Anime-Source: Top 50 Favourite Anime of 2011

The results of our annual Favorite Anime Survey is out! Go check it out!

Ranks 1-10
Ranks 11-25
Ranks 26-50

Working! Season 2 New Girl?

YES! My second favourite anime season of 2009 is getting a second season! And no, this is no April's fool.

Who's that new girl? According to MAL, she's Miyakoshi Hana,a character that's not on the manga but a webcomic original. I'm absolutely loving her energetic personality already. What's more, she's voice by Tomatsu Haruka! Check out that part in the middle where she used her Lala voice. The problem is she's on the April 1st announcement special, not the real one... The anime's home page doesn't show her at all, but I really do hope she makes it into the show, if not it's such a waste.

After Deadman Wonderland, now I have a series to look forward to ^.^

New Season of Hidamari Sketch? But after Madoka, I can never see Hidamari the same way again

I can barely read japanese, so here's my sauce.

I love Hidamari Sketch. It's one of the first series I came to love after entering the world of anime, and it still remains as one of the best series I've ever watched. It's also the show that got me into the slice-of-life genre and got me to watch stuff like Aria, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Sketchbook. And despite being an incredibly low-budget production in the first season, it also got me to love the way Shaft and Shinbo animate things, and got me to love everything Shaft produces. Well, most of them.

Then Shaft make Madoka. I don't know about you, but Aoki Ume's characters are so instantly recognizable, I can't help relating to Hidamari when I see Madoka. I don't think I can help picturing the Hidamari girls being in misery, crying every episode, with one character dying every other. Ugh, I think I'm expecting Kyubei to pop up at the Hidamari apartments asking Yuno to become a Puella Magi. (Hey, Puella Magi Yuno Magica might be pretty cool)

Hey, this might be what Kyubei looked like in another world:

Then again, Shinbo DID mention that he wants to put the Madoka girls in a slice-of-life series. That definitely gets my vote.

Japan, Earthquake, Anime and You

Frankly, I lost the motivation halfway through writing about the latest episode of Madoka that I've just posted. Like some other guy on his blog wrote, I'm not even sure if it's appropriate to do so either, as I'm practically leecing off and enjoying Japan's (plunging economy) crisis. As I write that post, my mind is filled the many, many problems going in animeland because of the stuff I kept seeing on the net, on the papers, on the TV and hell even on the ANIME blogosphere. A friend of mine is also badly affected by this national disaster too.

I didn't take the situation in Japan too seriously because, well, I was pretty confident that Japan and it's famed efficiency will definitely make it through without much problems. But the more I read, the less optimistic I was, especially in the light of the threat of the nuclear reactor. Wikipedia would never be 100% accurate, but here's a pretty good summary of what's going on; basically 3 of the 6 nuclear reactors had an explosion, but it wasn't nuclear explosions; it was hydrogen explosions. One of the explosions send radioactive materials into the atmosphere, but workers had been releasing a substantial amount of radioactive gas in order to bring down the pressure inside the reactors, to prevent a nuclear explosion. The fight to prevent a Chernobyl disaster from happening is still ongoing, and the INES level had just risen. Basically it spells bad for Japan, on top of the wreck the earthquake + tsunami caused.

I'm way more concerned about the nuclear reactor problem than the stranded people, not because I fear that the radioactivity will spread to my country, (radiation is spreading east across the pacific) but because the radioactivity will cause some serious long-lasting damage and worse, it's invisible. That is what seriously impedes the recovery Japan could be having from the earthquake.

It's too bad I can't do anything to help the nuclear threat, but I thought I could make the lives of the Japanese a bit easier for now... even if they ravaged my country in WW2. Japan has enough problems as it is. It's not much, but it'll help. Here's the link to the one I've donated to if you wanna help too (same as the one on the side bar). Like how Yumeka said, this incident does hits closer to home than it seems... Even if I've never spoken with a Japanese or even entered the country, I've probably came to like Japan more than my own country from the things I've learn through the medias. Since I have the Japanese to thank for all the almost 4000 episodes of anime I've watched so far, there's never a better time for me to contribute back.

I had planned a trip to Japan somewhere in June, but now I'm not sure if I really want to go there anymore with all the problems going on. Hopefully things would all calm down by the time I would make that trip.

Back to anime. RC had a good list of what shows would be affected, and so there's only Fractale left for me this week. Not that I'm really bother by it but... it just reminds you of how wide the impact of the disaster is. And I thought that if I'm of those who were badly hit my the disaster, I would count on the next episode of my favourite series to lift my spirits and the cancellations and delays would be such a downer.

I won't talk about the quake anymore... and my post from now on will be anime-related. While I couldn't quite get this thing off my mind, this blog is meant for anime in the first place and Animenano isn't suppose to be flooded with earthquake posts anyway. But what can we do for Japan now, the place that made us anime and manga fans? That's something to think about.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.9

Or rather, Sendai Magnitude 8.9

My heart goes out to those who suffered in the recent tragedy. It's the biggest earthquake ever to hit Japan and the damage it caused is just... wow. One of my friend got evacuated because he was in close proximity with the nuclear reactor too.

There are already plenty of information on the net, so I won't post any here.

Anyway, hashi made a list of seiyuus that has reported safe. My favourite seiyuu Hirohashi Ryou isn't on that list... Damn I hope she's alright.

Yet another post about K-ON's continuation

Is it just me or is Mio's face kind of weird

I'm sure everyone already know that the K-ON manga is going to continue... in college (university?) AND a separate story following Azusa and the rest in high school.

While it's generally a good news to me, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about this since I don't really read the manga even though the K-ON anime was undoubtedly one of the best things I've ever watched. The manga obviously will never be as cute as the anime and the humor isn't good enough for me to read the same story twice. (Unless I'm really bored)

Then again, this means that a third season of the anime is very likely to be produced.

I'm not sure how I feel about this... there are many examples of sequels that ruined the franchise because of how they extended the lifespan of it beyond it's originally intended length(i.e Code Geass), and I don't doubt that a large part of the reason of the continuation is because the author isn't ready to let go of this cash cow just yet. It's too hard to tell what kind of direction Kakifly wants to take for Yui and gang's college years, but speculations on the web seems to be fairly negative; there are simply too many (bad) things that could happen in the gang's college years that could ruin the character image and/or the franchise.

And the most talk-about scenario is that the girls would find boyfriends, and it's pretty normal for someone their age to do so. In fact, it would be kind of weird if the whole gang does not have a single BGR in the whole of their high school and college years, unless Kakifly intend to go for a yuri angle but that would be pretty weird itself. Well, I'll be pretty upset if a whole BGR happens offscreen (like Alicia in ARIA) but if the story can introduce a capable male lead I don't think I really care if the girls really gets serious in the relationship O.O

Actually, I'm fairly certain that the story would never introduce any males and just keep goofing off with the girls only. They probably won't mature as well but hey, that's the K-ON we all love.