Let us shed now one silent tear for the passing of 2010, the greatest year in anime history. This year marked some truly watershed moments for the medium, the fandom, the aniblogosphere… Things were glorious. Let’s give some well-deserved awards.

BEST NEW SERIES

Nozomi no Densetsu, without a doubt. I don’t think anyone quite saw this one coming, and in a way I’m glad we didn’t. GAINAX’s masterpiece was one of the best-kept secrets in years–which is made even more impressive by the fact that they chose to simultaneously broadcast it on American TV as well. Every aspect of this show so far has been a masterpiece. The manic enthusiasm of Gurren Lagann crossed with the emotional depth of Evangelion’s twisted psychology… This is very much an adult show, and embraces that. There’s a reason it’s skyrocketed to the top of the charts both in Japan and America. It’s the first anime since Cowboy Bebop to be really socially acceptable to watch in America, and is practically the talk of the nation these days.

And you know what the best part is? We’ve got the whole second season to look forward to next year. (But dear gods, what a cliffhanger! GAINAX are horrible people!)

BEST CONTINUING SERIES

There were some really fantastic series continuing this year, with FMA’s stellar finale and some of Naruto’s best arcs, but the real standout was Eden of the East. The announcement of a full second season at the end of the second movie was thoroughly exciting, and lived up to its promise. The world it painted was rich and fascinating, and extremely poignant. Everyone who saw it came away with a hell of a lot to think about, and deeper for it.

BEST MOVIE

Oh wow, Fuyu no Tobira, no question. Mamoru Hosoda has knocked another one out of the park. We all thought Summer Wars was brilliant, but it was nothing compared to this–especially given the turnout! And now the American premiere of it has opened to stellar box office results, not to mention the pundits saying it’s a shoo-in for Best Animated Picture. Not since Spirited Away has an anime movie been this widely-accepted. I personally think that Hosoda could well be the next Miyazaki.

BEST BLOG

This is gonna be cheesy of me, but… the entire goddamn blogosphere. You guys really stepped up to the plate, and made some amazing posts. The whole community seemed to really cohere this year, and swelled immensely in size. There were occasional bouts of drama, but nothing out of the ordinary. On the whole, you guys just fucking rocked this year. Mad props.

MOST INTERESTING BLOG

The OEG. We never figured out who exactly they were, but they sure stirred things up a lot. And, in the end, they were successful, on a much broader scale than even they intended, I think. We all underestimated how powerful our own viral marketing schemes could be, and… Well, frankly, we have the unofficial OEG panels at Fanime, AX, and Otakon to thank for a lot of the publicity. Sure, it resulted in a fuckton of trolling, but… go to any anime convention these days, and you’ll find a mind-boggling decrease in the quantity of idiotic narutard-style otaku. The fandom as a whole seems to be finally growing up, and the OEG may well have been the catalyst.

SADDEST MOMENT

The return of Jason fucking Miao. Goddammit. The one blemish on an otherwise glorious year. I won’t spend any more time on this cumdumpster than I need to.

HAPPIEST MOMENT

Do I even need to list this? I think everyone knows what’s going to be said.

Everyone was horrified when ghostlightning announced BusterBeamSlice’s illness. We all anxiously followed the hospital mess on Twitter, and were right there with him as he waited in anguish for the diagnosis. And when we heard the news…

Well, that’s when the magic happened. There wasn’t any one real leader to it. We all just kind of spontaneously rallied. And what resulted was a truly beautiful effort. I’ve seen fundraisers. I’ve seen charities. But this… this was something special. There’s a reason that baby is alive and healthy today, and the reason is every single one of you. You’re all beautiful people.

Fuck, listen to me! I got into this business to troll all of you, and here I am singing your praises! Shit man! This must have been one hell of a year, to get me talking like that.

And you know what? I have this weird kind of feeling, like 2011… 2011 might just be even better. We’ve got so much forward momentum. So much to look forward to. So much potential. All we have to do is… not fuck this up.

.lolikappa

Um.

Wow.

2010 is finally over, and good riddance to this fucking trashpile of a year.

