Sweet Dreams

Welcome to 2020! I meant to make a post before the end of the year, doing my usual year-end fanfiction reviews and making a list of my top fifty favorite anime of the past decade, but, oops, I forgot! Well, better late than never, right?

First off, Top 50 Favorite Anime Series Of The Decade!

1. Yuri!! On Ice (2016)

2. Fruits Basket (2019)

3. Shirobako (2014)

4. My Love Story!! (2015)

5. Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju (2016)

6. Bakuman (2010)

7. Space Brothers (2012)

8. ReLife (2016)

9. Oh, Maidens In Your Savage Season (2019)

10. Chihayafuru (2011)

11. Sailor Moon Crystal (2014)

12. Card Captor Sakura Clear Card (2018)

13. Tiger & Bunny (2011)

14. Bloom Into You (2018)

15. My Roommate Is A Cat (2019)

16. Yamada’s First Time (2010)

17. A Place Further Than The Universe (2018)

18. Yona of the Dawn (2014)

19. Zombie Land Saga (2018)

20. Death Parade (2015)

21. Your Lie In April (2014)

22. Major 2nd (2018)

23. Sound! Euphonium (2015)

24. Amagi Brilliant Park (2014)

25. Snow White With The Red Hair (2015)

26. Haikyu! (2014)

27. The Promised Neverland (2019)

28. Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun (2014)

29. Hinamatsuri (2018)

30. Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits (2018)

31. Orange (2016)

32. Given (2019)

33. Free! (2013)

34. Recovery of a MMO Junkie (2017)

35. Ancient Magus’ Bride (2017)

36. Sakura Quest (2017)

37. Love Stage!! (2014)

38. My Hero Academia (2016)

39. School Babysitters (2018)

40. Kaguya-sama: Love is War (2019)

41. Hanasaku Iroha (2011)

42. How To Keep a Mummy (2018)

43. Interviews With Monster Girls (2017)

44. Idolish7 (2018)

45. Flying Witch (2016)

46. Kiss Him, Not Me (2016)

47. Another (2012)

48. Bunny Drop (2011)

49. Tanaka-kun is always listless (2016)

50. Golden Time (2013)

Honorable mentions go to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Kimi ni Todoke - From Me To You, Natsume's Book of Friends, and Kobato. I only counted series that started between 2010-2019, so these didn't make the cut, despite airing partly between those years.

Now, fanfiction reviews! I answered three different year-end review questionnaires on my Tumblr, so I'm just going to link to them instead of copy and pasting. This entry is already getting long enough!

Set One
Set Two
Set Three

My review of the fall anime season and my choices for the Top Ten Anime of 2019 will be posted sometime in the next few days...hopefully.

Hana to Yume Magazine Lists New Anime for Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket Manga

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

I kinda lost hope of this ever happening, but Fruits Basket is finally getting the Crystal/Brotherhood treatment, with a manga-faithful new anime series.

*dances*

I think I'm even more excited about this than I was about Sailor Moon Crystal. Fruits Basket is my favorite manga of all time, and the original anime is still one of my top ten favorites, so I'm thinking Kaleido Star is going to be pushed off the throne with this new anime if it is a good as I imagine it will be.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I celebrated by buying a gift for myself: the Chibiusa and Pegasus Chouette figure I've been drooling over! I wanted to buy it from Crunchyroll, which looks to have it already in stock, but for some weird reason, they kept saying my credit card information was wrong even though it wasn't. I finally gave up and just pre-ordered it from Amazon instead (same price anyway). I'll have to wait until the end of March to get it, but, oh, well. I also ordered both Sailor Moon Crystal DVD sets -- Amazon has the first set on sale for just under $20! -- and a couple of gifts for my nephew's birthday in March. Can't believe he's almost three already!

I still have one more episode of Sound Euphonium to watch, and Classicaloid and March comes in like a lion are continuing into next season, but I think I've seen enough to give my opinion of the shows I watched this season:

Yuri On Ice - No surprise that this takes the top spot! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! It wasn't totally perfect -- twelve episodes wasn't enough time to really develop a lot of the characters, and despite paying lip-service to the scoring system, the scores were basically made up and unrealistic(Yuri would have almost certainly won Cup of China and the Grand Prix Final in reality)-- but it was still pretty amazing. I especially loved that three real-life skaters (Takeshi Honda, Nobunari Oda, and Stephane Lambiel) had voiceover cameos. And it seems very possible that we may be getting another season (or at least some OVAs), so YAY!

Classicaloid - I'm surprised I like this so much, but it is just so. much. freaking. fun! I mean, who wouldn't want to live in a music-themed mansion with a bunch of famous composers with mysterious Muzik powers? Well, besides poor Kanae... Okay, so maybe not, but still, her pain is the viewers' gain. (The modern remakes of classic pieces, though, can be a bit hit or miss.)

