I really enjoyed this series. It reminds me of Sakurasou (http://trakt.tv/show/the-pet-girl-of-sakurasou) but I enjoyed this one more. Visually it reminds me of a Makoto Shinkai film (http://trakt.tv/movie/5-centimeters-per-second-2007) and that's a good thing!
In terms of the humour and the characters, I really enjoyed both. Kawai is adorable and Mayumi/Sayaka make for some very funny and likeable support characters.
It's a shame this was only 12 episodes long. The final episode isn't terrible but it could easily have continued for another cour. Hopefully we'll get a second season at some point!
Turned out to be an awesome series, to nobody's surprise. Even if you have no real interest in Table Tennis (like me), this series is still worth watching. As mentioned in my other shout, it has some great staff behind it and it shows.
The characters are interesting and watching them grow throughout the series in a believable way is very enjoyable. Although the series often resorts to a kind of comic-panel-not-quite-still-frame style for some of it's action pieces, the fully animated parts are very fluid and exciting to watch. Overall just a damn good show. And don't be a snob about the art style, for the love of god. Some people might not like it (I didn't mind it at all), but don't let that put you off watching it - the story and characters more than make up for it.
I'm hovering between giving this one an 8 or a 9. I've rated it 8 for now but it's something I might revisit at some point.
A really enjoyable "cute girls doing cute things" slice of life series. I dunno what it is about this one that rates it so highly for me. They just get it all right. The girls are all very likeable, especially Ren-chon, she's just adorable. The series does a very good job at just mellowing you out. Some beautiful scenic shots and a relaxing pace to the whole thing. And the comedy moments are funny and charming.
Definitely recommended for fans of the genre. And a second season has been confirmed! Oh yes.
http://i.imgur.com/GAUP3pr.jpg
This sums up the chill factor pretty well. The first episode opens with this beautiful piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYEaitHu1T4
Mmmh. I didn't hate this one, and I quite liked the softer art style, but overall I was a little underwhelmed by it. It was cute and charming at times but the melodramatic parts were just annoying and Hase really needed to man up, especially towards the end.
Not a terrible series, but pretty forgettable. Which is amusing considering the subject matter :P
Yay, third season confirmed!
Season 2 got a bit crazy towards the end, but I guess most people don't watch it for the plot anyway :P
Wonder what crazy crap they'll pull in S3!
I found this rather enjoyable, despite having to suspend my disbelief quite a few times (I mean, even for a superhero movie)...
Some pretty awesome action sequences and it was great to see so many of the cast from the "old" and "young" in the same movie.
I also really like how the ending basically ret-conned the god-awful third film, "The Last Stand".
Woah, is this confirmed as coming this Summer (@sp1ti? :P)? All I can find is early indications that it's coming "soon".
I'm eagerly anticipating this series. The Visual Novel it is based on was really, really good. Of course, the anime adaption could turn out to be terrible, but I'll be watching it anyway :P
The best way I can describe the series for me personally is "mixed bag", and that's exactly what Space Dandy is. Every episode is standalone and very different in style and tone, which can be a good thing as you never know what to expect next, but also a bad thing if they very quite a lot in quality.
For me, I really didn't like some of the earlier episodes, and that very nearly put me off the entire series as a result. Fortunately, most of the later episodes are pretty decent, and a couple are even what I'd call excellent (still a couple of stinkers, mind).
Overall, the series (so far, I'm aware there is a second season coming) gets a hard earned 7 from me. I can't say I'd recommend it entirely as I really didn't like or outright hated some episodes, but there are some pretty good ones in there that are still worth checking out (and hell, if you wanted, you could just cherry pick the good ones and ignore the rest, as each episode is fairly standalone anyway). The animation quality is pretty good and there are some pretty cool looking action scenes (bravo, Bones) and the soundtrack is pretty cool too and for the episodes that worked for me, they were very well done.
One last thing - For me the weakest part of the series (and probably why some episode don't just "not work", but outright fall flat on their faces for me) is the main characters. Dandy especially. I don't find him to be an interesting character, nor does there appear to be much dimension to him. All the interesting things that make the series worth a watch just kind of happen around him. QT and Meow at least get some character development, so far Dandy just kind of walks into things and they happen through no skill or involvement of his own.