I’m honestly not even going to bother with awards, because really, what this year possibly deserved an award? Let’s see if we can’t recap all the horrible things that happened this year…

The year started off pretty uncomfortably with the fall of the OEG. Things seemed to have been going well, but they made the mistake of pissing some fans who were more, uh, devoted (read: crazy) than any of us anticipated. Once their contact information, it was honestly only a matter of time.

And then the media backlash started. The murder of two random guys didn’t seem that big a deal, but the media can never quite seem to let a potential scandal die. So it became the Blogger Murder. And suddenly there we were, aniblogs at the center of a huge news circus, and reviled by everyone.

There’s kind of a reason we started this year with a few hundred aniblogs and are ending it with barely three dozen. No one wants to be a part of this mess any more, and for good reason. I mean come on, this is the first post on notdotq by anyone for eight months. Shit.

Of course, the real shitstorm hit at Otakon. It was luck of the draw, really. Bad luck, that is. I maintain it could’ve been any convention center, and we just got the worst luck. With the bomber long dead, obviously, no one will ever know if it was targeted or just a random act of terrorism, but… the damage was done. Thousands dead (including half a dozen anibloggers–the most tragic of course being lelangir getting hit by an ambulance as he tried to pull himself from the wreckage), and apparently all over some Japanese cartoons.

The subsequent collapse of the anime industry, both stateside and in Japan, caught absolutely no one by surprise. The bottom fell out everywhere. It didn’t help that the fans went fucking nuts in the wreckage. Stragglers running to save themselves, ignoring burning and bleeding friends around them. Talk about the dregs of humanity. There’s a reason the world as a whole seems to hate anime fans these days.

So here we are. In the twilight days of anime.

And what do we have to say for ourselves?

Not a whole fucking lot.

I’m going to go read some webcomics now. That’s a ship that doesn’t seem to be sinking any time soon, and those few of you left are welcome to join me. The one we’re on is heading nowhere but down.

.lolikappa

lolikappa’s retrospective into the future brought to my attention the fact that lelangir is going to have been hit by a car this year. A suspicious comment of ghostlightning’s on GRSI made me think: maybe the good’ol bansheeelectro has insider info on these events!

Everyone knows otou-san is actually ghostlightning, since ghostlightning is now otou-san!

I did some sleuth work—namely, I went into WRL’s admin panel using digiboy’s account—and I found the following draft (DRAFT!) in the ancient fucker’s post queue.

Proof positive.

This is all part of a ghastly plan!

In early February, ghostlightning will announce the next meatspace get-together for the FAB. lelangir, for whatever reason (probably not in the cloud, hidden deep in ghostlightning’s personal files), will be on the island, and he’ll join them.

Don’t join them, lelangir!

It’s a trap!

You know what they say about self-fulfilling prophecy?

… and so, 2010 grinds to a close. A final sort of “meh” to what was a very “meh” year. There were a lot of disappointments this year. I don’t think anyone can argue with that. And certainly as far as anime and aniblogging goes, I can’t imagine many people will miss 2010. Sure, there were a few highlights, but they were few and far between. Let’s look back and see if we can’t pinpoint some of what went wrong…

BEST NEW SERIES

Well, the best new series this year was only barely from Japan. It was a pretty stellar new series, but… It was definitely one of the more awesome surprises of the year, we can all agree on that. The Anime Expo announcement that the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender were partnering with Production I.G. to make a new series set in a modernization of the setting… well, it was pretty awesome. The series so far has been pretty good, but seems to be missing some of the charm of the original. Hopefully the coming months will see it improve, just as the original improved drastically after a fairly shaky start.

BEST CONTINUING SERIES

Slim pickings here. Fullmetal Alchemist’s asspull of a conclusion was an incredible letdown to all but the craziest fans. No one really likes where Evangelion 3.0 is taking the series. Naruto and Bleach have both taken turns for the worse with both going on simultaneous filler seasons again. So this award is going to have to go to Bakuman. It hasn’t improved too drastically, but it has been consistently funny and engaging, with interesting characters and an original look into the manga and anime industries. It will never be anywhere nearly as popular as Death Note, but it’s continuing to be fun.

