I’m a fan of anime with episodes shorter than 10 minutes long because I find them more convenient to watch than standard length anime episodes and because those short runtimes often encourage production groups to be more efficient with their storytelling. There is one particular short anime series with a sullen ending song that I finished watching a few days ago and regret not finishing sooner.
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I initially resisted this show, as I was watching “Sunday Without God” at the same time it originally came out and did not feel like diving into another dystopian, post-apocalyptic world show. Well, it IS a caliber of dystopian, post-apocalyptic world show, but it’s just so bright and lively, it’s hard to believe we’re all doomed. “Humanity Has Declined” (“Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita” or “Jintai”) starts off with how human civilization has regressed and humanity keeps decreasing in numbers. The story follows an unnamed girl (although she is referred to as “Ms. Sweets”) who acts as a mediator between humanity and the “fairies”, who are small elf-like creatures attracted by sweets and happy things, but also have the habit to cause trouble to her (and others) with their powers in their endless search for amusement. Continue reading
I am so very tired of superheroes. Everywhere you turn around, another superhero pops up, having epic fights with epic villains or the Old Guard is trotted out to battle yet another implacable foe, bent on world conquest or world destruction or world series. I had some resistance to “One-Punch Man” (“Wanpanman”), as I felt it was more of the same. Well, it IS more of the same, but it is done in such a cavalier, toss-off, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot kind of approach, you are drawn into it, like a cheese log at the company party. Continue reading
This is my first entry in a series of posts about reducing my anime backlog one title at a time. I wrote last month about shifting toward finishing anime I have not completed watching. I have a few hundred in that category, many which I own on disc, and I’m anxious to wrap up some of them more than the others. I’m starting this journey with a horror series from early 2014 that topped an Anime News Network poll for the worst TV anime to air that year. Continue reading
This one is a combination of magic and survival shows, kind of what might happen if “Chrome-Shelled Regios” and “Blade Dance” merged ideas, so we end up with “Sky Wizards Academy” (“Kūsen Madōshi Kōhosei no Kyōkan”, “The Instructor of the Aerial Combat Wizard Trainees”).
In the alternative world of the future, humanity was driven off the land by the threat of magical armored insects and now lives in aerial floating cities. Its defenses lie in wizards who fight the insects with magic in mid-air. They are able to float and soar about and use a variety of weapons to dispatch these ‘Devil Beetles’. Continue reading
I empathize with Yurie. (image from Kamichu!)
May marked the 10 year anniversary of me starting to blog about anime and related things. I was a college sophomore then but I am now 30 and don’t have the same level of energy and enthusiasm. I have barely watched anime over the past four months. The only ones I’ve seen since mid-May have been as part of a weekend Skype group and they’ve all been older series and movies including Princess Tutu, the Space Adventure Cobra movie, Kamichu!, and currently His and Her Circumstances (Kare Kano).
Each quarterly season of new anime series contains many shows I have a medium level interest in watching but few have driven me to keep pace with weekly episodes to the ends of their respective runs. Readers who have followed me for a while might have noticed this trend. I have finished watching only 6 of the 13 anime series I discussed in a summer 2015 impressions post and made little to no progress on the many series I listed in an end-of-2014 post. Continue reading
