I’m going to start with the bold proclamation that Ano Hana is the best anime this season by the length of a street. While I wasn’t as impressed as others with the opening episode, largely because it begged to be compared with anime that I just considered to be better, like Cross Game and Bokura ga Ita, and these were comparisons that Ano Hana was never going to win, I did recognize it had potential. Since then, it’s executed the most critical element of any drama superbly: characterization. (Above image found on zerochan. Minor spoilers up to ep 7 of Hanasaku Iroha and ep 5 of Ano Hana.)

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Copyright © 2011 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai, Cross Game, Hanasaku Iroha

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For the third year running, I’ve set up a mock award for anime, based on the Oscars and timed to coincide with Hollywood’s most prestigious annual awards. I’ve tried to make this award resemble the real Academy Awards as closely as possible, with a couple of allowances for the sake of relevance and convenience. This year I’ve introduced the rule that seiyuu are only eligible for each category once, which I’m pretty sure is the case for actors in the real awards. (If I didn’t do this, I may have been incredibly tempted just to nominate Hanazawa Kana for every role she’s been in this year.) Otherwise, eligibility rules are the same as previous years: I can only give awards to anime that I’ve actually seen, and while any anime that aired in 2010 can be nominated, I’ve deliberately favoured series that have finished.

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Copyright © 2011 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Cross Game, Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai, Katanagatari, Kuragehime, Nodame Cantabile, Shiki, Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei, Yosuga no Sora

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It’s on again, and just as I have for the last two years, I’ll be covering this year’s AnimeSuki Choice Awards by sharing my thoughts on the categories, telling you who I’ll be voting for and, most importantly, trying to predict the winners. Last year, I managed to correctly pick 13 of the 18 categories (which is the same number I got the year before), and I’ll be trying to better that again here, except, again this year, I haven’t exactly been active enough on the site to know what people have been fawning over.

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Copyright © 2011 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 24 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Angel Beats!, AnimeSuki Choice Awards, Cross Game, Darker than Black - Kuro no Keiyakusha, Fullmetal Alchemist, High School of the Dead, K-ON!, Katanagatari, Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai, Shiki, Tamayura, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, Working!!, Yosuga no Sora

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This is cheating in more ways than one.

The year of 2010 was teeming with experimental approaches to jumpstart the medium, be it the attempts at original storylines, the omnibus format, or the use of unconventional execution. While such bursts of creativity have given us some memorable stories, most are remembered not for their ingenuity but for their spectacular failure to pull through. Perhaps the most egregious error of many a show was the inconsistency through its run. The lack of even simple tenets of consistent storytelling has severely crippled any gains these experiments may have achieved.

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Copyright © 2011 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Elineas | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Angel Beats!, Cross Game, Kemono no Souja Erin, Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai, Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto

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It’s been a good year for a few in anime, but a shocking year for so many others. As I hinted in my last article, negative perceptions of anime in 2010 are, I predict, going to be much more common than positive ones. Honestly, I’m struggling to think of a recent year that was as bleak as this one. The last decade had its strongest years between 2006 and 2008, and even prior to that, 2004 and 2005 had a lot of strong titles in a variety of genres, including Gungrave, Gankutsuou, Honey and Clover and Air. I have to think back to 2001 and 2002 to remember years where the offerings of decent new anime were as thin as they are now, and there’s a good chance my perspective of that time was skewed anyway, since that was when I was just starting to get into anime, so my focus was more on viewing a catalogue of the acclaimed titles of the late 1990s to build my “anime cred”, rather than catching fansubs as they were coming out.

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Cross Game, Kaichou wa Maid Sama, Kimi ni Todoke, Macross Frontier, Seikimatsu Occult Academy, Senko no Night Raid, Sora no Woto, Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto

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There’s still a season to go in the year (and I’m still to finish watching The Tatami Galaxy), but if Cross Game isn’t the best anime that’s aired this year, I’ll be incredibly, and pleasantly, surprised. Here’s an anime which lives by the “simple is best” policy. Nothing about it is flashy, grandiose or over-the-top in any way. It’s a story not atypical of the sports genre… a group of misfits with mild baseball ability coming together, starting from a position of disadvantage, working hard, and going on to achieve great things. What gives the story its gravitas are the events of the characters’ past, the events which open in the first episode: Tsukishima Wakaba’s death. (This post contains major spoilers, but Wakaba’s death is not one of them, since it happens in the first episode).

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Cross Game

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I've liked this anime's attempt to be authentic to the time period.

I’ve taken a slightly looser attitude towards picking up and dropping shows of recent times, so in the last few seasons I haven’t been so rigid about locking in my season line-ups within the first couple of weeks of the season starting. Last season I subbed out Pandora Hearts and Shangri-La from my line-up for Valkyria Chronicles. I can’t say I have massive regrets about dropping Pandora Hearts or Shangri-La, but in all honesty, Valkyria Chronicles has turned out to be a massive disappointment. I wasn’t expecting anything amazing, but for only one of the last ten episodes to be any good is a real underachievement. It wasn’t as if the show jumped the shark either, the show going downhill just kinda sneaked up on me, but in hindsight, all the signs were there, starting with the awful, spoiler-ridden OP sequence.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Cross Game, K-ON!, Taishou Yakyuu Musume, Valkyria Chronicles

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The title of best anime of the current season is basically a two-horse race, IMO. And while Eden of the East seems to be reasonably widely recognized, Cross Game has flown under the radar. In a lot of ways it’s a show that hearkens back to an older style of romance, and the thing that really impresses me is the way it seamlessly mixes a compelling romance/drama with an emphasis on the similarities and differences of its main characters with an absorbing shounen plotline. There’s probably nothing new about Cross Game itself, and Adachi fans will probably attest that he’s been writing excellent stories like these for years (I wouldn’t know, for some reason this is my first experience with an Adachi work), but its strength is in its simplicity (and execution). By keeping it simple, and all the characters unambiguous and easy to read, it emanates a down-to-earth quality, which is the complete opposite of the mystery-driven Eden of the East, which is all about intricacies and subtleties, to be interpreted, analyzed and speculated about. So, which one is better? Well, I’m not going to make that call until both shows are finished.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Cross Game

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This is a lot later than I’d usually make a “First Thoughts” of the season article. I usually try to post them about half-way through the second week, such that I’ve seen up to ep 2 of about half the titles I’m following, and ep 1 of the other half. But even the NHRV Editor’s Choice article came out a week after I originally intended. Let’s just say I’ve been busy (real life, among other things).

Every season the same group of cynics make the comment that this is a crappy season and there’s no good new anime, and it’s easy enough to dismiss their opinion because they say the same thing every season. So I don’t make the same comments lightly, but this really is a crap season. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of another season that has had such a dearth of interesting titles since Winter 2006. Now usually when people make such comments, my thoughts are that they just haven’t found the good stuff, since it’s usually a little more obscure and buried under the mountains of garbage, so if this is the case for me this season, I’d appreciate people to point me away from the crap and in the right direction. Nonetheless, based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think ghostlightning‘s Everythingfromthenewseasonisshiteritis disease is a mental delusion that strikes a few separate individuals, at least this time. This time, I think it’s actually reality, and that everything really is crap this season. Almost, anyway. There are a few titles here and there that have shown promise.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Cross Game, Eden of the East, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hanasekeru Seishounen, Hayate the Combat Butler, K-ON!, Natsu no Arashi, Pandora Hearts, Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~, Ristorante Paradiso, Shangri-La

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