Welcome to Star Crossed Anime!

Hey there! You’ve managed to find the new incarnation of psgels.net, one of the oldest surviving English language anime blogs on the web. Though our history may be long, we’re always looking forward, as seasonal anime is the bread and butter of our site. Here you’ll find episodic reviews of currently airing shows (plus weekly installments of Throwback Thursday), quarterly season previews, first impressions of new series as they premiere in Japan, and yearly rundowns of our favorite anime – 2019’s is just around the corner!

Whether you’re coming from psgels or you’re new to Star Crossed, we appreciate your readership. Let us know you’re here with a comment below, or by sounding off in the shoutbox to the right. Though we’re in the midst of a busy holiday season, new content will start appearing on the site very soon. Anime is a ride that never stops running, and neither do we – the new era of Star Crossed Anime begins now!

Fall 2019 Anime Coverage & First Episode Awards

Mario: If you ever wonder what is the current state of anime right now, well look no further than this final season of the 2010s as the Anime Goddess has offered us … half a dozen isekai shows. To be fair though, I have a feeling we’re reaching the post-isekai era where these shows appear to poke fun at the genre’s usual tropes (whether they’re actually funny is another topic). I also regard this season as a late bloomer, given how all these good shows aired at the tail end of our impressions (with several sequels still to come). Nevertheless, we’ve got our traditional First Episode Awards right down below, along with the blogging schedule for this Fall. With Armitage taking a seasonal hiatus and Aidan briefly coming back for more battles in space, this season we writers also aim to make a weekly summary where we can chime in on shows that aren’t receiving regular coverage. Enjoy the last breeze of the decade, folks.

 

FALL 2019 BLOGGING SCHEDULE

Aidan: Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Seiran film trilogy (episodic releases)

Mario: Beastars

Lenlo: Vinland Saga (carry-over) – Dr. STONE (carry-over) – Throwback Thursday

Wooper: Chihayafuru 3Hoshiai no Sora

Helghast: Psycho-Pass 3

Amun: Fire Force (carry-over) – My Hero Academia 4

Armitage: on hiatus

 

FIRST EPISODE AWARDS

Best First Episode
(The Death Note Award)

BEASTARS

Likely Spent All Their Efforts on the First Episode
(The Kyoukai No Kanata Award)

KABUKICHOU SHERLOCK

Best Animation
(The Samurai Champloo Award)

BEASTARS


Season Sleeper
(The Gargantia Award)

HOSHIAI NO SORA

Worst First Episode
(The Bleach Award)

ORE WO SUKI NANO WA…

Exceeded Expectations
(The Hyouka Award)

MAIRIMASHITA! IRUMA-KUN


Most Disappointing First Episode
(The Berserk Award)

SPECIAL 7

Best Sequel/Continuation
(The Natsume Book of Friends Award)

MY HERO ACADEMIA 4

Best Background Art
(Made in Abyss Award)

HOSHIAI NO SORA

Summer 2019 Anime Coverage & First Episode Awards!

With BEM released we come to the end of the First Impression period and the real beginning of this Summer Season. With 2 new writers on board I am happy to say that the 1st Impression had gone smoother and much faster than ever before. To make it even more exciting, we have 2 good news for you readers. First, this season Star Crossed Anime will cover a total of 12 shows, which if my memory serves right is the highest since psgels left the site. After many behind-the-scene black-market deals and fist fights and Mexican standoffs to make sure we can cover shows we wanted, this is our Summer 2019 blogging schedule:

Mario: Kanata no AstraCop CraftCarole & Tuesday (carry-over)

Lenlo: Vinland Saga – Dr. STONE – Kimetsu no Yaiba (carry-over)

Wooper: Mix: Meisei Story (carry-over)

Amun: Fire ForceDanMachi 2 

Armitage: O Maidens in Your Savage SeasonGiven

Helghast: Lord El-Melloi II-sei no Jikenbo: “Rail Zeppelin” Grace note

Second, it’s the new bloods’ idea to give First-Episode Awards where the staff vote for their favorites and worst (Credits entirely to Amun for the concept, layout and those lovely icons) so you readers can have a better grasp on the seasonal reception so far. Let us know if you like the idea and which category you would like us to include in the future. I’ll stop writing now and just let the awards speak for themselves.