I expect my opinion will be much the same by the end of season 2, but we'll see!
It's described as a side story but it really felt like 3 side stories, 2 of them may as well have been completely unrelated. It was nice to see another Kara no Kyoukai movie but it felt a bit underwhelming and disappointing overall.
I did enjoy this series and visually it is probably the most gorgeous work by KyoAni to date (and that's saying something!), but sadly there were a few things preventing me from rating it higher.
I'm not a big mystery fan, perhaps if I was then I would have appreciated some of the mysteries they solved a little more. That's not to say most of them weren't somewhat interesting, but I wouldn't say I was massively engaged in them and I certainly wouldn't want to watch most of them again. I did like the 4 main characters which is why I wish I could have seen them develop a bit more alongside all the mystery solving and shenanigans. This is probably why Gosick (http://trakt.tv/show/gosick) rated higher with me personally, because whilst it also had mysteries to be solved, enough time was also spent developing the characters and their relationships.
Overall I found the series to be a visual treat and a worthwhile watch, but lacking in areas important to me and leaving me with a slight sense of unfulfilment at the end. It's not a series I can see myself ever watching a second time.
Having finally finished my slow burn of this series all I can do is agree with other comments here. This series offers a sense of tranquillity when watching that I have rarely seen anywhere else. You just get absorbed into sometimes dreamlike atmosphere of it all. Each episode is somewhat self-contained and you really never know how it will end. Some end on a happy note, some on a sorrowful one, some are more ambiguous or bitersweet.
The message throughout is very much that Mushi are not malevolent or evil, they are just like forces of nature, and can be harmful or helpful to humans. Each story is more about how people deal with these things, with Ginko travelling around and helping where he can.
With a second season just around the corner all I can really do is repeat other people's recommendations - if you haven't already, watch this series.
This series was certainly an interesting watch. From the synopsis alone you may be forgiven for assuming this could turn into another raunchy high school love comedy, but nothing could be further from the truth. This series is dark and twisted, and a brilliant watch because of it. The main character is a thoroughly unlikeable, cowardly (and pretentious) wimp, which may sound like a turn-off for watching the series, but stick with it, because the series basically revolves around him being tormented by the messed up girl, Nakamura.
What I really liked was that this series took scenarios that, in other series, would be played for comedy, only here they're not funny and cause a great deal of angst and torment for all involved.
Another thing that sets this series aside from most other anime is the style of animation which uses rotoscoping. This style sadly was enough to make a lot of snobs turn their noses up at the series without ever giving it a chance. Personally I have no problem with the animation style and in fact wish more series would do this. (Trapeze is the only other example I can think of off the top of my head http://trakt.tv/show/trapeze)
It's a shame that the series hasn't done too well in sales because that means we probably won't get a second season. This really is unfortunate, because whilst stuff definitely does happen in this series, by the end you are definitely left with the impression that things are only going to get more twisted and messed up and that we've only started down the path of depravity (and in fact, the last episode makes this very clear). This series is adapted from a Manga though, so if you do really like what you see you can read that to find out what happens next.
Much as I wish I could rate the series higher, there are a few things stopping me from giving it a better score. The animation quality is sadly somewhat lacking. There are lots of crowd shots where nobody is moving at all, which is all the more frustrating because if anything, it should be easier to animate crowds in this style. Some scenes were drawn out a big too long to the point where you just want something to happen already (a good example would be the walk home after the infamous "classroom" scene. Yes building atmosphere is fine and everything but 5+ minutes of just walking? Come on...). And even though there's a lot of schadenfreude to be had from watching Kasuga suffer at the hands of Nakamura, he is still pretty insufferable and cringeworthy to watch at times.
In spite of all it's flaws however, this is still a very interesting and different show that I would definitely recommend. Just be aware that if you want to know what happens next, you'll probably have to read the manga.
Based on the title/subject matter, I wasn't particularly interested, until I saw that this will be by the guy who brought us Tekkonkinkreet (http://trakt.tv/movie/tekkonkinkreet-2007) and will be directed by the guy who, amongst other things, brought us The Tatami Galaxy (http://trakt.tv/show/the-tatami-galaxy).
