Hello Isaac, loving these write-ups a lot and yay at a Movies countdown *-*

 

Deadpool was a huge favourite of mine too and will be up high in my Movies EOY I think. It was the perfect blend of kickass action scenes (I could watch Deadpool flipping around for hours, although I do wish they up the budget a tad for a sequel so we get some more of the action) and hilarious humour (I laughed out loud so hard in the scene where he kept breaking his limbs when trying to beat up Colossus) :lol:

 

Have a lovely Christmas Iz !

Hi Iz!

 

The only film of those I've seen is The Girl On The Train actually. Good film for what is was but yeah wouldn't be too high on my list either.

The Girl On The Train being in your film list is nice to see (my BJSC 90 entry was from the soundtrack to that film, I take it you didn't enjoy Surfboard Fire as much as you enjoyed the film :P)

 

Also nice to see Ghibli here too - I've been really getting into their works, I've been a fan of My Neighbor Totoro for few years now but this year I got round to reading the book of Howls Moving Castle and watching Castle In The Sky (which I believe is their first film? not sure but it is rather dated now), I shall have to give Mononoke a watch!

Hello Isaac, loving these write-ups a lot and yay at a Movies countdown *-*

 

Deadpool was a huge favourite of mine too and will be up high in my Movies EOY I think. It was the perfect blend of kickass action scenes (I could watch Deadpool flipping around for hours, although I do wish they up the budget a tad for a sequel so we get some more of the action) and hilarious humour (I laughed out loud so hard in the scene where he kept breaking his limbs when trying to beat up Colossus) :lol:

 

Have a lovely Christmas Iz !

 

Thanks Josh!

 

I will definitely be looking forward to Deadpool 2, one of the few times I can actually say that about a sequel. Should actually see it again, I haven't seen it since the cinema.

 

Hi Iz!

 

The only film of those I've seen is The Girl On The Train actually. Good film for what is was but yeah wouldn't be too high on my list either.

 

Thanks Dobbo!

 

The Girl On The Train being in your film list is nice to see (my BJSC 90 entry was from the soundtrack to that film, I take it you didn't enjoy Surfboard Fire as much as you enjoyed the film :P)

 

Also nice to see Ghibli here too - I've been really getting into their works, I've been a fan of My Neighbor Totoro for few years now but this year I got round to reading the book of Howls Moving Castle and watching Castle In The Sky (which I believe is their first film? not sure but it is rather dated now), I shall have to give Mononoke a watch!

 

Actually I think I enjoyed Surfboard Fire more than the film, I nearly pointed it!

 

Got My Neighbour Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle for Christmas (between myself and Jacob) so I think I'm finally filling in the most essential Ghibli gaps. They are really essential so that's great to hear you're getting into them, Mononoke is the best of the three I've seen and I'd probably (unhelpfully) rank them all 10/10 movies.

 

Yay comments.

 

~

 

PART 3: TV SHOWS

 

Pretty much same rules as films, not going to all be from this year, watched rather few due to part 5, but what I have watched have been pretty good. I'm going to mark what seasons I've watched as about half of these have seasons I've yet to watch. The thing is with TV shows, I tend to binge what's out there when I first start but at some point, for all but the best/most hyped, I don't keep watching when it comes to be that time again. I (probably famously) still haven't watched the last season of Parks and Rec despite loving it a few years ago and I've still not made it past Lost season 4. But let's not focus on that. Or the failures to finish/catch up to some of these, but let's get to what I've actually watched. Well, half of it. Also I don't think I'm going to rank these. That may defeat the purpose of an End Of Year but I really just want to talk about them and they were all good series. The four which had less on an effect on my year will be in this first post, count them as numbers 6 to 9 if you want.

 

Planet Earth II

 

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I still have seen about 2 episodes worth out of watching the start of three of these. So I haven't seen it all. I wanted to talk about it first (and explain why I put it in when I don't put in reality shows like The Apprentice, I don't know, that sort of thing just doesn't feel right). As to why, I just felt like I should put more documentary shows in and not just stories, and of course Planet Earth II was the big one this year. It was the only 2016 British production I really got into this year, and the hype really shows why. It's amazing, the amount of people talking about a documentary series where you learn and accumulate knowledge in real life. I've gone through Islands, which has had the beautiful racer snake and iguana scene which really captivated my attention. Getting into Europa Universalis which includes all these small islands in the game really helps because I know where exactly all of these places are and can picture them in my head. I've caught most of the Grasslands episode with family with similarly stunning vistas and I've started watching Mountains. I can only do small bits at a time though, bits of knowledge that I must then absorb. It's such a pleasure listening to Sir David describe the animals and they're all so cute/impressive/interesting animals, I'm going to continue making my way through this and especially need to catch Cities, that's apparently the highlight.

 

Being Human (series 1)

 

 

Yes. Old stuff. I had picked up a different recommendation from Jay a month or two before picking up this (to be in the next post) so it's only fair to do the same for one of Joseph's recommendations. Actually Joseph just said I should check it out and I decided I was actually going to follow up on that rather than just generally agreeing. I had no idea what I was really getting into with Being Human, I just knew it was something rather supernatural and also I was a little apprehensive because it was British comedy. Now despite me loving Misfits and The Inbetweeners in the past I had convinced myself after a few years from really being away from British TV shows as a whole that British comedy would be reliant on cringe comedy and a bit too homey for my entertainment. Also I've spent the last few years wanting to completely disown about half of my home culture. But that's by the by. Point is, I really enjoyed Being Human and it's helped me get over a bit of the anti-British TV sentiment I was semi-harbouring, while there were cringey moments they weren't enough to put me off and the darker plot wrapping up around the trio, who play off each other really well for the positive, character interaction side of things. It was actually, to be blunt, most everything I was dreading, yet it turned out that didn't matter at all and I found myself really enjoying the first series. Still haven't moved onto the second. As I said above, I really struggle with moving between seasons of series sometimes. I will do it at some point in the future. Maybe.

Also, not a copout, I'm still going to write a full length EOY commentary for all things I've done major blog posts on but like with Rogue One, I'm going to link reviews that I did on my blog for general interest if people would like to read any more of my thoughts other than what I've put here. So here's my extended one for Being Human.

 

Mr Robot (season 1)

 

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Thank you, Amazon Prime. Ahem. I had heard the name of Mr Robot bandied about as the next great TV series and I did want to check it out as modern whizzy technology shows can easily sweep me up in a huge flash of pretty lights and incredible feats. I do have weaknesses. And that first episode, the depictions of Elliot hacking criminals was masterful in its execution and it was just a bit of a shame that there wasn't more of that overall. Because more of that can keep me captivated pretty easily. Thinking about it now, it had a lot of that action-adventure and run-ins with the law that made Breaking Bad so exciting and I did rather enjoy most of the middle of the season with Elliot's adventures with the misfit hacker crew up against BIG BUSINESS taking on the world. The paradigm is obviously supposed to be a take that against the 'man', I suspect there's going to be some annoying flipping around with opinions to make you question where the show is going. There's two reasons I haven't watched season two, firstly, I didn't like the way the

twist that Mr Robot doesn't exist and is Elliot imagining that his dead father is helping him, okay, it's clever but as of now it just seems like it was done to be clever

was executed. And I found the last episode a bit boring and lacking in a reason to make me want to find out what happens next. I do imagine that if I were to pick up Season 2 or rewatch those episodes now I might understand more but right now, I don't feel like doing that. The first 8 episodes were an amazing ride though (that I watched over a weekend that I probably should have been doing more work on).

 

The 100 (seasons 1 - 2, plus the start of 3)

 

http://www.dizi720p.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/the100cover.jpg

 

Yup, still haven't got to

the death of Lexa

although I know about it because how could you miss it if you've been hanging about on this board. I loved season 1 of the 100, even though it's apparently 'CW fodder' of attractive people in the apocalypse, there was a lot of mystery hanging around what was out there, the adult actors up on the Ark gave off some excellent drama while bast*rds like Murphy ensured that life was not peaceful on the ground and there were a lot of deaths. At least it felt like a lot of people could die. Season 2 was pretty good too, the consistent narrative of the Mountain Men, the rather great performances of President Dante and again, Marcus Kane kept me interested. And when she showed, Lexa. See, it's a very characters based show, there are some characters who you just kind of like and want to live, like Jasper and Monty, there are some who are rather boring and you just really really really want them to die, like Clarke (jk, she's okay but not the most interesting of leads), Finn, particularly about halfway through season 2 (I remember, unusually for me, harbouring such an intense hatred towards him during that arc

that I pretty much outright cheered when he got executed

. There are some things you just never have your characters do), then there are characters like those I've already mentioned, the older and more venerable actors who have honed their craft brilliantly to take on something like this, and then there are the characters that change. Bellamy, Murphy, Finn but the other way, Thelonious, and they are some of the most interesting because you don't know where their mood is going. Season 3 I felt just opened up the world too much and while I started it okay, I just kind of gave up at one point and never went back. I may go back to finish it at some point but all the City Of Light and this new Ice Nation thing, I'm not that interested, yet.

 

Which is a shame because I really like these worlds but as ever with the apocalypse, it has to happen in the centre of America. Which brings me to the plot. It's okay. It's serviceable. There are bits I really like in it, the languages, the different factions, the original conceit of sending 100 people to the ground was really great and I'd have loved it if there was more of a survival focus but now all of the living 100 have been returned to their families, pretty much, the focus of the show has drifted a bit. And there are bits I don't like, the apocalypse mentalities,the Clarke is the centre idea, the City of Light (only Murphy's snarking kept me enjoying those scenes).

Overall, a show I haven't finished, but a show that I really enjoyed the first two seasons of where I really felt that people could die at any time and while it has problems was able to overcome them - but I stopped and haven't continued it.

Being Human :heart: Glad you loved first Season now move onto second :P

 

 

Oh my, this looks so similar to my own TV/films list I'm sitting on *.* lemme go through them.

 

Great list for movies (well, the book for Girl on the Train is great, seemingly working a lot better than the film), DEFINITELY see Howl and Totoro next, I'm actually surprised you hadn't already seen them as they are so your thing! You've beaten me with Mononoke though, I'm yet to watch that but have obvs heard good things, I agree that don't think there's been a Studio Ghibli movie I'd rate lower than a 10. I saw one of their recent ones, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, it's utterly heartbreaking but utterly beautiful visually. Have a lot of love for Deadpool too, self aware superhero movies are the best kind (I suppose Batman v Superman missed the memo with that one :/)

 

You know my thoughts about Planet Earth II :kink: :heart: They're all virtually flawless episodes, but Cities is a highlight as it shows how much can go on the cities that we don't know about and the rich potential for life in them, would definitely recommend that one the most.

 

Mr Robot was an amazing first series, one of the best debut season I've seen actually, brilliant genre-hopping tone and so relevant to today as well. I'm actually surprised

you thought the twist was disappointing :o I thought it was amazingly done, it showed us that not only he's in deeper than he thought but he's a completely unreliable narrator so everything we see afterwards may or may not be happening and so it leaves you to speculate what IS real in this world (season 2 is kinda similar in this respect)

, Season 2 is very good by any standard, however it was a step down on the first and it did feel a bit more overstuffed with psychology rather than action, I don't know how much you'd like it if you didn't like the last two episodes of the first season but it's still good to watch~

 

The 100 I've been struggling with as well, I liked it at first and felt it developed a lot in it's first two seasons but I just find there was too much going on in season 3 and the concept's been overdone and nothing really surprises me anymore, I may give the next season a watch assuming it's the last one.

 

Being Human I'd say just watch the second series and that's it, not to give too much away but it starts to resemble the TV equivalent of the Sugababes after that :kink:

Edited December 27, 20168 yr by Wombanta Claus

Oh my, this looks so similar to my own TV/films list I'm sitting on *.* lemme go through them.

 

Great list for movies (well, the book for Girl on the Train is great, seemingly working a lot better than the film), DEFINITELY see Howl and Totoro next, I'm actually surprised you hadn't already seen them as they are so your thing! You've beaten me with Mononoke though, I'm yet to watch that but have obvs heard good things, I agree that don't think there's been a Studio Ghibli movie I'd rate lower than a 10. I saw one of their recent ones, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, it's utterly heartbreaking but utterly beautiful visually. Have a lot of love for Deadpool too, self aware superhero movies are the best kind (I suppose Batman v Superman missed the memo with that one :/)

 

You know my thoughts about Planet Earth II :kink: :heart: They're all virtually flawless episodes, but Cities is a highlight as it shows how much can go on the cities that we don't know about and the rich potential for life in them, would definitely recommend that one the most.

 

Mr Robot was an amazing first series, one of the best debut season I've seen actually, brilliant genre-hopping tone and so relevant to today as well. I'm actually surprised

you thought the twist was disappointing :o I thought it was amazingly done, it showed us that not only he's in deeper than he thought but he's a completely unreliable narrator so everything we see afterwards may or may not be happening and so it leaves you to speculate what IS real in this world (season 2 is kinda similar in this respect)

, Season 2 is very good by any standard, however it was a step down on the first and it did feel a bit more overstuffed with psychology rather than action, I don't know how much you'd like it if you didn't like the last two episodes of the first season but it's still good to watch~

 

The 100 I've been struggling with as well, I liked it at first and felt it developed a lot in it's first two seasons but I just find there was too much going on in season 3 and the concept's been overdone and nothing really surprises me anymore, I may give the next season a watch assuming it's the last one.

 

Being Human I'd say just watch the second series and that's it, not to give too much away but it starts to resemble the TV equivalent of the Sugababes after that :kink:

 

YES Chez.

 

Obviously I need to pick up as many Ghibli movies as possible and will be doing that really soon. I just find it so hard to go through a lot of movies hence why I only have 9 here, I think they were the only new films to me (that I remember) that I watched all year. Hah and yeah, I was invited to see Batman vs Superman but I kind of knew it would be a disaster so I skipped out on seeing it and I don't feel I missed much.

 

Will definitely catch Cities at the next available opportunity. I normally like watching things in order but you don't really for this so I should stop that and get to the highlight.

 

Thing is with Mr Robot, it was back in March that I watched it so the details may be a little hazy but I just remember being a bit bored at

the twist

after enjoying most of it up to then, maybe I did project that onto my enjoyment of it.

I hadn't thought that about the unreliable narrator part so that may make it a bit more interesting.

I'll try and pick it back up at some point although I have really slowed down the amount I've been watching lately.

 

I have heard about the cast changes in Being Human :kink: Might be best to do that.

