It’s December, the time when the anime blogosphere reflects on the year that’s been, so we can expect a swathe of “the year in review” articles coming soon. Our own “Year in Review” article will be published in the first few days of January (here’s last year’s for those unfamiliar to our yearly tradition), and it’ll be the sixth one we’ve done since the site started back in 2005. We’re in the initial stages of planning, making up our minds which anime we want to discuss, which we believe are representative of the year that’s been and which we think, individually, were the best of 2010. In between the usual banter and debate that goes on behind closed doors (:P) I’ve noticed a few trends that have already appeared in the titles likely to make our list. (Above image from oreno.imouto.org, yes, I was also surprised they had anything from The Tatami Galaxy.)

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Amagami SS, Angel Beats!, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Bakemonogatari, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Hidamari Sketch, Kobato, Kuragehime, Nodame Cantabile, Ookami Kakushi, Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai, Seikimatsu Occult Academy, Shiki, Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, Strike Witches, Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei

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I just started playing Resonance of Fate. Great game so far.

Fans and critics of anime across English-speaking communities over the internet have all been operating under a terrible misunderstanding. It is a misunderstanding that, I believe, will require significant effort to correct on the part of hundreds of people, and will take much time for us to overcome – particularly for the blogging and fansubbing communities. What could such a glorious misunderstanding be?

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Kylaran | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Anime, Blogging, Durarara!!, Hidamari Sketch, Nodame Cantabile, Seasons, Sora no Woto

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It's the busy review writing period, which is my half-assed excuse for not having posted anything on this blog for ages.

While everyone’s writing about the season that’s just started, I figured it’s a good time to go against the grain and look back at the season that just ended. Reviewing seasons is a completely different kettle of fish to reviewing a single series… there are multiple things to consider such as the number of “good” series (momentarily ignoring that there’s never a complete consensus about whether a given series is good or not), the variety on offer and whether the current trends are for the better or the worse. I don’t think there’s too much disagreement that Summer 2009 was last year’s best season (and arguably the best in anime for a long time), but in the wash-up, if our reviews are anything to go by, it was a season that had a lot of “good” titles, but only one “great” anime. (This post was originally going to be significantly longer, but I’ve split it into two parts. Arguably it weakens my argument, but it’s just much more manageable this way, and it’s not so blatantly tl;dr.)

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Aria The Animation, Bakemonogatari, Hidamari Sketch, Nodame Cantabile, Ouran High School Host Club, Spicy Wolf

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I had the full intention of signing up for Crunchyroll membership this season, but baulked when I realized they only had two shows I was interested in. However, those two shows are arguably the best of the season so far, and with the US dollar where it is, there’s probably no better time for me to sign up than now. The last season was horrendous, so I guess the question is, will this season be better. With my momentary policy (borne out of practicality) of trying my damndest to avoid crap, I’m not really sure I’m qualified to answer that question, but I have been mildly pleased by what I have picked up. We don’t have any out-and-out gems this season, but this isn’t usually the time of year for outstanding anime. What we do have, at least on my “following” list, is a number of quaint, enjoyable anime that have shown glimpses that are worth getting excited about.

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Copyright © 2010 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: Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Durarara!!, Hidamari Sketch, Nodame Cantabile, Ookami Kakushi, Sora no Woto

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In anime, moe is so rammed down our throats sometimes that it is easy to grow tired of it. It’s become a successful component in anime, to the point now that (to pull a number out of my ass) ~90% of anime use the moe art-style for character designs, but like all successful things, it has been abused and overused to the point where it’s use has become stale and unimaginative in a lot of instances, and even blatantly manufactured and manipulative in some of the worst cases (cf. the visual novel adaptations with an array of archetypes that you can check off on a list). Moe itself, though, is difficult to define (I don’t particularly subscribe to the Akamatsu definition) and we’ve basically been forced to go to an upper-upper-upper level to define it, calling it something akin to an art-style, which is sufficiently broad to encompass all things moe but tells you nothing about what makes it special or unique as a phenomenon. The challenge of defining moe in a meaningful way comes from the fact that it’s different things to different people, and I think most people have given up trying to come up with a definition that’s specific enough to describe it comprehensively, but general enough to encompass everything to do with the phenomonen. So, defining moe is a challenge (arguably) no one has completely succeeded at, now I’m going to attempt to define a subset of moe, something I refer to as “natural moe”.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Aria The Animation, Hidamari Sketch, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Natsume Yuujinchou, Sketchbook ~full color’S~

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