BEST MOVIE

Now this one I’m excited about. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Wow. What a fucking masterpiece. Kyoto Animation has truly set a new standard for epic trolling. Sure, the stunt got them shut down for good, but… I would’ve killed to see the looks on the faces of the thousands of fans crammed into the theaters on opening day when an apologetic manager came out and informed them that the film itself had disappeared! Sure, it’s terrible that some of the managers were beaten to bloody pulps. Sure, it’s sad that we lost one of the most gorgeous animation studios of all time. But damn was it funny.

BEST BLOG

This one. It may have been a shitty year, but that meant plenty of shit to mock. With LKs 1 and 2 working side-by-side for most of the year, we managed to… okay, so we barely got out a post a week, at best. Between the two of us. But all of the rest of you sucked even harder, so… yeah. Fuck you.

MOST INTERESTING BLOG

The OEG. The spectacular clusterfuck of drama that surrounded the last few rounds of it were an absolutely fascinating debacle–kind of like watching a train wreck, where the train is made of everything that is wrong with otaku. I think everyone can agree that the game turned out to be a massive failure, with “otaku” everywhere claiming to be so even more, in a retaliatory backlash… I think the real failing came when digiboy and Funeral, after being revealed as the bloggers behind the mask, let themselves get pulled down to the level of the people trolling them.

SADDEST MOMENT

Ghostlightning announcing the end of WRL in light of how much time he has to spend taking care of BusterBeamSlice. It was completely understandable, but still rather sad. We miss you, GL. Especially after otou-san retired earlier in the year… we lost two powerhouses this year. : [

HAPPIEST MOMENT

There wasn’t a ton to celebrate this year, but CJ did get into her top choice college. That was cool. And from her reports, the anime club she’s started there is doing dang well. She still won’t have sex with me, though. Slut. : [

SO ON THE WHOLE, we’re not doing that much worse than last year, but nor are we doing any better. Con attendance was down. Two more major studios closed their doors. We didn’t have any particularly memorable series.

Frankly I’m not left particularly optimistic for next year. Let’s hope things improve… otherwise, well, I’m seeing less and less reason to keep watching anime, or keep blogging.

.lolikappa

Here we are, coming up on the end of yet another year. Another notch in the grand ticking clock of life. On the whole I think we can call this year “pretty good.” There weren’t any huge surprises, in either direction, but overall things seemed to go well. So what earned my awards this year? Read on to find out!

BEST NEW SERIES

There really weren’t any huge standout new series this year, but I guess I’d have to give it to DRRRRRR. It was a fun ride, and the twist ending of Dullahan actually being an advance AI manifesting a holographic projection was really clever. To be expected from the people who brought us Baccano!, I suppose. I also quite enjoyed the cameos from the Baccano! characters–no reason for them not to be a shared world. I realize a few people found it distracting, but they were only there for a handful of scenes, and didn’t do anything significant.

BEST CONTINUING SERIES

Fullmetal Alchemist, no question. The finales (in both animated and manga form) were just as spectacular as we’d all been hoping. The month-long hiatus from the anime to give the manga time to get that last chapter out was perfectly fine (and well-timed, set to the actual in-story timeskip!) and thoroughly preferable to filler. Unsurprisingly, the english dub is also pretty good, and has garnered absurd amounts of critical praise and so on. Whoo!

BEST MOVIE

There were some pretty solid movies this year, with Evangelion 3.0 taking the series in a RADICALLY new direction, but I’m going to have to give this to the second Eden of the East movie. (Yes, those are both technically continuing series. Go fuck yourself.) It did a brilliant job of tying up all the loose ends, and left everyone who watched it with a lot to think about. There’s a reason it inspired so many introspective blog posts.

BEST BLOG (overall)

I’m going to have to give this one to 21stcenturydigitalboy. He’s really stepped up his game this year, holding to his various promises and ideas. He started off the year right by finishing off his Don’t F This Up series, and carried that momentum in an almost-daily string of posts on anything and everything. He didn’t break any new ground, and the majority of his posts weren’t particularly memorable, but overall this was a very solid year for digiboy.