 

The rest of my TV shows are as follows:

 

Stranger Things

 

 

This'd be the Jay recommendation. After he lamented that no one on Skype was talking about it. First I'd heard of it, and it was already finished at that point, by the time I'd gone through with it, it seemed to be everywhere. Definitely one of 2016's breakout shows of the year, built on a mystery laden with nostalgia and references and homages to the tons of 80s movies that were already great at that sort of thing. So what is better about Stranger Things. It could be the cute kids, it's very unusual for me to call kids cute in the world of TV because they are most often annoying the greatest girl band in the world that I wish I didn't have to feel bad about wishing death upon. The kids in Stranger Things were different, intelligent and thoughtful and played by incredible child actors. Which is good as they had to carry half of the show. The rest of the cast also gelled together really well, ascribing equal footing to the typical American hero of the Sheriff Hopper and the lead female role of Joyce Byers, who is very realistically hysterical when her son disappears presumed dead, even though she's sure he's alive. The mystery gets resolved very nicely. Definitely want to show solidarity to

poor old Barb

though. A very nice short topical show. I enjoyed the watch.

 

The Walking Dead (all seasons)

 

 

All seasons? What is this? Me actually finishing a show? Well, up to where it's gotten to, yes. I raced through this in the first part of the year and enjoyed it immensely. Like with all of the best shows in here, there was a lot of present danger to the characters and they kept this up well for a lot of the seasons but about partway through season 5 I felt that was lost a bit. Other shows like Vikings and Game Of Thrones in this area kept the danger, The Walking Dead fell into the trap of the viewers not believing that they'd really kill them off so had to go for shock deaths that meant nothing apart from the death. In that they needed to be brutal with Negan to force it back. The first season had so much danger, so much unknown, everything felt clean and polished and necessary, then it slows down a bit for the second season, which still felt pretty optimistic even with the gutpunch at the end. The third and fourth in the prison were desperate struggles for survival at times, I consider several of the scenes with the Governor some of the all time highlights of this show. The grand escape in season 5 gave a rather roady different feel to it and that was nice. Season 6 felt a little like retreading old ground as depression began to sink in and Season 7 has so far mostly been rehashing that. I will say that some of the episodes around Alexandria have been very exciting. I don't like the way they kill of characters most of the time though, there's only been a handful whose deaths were seriously powerful

Herschel, Shane, Lizzie, Deanna

, most of the others could have lived longer and it would have been better. I've gone over a lot of what's been going on in the latest season on the blog, episode by episode, which does remind me, I've yet to do one on the midseason finale. Which was probably the best episode of season 7 so far, unfortunately I have no confidence that will be repeated. I would cover individual episodes in here but it'd take way too long and I'm trying to condense into one paragraph seven seasons of a show that varies wildly in quality and speed of plot. It's not going to happen.

 

A show that can be incredible when it gets direction and a clear plot, otherwise it is very open to criticism. But that criticism is kind of fun to do so I don't mind it right now.

 

Star Trek (1987-1993 i.e. The Next Generation and the start of DS9)

http://www.cinemacats.com/wp-content/uploads/television/startrektngdatasday02.jpg

 

Last year I said I watched The Original Series in this thread. That was for the first time. I'm not going to spend as long on it this time as what this is now is a rewatch for whenever I feel like watching Star Trek, and I've been going very slow lately, I've almost finished running through every TNG episode ever but am not quite there yet. In the meantime (as chronologically they ran concurrently) I'm rewatching my favourite form of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine and that's bringing back some of the best nostalgia I've ever had. In small doses. Even the first seasons of DS9, which are the weakest, are having me rewinding bits to catch the way they were said again because I love those characters so much. With the exception of Picard, I don't quite have the same love for The Next Generation, but my reason for including that on my rewatch was to fill in all the gaps of episodes I hadn't seen back when I was younger. The episode 'Data's Day', literally an episode about an average day in Data's life really stood out to me as one of the best new things I experienced from this rewatch. And then there were old favourites like Cause And Effect and The Next Phase that I knew and really enjoyed watching again. Not a huge section, and I've been slowing down this rewatch lately with only a few episodes a month, but something I do have on my (re)watch list because I know I can't stay away from Star Trek forever and this is there to control that. Also I like being organised.

 

Vikings (seasons 1-3)

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Vikings was my first real experience with a proper historical fictional show. I know these exist and based on my enjoyment of Vikings so far I'd probably end up enjoying lots of the other ones as one of the key factors that makes Vikings so fantastic for me is that I'm constantly noticing and getting excited about little historical references that I recognise. Lindisfarne, Charlemagne, the ancient Romans, Bjorn Ironside, naming other Vikings Leif and Erik. There's even one or two with Finnish names. And when I started looking up more about the show, like the names of Ragnar's sons, the show went and rewarded me more for doing that. The world of Vikings feels so alive and set in a world that feels real even though it also feels fictional (there are several timeline discrepancies that like with Star Trek Beyond I have to get annoyed with), as of course we have no records that can really attest the true historicity of main character Ragnar Lothbrok, just lots of legends about him. In a move that probably took a legacy from Game Of Thrones, there's also lots of characters who are wonderful magnificent bast*rds. King Egbert of Essex being the best but there's also Earl Haraldson, head of Ragnar's village, Princess Kwenthrith of Mercia, Floki, but most of all my praise must go to the main character Ragnar. Ragnar's face, played wonderfully by Travis Fimmel gives away nothing of his intentions, either to the audience or to his enemies so he will often pull out plans you will never expect of him. There's so much Early Middle Age court intrigue in here I could watch it for hours and in fact should watch Season 4, something I haven't continued with for a reason that I'm not sure of. Definitely a good watch if you like history and/or like Game Of Thrones. Speaking of...

 

Game Of Thrones (season 6)

 

 

Done last because if I had to choose, Game Of Thrones would be my top pick. As it always is and always will be. Probably. So I'm going to go into major detail on each plotline as I love analysing this show. Season 6 was definitely an improvement on Season 5 which had flaws. A couple of flaws, most of them the waste of the Martell plotline. Which initially, in the beginning of this season looked like it was getting even worse as the

Sand Snakes seized control and took out all of the Martells

. Having just read the epic scene in Feast For Crows when Doran reveals to Arianne his master plan to ally with Daenerys, it was quite disappointing to see the Martells gone. But come the end of the season

when Varys filled in for Doran, 'FIRE AND BLOOD'

, it looks like that's connecting in not totally disastrously and I can stop looking for flaws in my favourite western TV show. Because there aren't any any longer.

Arya's plotline maybe had a few at the start. But like with the Martells, it slowly built into something more interesting, her diversion into the actor's guild of Braavos was a bit more interesting than Ja'qen slapping her about in a cold grey room. And she's

now on her way to kick some major ass

. I hope, I really really hope.

Samwell did well, even with only a few episodes. His asshole father was everything I imagined Randyll Tarly to be and the Oldtown library looks beautiful, I hope to spend a bit of time there next season, as much as the show can afford.

Up in the north, lots of political maneuvering.

Ramsay's fight with Jon was very epic even with the Arryns acting as the Riders of Rohan, and I'm glad Ramsey's dead, he had outlived his usefulness

. Not enough White Walkers yet although we're getting very close from repeating Hardhome but even more dreadful as they get past the Wall. Inevitably. Poor Eddison Tollett. Bran's certainly run into them a lot this season, with one of the key moments of this season being of course

HOLD THE DOOR. Poor Hodor, I will miss him but he went out on such a powerful note that any mention of that phrase (as many jokers tried to bring it up) will make me sad now

. Seeing looks into the past for young Eddard and Howland was very pleasing for all the connections it promised.

Dany's also finally

left the East, on her dragons

. That sums up this season, all the problems of stasis that people were screaming to get resolved throughout season 5 got resolved at the end of season 6 and it's this potential for season 7 that's making season 6 look very good right now.

Probably my highlight of this season though would be the scene that's probably on many people's minds, the one that's tied to hearing

. King's Landing was fairly light on intrigue this season but it saved the best until last. Seriously do not highlight this spoiler if you haven't watched it.

It is of course the culmination of Cersei's checkmate against the Tyrells, the destruction of them and everyone else who threatened Cersei in one fell swoop as she brings all of her conniving to her highest level yet. I didn't think even she was capable of this. The music made it feel like something was going to happen but you didn't know what and only realised the scope of it at about the same time that Margaery did.

It is, in all of the intrigue and games of thrones that this series has shown so far, the ultimate. The best. That is why I love this series, to see things that were hinted at and built up over seasons and seasons of frostiness and covert smiles to see

Cersei take pride in her ultimate victory at life. I have so many words for why it's so significant but I can't get them all out right now

. The days until season 7 will feel all the longer now. It will be epic.

Being Human :wub: :wub: I didn't actually watch series 1 in full myself until last year I think! I started watching on episode ~3 of series 2 and continued until the end of series 4 (missed series 5 due to an awkward timeslot on a school night :kink:). I'm glad you enjoyed it, it's not perfect in every way but what it does well is VERY good, and I like what all of the main characters bring to the table. Definitely keep going when you can! re. the cast changes, it does feel a bit odd and it's a huge shame when they happen but I don't think it diminishes the quality of the show actually!

Albums - Coldplay's album is pretty good! and omg twenty one pilots yaaaas!! blurryface is amazing but I've got to say that vessel is my absolute favourite :heart: only heard a couple of songs by 'Against the Current' so gonna have to check out the rest of their album!

 

Movies - Finding Dory was good but I agree that it's not as great as most of the other disney/pixar films. I've been meaning to watch The Theory of Everything and Deadpool for so long and haven't got around to it yet but since TTOE is 5th and Deapool is 1st in your list then I'm gonna make time to watch them over the next couple of days!

 

Tv Shows - Mr Robot is pretty good in its own weird way, I think it's pretty genius but at the same time I'm a bit like 'wtf' about certain things :lol: I've only watched season 1 and the first two episodes of season 2 so I'll need to continue that and find out what happens! Stranger Things is good too, I'm so looking forward to the second season! obviously zombies are hella cool so The Walking Dead is also among my favourite tv shows :heart: then obviously there's the 100 and since Alycia is my sig it's easy to figure out that I love that show too :wub: So hyped to see what games you've picked ^_^

Get To Heaven / Bonito Generation / Art Angels *.*!!! all essential listening

Being Human :wub: :wub: I didn't actually watch series 1 in full myself until last year I think! I started watching on episode ~3 of series 2 and continued until the end of series 4 (missed series 5 due to an awkward timeslot on a school night :kink:). I'm glad you enjoyed it, it's not perfect in every way but what it does well is VERY good, and I like what all of the main characters bring to the table. Definitely keep going when you can! re. the cast changes, it does feel a bit odd and it's a huge shame when they happen but I don't think it diminishes the quality of the show actually!

 

Oh yes I'll try and keep going. As far as I want to, I guess. When I can. Good to hear some confidence in the later seasons though.

 

Albums - Coldplay's album is pretty good! and omg twenty one pilots yaaaas!! blurryface is amazing but I've got to say that vessel is my absolute favourite :heart: only heard a couple of songs by 'Against the Current' so gonna have to check out the rest of their album!

 

Movies - Finding Dory was good but I agree that it's not as great as most of the other disney/pixar films. I've been meaning to watch The Theory of Everything and Deadpool for so long and haven't got around to it yet but since TTOE is 5th and Deapool is 1st in your list then I'm gonna make time to watch them over the next couple of days!

 

Tv Shows - Mr Robot is pretty good in its own weird way, I think it's pretty genius but at the same time I'm a bit like 'wtf' about certain things :lol: I've only watched season 1 and the first two episodes of season 2 so I'll need to continue that and find out what happens! Stranger Things is good too, I'm so looking forward to the second season! obviously zombies are hella cool so The Walking Dead is also among my favourite tv shows :heart: then obviously there's the 100 and since Alycia is my sig it's easy to figure out that I love that show too :wub: So hyped to see what games you've picked ^_^

 

Thanks very much for the detailed comment Alanna! :D

Definitely check out Against The Current if you get the time, I think it'd be right up your street.

Oh and yes, with the films, they are well worth the watch, I hope you enjoy them when you get to - both excellent films. If I've given out a recommendation then that's amazing.

People are definitely encouraging me to continue with Mr Robot so I may well do. Got so many things now. And Stranger Things and Walking Dead having things coming out. And yes of course you're a big fan of the 100, I do like it quite a bit.

 

I don't know how much my games will be up your street, or anyone's street, but they're in this post so that's part 4 done.

 

Get To Heaven / Bonito Generation / Art Angels *.*!!! all essential listening

 

Indeed. I do like going for albums that have the Seven stamp of greatness upon them *.*

 

Part 4: GAMES

 

I'm only actually going to talk about three games here. I've played more than three this year, but I figure for this I might as well only talk about games that I spent absolutely ages in playing. And due to my preferences, that would be three strategy games for PC. I've always been a PC gamer, it just makes sense as I've always had a PC and my favourite genre has always been strategy and those games are made best for PC. I think I've only ever owned a console for Mario Kart. Anyway, it's also a low number because while I was still doing my masters course I was limiting the time I could play games, and while I was doing my masters course I had an older laptop that wouldn't run games as well. Upon completing my dissertation I bought a new computer to celebrate and started installing all of the games I had ever loved. And played a few of those. I spent a couple of weeks nostalgia-obsessing over Rome and Medieval 2 Total War (and got a couple of the newer ones that may show up in future years if I ever get obsessed with one of those again, but not today), I think I literally owe my obsession with history to my original obsession with Rome Total War, I remember loading it up for the first time and thinking 'who are the Dacians and the Seleucid Empire, I must research this'. And then I did my degree on it. I've also been going back through the story of Assassin's Creed, on a decent computer, but it's 1 and 2 and while those are amazing, I don't know if I have anything new to say about them, it's fun jumping around Crusader Kingdoms and Renaissance Italy murderizing everyone you see and surviving huge falls by lying in bales of hay. That's all.

 

But you do notice something in common with this, right? History. I love games set in the past of our world - as I often love shows that are set in the past of our world, there's so many interesting things they can do with it. And that's why the three games I'm really talking about here are all to do with history. Or playing as nations to conquer the world with.

