Category: Special Articles

The future of this blog: I have no idea, to be honest. Tomorrow I’m going to say goodbye to my lazy student life, and start a five-month internship. It’s going to be the first time in my life in which I’m full time busy with something. After that, I’m planning to find a job, and move out of my father’s house. 2010 is very likely going to be the year with the biggest amount of change in my life, and I’m going to have much less time to work on this blog.

However, I have no idea how much that amounts to. I have no idea whether I’ll still have the time or energy to blog twelve series every week, and I may have to cut back on that amount. In the same way, I don’t think you can expect me to churn out reviews on other anime at the same speed that I’ve been doing for the past years now. If there are delays in posting, it’s also simply because I won’t have as much time on my hand as I once had.

However, I do want you to know that I have no intention to simply quit this blog. At this point I like blogging and the community too much to just go on a permanent hiatus and stop writing. Unfortunately, with my life about to go through huge changes and with the anime industry gearing more and more towards moe and fanservice, I have no idea how I will be thinking about this in a year’s time.

As for my to-watchlist, I might as well give you an update on its status, for when I do get the chance to watch more of it, I’m about to get to the stuff I’ve been really looking forward to: when I started it out, combining it with any additions I made in the process, I had a list of 209 series to go through. At this point there are only 63 series on that list left. As soon as I get to fifty I can get to the stuff that I’ve really been looking forward to (you know, the Honey&Clovers, etc). First I still want to finish off a few sequels or spinoffs before that, though.

If you’re wondering what’s up with this post: I was actually asked by the marketers of AnimeTV to review their first episode. It’s awesome to see such a request from a professional company, but at the same time that’s not going to stop me from giving it a fair review. AnimeTV basically is presented by Johnny Yong Bosch and Christina Vee, and it shows reviews of mainstream anime and interviews of important people in the American anime business. Right from the start it’s clear that it’s aimed at teenagers, rather than a wider demographic, so I’m not exactly the target audience, but here’s what I think about it:

Episodes are split up in three parts. The first part is called the “Hima segment”, where a panel of four people basically discusses what they’ve been watching, reading or playing. Basically a round of quick recommendations. The first part is a pretty nice recommendation for the Strongest Disciple Kenichi; it discusses why it’s more interesting than your average shounen, and even though it would have been interesting to see them discuss some of the lesser parts of the manga, it piqued my interest. After that there was a nice part about a new manga from Clamp and how they refuse to do cute stuff.

The segment completely derails after that, though. An overly obsessed Naruto fangirl starts rambling a completely incoherent story that clearly wasn’t prepared beforehand. In about one minute, she basically did just about everything that you shouldn’t do when making a quick recommendation: it’s incredibly disjointed, nonsensical for people who aren’t familiar with the Naruto franchise, instead of talking about what makes it good, she starts shipping her favourite couples, she imagines herself in the storyline and she actually spoils part of the storyline (way to go in a segment that’s meant to get people interested in a franchise…). This is the kind of talk that you’d expect in a bad fanfiction forum, not in such a professionally produced video like this.

After that another guy talks about the Yugioh trading card game, but he never really says anything about it. If I watched this video without knowing about it, I’d still be clueless. He just rambles on and on about how he pwns at the game, but that’s about it. People from Revision3: you wanted my opinion on this bit, and here it is: dump these two dimwits and replace them with two people who do know how to voice their opinions properly. You’ve got such a great opportunity to record a program to promote anime in a professional environment. You can’t waste it on these two people.

The next segment shows an interview, as we get to see inside the Bang Zoom studios (the same that was invaded by Conan o’Brien a few months ago, apparently), and an interview with a voice actors and one of its executives. This may just be me being outside of this show’s target audience, but that interviewer got very much on my nerves. He placed too much emphasis on himself, and too little on the actual people he tried to interview. I’m not sure whether teenagers would appreciate that style of interviewing more, though. When the interview actually gets to business, I guess it’s interesting enough, though not anything special. The second interview was a bit cheap, because the guy who was interviewed also worked as the producer of AnimeTV. It must not have been hard to get an appointment with him…

The third and final segment is an actual review of a mainstream anime, and I think that this is the best part of AnimeTV. What makes it more interesting than your average review is that the creators basically put four people in one room, and all of them have different opinions on what they watched. This is actually a pretty good way to collect different opinions. The fanboy and fangirl are back, though, and while they’re a bit better here, they pretty much stated the obvious and the girl again couldn’t resist to comment on the hotness on one of the male characters.