MOST INTERESTING BLOG

The OEG! These guys set out to stir up trouble, and boy did they succeed. The eventual reveal that it was actually LovelyKitsune (the original LK!) and Baka-Raptor working together wasn’t a huge surprise, but it didn’t diminish from their goals. They haven’t been entirely successful, as there are still assloads of people claiming to be “true otaku,” but they certainly made everyone think.

SADDEST ANIBLOGGING MOMENT

Lelangir getting hit by a car. As we all know, he’s recovering, and according to his recent posts should even get functionality back in his legs eventually, but… seriously. Our hearts all go out for him.

HAPPIEST ANIBLOGGING MOMENT

Nothing topped the birth of BusterBeamSlice. Ghostlightning kicked the year off right, with an incredibly adorable baby. Ongoing congratulations to him for everything!

So overall, this wasn’t a half-bad year. We had some fun new series, some good endings to old ones. The occasional spat of aniblog dramu, but nothing we couldn’t handle. The industry is fairly stable, and con attendance continues to rise. It looks like next year could be another fun year, with things continuing their gradual upwards slope! So here’s to that, kids! To 2011!

.lolikappa

Sorry for being so fucking late with this. I had shit to do. If you’re gonna bitch, fuck you.
SO WHERE WAS I?

BAKA TO TEST TO SHOUKANJUKU

Is he... making flashcards? really?

Seriously? This anime is about a guy who takes NOTES? Fuck this, I go to an academic enough college. I have enough test-taking in my life. So, I watched the first episode at 2x, but it seemed … well, it seemed like a 2x show. Here’s what I caught of the plot.

So this guy is a fucking moron, right? And he attends a school for ridiculous ninja shenanigans. He’s the secretary of his overpowered student council, so he has to constantly take notes on these flashcards. At first it seems like he’s just a useless pansy, but he figures out how to actually take the powers from each flashcard and use them himself! It’s a pretty badass core conceit, but the main character is such a goddamn pussyfooting Shinji that you can’t help but hate him. DROPPED LIKE IT’S NOT HOT!

HIDAMARI SKETCHY XXX

The sketchiest. Seriously.

Uh oh. Cute uniforms. Cute girls. Hilariously awkward old men with giant tubular heads. This could be a deal-breaker, ladies and gents. I mean honestly, this looks fucking a–

Wait. Hold on.

What the fuck is this shit?

It’s got XXX in the goddamn title. And not even like the “blank” sense like in xXxHolic.

No, fuck this, this shit is just straight-up porn.

I’m not watching this shit. 2010digitalboy, I leave this one entirely in your hands.

HARUKANARU TOKI NI NAKA DE 3

Possibly from space.

You know what? I almost enjoyed this show. I almost did. Two seasons ago. For half an episode.

Then I actually paid attention to the writing, and realized how incredibly shitty it was.

I tried watching this one, without having seen the previous seasons, because apparently it’s supposed to be one of those “pick up halfway through and be just fine” anime (you know, like Fullmetal Alchemist or Eden of the East). Well, I’m going to have to call shenanigans on that. I couldn’t understand what the FUCK happened in this. I mean you’d have better luck picking up halfway through a goddamn George R. R. Martin novel than understanding this.

But it looked kind of cool.

So you know what I did?

I went back and marathoned the first two seasons. Don’t ask me the fuck why. All the shit with the dragons and priestesses and demons and parallel worlds. Every bit.

Then I came back and watched the first episode of this again.

And you know what?

It made even less sense.

So fuck this shit. I’m done with this.

OKAMI KAKUSHI

HERE we go. This is what I’m talking about. Glowing red. Overblown outfits. Tiny girls with giant weaponry.

It seems like another nasu show. And anything that merits that moniker is gold in my book. (Even if it’s not a nasu show. It’s still based on some badass visual novels.) I mean, do I even really need to bother summarizing this show? She slices! She dices! She looks good covered in blood! Is there NOTHING she can’t do!? Oh, right, she can’t get a boyfriend, but that’s FINE. Because she’s my waifu.