 

3. Civilization V

 

I talked about this last year, but I've played it more this year than I did last year so why not include it again. Also I really want VI, the new game, but it's a bit pricey for me at this point in time so I'm waiting a year or two for that to drop. V is going cheap at this point though, so invest in that if you have a computer that can run it. It was the first thing I played after completing my dissertation and I had such a beautiful session on it with a game that's probably, although it was on a fairly easy setting, my favourite game of Civ I've had. I was the Celts, who take their city names from all of the modern Celtic nations, so I created areas of my empire (on a huge forested planet) for Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and Manx names, got a challenging Steam Achievement to have a city named Llanfairgwochwyll-longwelshnamecity in my empire, and just peacefully expanded while sending insults to the Romans across the sea from me and eventually culturally victorying through mead halls and building the CN Tower - that has the effect of giving you free radio towers in every city you own. Other games I've had include a multiplayer with my brothers where I was Japan and started on an isolated continent, building up my bushido power and eventually launching via the Divine Wind a huge fleet to sail around the world bombing the unsuspecting harbours of the AI (sadly we abandoned the game before I was able to sail into Jacob's Stockholm and wreck that too). And one as Egypt where I restricted myself to one city and just built, with Egypt's increase to wonder building, basically every important building in the game in my desert paradise capital of Thebes, winning a cultural victory. Civ V is not the most complicated strategy game, which is why I haven't played it for a couple of months as I've found more complex and challenging ones, but it's an incredibly enjoyable journey through the history of a world on another planet and it can get you lost for hours. There's also so many interesting Steam Achievements I do want to pick up in my next bout of playing before I move on to VI but that will get overshadowed by my #1.

 

2. Crusader Kings II

 

When nobody has revolted in like a year

Advanced Incest

Can anyone explain why my daughter is such a f***ing whore

(in lieu of a picture I think I'll just leave some reddit links here)

 

This is what I mean by Paradox Interactive, the makers of the top 2 games, dominating my life this year. Crusader Kings I picked up at the beginning of the year and got obsessed with it WHILE I was doing my masters, so had to sneak in games where I thought I could get away with doing it - and when I did I played for far too long. There was one session where I just started it up at the beginning of the afternoon, kept going and before I knew it, without even EATING, it was 1am. I'm certainly not doing that again but that's how into this game I got. Unfortunately I wrote an incredibly detailed story that I don't have with me (I'll edit the full thing into this post later) of one of my latest playthroughs with a young beautiful Empress of Cornwall who would sleep with anything, particularly her red-faced bishops, and was a master of court intrigue and surviving the plagues ravaging the countrysides of the British Isles that she was master over.

 

Crusader Kings is a strategy game, based in the Middle Ages, with tons of possible countries and kingdoms and empires that can form (and a lot of DLCs you really feel the need to buy, which I did as cheap as I could because I got really into it), but the focus is not necessarily on conquering the world like it is in Total War. Each of these games is like the campaign map side of Total War, which was always the best part, but far more nuanced and complex. But for Crusader Kings, the focus is not on making the country great. It's making you great. You. And you can be whoever you want to be, the noble head of a family, but you don't have to be the king. You can be the conniving duke, whispering words of loyalty in your king's ear before stabbing him in the back right at the most opportune time. You can be a marcher count, on the edge of a vast empire defending your personal holdings from hordes at the gates. You can of course be an independent ruler, but you can also play below. And either is fun, in different ways. Events come up throughout the game asking for choices and you can go on huge event chains that make each character seem like a real person. Also there's a ton of really really shady shit you can do. I'm talking banishing your son to seize his money, murdering your grandson because he's an inbred drooling imbecile, torturing your enemies, marrying your sisters and cousins because one of them's a genius and you can't risk those genes getting outside the family. This game is a wonderful one for no context lines. When you die, you become your heir, and it's of paramount importance to make sure that your titles pass onto your heir in a manner that's appropriate. It's also of paramount importance to make everyone else in your realm like you, be the right religion (religion is a huge part of the game, each religion, Catholic, Orthodox, Sunni, Shia, Pagan, Hindu, Buddhism, Judaism, plays so differently that it's a completely different experience. It also takes a lot of explaining to figure out how everything works, I was lost for my first session and I'm still not entirely sure how to play the game effectively. Which is probably the only reason why CK2 has lost to the winner of this mini-rank:

 

1. Europa Universalis IV

 

A fanart for this game has been adorning my signature recently. It's a personified map of Europe in 1444 and if you look at a bigger version of it you can see tons of little in-jokes related to this game. Like Castile/Spain firing a comet into the sky, an infamous bad event and it saying 'Adios Enrique', a reference to Henry IV of Spain, the starting Spanish heir and an awful ruler who you can now get rid of. Or Theodoro, the last Gothic nation in history over in Crimea. Or Aragon looking like Aragorn, or Albania hiding in 'mountains' with their three star generals. That's another thing with this game, this image is good because you literally want to give countries personalities. Like I loathe Muscovy and the Teutonic Order because they'll always end up siding against you while I'm starting to view France as a protective big brother and always want to suck up to the Ottomans for similar reasons. The Pope is also one for being a notable bast*rd but he is in basically every game of this sort.

 

Europa Universalis is like Crusader Kings, but with countries, and it's now 1444-1821, so colonisation and clashes of nations come into this, no longer are you controlling a character as such, but the destiny of a nation. In that, it is the ultimate grand strategy game/campaign map mode game and the huge layers of complexity and the challenge that's inherent in the game is why it's my favourite game of this year and if things stay as they are, is looking like a very good contender for my favourite game of all time. I've been playing it as much as I get time to lately and I still feel like I'm not a master at the game but I really know how to get things done. It wasn't always like this, I took ages to get into it, it took me watching an entire tutorial series on Youtube by quill18 to learn how to do anything right and even though I have many hours on it now I still have things I'm learning, for example I'm only about 50% sure on how the trade system works. That's another thing, I've also been watching so many EU4 let's plays by Arumba/quill18 that I've started using them to send me to sleep as I just listen to them talking about the game as they are playing it. It's logical reasoning so it really works well for me.

 

My goal with EU4, and I've written about some of my adventures with these on my blog, is to get as many Steam Achievements as possible. Unlike with many games, they aren't silly things to see how many people are playing the game with a couple of impossible boring achievements you can get if you really are obsessed. Because there's no set goal in EU4, you can do whatever you want, my goal is often to try and historically replicate what the nation did in history. Or better it, depending upon the nation. But the Steam achievements give you specific things you can aim for for each country, like own parts of Brazil and Africa as Portugal (which I've done), own pretty much all of Asia as a Mongol Horde remnant (which I've tried and failed at), form Italy out of the warring city states (which I've done), conquer the entire world as the nation Ryukyu, starting with merely the tiny Okinawa islands of Japan (which I want to have a go at at some point but it looks and sounds nigh on impossible). Unlike in many games, you can't just world conquest and that's that, I could only imagine a couple of the strongest nations under player control would have an easy time of it. I'm going to spend ages on these achievements and I don't think I'd get bored.

 

Because that's another thing, this game has so many aspects to balance to keep your nation stable that it's actually quite hard, you're always managing a different aspect of your nation so it rarely gets boring and there's always the chance that your bigger and more powerful neighbour could stomp you in a war and take half your land, setting you back about 40 years, if you don't play your political cards right and stomp your less powerful neighbours in wars demanding their land and money and women and wine from them. I've finished one game as Portugal, where I tried to go for traditional Portuguese colonisation targets like Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, all of the Caribbean, Florida, all of Australia, you know, all those traditional Portuguese places, and eventually conquered my way across the Iberian peninsula that I could change country to Spain and went and conquered half of Africa before the game ended. I've played as Songhai where I conquered Timbuktu and most of West Africa. I've played as the Ottomans where I tried to conquer Russia and Italy for an achievement but kept getting beaten back by the former - don't invade Russia, just don't. I've most recently started as Florence and dealt with a lot of political wrangling and timed conquests to avoid alliance networks to scramble up a united Italy by 1600. This game is so GOOD. Everything I ever wanted in a game, pretty much right here. Religion, abstract army management, trade, political intrigue, espionage, it's all here, it's all very complicated and I love it. Easily my #1 game of the year, if not of all time.

Part 5: Anime

 

This is where that anime pop thing finally comes in. Although I'm still including them in the songs bit, I'm also talking about them here.

 

I feel so excited to do this and yet this'll be the part that everyone else will know least about. It's okay, I expect that (I'm also cross-posting this to my blog so this isn't going entirely wasted on a forum of people who largely don't watch anime). However I should stress just how much anime has meant to me this year. I watched 8 animes in 2015, given about half the year to do so. I watched one anime in full before this. I have 26 anime TV shows that I watched over the entirety of this year, old and new. I have spent a lot of time falling in love with this medium (MEDIUM NOT A GENRE KLAXON), embracing the often weird and hilarious plots, getting attached to well-drawn animated characters, and so I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I'm going to write this particular post and sum it all up. And I've decided I'm going to go for a highly competitive rank - seriously, all of the top 15 shows in this list I would class as incredible entertainment and most of the rest are no slouch either.

 

I'm also going to do separate tallies for my all-time anime rank and ranking only anime who actually aired new episodes in 2016. And I'm going to say little things about the music and which are the best characters before talking about it as a whole. And probably most of interest to anyone who's not into anime, I'm going to give each show a rating that I'm tentatively calling, because you guys expect this, a Tentacle Rating. What that actually means is that it's a sliding scale on how weird and/or steeped in Japanese culture the show actually is, meaning how accessible it may be to Western audiences who aren't into anime like myself. 0/10 and the anime in question could probably be remade as a Western TV series with basically no changes and become a huge Western hit. 10/10 and the show is probably sporting all kinds of unusual Japanese culture barriers and probably does have actual tentacles somewhere in its plot. It's about this time that I should probably reiterate that this list contains no hentai. Because I don't watch that shit.

 

To show you how it's actually going to work, I'm going to do The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of my favourite anime series of all time, the first one I ever watched in full and consequently the only one that hasn't received this EOY treatment from me as I only started including anime in 2015 when it was clear it was going to be a big part of my watching habits. I recently rewatched this and its accompanying film, The Disappearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya for December and I loved it just as much as the first time.

 

The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/topic_images/p19jiua5kc7d6gbn1cqaluefun3.jpg

Anime Rank: #2 in All Time

 

Genre: Sci-fi/slice-of-life/uncategorizable

 

Tentacle Rating: 5/10 - It certainly has some weird parts to it but nothing that really outdoes a sci-fi show from the West, the 5 points are mostly from the actions of Haruhi being a bit sketchy morally in some episodes. The Japanese culture notes are pretty accessible, this was one of the biggest animes of the 00s after all.

 

Music: Very incredible music. BJSC veterans should be familiar with

, something that I think, after re-examining, is my favourite anime opening of all time. The lyrics are inspiring ('we've never experienced it so let's go do it' is the theme), its sonically brilliant and it's exciting. There's also

, the sweet first opening, the anime ending that became a meme dance at one point,

, and even the second ending song

brings me to chills. And that's not all, during one episode and one I think is incredibly important for Haruhi's character development, she fills in for a school band and sings the full version of

which is probably one of the best anime songs ever created through having incredible guitar and is, I believe, currently the record-holder for 'most Youtube views on an anime song'.

 

Best Girl Characters: There's five main ones and it's so hard to choose a favourite, even discounting recurring favourites like Ryoko Asakura, who once adorned my sig and Skype pic for absolutely ages and Tsuruya, who has green hair and is just incredibly weird. Kyon, the main guy, is one of the most sarcastic and funny characters I've ever seen in a TV show, Yuki Nagato has also often been in my avatars and I'm sort of planning to put her back there soon, she has incredible powers and it's always amazing whenever she speaks. And then there's Haruhi herself. Probably one of the most complicated and discussed anime characters, she's a complete ass to everyone around her and yet she's only trying to make the world more fun and you see a lot of growth from her over the course of the series. Albeit it's growth of her learning to slowly become a decent person but still, it's a lot of progression.

 

I'm also going to liberally quote from anime youtuber Gigguk, who's probably the best anime youtuber out there, from his 'If Anime Descriptions were Accurate' video:

It's like an anime set in Nazi Germany, except Hitler wasn't just a ruthless dictator, but a hyperactive twat as well. And Nazi Germany was a highschool. And there were time travellers, espers and aliens and a sarcastic git monologuing about it every 5 seconds. Scratch that, it's nothing like Nazi Germany. Except the Hitler part.

The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya is a genre-fluid show that attempts to parody and catch off-guard all of the anime tropes that were pervading the anime world in the mid-00s. By being so successful, it spawned an entirely new load of anime tropes for slice-of-life mixed with sci-fi shows. There is a lot of intrigue, a lot of danger, but it is mostly a group of friends having fun in the weirdest possible ways while protecting the world from earth-shattering events. The first and second season intertwine in a chronological order that has a number of arc based plots where lots of serious stuff happens (there's two big ones in Melancholy, more sci-fi based, and Sigh, which is more character based and sorts out Haruhi) but there's also more experimental episodes outside of that. Like Someday In The Rain, a story entirely about basically nothing but the characters talking. Or Endless Eight, the same episode repeated eight times (with a Groundhog Day-like plot, mind you) where you can show your endurance. Or The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina, the first episode I saw, a completely bizarre venture about an anime being as shit as it possibly can and therefore being awesome. Or just some normal episodes of normal sci-fi events happening. As you do. The interactions between the characters as they weave their way through such great plots is what endears it to me and that's before we even get to the movie, The Disappearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya. The movie on its own is a great reason to watch this series (as you need to watch at least part of the series to understand the plot of the movie sadly) as it's one of my favourite movies ever. I may have mentioned it a few times in the movie forum even. Unlike the 20 minute long anime, it's a huge, nearly 3 hour long epic that involves time travel, parallel worlds and big dilemmas about the premise of the entire series. It also basically concludes all of the character development necessary. Nevertheless, ever since it aired in 2010, the anime world has been pining for a season 3 that hasn't materialised yet. There's material out there so I hope they do it eventually, until then, this is some of the best TV I've ever seen.

 

Anyway, onto the actual list of anime. Starting with the worst:

 

26. Hundred

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm90/Eyes330/hundred_zpsm29575yi.png

Anime Rank: #35 in all time, #9 in shows airing in 2016

 

Genre: "Sci-fi" (but really harem)

 

Tentacle Rating: 7/10 - I really don't know what's going on with all the big ass weapons and the vibe of a high-school being the first line of defense against humanity. Not to mention the little sister character who seems weirdly into the MC (main character) and your standard inappropriate misunderstandings that lead to boob grabbing, and well, everyone is weirdly into the MC despite him being so bland I have no clue what his name is and I don't care to look it up. Because it's that sort of show.

 

Music: In an unusual twist, I found the OP annoying and don't remember anything about any other music.