This will also air in the noitaminA time slot, which admittedly isn't always a measure of quality, but normally does promise at least something a bit different!
I sense potential here!
And here is a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmZVuMDlw-w
As @sp1ti says, this is another "cute girls doing cute things" show, but this one is really cute so unless you absolutely despise this "genre" as a whole, you'll probably enjoy it. Not an essential watch by any means, but great for putting a smile on your face after a long stressful day.
This is a series I really wanted to like more than I ended up doing. I like KyoAni, and their works tend to have very high production values and (usually) pretty solid writing. I wouldn't say the writing was bad here, but it always felt to me like the story was aspiring to be more epic than it actually ended up being. The fight scenes were pretty good, but part of me kept thinking back to the imaginary ones in Chu2Koi, a series which kind of took the piss out of that sort of thing, and here we are now presenting it in an unironic and serious way. Perhaps it's not fair to compare the two series like this just because they're by the same studio, but that's how I felt. And it probably didn't help that they attempted to cram a lot of "comedy" in too, like Chu2Koi, but here I felt the comedy fell flat more often than not and just made the differences between the goofing off and the serious parts all the more jarring.
Overall certainly not a terrible series, but sadly it left me feeling underwhelmed.
Don't let the cute visuals fool you, behind this lies a comedy that can be pretty dark and effed up at times, but brilliantly so (here is a pretty good example from episode 1 which is by no means the only effed up thing in that episode ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42u4ytkzAWw). The story is anything but standard as well, this is a strange world where we are told that humans are dying out and the fairies are the new dominant species on the planet. Our nameless heroine serves as the mediator between humanity and the fairies, which as you might expect, gets her into many bizarre situations.
One of the things I really like about the series is that behind the cute visuals is a setting that is actually pretty dark. Humanity is dying out, and the fairies may look cute, but they are also rather creepy and respond rather strangely to human interaction. It's hard to know what they actually think of humans, and I at least got the impression that when humanity eventually does die out, they probably won't care or even notice.
I love our heroine in this story. Sure, she's cute like almost every girl in every anime, but she also possesses a dry/deadpan sense of humour which you see regularly when she is confronted with yet another bizarre situation. I found her very charming and it made it all the more enjoyable following her through this bizarre post-apocalyptic (kind of) world.
If you want something a bit quirky and different from your standard harem-anime-in-a-school fare, I'd definitely recommend this one. The series was written by Romeo Tanaka who has previously written some great Visual Novels (my favourite being Cross Channel). If you're familiar with his works then you might go into this knowing what to expect. Hopefully we will get to see more mainstream anime series by him in the future!
With this series, you'll know very quickly whether it's for you or not. It's a series primarily driven by one type of comedy, and that's lots and lots of sex jokes. Surprisingly, the actual content of the series isn't that explicit, just the dialogue. The jokes can be hit and miss but they're delivered at high speed so it doesn't really matter if a few fall flat.
The quality of animation is pretty high overall and makes for a pleasant watch.
The protagonist isn't the most charismatic lead in the world but he's also not a complete pushover and acts as the all-important straight man to the constant onslaught of the girls' dirty jokes.
Overall an enjoyable watch as long as you enjoy this kind of humour.
A show that the term "borderline hentai" was invented for :P
Yeah, I love this series. I've always been a fan of Key anyway and I remember being so stoked when I heard about this new project. For what it's worth this ranks in my top 3 Key works (along with Clannad and Rewrite, the latter of which sadly doesn't have an anime adaption(yet...?))
If you've seen other Key works like Clannad, Kanon or Air, you probably already know that they tend to enjoy mixing comedy with tragedy, often whiplashing you between the two very quickly. Whilst these elements are certainly present in Angel Beats, and whilst the pasts of some of these characters are still pretty horrible and tragic, I don't think the series generally wallows in it as much as other Key works perhaps did.
The series has a nice mix of action, comedy, music and drama and it works really well. It also has TONNES of characters (A trait it shares with Little Busters I guess) which sadly, due to the series only being 13 episodes long, don't all have time to be developed to their full. Still, they are all a fun and silly bunch generally, and watching their antics is very enjoyable indeed.