…

Oh, wait, except I’m not Josh Pines, so I actually have real girls. Fuck that. She can be Josh Pines’ waifu.

Still a good show.

OMAMORI HINAMI

Settle down.

Alright kids. It’s story time. I’m going to tell you a story.

For all four years of high school, my best friend was a catgirl.

No, I’m not shitting with you. She wore cat ears literally every day (and usually a tail too), she purred, she meowed, she made adorable faces, the whole shebang.

It was not awesome.

For years my arms were covered with scars because she scratched me all the time. She would regularly take naps on my homework or keyboard. She would on occasion forget how to talk and just try to make adorable noises. She was impossible to get moving if she wanted to stay lazing in the sun.

So fuck this shit. Don’t let this show lie to you and trick you into thinking it’d rock. It wouldn’t.

Take it from me.

LADIES VS. BUTLERS

Finally, what we need in this season! Some SUBTLETY!

Let me tell you what this is a show about. It’s about a harem of sexy ladies, who are interested in some butlers.

WHORES.

That’s really all there is to it.

CHU-BRA

I just.

Come on.

Really?

Really, guys?

Everything you need to know is right there in the name. It’s going to be about adorable kisses and bras.

You know what would be cooler? If this were a show about a badass that was part-Pikachu, part COBRA. I would watch the fuck out of that series.

+ =

That about wraps it up for this season.

In short: CRAP. Wow. This season SUCKS. Good thing Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is still going strong (coming up on some of the best stuff in the series), and we’ve got the Eden of the East movies. Because otherwise… wow, what an incredible load of crap. Remind me again why I watch anime?

… oh, right, I generally don’t.

.lolikappa

Okay guys, time for lolikappa to give his thoughts on every series that’s airing this season! Of course I have seen all of them, and the PVs for them, and done research, and shit like that. Obviously. So let’s do this! (I stole some pictures or something from like… Brian Andrew. Who the fuck is that? I don’t even know.)

DRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!

DRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrRrRrrrRRRRrrrrrRRRrrrrr

This looks pretty bitchin’ awesome. I mean, the guy in the middle is a butler or some shit, and he’s got a baseball bat covered with SHADOW SPIKES. Clearly he’s going to murder everyone with his shadowmancy. The other guys are also shadowmancers. The first episode is all about how they meet, at this sweetass restaurant. The guy in the middle (who Im’a call Green ’cause I can’t remember his real name) is a waiter there, and the other guys are hipsters who are meeting there for a date. They all get attacked by motorcycles, whose engines are just like DRRRRRRRRR all the fucking time, but it’s chill, because they use their shadows to cut the motorcycles in half. It’s kind of a ripoff of Pride from FMA, but whatever. It’s cool.

Also it looks like it was drawn by the designers of Persona 4, and some totally hot chicks told me that game was bitchin’, so I’m gonna say it was bitchin’ too. So yeah, bonus points for that.

DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUNDT CAKE

So… it’s basically Moon Phase, only with more blatant pedophilia. TARGET AUDIENCE: JOSH PINES. Seriously, I’m playing Star Wars RPG right now (yeah, fuck you) and my DM says he wants to watch this shit. So steer clear of this, because that dude is a fucking pedophile. And unless you wanna get tainted like he is, DON’T WATCH THIS SHIT. I mean he’s a pretty good DM, but seriously the dude likes little girl vampires. Creepy shit.

So what’s this about? Well, the first episode involves this naked vampire chick (I mean technically she’s got a cloak) and she eats like twenty guys, and turns them into zombies. Then she uses the flowers in her hair to seduce this salaryman, Kotaro. See he’s secretly a pedo too (viewpoint character or something) and she’s seducing him away from his boringass wife. There was some sketchy implications that Kotaro was a chosen one or something, but I didn’t really pay much attention.

My main concern: WHERE THE FUCK WAS THE BUNDT CAKE? I’M HUNGRY AS SHIT.

SORA NO WOTO

The only thing that could make this picture better would be if it were a flute. And if she were playing it with her vagoo.