 

Best Girl Characters: Only one stood out as being worthwhile. Emilia Crossfade (silver-haired girl in that pic) was fairly interesting because she pretended to be a boy at first, albeit with a paper-thin disguise only the MC couldn't see through, and still couldn't see through when I stopped watching. Shame I started watching at the same time an anime that was far better that ALSO contained a silver-haired girl called Emilia that I really liked. Sorry Crossfade.

 

If you can't tell, Hundred is BAD. The only anime on here where I couldn't and didn't want to make it to the end. In fact I made it all of three episodes. It's far worse than its western show with a similar name, it's often been called 'the show called Hundred because you've seen 99 shows like it already'. In fact I only picked it up because I'd heard that it was generic and I was feeling like I wanted to test how fun generic anime could be, seeing as I like most anime tropes in general shows. I did not like this. The stupidity of the main character not realising his best friend who is getting all embarrassed about changing in front of him and has a high voice isn't actually a boy was just mind-boggling, the plot was set in some future place with machines and mechas and everyone has a special weapon they call their 'Hundred' (which has no numerical value, to mess with me even further), there was a student council president who was a stuck up bitch, there was nothing new brought to the table with it and I bailed out as soon as I was sure I didn't want to watch any more. I pretty much included it here to prove I don't like all anime.

 

25. Monster Musume (Everyday Life With Monster Girls)

 

http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire2/c30b2e9196a1ac9ddd012620e8c7e0671437652484_full.png

Anime Rank: #34 in all time

 

Genre: "Slice-Of-Life" / Ecchi Harem (ecchi = highly sexualised but not pornographic, like an 18+ film)

 

I think I need to invoke Gigguk here super early

*plays slow classical music* Every so often, there comes a show that breaks the pre-conceived norms and challenges your perception of the world. What is acceptable, what isn't acceptable? Why is it that the rules of society are shaped the way they are, and how did social convention evolve to lead us to where we are now? These questions and more play an intricate part in understanding why we think the way we do. Which is why today, I present to you... Animals, you'd like to f***

 

Tentacle Rating: 15/10 - f*** it, we're breaking the scale early. I trust you can understand why, it's like the makers of this saw the previous weirdest show in existence and thought 'Let's try and one-up that'. Why am I even admitting I've watched this show to people I want to like and respect me? For self-depreciative comedy, Iz, that's why.

 

Music: Yeah, the opening for this one is rather good. It has a pretty great progression near the, ahem, climax of the opening and it showing the six girls in order several times over really appeals to my sense of order. And nothing else!

 

Best Girl Characters: Papi, the half-bird is rather cute (and produced what is simultaneously the show's best and worst moment, serious NSFW warning but it is hilarious) and the er... spider-girl is surprisingly intelligent and calculating. So those two.

 

I kept seeing this in Crunchyroll adverts and kind of wanted to check it out. Like with Hundred, to see how I actually enjoyed it. And, despite its low position here, I actually finished it in a weekend, probably the fastest of any on this list. See, it's not bad, it's just middling. In quality. The main character is a disaster of a blandfest, his name could be anything and the only thing I like about that is that the girls all call him Darling so often the intention is probably that you forget his name. I have. But like... everything about the rest of it was... surprisingly okay. It's a world where many different half-human people exist and they break up the weird thoughts you're having and sexual innuendos with surprisingly mature plots about the struggle and discrimination half-spiders and half-snakes and half-birds and centaurs actually face in this world. And someone wants to kill the MC. But it's mostly light-hearted fun. With a lot of 'near-nudity'. So it's also incredibly lewd. Shall we move swiftly on?

 

24. School Days

 

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/018/047/school_days_576.jpg

Anime Rank: #33 in all-time

 

Genre: Slice-Of-Life/Harem

 

Tentacle Rating: Either 6/10 or 8/10 depending on what you think the intention of this series was. If it was supposed to be a normal show that got way out of hand, then the latter. If it was intentional, it could be a pretty well-done

dark horror

but it's still from a visual novel and it's about high school teenagers getting it on with each other so...

 

Music: Pretty average really, there was barely any that I remember

 

Best Girl Characters: They're all pretty awful people but I think Sekai was originally my favourite.

 

Gigguk:

Man f***s anything with a vagina,

it doesn't end well

 

That's an understatement for one of the most infamous animes ever. But I won't say anything about what actually happened except behind spoilers and I won't even say the details behind those, so you can freely highlight if you don't care about watching the entire show

to get the shock of what happens at the end

. Because I didn't really know. And that made it kind of better for me. In fact once it had finished, I almost called it a masterpiece. Lots of people consider this the worst anime ever. It is several episodes of a guy turning from a normal high school kid into the most awful person ever as he sleeps with all the girls that are available to him and then ignores them while he moves onto the next one. So it is kind of a dark realistic look at what would literally happen if some of the wish fulfilment harem animes where tons of people want to sleep with you was actually taken advantage of by some bast*rd. And that last episode kind of made it all worth it. I did have to keep reevaluating it downwards though as there is so much that is dull and generic about it before you get to that. Incredibly unique anime, but unique for a lot of the wrong reasons.

 

23. New Game

 

http://gematsu.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/New-Game-PS4-PSV-Ann.jpg

Anime Rank: #31 in all time, #8 in anime airing in 2016

 

Genre: Slice-Of-Life

 

Tentacle Rating: 2/10 - Finally, something that looks like a normal show to have admitted to watching. To be fair, Monster Musume and School Days are two of the most infamous among even the anime community but it's really relieving to get to something other people could know I've watched and don't go 'why did you watch that shit'. New Game has a lot in it about Japanese work culture which is the reason for the two points but it's completely innocent and cute.

 

Music: I recall

for this one sounded incredibly like the one from School Live from last year, almost down to the same beats - yet they seem to have no apparent connection. It has some great trumpets.

 

Best Girl Characters: Aoba, the main character is a real cutie, and I also like the dour sarcastic Okinawan Umiko, for always thinking what I'm thinking.

 

Despite portraying the staff of a gaming company who are exclusively female, New Game is both an entry into the 'cute girls doing cute things' genre that I can just watch forever if the mood really takes me and a good look at Japanese workplace culture. Aoba is a new employee at this gaming company and they are making a new game for which she is going to be overworked and underpaid for but she has several friendly girl work colleagues to help her along and have a lot of fun, including sleeping in the office and spending your entire life at work, in order to make a long-awaited sequel to the game she loved as a kid. There's a few lesbian undertones between a couple of characters but there's not really much else to say, it's just a bundle of positivity and that's good enough for me most of the time. I did enjoy spending some time with this in October, and it was the first anime I wrote about on my blog. Decent but there's so much good ahead of it. And the real good starts now.

 

22. Cowboy Bebop

 

Anime Rank: #30 in all-time

 

Genre: Sci-fi/space western/film noir A new genre unto itself

 

Tentacle Rating: 0/10 - it isn't one of the world's most popular and enduring anime for no reason, it could easily be American-made and very little would change. It's kind of Citizen Kane + Star Trek + something else noir-y and western-y and space-rust-y. Like, this is the sort of anime I'd recommend to basically every TV-show watcher here because it could basically be sitting alongside X-Files or Twin Peaks in the classic stakes.

 

Music: A lot of people like the opening, steeped as it is in retro film sound but I'm not so keen on it myself

 

Best Girl Characters: Faye Valentine, obviously. And Edward is pretty crazy.

 

Cowboy Bebop.. it's loved by nearly everyone and yet it's very low on this list. I had a bit of trouble getting through it myself. There were several excellent episodes, don't get me wrong, Jamming With Edward, Bohemian Rhapsody and My Funny Valentine spring to mind (the episode titles are pretty much all named after classic songs or a musical genre) but the episodic style didn't leave me wanting more when the episode ended so I took ages to get through all the episodes. It's something I feel will benefit from me rewatching knowing sort of what's going to happen in each episode. And maybe watching the film. The characters are all very watchable, Spike is a lovely calculating maniac, Edward actually is a maniac, Jet is a cool straight man and Faye introduces a lot of necessary conflict to the show. And there's definitely some excellence in there - if you're a fan of film noir or realistic sci-fi there's a lot to love here. It didn't capture my attention as much as I wanted it to but it's objectively very good. Just subjectively I have 21 less reputable shows I want to put ahead of it.

 

21. Bleach (season 1)

 

Anime Rank: #29 in all-time

 

Genre: Thriller Action Adventure Shonen

 

Tentacle Rating: 3/10, it's one of the most popular animes in the west for a reason but it does have plenty of weird death and spirit world things going on.

 

Music: The opening to the first season, Asterisk by Orange Range is, despite me never hearing it originally, captures the early-mid 00s rock rap sound so effortlessly it feels so nostalgic. And kind of Gorillaz. So naturally I love it.

 

Best Girl Characters: Orihime, because I found out in the second episode that she's the Leekspin girl. That site that has Ievan Polkka on repeat and an anime girl spinning a leek around like a clean version of... that other site. And she's also pretty good in the show itself. Rukia and Chad are also pretty cool, to be fair. And the story's only really just started so any of them could become great.

 

Whenever you hear about anime, it's inevitable that someone will bring up the big 3, Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. I.e. fighting anime that have become huge in the West because they appeal to kids with time to watch anime and subsequently a generation has grown up with this as the anime they know. Bleach is the only one of those that has finished (Naruto might have finished this year I don't know, I recall hearing something about a final last episode so maybe that's not true anymore). It also seemed like the one I'd like the most as it seemed to be slightly more mature than the others. So at a time when I was very busy with essays, I was watching the first season of this to help me get through it. I stopped at the end of season 1 as it seemed a natural place to stop - as there are 14 or so seasons it'll be quite a bit of work to carry it on but I do plan to pick it back up at some point or other. It's a story about shinigami, the dead spirits of Japanese folklore, who get rid of bad spirits called Hollows and help people pass on to the next world. And Ichigo, the ginger protagonist is one of these and wields a huge sword and there are all kinds of powers behind the scenes and it seems like a lot is going down, the first season is him and his friends defending their school and neighbourhood from Hollows but the second season promises a gear change. Rather fun for what I watched and at least I have part of one of the big three under my belt now.