Best First Episode
(The Death Note Award)

O MAIDENS IN YOUR SAVAGE SEASON

Spent All Efforts on the First Episode
(The Kyoukai No Kanata Award)

FIRE FORCE

Best Animation
(The Samurai Champloo Award)

FIRE FORCE


Season Sleeper
(The Gargantia Award)

COP CRAFT

Worst First Episode
(The Bleach Award)

ARIFURETA

Exceeded Expectations
(The Hyouka Award)

DUMBBELL NAN KILO MOTERU?


Most Disappointing First Episode
(The Berserk Award)

DR. STONE

Best Sequel/Continuation
(The Natsume Book of Friends Award)

MIX

Introducing youngbloods, Vol. 2: Armitage!

Target acquired, lock, engage. Joining my brothers in arms, it’s your girl, Armitage! 😀

Hey, everyone!! After days of brawling and bloodshed, I have finally emerged as a joint victor of the Battle Royale for the coveted position of ‘New Blogger’. I am grateful to the brave fallen and look forward to making acquaintance with the living, here at Star-Crossed Fleet.

I am in my final year at Uni but I have decided to instead follow my passion for stories. I will be pursuing my dream to be a novelist, you see. Ever since I was a little child, I have loved fictional characters and the incredible lives they lead. And anime was one of the first mediums to make me feel that way. Hence, I have decided to give blogging a shot.

Some of my favorites include: Hunter x Hunter 2011, Honey & Clover, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and 3-gatsu no Lion. I look forward to talking about seasonal anime and more with you all and vow to fight to death, defending my shit taste over yours! 😛

Thanks for having me!! <3

 

Introducing Amun

Hello! Call me Amun – good to meet ya!

The kind bloggers of this site have graciously allowed me to join their ranks. A bit about me – I’m a 30 year old Happa who is gainfully employed as a programmer/manager/pointy haired boss/whatever (you’re here for anime, not a resume).  As discord embarrassingly revealed to the other writers, I currently play League of Legends, though I was sufficiently addicted to WoW in the past (afl lock, yessir).

My anime instincts tend to wander towards shonen, with good characterization and world building as musts.  I’ve been watching anime now for about 15 years (I tend to be anime only with resorting to manga when there is no hope for future seasons *sniff*).   The show that got me hooked was Hikaru no Go, and I haven’t looked back since.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, so here’s a small banner for some of my top personal picks.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy my thoughts and if not…flame me until I get better!  (+1 for everyone who can name all anime shown in the banner…+2 if you caught the previous pun).

Let’s watch some anime together!

Announcement Time – Writers Recruitment #2

Applications are closed. To everyone who submitted, thank you for your interest!

In June of 2017, I applied to be part of the team here at Star Crossed. Now, nearly two years later, I’m writing our new recruitment post. Time flies when you’re blogging anime.

With Aidan’s recent departure, it’s time for us to shore up our roster a bit. More writers means we’ll be able to cover more series, include more perspectives in our First Impressions posts, and perhaps introduce new features like Lenlo’s Throwback Thursday. Seasonal anime will always be our bread and butter, so we’ll be asking new recruits to give us a hand starting with the Summer 2019 season. If you watch anime week-to-week and want an established platform to write about it, then we’d love for you to apply.

Text blogging isn’t a glamorous job in this era of video sharing sites and social networks. If your application is accepted, your only rewards as a writer will be a sense of accomplishment and the rare message from an appreciative commenter. Keep at it long enough and you may even get one or two not-so-appreciative messages! Mario, Lenlo and I will be grateful to have you, though. We’ve all got different tastes, so you’re sure to find somebody you click with. We’re also flexible regarding upload schedules and show selection, though we’ll begin to expect a bit more once you’ve settled in.

Still keen on applying? Hit the jump for details!

Continue reading “Announcement Time – Writers Recruitment #2”

The Retirement of AidanAK47

To those whom it may concern this is a declaration of my retirement from the Star Crossed Anime Blog and this is a needlessly dramatic sentence. However when I consider my five years on this site blogging shows I feel that some dramatic gravitas is warranted. Now this post will likely be very long so I suspect that most will skim it at best or declare TLDR before moving on but I really feel like giving at least one last post to explain how I got here, why I kept doing this and why I am stopping. After Psgels abandoned the site without a word I felt it would be wrong to repeat that even if my leaving will be met with little lamentation. So bear with me as I take you back to the days of yore when the animated TV adaption of Fate/Unlimited Bladeworks was about to air.

