Fifteen years ago today, the classic anime Angel Beats! premiered. So there’s no better day for a new entry in the Anime Playlist series.
So, hit the jump and commence Operation Playlist!
Continue reading “Anime Playlist – Angel Beats!”Tag: Angel Beats
Song Title Challenge – but with anisong!
So, a challenge popped up in my Facebook memories on Wednesday – match categories to song titles. Back then, for my not anime fan friends, it was all was (for lack of a better term) normal music. I talked about going back and redoing it with anime music… But until today, I never did.
So, hit the jump and let’s take the challenge! (And you can join in!)
Continue reading “Song Title Challenge – but with anisong!”Angel Beats – a brief retrospective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eksw56g-WBY
Turns out that Angel Beats premiered ten years ago today…
This was an important show in my development as an otaku. I’d been kinda getting into anime and watching stuff on Netflix, and while I’d enjoyed most nothing had actually clicked. I don’t know why I picked Angel Beats, but within a few episodes I was seriously hooked and ended up marathoning it across two days.
When my wife got home from work, I convinced her to sit down and give it a try. And even though I’d just finished it hours before – I sat right down and rewatched it. My first ever rewatch, and one of only a handful of immediate rewatches. (The last immediate rewatch that I can recall is Laid Back Camp – two years ago in the Winter 2018 season.)
So, a question for you… What show struck you like a bolt of lightning? What show changed you in a measurable way? Drop a comment and let’s chat!
Worth Reading – 10/31/2019
New rule for Worth Reading – five entries, or end of the month, whichever comes first. By the luck of the draw, I hit both about the same time this time around.
Somehow, I also ended up with what I think is a nice thematic collection too. Can you guess what it is? (I’ll reveal it at the end.)
So, let’s hit the jump and take a look at what’s Worth Reading!
Continue reading “Worth Reading – 10/31/2019”
Favorite Anime OP’s & OP Bingo! – Week 3
Of course… WP managed to somehow eat the introduction I’d written, and now the page has been published. Ah well, consider it written and posted and pretend I said something intelligent and witty here.
Then hit the jump, and let’s take a look at the songs in this week’s squares!
Worth Reading: Links, news, and views. 9/14-9/20
Welcome to this week’s Worth Reading!
Last week I linked to a review of Kiki’s Delivery Service and pondered on why Ghibli movies were so rarely reviewed. Reader Dawnstorm however provided the simplest and most likely explanation – the anime community concentrates mostly on streaming and current season stuff. That being said, reviews of and articles on older stuff aren’t exactly uncommon.
- Truly Trash Media posts a look back at the classic Angel Beats – the second anime they saw. (Though they don’t say when that was.) It’s a fun read, because Angel Beats was also among the early shows I watched. After watching it, I told my wife “there might be something to this anime stuff” and we sat down and watched it together. There’s been few if any other shows that I’ve ever immediately re-watched. To be fair, that may be for the reason Dawnstorm gave – as one season ends, it’s time for another without much of a break.
- Frog-Kun at Fantastic Memes reposted an older column of his comparing the LN and anime versions of INVADERS of the ROKUJYOMA!?. Though mostly forgettable, it was a fun little show. There’s one scene in Ep3, a Crowning Moment of Awesome (Warning: TV Tropes link) for Yurika, that I do re-watch now and again. I just love the look of determination she gets right before her henshin sequence… Wait a moment – I’m a Magical Girl! I’ve got this!
- Frog-kun also authors a piece at Crunchyroll “Hanasaku Iroha” – The Good, The Bad, and the Kawaii. Sakura Quest (whose finale aired today) was marketed as part of a thematic trilogy with 2011’s Hanasaku and 2014’s Shirobako, which makes this article particularly timely. The article is worth reading, and the anime worth watching. In some ways, Hanasaku illustrates what Sakura could have been and fell short of.
Speaking of older anime and adaptations (we were discussing the latter last week)…
- Scott at Mechanical Anime Reviews discusses why he liked the original Kino’s Journey and his concerns over next season’s reboot.
- Last week’s Worth Reading post had an interesting conversation on adaptations down in the comments (scroll down to read them), they’re worth checking out. Feel free to add your thoughts.
Adaptations and their issues just keep coming up. I should probably just create an ‘Adaptation’ tag and be done with it!
Irina at I Drink and Watch Anime posts an interesting piece – Why I keep watching bad anime. C’mon, it’s something we’ve all done – watched a piece of complete trash coughLove&Liescough right through to the end credits. I know I have.
Reasons I’ve kept watching a bad anime: It started good, and I hoped it would return to being good… (Dimension W) It’s wasn’t that bad taken as individual episodes or arcs… (Gangsta) The pieces were there even though they failed to pull it together in the end… (Celestial Method) And of course the infamous “trainwreck you can’t take your eyes off of”… (Big Order)
Yukinocake at ShinYuu posts on Japanese Breakfasts. Very different from what I’m used to eating for certain! (Usually cereal, unless there’s leftover pizza – then pizza.) I keep meaning to talk more about food & cooking here, it’s one of my favorite topics.
As usual, hit the jump to see the ‘below-the-fold’ material. Bonsai, my favorite villians/antagonists, and a dream about ani-blogging!
Continue reading “Worth Reading: Links, news, and views. 9/14-9/20”
It’s the final countdown…
After this week’s ep of re:Creators somebody (I forget who and where) spoke of the protagonists getting ready for the “final battle”. What with the oddly veering way my mind often works, that made me think of Europe’s 1986 single – The Final Countdown.
So, on a whim, off I went to YouTube to see what if any AMV’s there might be set to that tune. And lo and behold – there were. Hundreds of them… and predictably virtually all of them stuck to the “Final Battle” trope. Out of curiosity I kept paging through and found this little gem – the creator has reimagined Girls Dead Monster (from the anime Angel Beats) as a 80’s hair band in a typical 80’s concert video. MTV is thirty-six years old as of today, and barely shows music anymore… but at the time (only five years old and at the peak of its cultural relevance) it was positively flooded with this type of band and video, and the AMV was instantly familiar. (Man, really showing my age here!)
Anyhow, I couldn’t resist sharing it.
For the curious and for reference, the original 1986 video can be seen here.