My basic issue with AnimeTV is that while they have nice ideas, a lot of the reviewers and interviewers don’t really make use of the unique opportunity here. They’re part of the Invision 3 network, which also has many other shows that are not about anime, and thus it has the potential to get non-anime fans curious into the franchise. If you then have a rambling Naruto fangirl going on and on about how she’d like to marry one of the characters, then that’s only going to have the opposite effect. With good reviewers however, it has the potential to be an interesting show.

Look, I’ve been thinking about this and yeah, I’m going to drop Kimi ni Todoke. It was an interesting enough experience, but it’s at this point become too much of a chore to blog it, as a lot of people pointed out. It could have been a nice slice of life-series, but having to write about it on a weekly basis, it just got on my nerves a little too much.

Now, the question is what to replace it with: what series can I use in replacement to keep me busy this season. I have enough problems finding enough series to blog during this season, so finding an eighth one is going to be virtually impossible. Some people suggested to just blog an older series, and you know what? Why not? This blog started out partially as a review blog of old series anyway.

On top of that, since Kimi ni Todoke was the winner of the “What Show do you want me to blog”-contest back in September, I do want to make up for it somehow and spend the rest of Kimi ni Todoke’s airtime on something more worthwhile.

So here:s the thing: post a comment, leaving the names of up to three anime. The only restrictions are:
– Only 14 episodes or less.
– I haven’t watched it yet. For a quick list, I compiled a quick list here (note the beautiful lay-out) and note that those titles are listed in the way that they appear on AniDB. Any anime not on this list is eligible.
– No movies.

Apart from that, I don’t care: TV-series, ovas, whether they’re 2 years old or 20. Whether it has 13 episodes or only 2 or even 1. Whether it’s an original series or just a continuation. Recommend me the best series with 14 episodes or less that I haven’t seen yet, and I will cover it on a weekly basis just as I do with all of the other series I’m blogging. I don’t care whether it’s only available in raw or even German or French (although do note that it should at least be available somewhere). If the series with the most votes only has 1, 2 or 3 episodes, I’ll probably end up with the top-ranked series that total about 13 or 14 in amount of episodes episodes.

This is a quick poll, the deadline is upcoming Friday January 8th, 23:59GMT and any votes after that won’t count. After that, I’ll start to blog whatever series has the most votes.