I stumbled upon Psgels really out of nowhere after my old hangout of cartoon-world forums went dead and for some reason or another just stuck around talking to people on the shoutbox and commenting on posts. You may be surprised to hear that back then there was a rather thriving community on the site and we all basically knew each other. It was nice and gave me a place to talk about my interests when the place I am from people don’t even know what anime is, let alone talk about it. Then came the time psgels decided to make this site a multi-author blog and indeed it did seem to be his means of distancing himself from the site. He picked out a number of people from our Shoutbox community to carry on the site in his stead and let me say that I was not actually one of them. As a matter of fact I was put forward by someone else for the sole purpose of covering the new Fate show and nothing else. Seeing as I was the person with the most knowledge about the franchise and was interested in trying to cover it, I decided to offer to do so. With that Psgels reluctantly gave me access to post to the site. Yes, reluctantly. You see dear readers, psgels did not actually like me and don’t take that to mean that I hold it against him. I gave him plenty of reasons to dislike me, potentially even hate me. Nonetheless he gave me access to the site, though made sure to contact me through a proxy email and not his real email address which caused massive headaches down the line.
Continue reading “The Retirement of AidanAK47”

Spring 2019 Anime Coverage

I must say, though the spring season is usually a heavyweight in both quantity and quality for anime offerings, spring 2019 surprisingly has a condensed amount of shows airing. This might be the fewest First Impressions posts we’ve done in a while. I’m optimistic about the season, however. There’s a clear cut between the 7 shows we’ve chosen to  blog (well, 6 shows and 1 carry-over) and the rest. That’s another way of saying that I’m happy with our schedule this season. Without further ado, here’s Star-Crossed Anime’s coverage for spring 2019:

Mario: Sarazanmai, Carole & Tuesday, Fruits Basket

Lenlo: Kimetsu no Yaiba, One Punch Man 2, Dororo (carry-over)

Wooper: Mix: Meisei Story

This is where I would finish with a witty remark, but since I’ve just been reborn as a dancing kappa through someone’s butt, let’s just end it right here before I burst out singing.

Winter 2019 Anime Coverage

 

Like a cold you can’t get rid of, the new season has come and all the premieres have been aired. Overall, this Winter season looks to be an exciting one. It’s certainly the fewest shows in terms of quantity for quite a while, and shows that supposed to be stand out are doing a pretty good job. Mob Psycho 100 2 delivers one of the best episode in a while, Boogiepop tanks but the rest is what we could’ve predicted. This season also marks many shows cut-corner by animating entirely in CG, and the results are pretty clunky. I hope this trend won’t become dominant in the future.

Below is our schedule for 2019 Winter season:

Aidan: Yakusoku no Neverland

Mario: Boogiepop Phantom (2019), Kemurikusa, Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai

Lenlo: Dororo, Mob Psycho 100 II, Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru (carry-over), Paranoia Agent (Throwback Thursday)

Wooper: Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai

Hooray for Wooper who will be back on board with us for the season. Extra hooray for Lenlo for working extra next season (I hope you survive, lad). And let’s hope for this 2019 year to be a better anime year than the last one.

KANPAI!!!

Fall 2018 Anime Coverage

While there are some shows still lagging behind, we’ve pretty much had the general sip of what this new season has to offer. While personally I don’t have a clear favorite (my top shows only have 70% potential, the lowest since I’ve taken this job), there are many shows that genuinely surprise me. Who would’ve thought an anime with “Bunny Girl senpai” in the title can be this solid, or shows like Zombieland Saga and SSSS Gridman that defy their own tropes in every turn? On the negative side, I can regard this season as the season of bad-taste rape-attempts. From yaoi show about a romance between two sexy boys poisoned by attempted rape; goblins sexual assault to loli abuse, incest romance and a boy who travels to another world to make love with 12 different girls. This season has it all. Welcome to another season of Star Crossed Anime.

Here’s our schedule for the 2018 Fall Season:

Aidan: Goblin Slayer, Zombieland Saga, Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl-senpai no Yume wo Minai

Mario: Thunderbolt Fantasy 2, Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara, SSSS Gridman

Lenlo: BANANA FISH (carry-over), Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru, Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san (short), Planetes (Throwback Thursday)

Let’s enjoy this last season of the year together, my friends.