 

~~~~

 

I have a lot of anime to write about :D If you read all that you're cool and you hopefully don't think any less of me. The weirdest (and ironically, the most normal) is behind us.

Ooh, you have a blog (presumably anime related)? Link me up!

 

Monster Musume was one of those series that I actually felt a bit dirty for watching, but a decent enough way to wile away time. The scene you mentioned is actually not the near-X rated one that stood out for me, the one involving Papi and a cell phone being the one that I thought was closest to crossing the line.

 

The theme to New Game is indeed wonderful (only one of 3 anime theme tunes this year that made the transfer to my iTunes, you can probably guess what the other two were from my year-end list/BJSC entries), and decent series as well. I watched the 1st series of Bleach nearly 10 years ago, and although I have no desire to re-visit it, I did enjoy it at the time. I've just finished Cowboy Bebop, and really enjoyed it. Although not as perfect as its reputation suggests, I can see why it is so popular in the West.

 

Looking forward to seeing what's left to come, and see if you've watched any of the shows that I've recommended and/or mentioned. I'm going to guess that RE:Zero is going to be #1 - I've started watching it myself after you spoke so highly of it - if its good enough to warrant an avatar change, that's very high praise indeed.

Ooh, you have a blog (presumably anime related)? Link me up!

 

Monster Musume was one of those series that I actually felt a bit dirty for watching, but a decent enough way to wile away time. The scene you mentioned is actually not the near-X rated one that stood out for me, the one involving Papi and a cell phone being the one that I thought was closest to crossing the line.

 

The theme to New Game is indeed wonderful (only one of 3 anime theme tunes this year that made the transfer to my iTunes, you can probably guess what the other two were from my year-end list/BJSC entries), and decent series as well. I watched the 1st series of Bleach nearly 10 years ago, and although I have no desire to re-visit it, I did enjoy it at the time. I've just finished Cowboy Bebop, and really enjoyed it. Although not as perfect as its reputation suggests, I can see why it is so popular in the West.

 

Looking forward to seeing what's left to come, and see if you've watched any of the shows that I've recommended and/or mentioned. I'm going to guess that RE:Zero is going to be #1 - I've started watching it myself after you spoke so highly of it - if its good enough to warrant an avatar change, that's very high praise indeed.

 

Of course! https://izzystarsblog.wordpress.com/

 

It's about one-third anime-related (the other thirds are history and miscellaneous stuff that I feel like talking about), although lately all I've done on anime is talk about my rewatch of Haruhi but I've written quite a few pieces in my Anime category about what I've been watching over the last few months. I've just started watching Izetta: The Last Witch (as you might guess from my new BJ name, I quite like it so far but the pun was just an opportunity not to be missed) so I'm planning to do a post on that soon.

 

I had completely forgotten about that phone scene! Yeah that's quite bad too. The scene I linked just stood out so much to me that nothing else came close.

 

I guess Your Name (which I need to see as soon as I get an opportunity, sadly there were no cinemas near me showing it) and Rin-Ne then? Pretty good. I'm kind of mixing everything up into 2016, even older stuff, most of the tunes I've really gotten obsessed with this year are from older series. Pretty much the same thing as me for Cowboy Bebop then, I can see why it's so popular but I'm not really raving about it.

 

I'm pretty sure there are several shows you've recommended to me/watched to come, although some like Sword Art Online, Bodacious Space Pirates and School Live I covered in my EOY last year in this post, or this for Love Live which I did belatedly in a separate post as I was watching that almost exactly a year ago. I can't remember if you saw those or not. The shows I watched last year are where the gaps in the all-time rankings are coming. But yes, very pleased to hear you're watching Re:Zero now :D I will give nothing away though.

20. Fate/Stay Night (2006)

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NgtWCg4g1Tw/VZuRXgQQptI/AAAAAAAAChA/pRrrLp7mUC4/s1600/peopledieiftheyarekilled.jpg

Anime Rank: #27 in all-time

 

Genre: Fantasy battle royale

 

Tentacle Rating: 7/10 - The tropes it takes from Western legends are presented in a rather unusual way, many of the magic abilities take form through tentacle shapes (instantly bumping this rating up no matter how magic and airy and wispy they are) and unlike its remakes and successors, this adaptation stays more true to the original visual novel's mission of picking a romantic girl for Shirou, the main character, to end up with.

 

Music: I adore the music for this - it's very 'old-sounding' stuff, with quiet themes that slowly get more powerful and fill the atmosphere of the story. It's the best thing about this version of Fate/Stay Night.

and

are emotional and magical sounding choral/instrumental pieces that just exude true beauty.

 

Best Girl Characters: There's another Fate/Stay Night coming so I'll expand more on the characters there but this version gives me a lot more Sakura and Rider and I appreciate that because both are good - I'm quite hyped for the upcoming Heaven's Feel adaptation. Rin and Saber are of course excellent and Saber gets a lot as this is her route specifically, Shirou is just even more hot-headed and stupid than he is in the other version, as you can maybe tell from the image I've put in here. It's a balance, but mostly it's the same characters.

 

The Fate franchise. I've really fallen in love with it. Or at least its major anime adaptations. However the first two I watched were the more recent versions made by the anime studio Ufotable and this, made in 2006 by a less talented anime studio, is a bit of a runt of the franchise. It was big when it came out I've heard but it's been surpassed. Exactly what it is requires some explaining. Fate/Stay Night was originally a visual novel that seems to have required the player to play it through three times, once on a route called 'Fate', the second time on a route called 'Unlimited Blade Works', and the third time on a route called 'Heaven's Feel'. Each told the same basic story in a different way with focus going to different characters while killing others off earlier in the run than they might have on other routes, it is a battle royale after all.

 

Now when they came to make this anime adaptation, they mainly adapted the Fate route, the first and most important, but included elements from the other two to create one story. This would have worked well if the popularity of Fate ended there, but it didn't. A couple of years ago, an adaptation focusing solely on the Unlimited Blade Works part of Stay Night was released by Ufotable to follow up their successful prequel show of Fate/Zero. I of course watched these three, the two Stay Nights and Fate/Zero, in precisely the reverse order. Because I got mixed up and just went for the Fate/Stay Night that was on Crunchyroll not realising it would be the newer one. Or even that there was a newer one at the time. So eventually I came back and watched the original anime adaptation because I just wanted more Fate. Even though I'd heard it would be a bit bad.

 

The first few episodes were almost exactly the same, with minor differences, to the 2014 UBW adaptation. I nearly didn't continue. But it diverged eventually and gave far more attention to Saber than the other adaptations had, which I like, as she's fantastic. It's hard to love Fate and not love Saber. And one episode about the middle, Tearing The Sky, gave me this wonderful visual image of her facing off against Rider and the sky lighting up in their colours of blue and purple and that was something that I didn't get from UBW.

 

On the whole it moved a lot slower and can't focus on its plot as well as the later Fate adaptations do, so it is a lot lower. The visuals also don't help it as well, I must say, being used to the incredible visual spectacle that is Unlimited Blade Works, this is quite a step down, even if it was probably good for 2006.

 

19. Pokémon (Indigo League + First Half Of Orange Islands - i.e. first 100 episodes)

http://metalarcade.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Pokemon-Season-1-Indigo-League-The-Complete-Collection-Review-Screen-1-Pikachu.jpg

Anime Rank: #26 in all-time

 

Genre: Pokémon/ fighting battle shonen

 

Tentacle Rating: 4/10 - Like, it is Pokémon but Pokésins has made me aware of some really questionable episodes, plus the entire enslaving animals to make them fight for you thing. If Pokémon wasn't such a familiar thing this is what I'd give it.

 

Music: I trust we all know the Pokémon theme song. That's quite good. There's nothing else that I really think is amazing. I mean, a lot of the music was westernised for the dub. Side note: The only things I watch dub in are Cowboy Bebop, sometimes Haruhi, and this. Because it's just far too hard to imagine Pokemon in Japanese voices now, although I did watch it in sub for the banned episodes.

 

Best Girl Characters: Brock is best girl. This is the truth. Ash and Misty are far too young and annoying to be likeable. In fact most of the fun with them I get is from snarking at Ash's stupidity. Oh, and Team Rocket are all excellent characters. I always hope they win.

 

One more Gigguk quote? I do really like them:

Elemental cock fighting is legal and no one bats an eye. Join Ash Ketchum on his journey of never winning, never achieving his dreams and always falling short because that's f***ing life, kids

 

One oversight I made in the Games section was that of Pokémon Go. I'd say that that's because it's a mobile game and I don't tend to count those as games but that'd be far too snobby. Because I really enjoyed Pokémon Go for what it was in the summer. In that I'd never really gotten into a Pokémon game fully before and despite watching a few episodes and collecting a few stickers in my childhood, I didn't have all that much to do with Pokémon. So I took the opportunity of briefly getting obsessed with catching pretend Psyducks and Goldeens in churches and on the beach, at the same time as I was mostly doing my dissertation, I used Pokémon episodes as a half coping mechanism, half wanting more of Pokémon. I got to episode 100 before my desire to watch any more ran out, but I enjoyed the show for what it was. The Youtube series of Pokésins really helped keep my interest going (to look out for the things that I guessed the host of that would notice ahead of time) and some episodes were pretty funny and enjoyable and yes, watching the first part of an old kid's series was a pretty great part of my summer. And like, the episodes with Eevee and Gastly/Gengar and that one with the ridiculous exam were pretty funny.

 

18. Orange

http://i.imgbox.com/m3ZcB9VR.png

Anime Rank: #24 in all time, #7 in anime airing in 2016

 

Genre: Romance shoujo with "time travel"

 

Tentacle Rating: 1/10 - Could be a romantic hit here. And it's very clean and wholesome.

 

Music: I got rather into the OP,

, it has a beautiful lead-in riff and it's fairly upbeat.

 

Best Girl Characters: Hagita is the sort of teenager I always wanted to be in my friendship group, he's funny but always dry and deadpan. And he made this good watching. And Suwa was one of the more perfectly brilliant examples of a human I've seen in anime, a huge bro, kind etc. A rare example of multiple male characters being better than the female ones in anime - I wonder if the different intended audience had anything to do with this.

 

I largely watched Orange because it looked like an interesting shoujo and I wanted to watch one of those (in opposition to shonen, shoujo is anime that has their target audience set to girls instead of boys). Mainly for the time travel aspect. Which ended up being only a device to drive the love story and the explanation they finally gave for it at the end of the show was less than satisfactory

"It's like the Bermuda triangle, we send messages around the world, they go through the Bermuda triangle and end up with ourselves in Japan 10 years earlier

but to be fair, the story didn't need the time travel explained, so I didn't really dwell on it and I'm more disappointed that they wasted time trying to explain it instead of just leaving it unexplained. The story itself? We have main character girl Naho who's been afflicted with the disease of denseness that normally affects male main characters. She is very shy and unconfrontational as a teenager so at the age of 27 she and her friends have a lot of regrets, so she sends her past self a letter telling her what went wrong and how to fix it. Cryptically of course. And that was a fairly fun part of the show, as events came up and the young Naho had to struggle with what to do now she knows what will happen - although it seems she never reads ahead. The other fun part of the show was how nice and together the main friendship group was, really pleasant watching as they stick together through all the trials that come up.

17. Dusk Maiden Of Amnesia

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7d4s9QJ2Y1qjhgxjo1_500.png

Anime Rank: #22 in all-time

 

Genre: Comedy mystery supernatural romance (verging on horror at times)

 

Tentacle Rating: 5/10 - could work as a western show, has a few weird parts and characters being a bit 'sexually liberal', but all in all not too weird, not too normal

 

Music: The reason I watched this in the first place was of course because I got obsessed with the remix of

, which will be making a major splash in my songs EOY, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that though. The original is great and emotional too. The opening also had a slightly creepy atmospheric J-pop-rock theme. So I liked that too.

 

Best Girl Characters: Yuuko Kanoe, the girl in the Requiem imagery, is easily the best character in here, she's got a great personality and the story does revolve around her. That was a major strength of this. I could take or leave the rest of the characters and one of the other members of the cast is very annoying. Yuuko drives this show.

 

This is the anime that I watched first in the year after finishing Love Live, the last one I watched for my 2015 list, so it's the one I'm having the hardest time remembering things about. But I definitely remember it was funny (due to Yuuko's love of practical jokes) and creepy in pretty much equal measure. The main characters go to a school that has a huge rundown spooky wing (so you barely see anyone but the four main students) where a ghost was believed to have died years ago and the first thing that you see is that the main characters have started a school club to investigate paranormal happenings. The story is then about unravelling the mystery of the ghost. The best part I remember is the first half of the first episode where I, knowing nothing about the show, had the exact situation laid out to me in a few very memorable scenes to reveal that

Yuuko is the ghost and it's her story about her love with Teiichi that's going to drive the rest of the show

. When Requiem finally came on in the show itself I kind of broke down into tears. It's not got the most standout plot overall but it's a solid show.

 

16. ReLIFE

Anime Rank: #21 in all-time, #6 in anime airing in 2016

 

Genre: Slice-Of-Life with one element of science fiction, goes into drama

 

Tentacle Rating: 5/10 for the plot being 'man in his 20s goes back to highschool looking like a teenager with this new drug'. Less dodgy than it sounds for a variety of reasons but I think that premise would need some altering if it were to be a non-anime thing.

 

Music: OP didn't really stand out to me that much, I suppose it was alright. Similarity to Orange's OP, in fact a lot of things about this anime and that were similar and I was watching them at the same time.

 

Best Girl Characters: Well the main character is pretty good as he's suitably snarky although he's not quite at Kyon level. Yoake is uncannily similar to Koizumi though, so I get creeped out by him in the same way. And An is a very fun character. Mostly a very pleasant cast.

 

ReLife comes at about the middle of my rank in pretty much all situations. It's fairly middle-of-the-road as far as the shows I watch go, enjoyable plot with a good driver for the plot, something that I bet some people would like to see implemented, an experimental new drug that makes adults look ten years younger so that they can go back to high school and have a second chance to 'get the grades they need' to have a better life. Because they've hit rock bottom. The main character has, and he's going to be a test subject for this new drug to make sure it works. When he joins school it turns out he underestimates how much work high school is and hijinks ensure as his experience of life matters and apathetic attitude clashes with the enthusiasm and bright young minds in the school. And this anime uses a really cool 'funny face' that the characters use when they're being mischievous or banterous with each other that I find just brilliant. There is quite a lot of development for everyone as the series goes and it ends on a very positive and happy point. I didn't race through it but I enjoyed what was there and the drama it turns out was a good warm-up for some of the new drama I was going to face.

 

(so apparently it was a bit funny putting all those 5 on one post)

This is where for me all the shows get pretty much perfect and I thoroughly enjoyed most parts of them. So shows I think are excellent are going to miss the top 10.

 

15. Your Lie In April

http://img00.deviantart.net/7457/i/2016/226/5/f/your_lie_in_april_by_azu_chan-dadx2mv.jpg

(the quality of fanart for this anime is just incredible)

Anime Rank: #19 in all-time

 

Genre: Drama involving a focus on classical music performances

 

Tentacle Rating: 2/10 - there is a bit of slapstick comedy that at times feels a little out of place which is a shame because otherwise I'd actually be considering showing this to my mother (who is a violinist by trade). It's an incredible story that deserves to transcend medium.

 

Music: Naturally. The ending and opening themes, particularly the first opening, rise the music to the appropriate level of drama and feel in place with the classical themes of the show, considering they are still pop tracks. And in the show there are tons of performance pieces from Chopin and Tchaikovsky and the like, which come across beautifully in the soundtrack, coupled as they are to the plot making them directly emotional.

 

Best Girl Characters: I guess I really identified quite strongly with Arima, which is good, because this is his story.

 