Finally some good news for anyone who wanted more. Key have finally announced that an Angel Beats Visual Novel will be released in 2014. By the looks of it, it will be released in separate chapters (or beats), but hopefully this will give people a chance to learn more about the characters that didn't get much screen time in the anime (well, assuming it ever gets translated :D)
http://key.visualarts.gr.jp/angelbeats/index.html
For me, Monogatari Second Season (aka Season 3) has done a great job of rescuing the series and removing the bad taste left by Nisemonogatari (Not everyone hates it, but most would admit it is the weakest material by far when compared to the rest).
I liked how the arcs shown were not done in chronological order and that we had different narrators for most of the arcs. Seeing events unfold from other characters' perspectives kept things interesting. Most of the arcs were very good, I wasn't as big a fan for Nadeko's arc but that has more to do with not really liking the character than what happened.
This second season has restored my faith in the series and I am really looking forward to SHAFT animating the remaining material now.
I am SO buying the Blu-ray that has finally been released in this country!
Possibly not quite on the level of SAC, but I'm still enjoying this version of GitS. The soundtrack by Cornelius is a massive plus too!
Another "cute girls doing cute things" series. Quite an enjoyable watch and some moments are genuinely quite unexpected and funny. The girls are generally quite likeable and Nobue (the older sister of one of them and unofficial babysitter most of the time) is pretty cool as well.
Not a mindblowing series, but a relaxing and enjoyable watch with some quite funny moments.
From start to finish - an absolute joy to watch. In what I would consider a not particularly impressive anime season, this series really shines out as an example of what you can really do with a bit of creativity. The series (if you don't include the OVA and the Net Episodes from Season 1, which you don't really need to see) is only 10 episodes long but it still manages to tell a fantastic and touching story.
What really amazes me is how good this is compared to what I was expecting. Having watched the OVAs and web episodes that "aired" prior to the TV series itself, I found myself thinking "Looks cool, but doesn't really make any sense or go anywhere". The TV series was able to flesh out the previous content and weave it into a very compelling story. What's even more amazing is that from what I understand, this started out as just a small little collaberation between Toei Animation and a friggin' toy maker (Banpresto)!
I get the feeling that not everyone will be quite as smitten with the series as I was, but it just worked for me. I liked the characters, the fantasy setting, the music, everything. This absolutely shines out as my anime of the season, and possibly the whole year.
Oh, and Koto is love.
I'm enjoying this series but I wonder what kind of "ending" it will have. From what I can see this series is covering the events of the "Introductory Chapter". There is then a "Closing Chapter" set 3 years later that seems a lot longer and introduces a bunch more characters. I wonder if the plan is to have another season to cover this at some point.
Quite enjoyable. The movie and it's themes reminded me of Chu2koi somewhat (http://trakt.tv/show/love-chunibyo-and-other-delusions), but this one takes the more realistic route with bullying etc. I wasn't too sure what to think at the start and it did take a while to get going, but it was enjoyable and I was definitely behind Satou as he was standing up to the bullies and trying to help the girl out. There are a few silly parts and the animation quality isn't amazing - It's not far above what you'd see in an average anime TV series so there's a lot of unmoving backgrounds etc. Even so, definitely a worthwhile watch.
This is one of the first anime series I ever watched and holds a special place in my heart. Objectively speaking this probably isn't the best series or adaption of source material (The Manga is definitely better and offers a more definitive ending), but I still think it's quite enjoyable. A lot of people don't like Naru but I do. She was my first tunsdere, I think :P
This is a bad series for bad people. Anyone who watches it should be ashamed :D
Great list so far. I love all of Satoshi Kon's films and it is such a shame that he died before being able to make more. Millennium Actress was amazing.
Of your list so far, the only one I haven't seen is Grave of the Fireflies, which I know I absolutely should. I just need to mentally prepare myself for it, I think.
Those who liked the tone and feel of Fate/Zero should try Kara no Kyoukai/The Garden of Sinners. Also animated by studio ufotable and "kinda" set in the same verse as Fate, it's a series of movies about mages, vampires and stuff. It was considered the precursor to Tsukihime (again set in the same verse as Fate) which also has an anime adaption (or not, depending on who you ask :P)
