Shameful Otaku Secret!

I know how readers love excuses (spoiler: they don’t), so here’s mine: I was stuck working in London, UK. Is anyone aware of just how shitty England’s winter preparation is?

Well I am, now. So let’s catch up:

Moment the second: Finishing Zeta Gundam.

It doesn’t seem that significant. We finish anime series all the time. But I rarely watch long series, especially not older ones, at least not with a high level of success (witness my MAL slots for Captain Harlock and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, both series that I’ve enjoyed very much but still labor with finishing). The fifty episodes of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, however, I finished in record time and came out not tired of it, but a true blue Gundam convert. I have to thank ghostlightning, Schneider, and everyone else who encouraged me to try the vintage stuff despite my distaste for most modern Gundam. I saw the tears of time. I think.

Moment the third: Two great tastes, tasting great together.

I admit that Highschool of the Dead didn’t always live up to its promise, but the opening few episodes, with their intense pacing and boundary-pushing fanservice, contained many Moments for me. I’m a longtime zombie movie fan. I am an unrepentant Romero apologist and I firmly believe that zombies don’t run. I also, surprisingly, like anime (despite the fact that I watch enough of it to hate it). The combination, including the all-important moment where a character realizes his friend is no longer his friend and must kill him, was potent enough for me to forgive plenty of flaws.

Moment the fourth: I make no apologies — Black Rock Shooter.

Yeah, bitches. I enjoyed the shit out of Black Rock Shooter. It had fun fights, great visuals, and a very innovative way of telling a story. I’m a big fan of Huke’s art, especially his dark re-imagining of icons like Asuka Langley Soryu and Gurren Lagann. But of course his most endearing creation is Black Rock Shooter, so intriguing to view that Vocaloid user Ryo created a song wondering just what she was about. It took quite a while for that question to be answered, and even then, plenty of fans didn’t find that answer to be satisfying, but you know what? We watch the same old shit season in and season out, and Yamakan and Huke gave us something just a little different when an uncreative cash-in was the easy route. In my mind, we should be so lucky.

Moment the fifth: More Eva.

Another contentious subject this year was Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance. It made a huge alteration to the original story where 1.0 simply put a shiny coat on it. Hideaki Anno was the talk of the town, and thanks to ghostlightning, I was able to put in my own two cents despite not having a blog of my own at the time. But if Evangelion is the series that made a million fanboys, you’ll just have to count me as one of a million, and I’m eagerly awaiting part 3. Also… what if it is a sequel?

Moment the sixth: Coining a phrase.

I swear, this was already on my list before Anime Diet’s Mike Huang wrote about it, but I love that someone else enjoyed the phenomenon of 2010′s leggy heroines enough to make it one of his own moments. It was a tossed-off phrase, the kind that I use often in posts, but for some reason, describing Ookami-San’s impressively long legs as “endless pleasure sticks” just kinda stuck. It’s nice to have a legacy. It’s weird to have this particular one.

Moment the seventh: Tatami’s end.

Tatami Galaxy was the kind of series that makes watching anime worthwhile. You could probably watch nothing but noitaminA series and maybe the occasional Anime-no-Chikara one, but then you’d probably end up with a warped perspective of how decent most TV anime is. Perhaps Maasaki Yuasa’s finest hour, Tatami was visually innovative, structurally brilliant, and more importantly, really entertaining. I hope that it did a lot for the average anime viewer’s expectations of what it means to be experimental and imaginative, that it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be stuffy and atmospheric — you can also be funny and cute, and of course, you can have Akashi-san.

Moment the eighth: Faith renewed.

Dennou Coil is my Secret Santa series, something that maybe I shouldn’t even be revealing, but in preparation for the post on it, I have to thank my Secret Santa for delivering me from apathy toward anime for hopefully a very long time. Turns out, there are plenty of shows out there, even made recently, that have all of the classic appeal of anime. Of course, turns out there’s also a ton of amazing animation that hasn’t been and may never be licensed in the US. What a shame about this one.