Anime Sunday: Winners of Winter 2017

Hey all! This Anime Sunday I’m back with my pick of winners for the previous season of Anime, and yes this post has been highly delayed. Sorry about that, but circumstances and my decision to post on an every other day schedule for a while have only let me do a few Anime Sunday columns since I started posting again. Anyways it’s my Winners of Winter 2017!

Youjo Senki: This was a great show to watch and I highly enjoyed watching a villainous protagonist. Sure it might have been a tad too gory for my tastes, but it was a fun show to watch nonetheless.

Dragon Maid: This was an absolutely hilarious show, and I enjoyed watching it thoroughly. If you enjoy some off beat comedy, Dragon Maid was the highlight of the season in my opinion.

ACCA-13: This was a surprisingly fun show to watch, with plenty of political intrigue and drama. It’s art style was also pretty neat.

Honorable Mentions:

Tales of Zestiria the X: The second half of the Tales of Zestiria adaptation, I never got to watch it, but I’m happy ufotable was able to create something that took the story of both Zestiria and Berseria and wove them together.

Naruto Shippuden: This had it’s final episode in this season, and while the “sequel” has started with Boruto, it still deserves a mention.

That’s it for this week’s Anime Sunday!

Anime Sunday: Long Running Series’ Issues

This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering an topic I find amusing and disappointing at the same time. It’s Long Running Series’ Issues!

What do I mean long running series?: I mean any series that airs weekly (minus any holidays that would preclude them airing) and has been doing so for more than half a year. This may mean that they have been running since they first aired, or it’s just a full years worth of episodes. Either way they often run into the same problems, although the latter is less likely to have one of them.

Filler: As any diehard Anime fan will tell you, filler is the bane of all long running shows and is the reason why One Piece is consistently at the top in terms of suggestions. That isn’t to mean One Piece isn’t without it’s faults, but it doesn’t do filler anymore and those arcs it did were short and sweet and weren’t bad. One Piece has another issue entirely which is almost the complete opposite of filler, it has a Chapter to Episode ratio of 1:1 which leads to episodes taking things cut from the Manga which leads to a slowdown in terms of action and plot pacing which leads to people feeling it takes forever.

Animation Gaffs: Pictured above is one of the more well known animation gaffs from Naruto, a show which has tons of them. One Piece does as well, if you compare the Manga to the Anime the quality in backgrounds is generally very noticeably different with the Manga having much crisper and more quality backgrounds. Bleach when it aired had it’s shares of gaffs as well. Any Anime will probably have a gaff or two, but they aren’t nearly as frequent or bad as long running series.

That’s it for this week’s Anime Sunday? What are some of your favorite Animation Gaffs or most hated filler arcs? Leave a comment below!

 

Manga Monday: How Come It’s Not Out This Week? An Explanation

I’m back with an answer to a question I hear asked all the time in person and on the internet for this week’s Manga Monday! It’s all about why your favorite series are not out yet!

Golden Week: First off this is the one most people don’t understand, Golden Week is a series of Holidays that all take place in the space of a single week in Japan. Almost no one works and it’s essentially a week long break for just about everyone. So magazines and publications that are published weekly aren’t published that week. Golden Week takes place at the end of April and beginning of May.

(Insert Publisher Name)’s Annual Break: Lots of companies have a single week where they and their company take a break from their weekly publications. This isn’t any big issue and stuff hasn’t happened to your series, it just is a weekly break for the Mangaka (Manga authors/artists) who work themselves to the point of exhaustion the rest of the  year. 

Hiatuses: That all being said some series just aren’t being serialized at the moment anymore, but they aren’t axed either. Some notable series that this has happened to are Hunter x Hunter and D. Gray Man, who have been on Indefinite Hiatus for years as of this writing (I don’t count the one chapter that D. Gray Man had released earlier this year as being re-serialized.) Most times this is due to the poor health of the Mangaka. Other times it’s because their Mangaka need time to do some research or need to come up with so many new things to draw that they don’t have the time to keep being published while keeping their quality up. Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece have all done this before and are probably the easiest and most notable examples.

Axed?: It’s a slang term for being discontinued due to poor sales, it most frequently happens to series published by Shueisha because of their incredibly hard and difficult requirements for staying serialized. Things like Iron Knight, which I personally enjoyed, were axed due to being unpopular.

That’s it for this week’s Manga Monday! I hope that answers some questions you may have had!

Manga Monday: 666 Satan by Seishi Kishimoto

This week for Manga Monday I’m covering a series I found lacking. It’s 666 Satan, or O-Parts Hunter in America, by Seishi Kishimoto!

Plot Synopsis: Set in the near future, it tells the story of a teenage girl named Ruby Crescent who wants to become a treasure hunter, following in the footsteps of her father. Her objective is to find O-Parts: magical items hidden in ruins which grant people fantastical powers and can only be used by an O.P.T. (O-Part Tactician). She soon meets a mysterious boy named Jio Freed who, due to having a dark, lonely past, seeks to conquer the world.

Plot: The plot’s not amazing, and it’s a pity that someone whose brother is one of the most well known artists out there wrote such a lackluster series.

Characters: The characters aren’t super interesting either, but it’s not the absolute worst series I’ve ever read.

Art: This is where it probably shone the most, and that’s only because of Seishi’s name. Seishi is the twin brother to Masashi Kishimoto who is best known for a series called Naruto. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a very similar art style to his brother, and that’s probably the only reason many people picked up this series in the first place. That includes myself.

Overall: This is an easily skippable series.

For those who like: Shonen Manga, Action, Adventure.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above, or a work that is overshadowed by the author’s brother.

Manga Monday: Series That Ended in 2014

This week for Manga Monday I’m going to talk about some notable series that ended in 2014.

Naruto: Wow I can’t believe it lasted 15 years, but what a ride of both excitement and disappointment it was for those 15 years for so many people. I’ll probably give this a full review in a couple of weeks at the latest, but this was one of the Big 3 (Bleach, Naruto and One Piece) and it was the first to end when most assumed it would last longer then Bleach would. Good thing One Piece only hit it’s halfway mark a few years ago.

Kuroko no Basuke: I really didn’t think that this series would do so well, but it definitely lived up to the standards left by other series like Prince of Tennis and Slam Dunk. I’m excited to read the epilogue series.

Tokyo Ghoul: Like I said yesterday, I really don’t like this series, but it did end last year and it was one of the top selling series. Personally I think it’s a bit overhyped, but oh well. I’ll probably cover this sometime in the future. There is a sequel series that has started, but I personally don’t like it at all.

That’s it for this week’s Manga Monday, sorry for the short article!