There's so much to discuss about Your Lie In April that I doubt I could quite do it justice in this paragraph. I'll first say the effect it had on me. It got me wanting to learn piano again. And I've played a lot more than I used to lately, getting back into it, but if only I could run my fingers over the keys like Arima does. And he spends quite a long time in the anime unable to play anything because of a (psychological) condition he has and yet he still comes across as a master. That struggle he goes through throughout the anime, to make something of himself, to allow people to feel his emotion in the music when he was a mere 'perfect puppet' before, able to play everything note-perfect but without feeling. The story is him meeting Kaori in a park and developing a relationship with her as the girlfriend of his best friend, where he is referred to as the unimportant 'Friend A'. And he and Kaori go do music concerts together. His relationship with Kaori influences that of course, as she puts everything into her violin playing and he himself gets inspired to play better. And he's surrounded by friends who want him to be happy, even his competitors learn to respect him. And yes. This anime made me so hyper aware of the emotions that different orchestral arrangements can put into classical pieces such that no two performances sound the same that it's made me keep an eye out for that ever since (and pretend to be jotting down notes in the way that the judges watching each performance do). And it's an incredibly emotional and well-told story besides.

I did cry at the end, I would be surprised if anyone wouldn't and the only reason I'm not saying this outside of spoilers is so that people don't come away thinking 'this anime will make you cry' is all this anime is because it is quite a bit more than that and just having that expectation tends to spoil it

 

 

14. Bakemonogatari

(yay catgirls)

Anime Rank: #17 in all-time

 

Genre: who the f*** knows? mystery, experimental, avant-garde, parody, comedy, and supernatural are all words I'd say are in there but none really begin to describe it well.

 

Tentacle Rating: A solid 9/10. The story structure and whole presentation of this show is incredibly weird to start off with and that's before you get main character Araragi fighting with a small girl, building up harems of girls with something supernaturally wrong with them and the bluntness and sexual openness of about.... all the characters. I believe this is kind of the point. But it's still damn weird.

 

Music: Unusually, the opening theme kept changing, to songs wildly different in style and tone, depending on which girl the episode was focusing on. Staple Stable, the first in this video is probably the best. I actually ended up falling in love with

more, it was more consistently there and once I'd watched part a certain point in the anime the lyrics became really powerful.

 

Best Girl Characters: What this entire show revolves around. If you don't like the characters, good luck liking any of the episodes. I myself LOVED Senjougahara as she was darkly sarcastic and Tsubasa became really good near the end.

 

Bakemonogatari literally means 'Ghost story' and the plot can be described as 'guy finds spirits living within girls that he knows and tries to cast them out or fix the problems they have'. He, Araragi was also recently a vampire but that's not important right now (it will be in the later Monogatari shows that I haven't watched yet I assume, Bakemonogatari being the first part of the story but not first chronologically). One day Senjougahara falls down the stairs into his arms and after he finds out that she weighs nothing, she stabs him with a stapler. And that's one of the more normal parts of the plot. But the most notable thing about Bakemonogatari, and all Monogatari, is the presentation. In that it literally looks like a presentation. Or a Powerpoint. Some people call it Powerpoint: The Anime. At random times different 'slides' containing information will flash up on the screen containing plot points and then flash away too quickly for you to read them. And very little 'happens' in the episodes. There's a bit of action, but 90% of the episodes is Araragi and one of the girls waxing lyrical about some philosophical point that's relevant to what they're talking about right now. Or it could be on the specific supernatural point because the supernatural spirits, a snail meant to slow people down, a crab that takes your weight, they're not normal spirits. But mostly it's an anime of people having conversations - so you'd better be good at reading subtitles as they also slip in tons of Japanese puns and play on words as much as they can. It's almost trying to be too clever for its own good but I managed to keep up and I feel really quite rewarded for doing that. And it's a very open anime, no subject is too taboo. Violence, sexuality, the author could have written a dissertation for this story and it wouldn't have turned out too differently. It got better as it went on and I got used to the style and became invested in the characters. I've been meaning to go onto the next show, Nisemonogatari but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I really should do that soon. An anime that... if the anime world were mostly made up of 'pop song' animes, this would be something very indie and obnoxiously hipster, yet incredible and raved about by the few who decide to sink into it. I definitely enjoyed it quite a lot.

 

13. Erased

http://data.whicdn.com/images/219996500/large.jpg

Anime Rank: #16 in all-time, #5 in anime airing in 2016

 

Genre: Mystery Thriller

 

Tentacle Rating: 1/10 - as I'll explain in a short while, one of the West's biggest shows this year had some notable similarities to this but was probably weirder. This is very much something with few anime trappings and just a dramatic storytelling. Definitely one I recommend people check out, I hooked Jacob through this one.

 

Music: The opening is very upbeat and fun, probably in contrast to the rest of this anime. It does feel slightly nostalgic though. I briefly got into the ending a bit more though, no one talked about it but it's a very

.

 

Best Girl Characters: Who doesn't want to protect Kayo? And Satoru and Kenya were very enjoyable and mature, that's a criticism I've heard of this anime, that the kids talk like grownups but if it makes them more bearable for the purposes of a story...

 

I wasn't sure what this was before I watched it and it only became clear to me by the end of the first episode so I would recommend not reading what follows but I'm going to continue to talk about it and not spoiler tag it because it'd be hard to hide the entire plot of this anime. Only I did gasp at the end of the first episode when I realised how the plot was going to play out.

 

Anyway. Before Stranger Things took the Western World back to the 80s when we were all kids, the biggest anime of the Winter season was already doing that, although by the more natural method of mental time-travel. And if we're talking thrillers, Erased really had me on the edge of my seat better than most this year because it talks about replaying an old murder. And that is one of the creepiest things I can think of, reading old murder spree details on Wikipedia is one of the more grimly fascinating pastimes I occasionally partake in (and wondering if time travel was a thing, how they could be fixed). Erased, or in Japanese, The Town Without Me, brings this back to a cold winter in northern Japan in the 80s where children were abducted and brutally murdered. Only this time, the main character has made it his mission to save the children who died. Two of these children were in the same class as him. It was really creepy and scary and honestly the only reason it's outside the top 10 on this list is (real spoilers this time)

the identity of the killer who was obvious to everyone and their grandmother through being literally the only viable option presented to you. But the ending was really positive and happy

.

 

12. Food Wars (Shokugeki No Souma) (Season 1)

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/J1pETyNUJV4/0.jpg

Anime Rank: #14 in all-time, not a rank for 2016 as I didn't actually watch any episodes of it that aired in 2016

 

Genre: Audacious Food Battle Shonen Comedy

 

Tentacle Rating: 11/10 - When the first episode has not three minutes in an image (all the dodgy stuff is in the over-the-top visual reactions of what it feels like to eat the food) that could easily be mistaken for literal tentacle porn if someone walked in on you and didn't look properly... it deserves this. I don't think anything else is quite that bad from memory but it really deserves its accolades of 'If Masterchef included orgasms', 'you know how food makes you feel so good it spontaneously tears all your clothes off' and 'hey what if food porn was like... food and porn at the same time'. Nothing explicit of course, (and it's equal opportunities, it's just as likely to give these over the top reactions and sudden nudity to fat old men as it is to beautiful young women) or it would never have been this popular but definitely a show you want to make sure no one catches you watching. And yet it's so high. Because I enjoyed every second of it.

 

Music: Incredible. Spice and Saachan's Sexy Curry (yes, that is the title) are very pleasant songs to warm you down after an episode of high-octane cooking action.

, the first opening, is an incredible and well building male pop song with a slightly imperfect voice that fits so well. The background music is very lovely and tense through the long explaining scenes. With music like

, you're never going to be bored.

 

Best Girl Characters: Very hard to pick a best girl actually, Megumi is very cute. I always get drawn to characters with blue hair and pink hair and she fits the former. Hisako fits the latter. There's Ikumi Mito who gets a lot of development as well and she's hard to miss in a scene with her bronzed skin and American flagged wear. And the guys, Yukihira, the main character is very charismatic and likeable, it's always a good sign when I count the main character as one I like, and the Aldini twins are great adversaries and I want to root for the less spotlighted Polar Star dormitory characters. I like a lot of these characters.

 

I'm not exaggerating when I say I enjoyed all of this - it's got dodgy as hell scenes to Western eyes but it's such an unabashed, unafraid, totally audacious show in its love of cooking preparation that it's hard not to fall in love with it. It's incredibly funny too, hitting most of the right notes for comedy. I have yet to watch any of the second season but I have decided that I am, with most shows, going to not lose my momentum upon watching them and watch them once the entire season is out. The first season ended with a run of brilliant episodes, the last few focusing on a tournament where nearly every character with any screen time thus far made their own unique and mouth-watering curry. And up before then every episode had had one or two or three similarly excellent dishes presented with cooking skills that seem inhuman. Each time I think something is impossible one of the characters pulls something from somewhere that makes the impossible possible. There's something so enjoyable about it. And like with Your Lie In April making me more interested in piano, this made me more interested in the art of cooking. I think my cooking has literally improved since I started watching this - and I've been far more keen to cook. Eventually I want to try one of the more feasible dishes from this show, lots of them probably aren't really intended to be made, ever, because they use experimental techniques that are impossible to keep together in the iamspamspamamior are too much style over substance in reality but there are a few that could be replicated. I never cared for Masterchef or Great British Bake Off or any show about making food before this. Food Wars made me interested in the art of cooking. Anime is truly magical. And it's for more reasons than the lewdness, it's the way they are so enthusiastic about it and the life-or-seppuku competitions that are portrayed in this beautiful show. I started to really get behind rooting for the large cast of characters by the end (large casts are nearly always better and I think this is the largest cast in my anime list so far, although it's going to be outmatched by what's above it).

 

 

11. Toradora!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TjsjHOp2mAk/T0Pwf0siCEI/AAAAAAAAwug/UBxg2R7WGzM/s1600/Toradora.jpg

Anime Rank: #13 in all time

 

Genre: Romantic comedy that becomes romantic drama later on

 

Tentacle Rating: 3/10 - would be mostly unchanged as a Western highschool romantic comedy although obviously you still have the culture differences between how Japanese teenagers act in comparison to others.

 

Music: Decent openings, cutesy pop songs that I didn't really get very much into. Emotional music when it needed to be.

 

Best Girl Characters: Toradora is all about the characters and all of them were likeable and relatable. Ami I found the most complex and she's been in my avatar for the past month as a reward, outwardly mature and likeable, inwardly sarcastic and childish, she has enough of both to make herself better by the end and although that's not really the main story here, I loved her little arc. Minori is inspiringly positive but has serious depths, Taiga and Ryuji, the main two are adorable in different ways despite being rough on the outside (I have to watch the sub because Taiga's voice just melts me), and Kitamura has an episode or two where he is able to shine as a weird personality.

 

Toradora ('Tiger & Dragon') is the most recent anime I've watched, I've seen it described as the best romantic comedy anime has done, and I'd sort of agree. You spend the episodes really getting to know what makes these characters tick, their vulnerabilities, their strengths, their desires and their ambitions. By the end, you know them. In a way. In only 22 short episodes, you know them. At first though, it's very funny and successfully so as to suck you in when you don't know them. Taiga and Ryuji, are the two most feared kids in the school, one for being a short hair-trigger temper size inadequacy, the other for having a very scary set of glaring eyes. She has a crush on Kitamura, he has a crush on Minori, so, in a deal that's heavily weighted in Taiga's favour at first as she gets to slap him around and call him a dog, they agree to try and set each other up. And so starts a beautiful friendship, lots of Ryuji cooking for Taiga, lots of talking about your true self, and a feels train that's speeding towards the end before you know it. Oh and there are lots of episodes set around Christmas and one of the biggest events in the series happens on the episode of the Christmas Eve party so it's often one that people in the anime community watch around Christmas time. So I was right on time there. Very high quality romantic comedy, and I know that's sometimes a tough statement to make, but one I enjoyed and ended up putting far higher than I expected it to because of its direction and purpose and well-developed characters.

10. Konosuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World

 

http://fanaru.com/konosuba-gods-blessing-on-this-wonderful-world/image/253368-konosuba-gods-blessing-on-this-wonderful-world-megumin-and-aqua-thumbs-up.gif

 

Anime Rank: #12 in all-time, #4 in anime airing in 2016

 

Genre: Fantasy comedy

 

Tentacle Rating: 7/10 - kind of naturally, to do all of the stuff it sets out to do it has to be quite weird as it's mocking shows that are very weird themselves.

 

Music: As with everything else with this anime, the opening theme sounds like a parody of Sword Art Online's opening songs. At least I assume it's got its tongue in its cheek because the opening reel of images look mocking and you learn to expect everything about Konosuba to be mocking.

 

Best Girl Characters: Megumin. Megumin. Megumin. EXPULOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSIIIIIIIOOOOONNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!! Oh and Aqua is a huge bitch but she's so entertaining to watch so I like her too.

 

Konosuba is the funniest anime I have ever watched. I don't say that lightly, most anime comedies have me chuckling at some point but this one had me hugely entertained. It deserves a place in this top 10 solely because of that. It does this by appearing like a completely generic show for the first two minutes where some shut-in gets his wish fulfilment of being transported to a fantasy world after dying and leaving his pathetic old life. And then it shifts gears. Hard. And pulls comedic twists in ways so unexpected I don't even see a problem by saying that they are unexpected. Each new episode brings a new, fresh and exciting look at the absurdities of video game fantasy worlds (i.e. even if you aren't familiar with the many anime shows that have those as their setting it's basically also mocking Skyrim). And one where the main characters are drunkards and layabouts. There's a season 2 coming out this year and given this was also one of the shortest animes I've ever watched with merely 10 episodes, I'm definitely hyped to see more.

 

9. Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works

 

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Anime Rank: #11 in all-time

 

Genre: Fantasy Battle Royale

 

Tentacle Rating: 5/10 - two less than the 2006 version, times have changed and the focus is now on UNLIMITED. BLADE. WORKS. But still a bit of weirdness - but we have a lot more talk about who these characters are.

 

“I am the Bone of my Sword

Steel is my Body and Fire is my Blood.

I have created over a Thousand Blades,

Unknown to Death,

Nor known to Life.

Have withstood Pain to create many Weapons

Yet those Hands will never hold Anything.

So, as I Pray--

Unlimited Blade Works”

 

I need to hope others on here catch on to this meme even if they haven't seen the show because it's one of my new favourite copypastas. For being such a large ham when it's actually said in the show.

 

Music: Very awesome. Particular focus must go to

, the second opening and one that would have probably been my Fate BJSC anime entry if Kalafina hadn't been even better. The opening images that go with Brave Shine are incredible too.

, the first opening, and the second ending are also great. Also if you were in Nuggets, you might remember Garnidelia's Yakusoku video had a lot of swords in a field. Despite that song being newer than the anime and not appearing in it, that's a direct reference to this anime for some reason.

 

Best Girl Characters: You might recognise Rin from one of my avatars. This is because she is one of my closest contenders for being best girl, strong and in control of herself, and very no-nonsense. Definitely struck a chord with me. Archer is much better in this one than he is in the original, and so is Shirou actually. Shinji is even more hammy and hateable, in fact, most of the characters are just better all round.

 

One thing that has to be said about UBW (as I'm calling it in short hand) is the sheer beauty of its animation which is why I've gone out of my way to get a fighting gif for this one. That's just a short clip of magic powers lasting a couple of seconds and yet the work that went into creating that must have been an impressive achievement. It's a good thing ufotable had a lot of money. This has led to the rise of the name Unlimited Budget Works. Even though this is 2014-15 and it's a couple of years old, I would still say it's a solid contender for the most graphically advanced anime ever made. The show is beautiful.