Sora no Woto is fucking amazing. I mean seriously, I’m tentatively gonna declare this best series of 2010. I only saw the OP, but that’s already enough. From what I could gather from the PVs and stuff, it’s the story of a wandering soldier known only as the Sky Bugler. She passes through the post-apocalyptic industrial countryside, showing off her badass bugling skills. It’s a heartwarming story of life and love in a world beyond the end of the world. Science has failed, and only music can save humanity at this point, so it’s up to the Sky Bugler. She has a profound elemental connection to the sky, and can understand the nature of the war that came before.

This is one to watch, guys. Trust me on this. I’m an expert.

HANAMARU KINDERGRABBER

No seriously, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Apparently someone decided Ichigo Mashimaro wasn’t foetal enough. So now we legitimately have a show about FETUSES RUNNING AROUND. Holy fucking balls. And their dad is a florist. Who looks like Keitaro from fucking Love Hina. Holy balls.

The first episode… NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED. It was literally 24 minutes of fetuses staring at each other and giggling occasionally. Then one of them SHAT THEMSELF. I feel like I could’ve scrubbed bleach into my eyes for 24 minutes and had it be more productive than this bullshit. Jesus fetusfucking Christ.

NODAME CANTPLAYIT GRAND FINALE

So, this is the seventeenth season of this series, about some chick who plays piano and some guy who stabs people with a conductor’s baton. The chick used to be lame as shit, but in the new series, she’s taken a level in badass, and has ninja skills. You can see that in this picture, where she catches a fly with her bare hands. It’s pretty intense.

Anyway, this series picks up where the last one left off, namely with her discovering his secret identity as a crime fighting Parisian. That’s right, motherfucker’s from Paris. Since she’s British and Japanese, this is pretty intense. But as the new episode opens, she reveals that she too is a crimefighter. Now, with both of them together, they can take on the most dastardly villain of all: Michael Tilson Thomas. It’s going to take all of their power to stop his mad plot to take over the entire world through a particularly intense concert. Everyone will dance to the beat of his baton!

I’m pretty excited for this series, because Michael Tilson Thomas is a badass, and has glowing blue glasses. I met him at a party this one time, up in Mendocino in a barn. He was a cool dude. I almost got glasses like him.

Some promo art of the Big Bad. Look at that badass.

KATANAGATARI

So, “Katanagatari,” which is short for Katamari Gattai Train, is pretty damn awesome. The art style is absolutely gorgeous. It’s by Nisio Isin, and is an adaptation of the original Katamari, but takes the series in a VERY different direction. That guy in the middle there? That’s the Prince of All Cosmos. See, his father, the King of All Cosmos, got drunk as shit one night on sake, and crashed the beautiful Japanese palace into itself, resulting in the cherry blossom petals being scattered to the four winds. The Prince must now set out on his magic train to gattai with every beautiful girl in the land, in order to prove his own self-worth to himself. The whole thing is very metaphorical, and has constant allusions to the Tale of Genji. It’s a beautiful work of art, and definitely one to follow this season.

SEIKON NO QUASAR

So, quasars are the coolest shit in space.

Unfortunately, this show doesn’t live up to the brilliance of its own premise. It’s set in the distant future, and follows the story of that young badass in the front, Seikon. He lives with his four sexyass goth-loli maids in a fucking quasar. That’s right, a quasar. Unfortunately, the quasar recently set a blast of energy at an inhabited planet, and wiped out half of the planet. So now the survivors have come for Seikon, to get their vengeance. Seikon must ride into battle to defend his harem, armed only with his epic scythe, made out of space.

It’s incredibly sweet, but beyond the character designs, there’s not a lot to see here. The writing is mediocre, the fanservice is crap, and the fight scenes are incredibly poorly animated. DROPPED.

That’s all I’ve got time for today. I’ve gotta convince Mace Windu not to kill me, and get his help to kill some Unifying Force bitch. Whatever, I’ve got a Kaminoan geneticist captive to extend my lifespan, because I’m a badass Clone Trooper.

I’ll post my thoughts on the remaining series sometime tomorrow.

For now, this is lolikappa, signing off, underlings.

.lolikappa