Male Tohsaka Tokiomi Male Kayneth Archibald Male Sola-Ui Sophia-Ri Female [...]

The Good: May be the most clever anime I’ve ever seen. The Bad: “Artistic” ugly. Annoying side characters. Entangling plot and metaphor. Coming too soon after Endless Eight. The main character talks too fast. Michael won’t shut up about it. Final Grade: +

I’ve seen way too many comedies try to get by on premise alone. This kind of crap is all over Adult Swim. There’s no creativity to keep you interested once the novelty of the premise wears off. The shows either keep trying to milk the premise long after it’s been beaten to death or resort [...]

Another year, another END DAY. I initially dropped Kenshin back in the 20s. It was loaded with filler adventures I couldn’t bring myself to care about. Kenshin goes to the circus. Kenshin rides a train. It seemed that Kenshin quit his role as Battousai the Manslayer to become the Japanese Spot. Somehow my brother convinced [...]

No wonder Galatea slashed her eyes and got to a nunnery Me in 2001: Why are they having nosebleeds? Me in 2006: Why are they bleeding out of anything but their eyes after seeing that ugly swimsuit? Me in 2011: It’s funny because otaku have stupid fetishes. It’d be easy enough to bash the fetishization [...]

Some say Rose of Versailles is as good as it gets. I say it has been better gotten. There’s one huge objective flaw that should keep anyone from giving RoV a perfect score. Most of the RoV characters are actual historical figures. Oscar is not. She’s not going to shoot the Duke of Orléans. She’s [...]

Some call me a homophobe because I prefer watching anime without gay sex. I tell them I can’t be homophobic because I like lesbians. They tell me that gays and lesbians are completely different, because lesbians are demeaning and trashy, whereas gays are artistic and enlightening. I tell them I like gay characters too, particularly [...]

I once put off watching Spice and Wolf because I assumed it was targeted at zoophiles. Then I put off watching the second season because I hadn’t watched the first season. Then I watched K-ON, the worst anime ever, and learned two things: 1. I don’t understand otaku fetishes at all. (Apparently it’s the ears [...]

Everyone else knows something about microbes. Everyone else knows about Sawaki’s secret power. Oikawa knows nothing about anything. She’s out of place in every single scene that has anything to do with microbes, not to mention all the other scenes she screws up because she’s an annoying bitch. Stupid cow Her only reasons for existence [...]

Final Grade: ++ Now lets talk about everything that sucked. Spoilers abound. The vampires are sparkly and have feelings. Nice cleavage Natsuno looks too much like a girl, even for anime. His personality is too inconsistent, even for anime. He has too much implicit gay sex with his best friend, even for anime. Megumi’s attack [...]

That’s what I looked like when I watched it I heard all the hype. P&Sw/G was so hip and radical and antiestablishment and subverts tropes and doesn’t take itself seriously and is made by GAINAX. This had to be the best thing since Astro Boy. But before I could watch it, I had to figure [...]

VS. Round 1: Japanese Title Jellyfish Princess: Kuragehime (5 syllables, all one word) Squid Girl: Shinryaku! Ika Musume (8-9 syllables, three words, questionable punctuation) Advantage: Jellyfish Princess Round 2: Not Improperly Called Slice-of-Life Jellyfish Princess: Animesuki 2010 Choice Awards Squid Girl: Anime News Network Advantage: Draw Round 3: Tentacle Rape Jellyfish Princess: Only date rape [...]

Quick, name a GAR character. Did you say Kamina? Why not Guts, Kenshiro, or Golgo 13? Why is it Kamina’s name that’s synonymous with GAR? I asked the OH! Team to enlighten me. Baka-Raptor: I don’t get it. Why does everyone keep saying Kamina is GAR? Lbrevis: Kamina’s dramatic speeches, fearlessness and hotheaded battles with [...]

The manliest song without an AMV? Anything worth doing is worth doing alone. Can’t exercise by yourself? See if I care when you get a heart attack. Don’t want to eat alone? Go ahead and starve. People who need others to hold their hands to get them to do things they already want to do [...]

Why 2009? I’m always a few seasons behind. See what I did there? Could my post order be any more strategic? If you’re not satisfied with that explanation, consider this: if this post only contained series from 2009 that I finished in 2009, it would include Queen’s Blade. This list only includes series. Movies, OVAs, [...]

You do not live in Japan. A new season of anime means new anime airs on TV in Japan, which is a country you do not live in, unless you’re a disillusioned expatriate who has yet to learn that watching anime all day makes you a loser no matter where you are in the world. [...]