And it appeals to my love of history too, half of the characters from my Pointless hosting this year that I used for the questions were from this show. And the original. Hercules, Medusa, Medea, heroes of legend, referred to as Servants, they've all come to battle in modern Japan over control of the mysterious Holy Grail. They are summoned by modern magicians, and each hero occupies one of the seven slots of the legendary hero classes, Saber, Archer, Rider, Caster, Lancer, Berserker and Assassin. To hide their identities and prevent their opponents from learning their special abilities (called Noble Phantasms), they are normally referred to by those names and I only say what they are because for those it makes little difference to the story. Shirou and Rin are two of the modern magicians, Shirou a bit unwittingly. The catch is that in order to get the Holy Grail, they must battle to the death until only one Master remains. This is how I was introduced to that central concept of Fate and apparently this is the worst one to do it in out of the two Stay Nights and Zero - but the prologue episode for this did the job pretty convincingly while I had no idea what was going on. It's the same basic story as Fate/Stay Night but the ending and the journey to get there diverges a lot. There's much more of a focus on Rin and Archer in this version rather than Saber, which, I like Saber, but I like Rin and Archer more and this felt far more exciting and dangerous for all characters as it advanced pretty rapidly towards the end over merely 24 episodes. I also got a bit of real life relevancy from this as a couple of friends brought it up out of nowhere about a month after I finished (and had moved on to Zero) so I got to have that rare moment of excitedly discussing anime in real life.

Top notch tense anime fights, lots of morality discussion, I didn't touch on that much so I'll do so now. There's some great themes particularly about selfishly having higher ideals and planning to sacrifice yourself when doing so does not fix the problem. The best comes at the end of 'A Visitor Approaches Lightly' where Archer berates Shirou for basically all of this, as he has been fighting merely for the idea of being a hero, an idea that he borrowed from idolising someone else and as such has no real reason for fighting on his own. Essentially practical nihilism against reckless idealism. Shirou then resolves to prove Archer wrong. That, helped by the music and dive into the ending, really stuck with me. I credit this one for introducing me to a franchise full of all the things I want from anime, fights, history, excitement and discussion on morality and the human condition. And those discussions certainly aren't done yet.

 

8. Psycho Pass

Anime Rank: #9 in all time

 

Genre: Dystopian cop thriller

 

Tentacle Rating: 1/10, the West has always had a love affair with these genres lately and the only reason for the one is the uniquely Japanese cute robots of the government that are used to calm and restore order in an exaggerated version of the tactics the Japanese forces use now. And yeah, like with Cowboy Bebop, this is a very good show for someone who's a fan of TV but not necessarily a fan of anime. In fact I'd recommend it above that one.

 

Music: Not pop or pop rock. This is probably the most 'indie' I've seen an anime opening. Abnormalize is very reminiscent of mid 00s progressive rock or alt metal. The second,

is that rare unicorn of an anime song that has lyrics in English and it is a total rock tune. Very different from the normal anime.

 

Best Girl Characters: Tsunemori became one of my avatar characters so there's that. As the lead, it's very nice seeing her at the helm, she's competent, brilliant and far from being the jumpy newbie she's made out to be in the first episode, she grows a most incredible backbone throughout the show. Kagari and Old Cop-San Masaoka are also very watchable and easy to root for. And Makishima. Everything about Makishima was brilliant.

 

Set in a Japanese city in 2100 or thereabouts where all crime has been eliminated, Psycho Pass owes a lot to classic dystopian literature and wears that on its sleeve, with multiple name drops of the likes of Philip K Dick and George Orwell as well as quoting liberally from philosophy and ancient stories (there's a quote from the parable of the wheat and the tares in what is possibly the most appropriate situation for that reference ever devised by a story) left right and center. Most of that done by the eventual villain of the series, Makishima, a classic card-carrying, camp, hammy villain yet with noble motives, I love him. In the end, he's only part of the story though. The Sibyl System that stops crime happening for the majority of people also determines who gets to live and die if their likelihood to commit a crime, their Crime Coefficient, goes too high. It's then that police can enforce actions on criminals, they can use their guns once intent to commit a crime is detected - the perfect crime system. The Sibyl System also decides for you what career you will be best suited to so that everyone does not have the stress about worrying what they can do and can spend their best efforts making something of their lives. It's certainly a very effective dystopia, peaceful and mostly undisturbed by criminals. Of course, the story changes that but I think what most impressed me is how well structured this world is, it's essentially the perfect dystopia, no plot holes, a system that has several good arguments for implementing and a lot of real world analogies that can be made through the stories - my favourite analogy being an episode that literally looks at how online celebrities can affect people as it shows the logical extreme of a huge virtual reality net where people can hangout with celebrities who are famous for nothing all day every day. It's the logical extreme of Youtube vloggers and I'm amazed that this show included that in it. I wrote a blog article about exactly that, this show is excellent at finding an aspect of our society and logically exaggerating it to introspect ourselves, and it's for that reason it gets a place in my top 10.

 

it's also written by Gen Urobuchi who's one of the holy trinity of anime

 

7. Parasyte ~the maxim~

 

Anime Rank: #8 in all-time

 

Genre: Science Fiction Horror

 

Tentacle Rating: 6/10 - I mean, look at what's actually going on there. I think it being a horror loses it a couple of points though as if it were a non-anime it would still be accepted by that audience and aside from the parasitic alien monsters who make tentacle limbs of themselves it's very mature and normal. Also I think they tried a live-action version of this and this is something that really works only in animated form. For best effect at least.

 

Music:

is one of the most awesome hardcore screamo songs I've heard and it being attached to an opening of an anime as prestigious as this... *.* it's so energetic. And I've made everyone listen to the beautiful and emotional

from this too. Over the course of the anime you also grow to love Migi's Theme too and now I'm listening to it I want to watch this entire show again. One of the best musics an anime has had.

 

Best Girl Characters: The main duo, Shinichi and Migi carry this show so well that you almost could have anyone filling the other roles as, like any self-respecting man and his right hand, they have an incredible relationship and bounce off each other so well. That came out the way I meant it to. But Kana is a very interesting girl to help the series along and Satomo is I guess... okay. One thing about this is that the animation design for the humans is far more realistic-looking than most animes so while the characters don't stand out as much as they do in most anime they do feel more... human.

 

Based on an 80s-90s manga that finally got a properly good anime adaptation in 2014, Parasyte feels its older influences by having limited adaptations for the additions of technology, and as such is a desperate struggle of one boy to survive against an invading alien force, a group of parasites who have the ability to take over any human and act exactly like them to those they know, only revealing themselves for the monsters they are when it's too late and you're going to die. Shinichi was meant to be one of these but he stopped the parasite invading his brain such that it could only eat away his right hand instead. So instead of being a parasite with one brain, he now has two brains in his body, one human and one parasite. And he's lost control of his right arm now and so we call that parasite, the friendly parasite, Migi (who's a bit cold and calculating but has the most wonderful unique voice in the sub, I can't praise that voice work enough). Actually, with the alien parasites invading your brain and the 90s setting, it feels very adult Animorphs, doesn't it? I used to be really into Animorphs, that's why I've made the connection, but here it's a lot more horror and twists and turns around every corner and keeping you on the edge of your seat and actually, for the first half of this year it feels like I watched some very thrilling animes. This one was in January, with Erased and Fate soon to be watched, so it's something I've been missing a little lately. Although I've had Psycho Pass and Death Note to keep me up to speed. I don't know. Anyway, Parasyte had a wonderful open feeling to it, a lot of excitement with ever present danger and it really is a great TV show. Very anime, but also very good and open for anyone to jump in and get sucked into the adventures of one man and his right hand against the world.

 

6. Death Note

 

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Anime Rank: #7 in all-time

 

Genre: Psychological Thriller + tons of mind games

 

Tentacle Rating: 1/10? The only supernatural element is the Death Note and the shinigami themselves, maybe it's the fact that most of what I've watched so far has been in dub so I'm scoring it low and normal. It's very normal as far as anime goes. It's probably arguably the most well-regarded anime of the 21st century.

 

Music: I had almost forgotten

that Terra Avium entered to an old BJSC spinoff but here it is fronting the opening of Death Note. Glad I made that connection eventually. Nothing else so far.

 

Best Girl Characters: Not really any girls as far as I watched, but I am captivated by Light. And L. As you're supposed to. Both are incredible characters and I actually feel more compelled to root for Light even though he's the more insane of the two.

 

Notice that 'as far as I watched'. It's because I haven't finished this yet. And hence I was extra careful with finding a picture. It's not because I don't want to. Every time I finish an episode I want to go straight on to the next one. However I've been watching this with someone else and watching a long TV show with someone else on a basis of 'whenever we say we should watch more' means that progress has been incredibly slow. So slow that I'm starting it in sub again (and racing through that) because I want to see how it ends and, no disrespect to the dub, which is a totally fine dub, but I do like watching these shows with subtitles in the actual Japanese.

If you're not familiar, Death Note is a book that gods of death, shinigami, have and one, Ryuk, has dropped it into the human world where a student named Light Yagami picks it up and finds its power, you write someone's name in the book, and they die. He starts using it to kill criminals and draws media attention and a huge police investigation led by the mysterious L to uncover the identity of the killer. I haven't finished it and it gets more complicated than that but that's the very basics.

But yet, even though I've only watched about 12 episodes and there's still plenty to go, I'm willing to put it at 7th in my all-time list and 6th in this list. I predict it'll be even higher once I finish it if it keeps up this quality. Each new episode pulls out new things from under the rug, it places two incredible minds at work trying to suss each other out without knowing the other's identity, there's a huge morality drama of whether Light is right and that he is creating a better world, I've wondered ever since picking it up what I would do with the Death Note and talked about that and scarily, I can't say that I wouldn't do what Light does, try and make a better world with this power. Although he has far more ego than I do.

Each episode of this is incredible. Whether you like anime or not, whether you like thrillers or not, I definitely recommend this as a show YOU SHOULD WATCH. For like, anyone. It's that accessible.

Almost forgot to mention this beautiful time-honoured scene from Death Note:

 

 

Anyway, on to my top 5.

 

5. RWBY (volumes 1-4 with 4 ongoing)

 

http://i.imgur.com/st4rcUr.gif

(god if this wasn't the greatest moment in the history of free internet shows)

 

Anime Rank: #6 in all-time, #3 in anime airing in 2016

 

Genre: Fantasy (friendly to weapon-obsessed nuts fantastical weapon connoisseurs)

 

Tentacle Rating: -1/10 - minus one point for actually being a Western show, plus two for the plot being centred around a boarding school where people learn to use special powers, almost like magic... oh. Scratch that. This is questionable in being in this rank rather than in the TV rank but there's a reason for it.

 

Music: Oh my god the music, I think I got more into music from RWBY than any other show this year. There's

of course but along with that there's an entire album of pop-rock for each season volume and it's all incredible.

is wistful and epic,

could fit alongside pop favourites, and those and more will be making appearances in my songs EOY, I know the earlier volumes better so I know more from there but it's all wonderful. The soundtracks are fairly great too, when they don't get interrupted for songs.

 

Best Girl Characters: I have a really hard time choosing but I really have to go for Weiss because she grows and she's so watchable and kind of relatable. Although Blake is just as relatable, just for another side of me, the shy introverted yet inordinately passionate side. One of those two, the black or the white. I love Ruby, Yang, Pyrrha and Emerald too and Neptune and Sun end up being fun because they're such doofuses (and Sun being literally based on a Chinese legend is quite cool). But none can really stand before the eccentric and over-the-top history professor Dr Oobleck who is my personal idol and who I hope to be in 20 years, swigging coffee, talking excitedly about what history means to the world and being an awesome shot with a flaming thermos bat.

 

So RWBY is not exactly an anime. It's a half anime. Made by Americans. I've put it in here largely because the style of the animation and the focus on fighting scenes and magical girls is very anime and yet also western. It's neither and both. It's where the two cultures meet and they've made an internet show that's freely accessible on Youtube and Crunchyroll that is far better quality than a show distributed through those methods has any right to be. It's one of the shows I've gotten so obsessed with this year that I've actually watched it through twice. Now this is easy to do because the episodes are so short, only 15 minutes at the longest, but still, that's something I don't normally do with just any show.

It's set in a fantasy world where most of the living space is made uninhabitable by evil black monsters that look like animals but are really these manifestations of evil called Grimm, who feed on and are attracted to fear and conflict. I.e. something for all the ridiculous weapons this series has to harmlessly kill. They are hunted by Hunters and Huntresses, trained combat specialists who spend a lifetime protecting the few human kingdoms who exist in this world, and it's from this group that all the main characters are drawn. At least they're Huntresses in training at the start of the series, albeit still very competent in combat. In the school they're training at, they are split into groups of four, protecting each other and helping each other, and one of these main groups has all the main characters, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang. Making... RWBY. All the groups are named after colours, as are many of the characters (Ruby, Weiss, Jaune, Emerald), other teams include JNPR (Juniper), CRDL (Cardinal), CFVY (Coffee), SSSN (Sun), ABRN (Auburn), NDGO (Indigo) and BRNZ (Bronze). I'm waiting for MRNF (Amaranth).

The first volume is probably the worst. It takes about an hour and a half for the entirety of it though so it's not worth skipping when many TV series are four times as long. It sets up the story well and has some very memorable scenes in it but if you are fussy about inexperienced voice actors then it does admittedly show those off quite badly. They get better and better throughout the show though. And the show starts to get a hold of its identity, it has a fairly generic setting in the first volume but the second volume expands the world and the danger and basically everything is better from then on (and when your season starts off with the first episode almost entirely dedicated to an epic (in the true sense of the word) food fight scene, you got a good thing going. Though of course it gets much more deadly than that but volume 2 is a load of fun and what got me really hooked on the show after sticking with a rather weak volume 1.

Volume 3, the one airing 2015-16, was even better. Dedicating an entire season to a tournament full of breathtaking fighting battles (the fight scenes in this show are half the reason to watch it, they are so fast-paced it's glorious), this was the season that really got shit going and I loved every minute of it (particularly one episode, Never Miss A Beat, brought out some excellent musical and visual weapons). I am hesitant to say much more but basically the tone and setting of the show has changed hugely for volume 4 that is currently airing. As much of volume 4 will be contained within next year I'll save most of that for next year but I've already been doing weekly reviews of it on my blog as it comes out (although I still haven't seen the latest episode yet so should get to that) so I'll have plenty of material for that.

 

4. Angel Beats

 

Anime Rank: #5 in all-time

 

Genre: Comedy-drama

 

Tentacle Rating: 0/10 - I would say this is one of the better gateway drug animes, supernatural plot, short and easy to finish, the humour is accessible and not Japanese or niche focused humour like in say, Monogatari or Konosuba. The drama is poignant and relatable too.

 

Music: The music was a key part of this anime's enjoyment for me, and it really affected me. The piano plink plonks in the opening My Soul, Your Beats, the slow beauty of the ending

, and finally the glorious and heart-wrenching

. I prefer listening to the Yui version in that link in general because the other version, the one played

had a different arrangement as if another character was singing it and it was that that smashed my heart into pieces. I don't want to overload that again. And of course Girls Dead Monster (the in-story band) provide a great soundtrack for the rest of the series.

 

Best Girl Characters: I use Tenshi from this anime looking up at the sky as my blog header, and she's one of those silver-haired deep emotions girls that anime loves throwing at me and making me care for so her of course, despite being the antagonist. Yui grows into a great character over the course of the show, as do Yurippe (kind of a budget Haruhi but I'll take her) and Hideki. Naoi has a lovely little mini-arc, TK and Matsushita 5-dan form an excellent little duo and even if you watch the sub be prepared for TK making occasional nonsensical statements in English. If Iwasawa had gotten more screentime I'd love her too, she's kind of like Hayley Williams in anime form. There's a huge number of characters for the length of anime it is and in only a few short episodes you get the gist of most of them. Some are only there to fill a comedic role, like the Completely Generic Student (Ooyama), the Belligerent Idiot (Toda), No-Nonsense Tsundere (Shiina) or the Smart Guy (Christ Takeyama) but they're still part of the team and a few extra episodes (OVAs) get some of the best out of the side characters.

 

