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 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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Subversive, certainly. And I can sympathize with her.

(Minor spoilers to follow of Nodame Cantabile ~Finale~.)

She had it all: her performance of Chopin’s 1st Piano Concerto was greeted with fanfare and was broadcast across the globe, reaching and touching the hearts of many classical aficionados.  Fame! Prestige! Honors! They were all within her grasp! Yet, when it was over, Nodame, wasn’t elated; rather, that performance set off within her a deep funk, one that took a bit of traveling around to shake off. And even then, it wasn’t completely over by the time she returned to Paris.(...)
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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By zzeroparticle | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Arakawa Under the Bridge, Nodame Cantabile

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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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'Torrid' is the last word you'd use to describe these two. Even holding hands was an ordeal.

In all honesty, this is an intentionally misleading title, because none of the following anime romances can really be described as “torrid”. In fact, anime romance generally isn’t torrid at all. Romance in anime tends to be fairly subdued, and there’s an innate innocence about the emotions involved, especially compared with other mediums. Romantic J-movies tend to be obsessed with jun’ai (or “pure love”) and often come off as melodramatic or unbelievable. Western romance movies love to focus on the quirkiness and irony of love, and often seem to imply that love is an irrational response (although maybe there’s a corn chip of truth to this). And then there’s Western romance novels which sometimes don’t even bother to disguise the fact that they’re straight up smut. Their reputation as being targeted towards lonely housewives who are compensating for their own passionless relationship is well entrenched. Obviously I’m making vast sweeping generalizations here, which is necessary when trying to comment on how a genre differs across different mediums. But I want to make the argument that anime’s track record with romance is as good as any other mediums, which is something that I’m not comfortable saying about any other genre, with the arguably exception of the mystery genre (and the iyashikei genre, which is exclusive to anime and manga). This post, which features some relatively recent examples of anime couples that I really liked, contains major spoilers for the tagged titles.

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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: Clannad, La Vie en Rose, Nodame Cantabile, Spicy Wolf

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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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Hence, this series of “decade’s” posts by The Nihon Review Staff. If there’s one commonality that links us, it’s that this past decade saw our interest in the medium surge as we began viewing not only the classics of old, but following the shows currently airing in Japan. And despite the deluge of anime we’ve seen, there are those that have made such a deep impression upon us that we cannot forget them.

So in following the footsteps blazed by gaguri, and wishing to join those who have put their thoughts forward, I present you my list of twenty titles that made an impact upon me in this past decade. TV shows tend to leave a stronger image in my mind, so I opted to focus on those. So with that, here’s my list. Dramatic execution demands that I start from the bottom and build up towards the top to create suspense. I’ve always hated that, and so, I’ll start from the top and work my way down. It’s always seemed more natural that way.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By zzeroparticle | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Aria The Animation, Fullmetal Alchemist, Gankutsuou, Gunslinger Girl, Honey and Clover, Kino’s Journey, Monster, Mushishi, Nodame Cantabile, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

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This is about the time when a slowpoke.jpg is appropriate, but there are some advantages to writing about a series approximately four months after everyone else has already put it behind them. The disadvantages are that everything I have to say is pretty much out-of-date, and it’s very hard to say something new about a series that has essentially been discussed to death. The advantages are that I can be pretty open about spoilers, since almost everyone who had intended to watch this series pretty much has.

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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: Hatsukoi Limited, Honey and Clover, KimiKiss pure rouge, Nodame Cantabile, Toradora

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ITT overrated shit

There was a long time after I first starting watching anime (and fansubs) where I’d pretty much rewatch almost every title I saw, unless I totally disliked it the first time round. Then again, even some of the most generic fanservice anime had some rewatch value. This activity kinda fell off over the timescale of months after I started watching series as they aired, and these days its a rarity for me to bother watching something a second time. I think it has something to do with the fact that, almost inevitably, when I started watching anime as they aired, I was spending more time discussing the latest anime on forums and whatnot, which is probably time I would have spent rewatching anime in the old days. That, and going onto a faster internet connection probably killed off the need to resort to watching stuff I’d already seen to keep myself entertained. These days, I really don’t need to rewatch most things, since being active in the online discussion about anime usually fills in the holes I might have missed first time round (and anyway, I’m generally of the philosophy that, in most cases, because I take the effort to pay attention while watching anime, if I’ve missed something, it’s probably due to poor storytelling than anything I could be responsible for.)

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Bartender, Bokura ga Ita, Monster, Mushishi, Nodame Cantabile, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann

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