Here are the results so far:
Ah! My Goddess – 1
Aria – The Animation – 46
Aria the Origination – 2
Armor Hunter Mellowlink – 1
Bakemonogatari – 1
Black Blood Brothers – 1
Boys Be – 1
Bubblegum Crisis – 1
Cyber City Oedo 808 – 1
Dance in the Vampire Bund – 6
Denpa teki na Kanojo – 2
Diebuster – 6
Divergence Eve – 1
Dual! Parallel Trouble – 1
Durara – 7
El-Hazard: The Magnificent World – 1
Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu – 1
Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid – 1
Gag Manga Biyori – 2
Genshinken – 7
Gravitation – 3
Gunbuster 1988 – 10
Halo Legends – 1
Hatsukoi Limited – 1
Honey and Clover II – 8
I My Me Strawberry Eggs – 2
Innocent Venus – 7
Jinzou Ningen Kikaider – 1
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 1
Kashimasi: Girl Meets Girl – 1
Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo: Kyuuketsuki Densetsu Satsujin Jiken – 1
Kita e ~Diamond Dust Drops~ – 1
Koi Kaze – 50
Loveless – 2
Macross Plus – 9
Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto – 1
Maria Holic – 2
MazinKaiser – 1
Meine Liebe Wieder – 2
Midori no Hibi – 4
Mnemosyne – 6
Nodame Cantabile Finale – 4
Onegai Teacher – 3
Ookami Kakushi – 3
Patlabor OVA I – 1
Patlabor OVA II – 1
Photon – the Idiot Adventures – 1
Read or Die OVA – 1
Record of Lodoss War – 2
Seikai no Monshou – 11
Sketchbook – 6
Sora no Oto – 4
Sweat Punch – 2
The Five Killers – 1
The Great Horror Family – 3
Tide-Line Blue – 1
Victorian Romance Emma – 4
Windy Tales – 8
Yami no Matsuei – 1
A Certain Scientific Railgun – 1
Aria – The Natural – 2
Battle Angel Alita – 1
Black Lagoon – 1
Blue Submarine no.6 – 1
DNA2 – 1
FLCL – 7
Gankutsuou – 3
Ghost in the Shell SAC – 1
Gungrave – 1
Haibane Renmei – 1
Honey and Clover – 6
Hoshi no Koe – 1
Jyu Oh Sei – 1
Kemonozume – 1
Key The Metal Idol – 2
Kikoushi Enma – 1
Kino no Tabi – 4
Kurau – 1
Last Exile – 6
LovelyComplex – 1
Macross – Do you Remember Love – 1
Monster – 13
Mushiuta – 1
Muteki Kanban Musume – 1
Paranoia Agent – 14
Pet Shop of Horrors – 2
Planetes – 7
Princess Tutu – 11
Sengoku Basara – 1
Shamanic Princess – 1
Tenchi Muyo – Ryo-Ouki – 1
Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo – 1
Toradora – 1

The series in italics don’t fit one of the restrictions. Out of the posts that suggested more than three series, I selected the first three that met the restrictions.

Well, so much for the poll. I just discovered that someone has been spamming nearly 30 votes for Koi Kaze. If you’re really going to be that immature about it, then I’ll just cancel this little contest.

I’m still going to blog an old show. Instead, I’ll just pick the series that seems the most interesting out of the ones you suggested. I’ll decide which one it’s going to be after I get home from university.

I think that at the time that I started this blog, I never would have guessed that I’d still have it four years later; it really was created on a whim, and eventually I just never had any intention or reason to quit it. Anyway, today marks Star Crossed’s fourth anniversary. Like I also did in the previous years, here are some statistics:

General Statistics:
Up till now, I’ve made 3019 posts, regularly blogged 108 different television series and 13 movies and OVAs.
The site has been received 3020186 unique visitors, which consist out of 1942846 first time visitors and 1257340 returning ones. (Basically, in the past year I received nearly the same amount of visitors as in the entire first three years combined).
18085 comments have been posted (many thanks to everyone who posted one)

Top-10 Most Accessed Series:
(note that this list is from the past year only, otherwise it’d just look too much like the list I made a year ago)
10. Michiko e Hatchin
9. Guin Saga
8. Bonen no Xamdou
7. Mushishi
6. Jigoku Shoujo
5. Pandora Hearts
4. Phantom
3. Casshern Sins
2. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
1. Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood

Top-10 Most Accessed Posts: (a bit one-sided this time)
10. Hajime no Ippo – New Challenger Review
9. Which Autumn Series do you want me to blog?
8. Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 23
7. Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 26
6. Mahou Shoujotai Review (for a series that had such an enormous impact on me, I surely did write a crappy review of it).
5. Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 27 (the internet is weird… this post is barely a month old… and it’s about a bloody recap…)
4. Bonen no Xamdou – 02
3. Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 19
2. Darker than Black Review
1. Top 10 Anime (the old version)

Top-10 Google Keywords: (aside from the obvious ones as “psgels”, “star crossed” and variations of “top 10 anime”)
10. Umineko no Naku Koro ni
9. Pandora Hearts Blog
8. Saiunkoku Monogatari Season 3
7. Genji Monogatari Sennenki
6. Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood 23
5. Guin Saga
4. Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood 27
3. Mouryou no Hako
2. Aoi Bungaku
1. Darker than Black Review
(Especially number 2 and 3 surprise me: those were the last two series I expected to generate lots of hits O.o)

Amusing search-terms (I can’t believe how many screwed up ones I managed to find this year…)
anime girl with 5 different personalities – Schizophrenia, anyone?

crazy person claiming to be the real neo trinity forum – I don’t know what’s worse: a person claiming such a thing, or people actually searching for this guy…

dress up kurenai sense but first she has to be naked – What the heck did this guy have in mind? O.o

hi me anime – Hi… um, me psgels

porfy is a stupid name. say it. porfy. – It’s short for Porphyras, a greek name. Obviously it’s going to sound wierd in English.

anime in which a star turns into a skateboard? – Oh god, please no!

anime were can i buy paprika – at the local supermarket?

how to blog anime – Go to wordpress.com, register and start writing

how to make an anime with you as the star – You really don’t want that to happen.

sky bolg of nice girl – Even though this is a typo, I have no idea what this guy was trying to find with this term…

what does 3 year anniversary mean – That something is three years old, idiot.

what season is august in – You seriously needed to search for this?

26 + 74 = one hundred – Erm… thank you for this piece of information…

japan, producing of the worlds weirdest shit since 1952 – Certainly!

a 13 to 15 line paragraph on how i betrayed my best friend – Write it yourself, how should I know about that friend of yours?

a anime where you can see girls – You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that. 😉

who blogs star crossed anime – I do.

humanity calls out for a hero… can a child of ruin be the savior of mankind? anime – Oh no, not another one!

i can’t understand your blogs cuz of your bad english – Um… sorry. I’ll try to type more clearly from now on.

i will force that reasoning aside with my unreasonableness” – I like this one.

when did june start 09 – Um… on June 1st, 2009?

when some when apologize and i dont want .. nicknames – Why?

a letter to have good first impression from a nice girl – Again, write one yourself.

at the beginning, to begin with, afterwards, finally, after a while – Get on with it!

i have a great idea for an anime but don’t know what to do with it – Here’s my advice: just go sit in a corner, and wait until the idea goes away.

i’m not fully understood – Who is?

i’ve been a princess – Who isn’t?

interesting metallic thing – I really wonder what this guy was hoping to find when he typed this in…

what’s the weird anime that anne is not telling me about – … no comment.

“parents are still alive”, anime – That’s rare…

what would kaiba say – “Screw the rules I have money” (only the ones who watched the Abridged Yugioh will get this reference, but ah well).

is that a motha-fuckin’ rpg?! is that a motha-fuckin’ rpg in a backpack?! – This one’s my favourite. ^^;

IRC-Channel
Oh and if I recall correctly, a few months some people requested an irc-channel. So, why not:

#starcrossed @ irc.chatspike.net

This is pretty much an experiment, but if it catches on I’ll post a link to it somewhere on the main page.

I have a question for the people who have been keeping up with the latest episodes of Gintama. As some of you may know, I’ve been keeping up with Rumbel’s subs for the series. Now that Horriblesubs have released the final missing episodes between Rumbel’s and the start of Crunchyroll’s, I decided to slowly marathon up to the latest episodes. Right now, I have just finished episode 124 and am seriously considering to drop the series altogether. My question to you is: is Gintama really going to improve? Because seriously, my patience at this point has entirely run out. I have heard that around episode 140, this series gets serious again with a bunch of good episodes around Kagura’s past, but is that really going to be worth it if the creators are going to delve into boring fillers again? Is it really going to be worth it, watching a dozen episodes, just to get to one good one? Ever since the new director took over at episode 101 for me, this series has lost all of its charms, but I had faith in the series, hoping that it might pick itself back up. However, then I reached episode 120, which was the funniest episode ever since this guy took over. So what was the best joke in that episode? A rip-off of one of the best jokes of the first director. It was at this point that I realized that it was getting pointless to watch this series. I truly rate the first 100 episodes among the top comedies I have ever seen. Sure, it also did have its share of weak episodes, but those were vastly outnumbered by the number of awesome and really well written episodes. The new director however just failed to live up to it in every single way. The penis jokes for example have become way too obvious, and that’s just the tip of the ice-berg. Another pet peeves of the new director is that he tries to stuff in as much references to other shounen series as possible. I’m always in for a good parody, but that’s the problem: instead of parodying, the new director is simply listing a bunch of references without making fun of them. After a while this becomes really, really boring. Then there’s also the matter of the increase of lengthy arcs. In the first 100 episodes, the only arcs that took up more than 2 episodes were the ones that mattered: the ones that developed the characters and made optimal use of their length. Right now the long arcs are just dragging on beyond belief, often wasting entire episodes with things that can be solved within only 10 minutes. The biggest example of this are episodes 121, 122 and 123: what the heck was the point in dragging this on for three episodes? The entire story would have fit into just a half of an episode, and instead it became an utterly predictable bore-fest that just would not end. A more fundamental problem however is that the quality of the script-writing has gone down a lot. The first 100 episodes were really good at tugging at my heart-strings, not through its characters, but because of its subtle writing that knew exactly what to say. Especially the long monologues of the characters were deep, meaningful and really got the best out of the characters in the serious moments. That’s completely gone now as well. The dialogue has become uninspired, cheap, and way too much focused on over the top violence in an attempt to make up. I’m really beginning to feel that I’m just watching the show for the heck of it, which is a shame because there are many better shows at the moment that I’d rather spend my attention at. In the end, there really seems to be a curse on shounen series that go beyond the 100 episode mark: Dragonball Z would have been fine if it just ended after 26 episodes; it would have been a nice action series that way. Naruto was pretty much a good series until the start of the final Chuunin Examinations, after which it dragged its story on and on beyond belief. Bleach was also a very entertaining shounen series for its first 30 episodes… until it descended into a bunch of boring and predictable fights around the Ichigo the Marty Stu. Gintama lasted longer than the others, but in the end, my enthusiasm for the first 100 episodes is just completely gone at this point. So yeah, if I do end up dropping it (which is pretty likely at this point), what do you want me to do? Write a review about just the first 100 episodes, or is that review not really necessary?]]>

Here is a list with the shows that are scheduled to air. (At least, that’s what I assume. Notify me if it isn’t complete). – No direct sequels; that’s just boring and predictable. – Apart from that, I accept any series with an airdate between September 20th and November 11th. – Please refrain from spoiling synopsises or staff lists. I’m still trying to enter the Autumn Season with as little information as possible about the upcoming shows, and I’d like to keep it that way. – The poll will end at September 30, 23:59 GMT. All votes that arrive after that will be ignored. Here are the current scores: Kimi ni Todoke – 44 Romance of the Three Kingdoms – 36 Kobato – 34 Kuuchuu Buranko – 31 Winter Sonata – 25 Letter Bee – 23 Armed Librarians: Book of Bantora – 18 A Certain Scientific Railgun – 14 Seiken no Blacksmith – 11 Fairy Tail – 11 Jungle Emperor Leo – 8 Darker than Black – 8 Sasameki Koto – 7 Blue Literature – 7 Nyankoi – 6 Kampfer – 3 Seitokai no Ichizon – 2 Ai no Kusabi – 2 Yumeiro Patissiere – 1 Sora no Otoshimono – 1 Note that with comments that selected three series, I just picked the first two. The people who voted for Darker than Black II and ignored the “No Sequels”-rule can of course always change their votes. A Second Note: it just turns out that Jungle Emperor Leo isn’t going to be a TV-series at all, but instead just a TV-Special. Those who voted for it can of course change their votes.]]>

You know, wasn’t this summer season supposed to suck? I mean, from the things I caught here and there this seemed to be a rather small and underwhelming season. And yet, I have only seen five new series so far (four if you don’t count the umpth Saint Seiya), of which three of them are already interesting enough to blog, and have a lot of potential to become great series. Is the rest of the season going to be filled with dumb harems and Code Geass clones or something?

In any case, with series airing a week before the rest of the season, it’s always hard for me to decide whether or not to blog them, because I have no idea whether or not there are going to be any better series turning up later. For Umi Monogatari it’s the same, as the majority of the new season has yet to air. Still, this episode definitely showed me that this series has a lot going for it, and I can always drop it if even more better shows pop up.

I’m obviously not blogging this series for the aestetics. While the animation is great, I first want to see it remain great for the next couple of episodes, and the art style itself is rather plain, with your average collection of moe stereotypes (one of the lead characters has yellow hair, one has red hair and one blue hair. Gee, those are the three primary colours, where have I seen that one before?). There’s lots of fanservice and all, but thankfully it’s handled tastefully: you don’t see any close-ups to jiggling boobs or strange crotch shots. That’s enough to keep it from getting annoying.

What caught my interest with this series was its characterization. The spring season already had a lot of series with an excellent cast of characters, and Umi Monogatari sounds like a nice addition to them. The three main characters feel realistic and very sympathetic. There are a lot of emotions in this series, but none of it feels like cheese, and it’s surprisingly genuine. It’s the charms of the main cast that really makes me want to watch more, and it makes for a pretty relaxing series with still a lot of drama.

The storyline is obviously going to need a bit more work (evil demons have been unsealed and need to be stopped by a certain sea priestess and air priestess), but I like how this series toys with your expectations. Along with unsealing those evil powers, the little mermaid also unsealed a rather strange turtle. That one I didn’t see coming.

Rating: * (Good)
Successfully carries the atmosphere further with some great animation and characters, even though the plot is a bit clichéd.

Okay, so most of you probably know that I don’t write a lot of editorials because I suck at them, but I still want to say a few words about this subject. After Howling-Kun mentioned the DVD-sales of certain shows in the shoutbox, I started looking at some of the other data in this topic. Now, this is not going to be a rant on how most of my favourite shows aren’t getting any DVD-sales. Everyone’s of course entitled to what he wants to buy (although it does get harder and harder to associate myself with this fandom when shows like Training with Hinako top the charts…).

Instead, those rankings reminded me of all the fuzz that’s going on, and how many people seem to be claiming that “anime is dying”. With this many times that the same doom-scenarios popped up, I almost started believing this myself, until I saw the actual facts in the following graph of DVD-sales in the topic mentioned above.

Well, I may not be an economist or anything near it, but here is my interpretation of the graph. First of all, I don’t get any of those arguments about how anime is supposed to be dying. Sure, sales have gone down compared to 2005, but that’s just a very selective analysis: compare it to ten years ago, and you can see a huge increase in sales. The decline in sales of the past years is about the equivalent of a kick in the groin: sure, you’re going to be walking funny for the next couple of hours, but “dying” is a big overstatement.

The thing is, that the year with the biggest sales was 2005. Interestingly enough, the response in 2006 to this was a huge increase in the amount of different anime titles that was released, as everyone seemed to be profiting from this boom in the sales of the industry. Unfortunately though: just like in the stock market, when sales suddenly go up, this isn’t going to continue forever. Right now, the anime industry is trying to find a new balance amidst the significantly increased interest in anime for the past ten years, and until it has found this the market is going to wobble around like a drunk student on his way home.

And as for the relatively low sales figures of 2008: did you seriously expect anything different with the current economic crisis? The recession has also hit Japan very hard, so it’s of course to be expected that last year’s sales would decrease. What I actually haven’t seen yet is people who are looking at the future. Sure, reports like this are nice and all, but they seem to assume that this recession is going to take forever.

With a bit of luck, the economic crisis is going to be mostly over in 2011 which is going to allow the industries to recover. So what’s going to happen with anime when that point arrives? When that point arrives, people are going to have more and more money to spend on anime, so there actually is a chance for a very solid recovery in the not-so-distant future. Who knows?

And really, as long as producers are able to churn out well-produced series of which they know are never going to sell well, I’m not buying those “anime is dying”-arguments anymore. As long as there are Genji Monogataris, Himitsus, Porfys and Kaibas, it shows that the animation companies aren’t at the real edge of destruction.