Angel Beats is consistently funny. It's only 13 episodes long and most people say that that wasn't nearly enough to tell the story it wants to tell. It's about a young guy who dies and goes to the afterlife, where he finds a number of people who have also died young and are battling against Tenshi (the angel) in a setting that is basically Purgatory High School to keep from going on into what they believe to be nothingness. Most of the school is populated by NPCs, non-humans created by the angel who just act like humans to give the inhabitants some sense of normality. The named characters have formed a club to keep everyone together and they spend their time launching strategic missions against the angel.

 

I went through Angel Beats knowing it would be similar fare to Charlotte, something I watched and enjoyed last year, but even better (and I was seemingly one of the few to enjoy Charlotte a lot so I had that going for me), but I wasn't quite prepared for how significantly it would affect me. I'd heard it would. I hadn't heard that it was going to be funny. And that I'd enjoy the story so much I'd want to continue with these characters and see what happens after the end of the show. (some major spoilers on tone)

I broke down crying at the end of it because of how desperate it all was and seeing the characters disappear one by one from the ending screen where before they had been appearing one by one and I'd watched that carefully each episode, it was a glorious outpouring of emotions. Comedy-dramas really are the ones to hit your emotions the most, because you don't expect it

That's why I've played Ichiban No Takaramono a lot to this day pretty much, because it reminds me of the ending and I never want to forget it.

 

3. Re:Zero - Starting Life In Another World

http://i.imgur.com/H5Euq40.gif

 

Anime Rank: #4 in all time, #2 in anime airing in 2016, best anime that debuted this year

 

Genre: Suffering time. Or Intense fantasy drama

 

Tentacle Rating: 6/10 - Plenty of wispy magical tentacles, catboys and best girl wars, the premise is understandable though. Might be just a little too weird for non-anime fans but there's so much action and excitement it's overcome-able.

 

Music: Rather good but hasn't taken over my life as much as the music in the rest of my top 5 has. The second ending,

is a very enjoyable piece of subtle modern pop though, giving a great lead-in to the second half ending episodes, where it was really needed to take away the suffering.

 

Best Girl Characters: I'm one of the few who seems to be Team Emilia. As you might have guessed from this image which shows her in her best light, playing with Puck, the cat. He's also awesome. As he was in my avatar for a long time. Something that gets me to change my avatar away from an anime girl is quality, as Brett noticed. But yes, I am Team Emilia, because it's the right team and Emilia is an incredible person, as she proves in the final episode as well as proving it right at the beginning. She is less present for the middle part of the series and that is where the divide lies. Because that's where the other team comes in. Team Rem. Rem is probably the most popular character to emerge ever since I've been following the anime community and the amount of fanart and love I've seen for her is incredible. I don't dislike her, she's great (as is her twin sister Ram). She also proves she'd be a good choice (yes, like in Twilight teams, this is a choice between which girl the main character chooses to hook up with but it's better because this has a good story). But she, for me, is too passive. She would be a great friend, but the way Emilia tries to appear strong throughout, including cutting off Subaru when he's being too much of an asshole, I think that's far more admirable.

 

Beyond the inevitable clash of waifu wars, Puck is great, Crusch, she is possibly the most capable leader in the land, Felix is great although him being a catboy rather than a catgirl is still very confusing to me (because he looks and sounds just like a girl but we're assured he has the right parts), Wilhelm proves his awesomeness several times over the series, Subaru has his moments of being awful but as a main character is likeable about half the time. The other half is willing him to go kill himself. And Betelguese is a very memeable villain.

 

Re:Zero has been pretty definitively the most popular anime of 2016 over both Japan and the Western World. Apparently lately there has been some figure skating thing challenging it but as someone who always roots for fantasy, and was checking anime boards throughout the summer, you could not escape Re:Zero's dominance over that part of the world. Why? Well, like with Konosuba, it's deconstructing elements and tropes of the rather overused story baseline 'main character gets transported to fantasy world and has adventures', but instead of doing it through a route of comedy, it's going through a route of realistic, painful, mostly mature, drama. And you keep coming back for more of that. Even if you don't want to. The premise, in something that will be familiar to anyone who's played Dark Souls (apparently, I have never played that but I hear deaths are common there) is that Subaru, the best car main character transported into this world has been given the power of 'Return By Death'. Which means whenever he dies he returns, back in time and alive, to his nearest save point. Just like in a video game. Except this is real life and there are painful consequences and mind-altering traumas associated with dying over and over again. And if he doesn't get the entire run right, people who he's come to care about through spending far more time with them than they have with him (causing problems of over-familiarity with his relationships at times), will probably end up dead too. His task is to find the only viable route through this world where everything seems out to kill him and drag him into a pit of despair.

 

What's worse is that Subaru is a bit of an asshole and assumes that this fantasy world is entitled to make him a hero, which is the result of about half of his downfalls. It's at that point that you do want him to die. Yet, despite that, there's good writing, characters grow, characters give long speeches and conversations that develop them and make everything right with the world, there's plenty of action, there's a lot of suspense, there's so much that this is so far one of the few animes I have watched pretty much as it came out because I was so hooked that I could not wait until it was all out there and ready to watch, I had to know, each week, where it would go next. And I really hope that a season 2 materialises at some point, despite being the most successful anime of this year by a long shot, even successful anime have a hard time getting sequel seasons and the source material isn't all quite published yet. So we could be waiting a while but this was a great show to dominate the summer and I hope an anime like this comes out every year because then I won't ever run out of amazing anime to get into.

 

However, as good as Re-Zero was, and how it pretty much dominated this year for anime, it can't quite get into my top 2, which have really been shows that have influenced my year and my thinking like few others have.

2. Assassination Classroom (seasons 1 and 2)

 

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Anime Rank: #3 in all-time, #1 in anime airing in 2016

 

Genre: Comedy + inspiration for everyone involved in the learning process

 

Tentacle Rating: 8/10. Yep, one of my favourite animes has a large amount of tentacles involved. I hope you're not surprised. It's largely because the main premise involves an octopus-like being who naturally has lots of tentacles. And enjoys having tentacles so uses them in class work and part of the main story is centred around tentacles. In fact that's probably the only reason I'm rating it so high, it'd literally get a 12 rating in terms of classification here, there's not much weird besides that.

 

Music: As you probably know, I got into 3-Nen E-Gumi Utatan (literally '3E Class Band'), the voice actors singing the openings, all four of which, Seishun Satsubatsuron, Jiriki Hongan Revolution, Question and Bye Bye Yesterday are excellent. Jiriki and Bye Bye Yesterday were the ones that really got me getting chills to the opening images and listening numerous times outside the anime though. The former is exciting, the latter emotional. Question is a bit of a middle in between those two. The ending, Hello Shooting Star, by moumoon, is in contrast to the boisterous openings, quiet and reserved. As is the second ending,

. All the music was excellent. The in-episode soundtrack was just as amazing, for example each time this

played played you sat up and paid attention. Definitely an anime where the music elevated it above the norm.

 

Best Girl Characters: And the other reason why this one really struck a chord with me was the huge amount of characters it had on offer. Most animes, hell, most TV shows, when they're about a classroom, focus on 4 to 8 students. Maybe a few more if you're lucky, but the rest of the class will be background extras, in live-action or anime. Not Assassination Classroom. Each and every member of the class was important, had a role to play in the plot of episodes, got their own screen-time and while it focused more on the students with coloured hair who were the real main characters, you got to know each and every one of the others so that they felt like a team. Eventually, after much checking of the character page on TVTropes. I also figured out all of their names. All 30 of them. That was definitely worth it. Out of the less important students, I really grew to like Nakamura, because she has a cheeky sense of humour, Takebayeshi, because glasses and clever, Chiba, because of his mysterious hair and face and Kanzaki, because she's sweet and lovely. What makes this better is that in numerous episodes there will be something that applies to all of the students, like a nickname or what they like or what role they've taken in this latest class activity and the show pans over all of them so if you want you can pause and see who got what. And, as you're not a teacher, you're just an observer, you are completely free to pick favourites like I have.

 

The main characters were eminently likeable though, which is where the strength of this comes in. The reason you absolutely have to watch this subtitled is the incredible voice of the Japanese VA of Koro Sensei, the teacher, the tentacle monster, the reason for the premise. His demented chuckling is brilliant. And he has quite the personality as you spend all two seasons exploring his depths, including why he wanted to become a teacher, which is probably one of the greatest strengths of this anime.

Karma and Kaede both have their moments, Karma has a lot of overconfidence and recklessness that shouldn't endear you to him but as the bad boy who's nevertheless a genius, he's good watching.

 

I have to give the props to main character Nagisa though. If you're on Skype with me, you'll notice my picture there is still that of Nagisa and I only change it away if I have a Skype interview coming up. I really identified with him. And not just because I thought he was a girl for most of the first episode and still really like looking at his character model. He's the sort of student most of us can identify with, has his own struggles, is not the most domineering person in the class but he really latches on to the mission of the series and becomes a much stronger person through it. His successes are the viewers successes and living vicariously through him is amazing. As are his balls of steel.

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The premise of Assassination Classroom is a simple one. A tentacle monster (not an alien, he was born on Earth, thank you very much) has destroyed the moon and threatens to destroy the world if he is still alive at the end of the new school year. His class's task over the next year is to assassinate him by any means they can. The catch. He can move at Mach 20. I.e. very very fast. If any of the students manage it, they get a huge monetary payout. So they are very motivated to kill their sensei. At first. Assassination Classroom is very touching, but along the way, it's a whole load of comedic fun with THAT ridiculous premise, over both seasons. As I've said in the characters section, you really start identifying with them and there's a strong message outside of that. The message of acceptance and equality. Schools are very reputation based. The students in the anime go to a good school, but they are in a separate, remedial class, that has to go to a separate, run-down building at the top of a mountain to learn, and the class is filled with dropouts and losers, all looked down upon (and this is encouraged by the school) by students from the higher achieving classes. As well as assassination, the other part of the series is improving Class 3E's reputation into people who are not taunted and ridiculed every time they appear on the main campus and are actually respected as capable students. It presents the joys of teaching and helping your students grow exceedingly well.

 

And they also have loads of fun with extra-curricular activities learning all the challenges of being capable (and safe) assassins. It goes from episodic romps in season 1 towards arcs that build and build, all the way through Season 2 and that second season, airing its final episodes as I reached the end myself, was one of the most amazing single anime seasons I've ever seen. So much enjoyable content with characters I cared about, and all pretty much very positive stuff. Helped distract from the pits of despair that Re:Zero was sending me into.

 

Over May and June, I was stuck inside working on exams and my dissertation. Once the former was gone, I had quite a bit of independent time. That was mostly spent getting completely obsessed with what was going to happen next with this anime. I think, watching it as I did, when I was about to leave my personal education for what is probably going to be the final time, it really had a significant impact on me and it will stick with me forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Fate/Zero

 

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Anime Rank: #1 in all-time

 

Genre: Fantasy battle royale

 

Tentacle Rating: 4/10 - more grounded and real than Fate/Stay Night but still has big scenes with huge monsters and concepts that could only exist in anime

 

Music: Kalafina's

, Eir Aoi's Memoria, two serious contenders for the best anime opening and the best anime ending I know. Memoria has a ton of relevant historical imagery which always gives me chills and while To The Beginning took a while to grow on me I was listening to it so much since finishing this anime in May all the way through to October. The soundtrack is incredible and I do have to give

as I don't really know the names of specific tracks well enough to associate with them. Just looking them up gave me serious chills from the memory though. When I rewatch this, as will be necessary at some point in the near future, I will note down the music tracks I loved. Music really is at least one third of my love affair with anime, the soundtracks and the opening songs and the closing songs are so often very mesmerising and special in different ways.

 

Best Girl Characters: Waver and Rider are the best duo anyone could ask for, mismatched in size and ability but bonded for life (and my personal fandom of the historical characters behind Rider and Saber made them so brilliant for me, in what other show do you have

Alexander The Great facing off against King Arthur

). Kiritsugu and Saber have a far more serious relationship and that's a dramatic part of this anime. And when Irisviel comes into the picture too, she's sweet and kindly and far more than what her origins should be letting her be. Every other character has a vast array of motivations that lead to them taking part in the war and it is great fun to see all fourteen of the main participants clash upon the battlefield with their opposing ideologies. Obviously, the main inspiration for my Pointless came from here. We should get to the story though.

 

Like with Star Wars, Fate/Stay Night had a prequel written about it, set chronologically in the previous generation of characters, doing a similar kind of thing to the original story, with a shift in tone. Unlike the Star Wars prequels, Zero's shift in tone was to the adult and serious, and also unlike them, this prequel is more highly-regarded than any form of Stay Night. For the wider community and for me as well. Produced in between the two Stay Nights that have already been in this countdown, the light novel and the anime for Fate/Zero uses the historical potential of real legends fighting it out on the battlefield to much better use than Stay Night, a better cast of Servants, with deeper motivations of their own, as well as a load of Masters who unlike in Stay Night, are all (with one exception) adults with tons of life experience, and it feels like a really serious conflict. Add to that the discarded lack of a romantic focus between the main character and one of his rival Masters and/or his Servant and you get a situation where for quite a long time, even if you are familiar with the connections some of the characters have to Stay Night and think they're going to survive, you're still not quite sure who the main character actually is. Who is going to win? Who will make it close to the end? Who will die and who will live? Those were all questions I wasn't entirely sure on for the first 75% of my first watch of Fate/Zero. With the exception of one Servant/Master pair (who are so ridiculously evil that they're enjoyable that way), they all have valid reasons and claims to being the hero of the story.

Again it's a war for the Holy Grail, with seven Masters, humans with magic powers and seven Servants, legendary people from history, in different classes like Archer, Saber, Rider etc, but this time it's a lot more gritty, dark, and without a clear focus on one pair so you get to focus on them all.

There's behind-the-scenes maneuvering that is entirely worthy of Game Of Thrones (you need it in what is basically a seven-way free-for-all), there are strong character motivations for every character, no one is left behind, the fights are fantastic, the fact that you like so many characters but since they are in conflict inevitably some of those you like will die by the other's hand is a very different experience to most shows and it does make it all the stronger. I always like looking at the titles of the episodes and Zero has so many great ones, 'The Fake First Shot', 'A Wicked Beast's Roar', 'Distant Memories', 'Knight On A Two-Wheeled Steed', 'The Ocean At The End Of The Earth', and thankfully all those episodes were just as fulfilling as the titles. It's a powerful, epic anime, telling a weighty and mature story, and it is pretty much an entirely perfect show. While I haven't raved about it like I have with Assassination Classroom, the sheer quality and enjoyment I got from Fate/Zero is enough for me to put it ahead, and put it ahead of Haruhi as well. In fact, it's a good thing for Game Of Thrones that it's still going and has a ton more episodes, otherwise that one might be in danger. But Fate/Zero is so tight on merely 25 episodes, that it tells all it needs to and plays every card it has right, it's worthy of being my #1 anime.

 

~~~

 

 

 

Well. That is a lot of writing I've done. My song list will start shortly, once I've properly compiled it. And rested my writing hand for a day or so. Now I'm finally at the part most people use this forum for. :kink: