It's a new year and that means it's a new anime season. I know I am late in posing this. After all the new season is almost half way done. What is even worse is that as I was looking up the shows for this season I realized that I had started some series but had forgotten about them already.

You see I tend to use these season preview posts as a way for me to remember everythgin that I am going to watch so in restrospect I should never forget to do these posts so late. Now my backlog of anime is even larger. -.-

Back before we had services like Crunchyroll and Netflix it used to be that the only way one could get access to Japanese Anime was by either going to the video store or the library and checking something out. Back in 1999 getting information on the newest anime series from Japan was even harder. You could only really get information by either learning Japanese and reading content over there online or via print material.

When Crest of the Stars was first animated in 1999 I didn't know anything about it. It wasn't until I saw a 2000/2001 (ish) article in Newtype USA that was discussing it's impending DVD release here in the states that I first became aware of it. Ever since then Crest/Banner of the Stars has ranked continuously in my all time favorite anime list. Here are a few of my reasons why I adore this franchise.

You know I would be the first person to say that subs are better than dubs then it comes to Anime’s. Call it the anime purist in me, call it a record of bad dubs over the years. I’ve just never been one to watch dubs over the years. But sometimes I am willing to make an exception if the dub is done so well that I prefer a dub over a sub. Mai-Otome is one such anime.

Airing in 2005 under the direction of Masakazu Obara (My-HiME and Guilty Crown) Mai-Otome was a spinoff of the 2004 My-HiME based on an alternate world set sometime in the future. Mai-Otome is almost like a retelling of the 2004 My-HiME. All of the My-HiME characters are there but the world they are in is completely different.

I will probably be posting a lot of new stuff in the next few days. These posts seem to always come in waves. It is what it is I guess.

Anyways, 2014 Fall anime time. I've decided to try and view a few more anime series this season. This is mostly because last season I watched so few shows that I actually got bored waiting on them to come out. Of course this may also be why I've been playing so many games as of late, but I'll post about hat later on.

So on with the list of what I'll be watching this season!

There is so much anime that comes out these days that sometimes I miss stuff that I would have watched when it came out if only I wasn't distracted by the multitudes of other anime's that are out there. Guilty Crown is one of those anime's. Aired during the Winter 2011/Spring 2012 Anime season's Guilty Crown is the story of Shu Oma and Inori Yuzuriha and their fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo following an event called the "Lost Christmas".

What follows is a story that twists and turns over the course of the season in a way that I haven't seen in quite some time. Too often anime's often try to constrain certain characters within specific archetypes. While character stories often get fleshed out and expanded on it's rare to see characters change as dramatically as they do in Guilty Crown.

In the end it is a story about Redemption and second chances. Plus it is one heck of a ride.

I know I should do this on a more regular basis but something always happens to get in my way. Either a hard drive crashes, I forget to backup files off a web-host that closes down, or in my most recent incident accidentally format a drive when moving it into a NAS enclosure. >.<

Hopefully the new hardware I bought for my webserver combined with my backup drive will prevent this from happening again. With that said it's Summer Anime time. \o/ - Yay!

There's so much that I could say that raves about K-ON!! I could talk about the fun loving characters including the absent minded Yui and the timid Mio. I could talk about the stories about the innocence of youth and the aspirations for the future. I could even talk about the music, how it literally takes over the show, not simply due to it's quantity but it's quality as well.

I could go on for hours, but to sum it up, K-ON!! is Awesome.

Plot

Stan Lee is making an anime.

Nothing more needs to be said other than Stan Lee is making an anime.

Well no, a lot more could be said, but that's the most important part. I mean how often do you get one of the greatest Comic writers of all time to sit down with Japanese anime producers to make an American stylized anime about a boy who repaired a toy robot and becomes a hero to save the earth from a ruthless alien invasion? Not often enough.....

Anime’s, I’ve concluded, fall into a few distinct categories when it comes to their balance between plot and character.

Strong Plot and Strong Character – Bleach , Ookami Kakushi
Strong Plot and Weak Characters – Mai Otome
Strong Characters and Weak Plot – Arakawa under the Bridge, K-ON!

I can't say that I'm a huge fan of romance anime's. They just haven't been something that I've been interested in before. I think the first one I saw was CLAAND, which was OK for the first few episodes but after that it just went downhill and I couldn't watch anymore after that. I have to say though, that Kaichou wa Maid-sama has restored my faith in the genre.