Sound Euphonium - Not quite as amazing as the first season, but still very good. I felt the first half was kinda weak, focusing on characters I did not care a bit about and a problem that would have been resolved a whole lot faster if the people involved would have just talked to each other. The second half, however, was great, especially since I'm a big Asuka fan. Also, the mid-season performance was just incredible.

Magic-kyn Renaissance - This was so...sparkly! And it was great to watch a reverse-harem show where the main heroine actually had some personality and you could see why all the boys fell in love with her.My one minor complaint is that they made a big deal in the first episode about the two best students being named Prince and Princess Artista, yet that never happened? The only prince and princess that were chosen were roles in a play, so that was kind of strange that they seemed to forget about that.Maybe another season is planned? I don't know.

Izetta: The Last Witch - A lot of people seemed to dislike this show for some reason, but I liked it just fine. Princess Fine, in particular, was a pretty awesome charcter.

March comes in like a lion - I would say this show is good, but uneven. It doesn't help that the shogi parts are really boring since it's impossible for somebody who doesn't know Japanese to understand what is going on in the game (although I appreciate the adorable cat song that attempts to explain the rules).

Miss Bernard said. - An amusing short. That's pretty much all I have to say about it.

Though not from the current season, I also finally got to watch the second season of The Heroic Legend of Arslan, which was very good. As for next season, I don't think any streaming announcements have been made yet, but if I can watch them, these are the shows that's I'm considering: second season of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga, Fuka, and Scum's Wish.

And since the year is ending, I'm starting something new and picking my ten Best Anime of 2016:

1. Yuri On Ice
2. Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju
3. Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3
4. ReLIFE
5. Flying Witch
6. Classicaloid
7. Sound Euphonium
8. Dance With Devils
9. Sweetness & Lightning
10. Orange

Last episode of the season, and it was fantastic!

( Spoilers ahead! )

Amazing episode this week! Granted, the animation was not very good -- definitely the ugliest episode of the season so far, maybe even the entire show -- but the emotional content was like, just, WOW! I definitely got teary-eyed at several moments.( Read more... )

In other news, the title and cast members of the next Sera Myu, based on my beloved Dream Arc, have been revealed! I'm surprised that Anime News Network doesn't have an article up about this yet, so I'll just link to the announcement of the official Sailor Moon site. It's going to be called Amour Eternal, and the fact that they use the name Helios and not Pegasus in the cast roster has me hopeful that Helios will be in human form for most of the show. (Can't wait to see the actress in costume!) I am a little concerned, though, that while they announced the casting of the Amazon Trio, there's no indication that the Amazoness Quartet will be a part of the show, a decision that rather baffles me. The new Sera Myu so far have been heavily based on the manga, so I'm not sure why they would decide to cut the Quartet when they're the main mini-boss crew of this arc -- the Trio are more like MotD -- and actually show up in the next arc as well. Come to think of it, I don't think they appeared in the old SuperS musical either... Maybe their hairstyles are just too complicated to make in real life? (Although I've seen pictures of cosplayers who have done it.) Well, whatever, I still can't wait to see it!

Another great episode of Crystal, although I have to confess that the real highlight was the new ending song, sung my Mamoru. The song's great, but it's the visuals that really sell it. Especially loved the shots of Mamoru standing in the rain in a wet shirt... Yum! This episode also premiered yet another version of the opening song, this time sung by a group. It was nice enough, but I still think my favorite is the second version.

This episode of Crystal was almost as good as last week's, which I absolutely loved. Things are getting good!I really loved everybody joining their powers together to help Sailor Moon transform into her Super form (even if the transformation itself wasn't that interesting), and the new fuku is stunning. I was never really fond of the Super fuku in the old anime because the colors didn't really work together, but Crystal's color palate makes it look much better. I'm also glad that they kept Neptune scolding Uranus about talking about their "patrons" from the manga. That was always one of my favorite interactions between them! (Although it would be nice to find out exactly who these patrons are.) But the main meat of this episode was the Outers finally telling the Inners their Silver Millennium backstory and what they plan to do to Hotaru. Sure it was a lot of exposition, but it was really well done exposition. I even got chills at one point. Also loved Mistress Nine's voice and thought it was really creepy (in a good way) how Hotaru's face and voice changed when Mistress Nine briefly managed to take control before her final awakening.

In other news, that Pegasus toy that I spent a ridiculous amount of money on finally was delivered a few days ago. There was some doubt I would actually get it since shortly after I bought and paid for it, the seller came back to me, wanting me to pay the full $300 he originally wanted because he really needed the money and regretted selling it for so cheap. I sympathized, but there was no way I could afford to pay that much, so I told him that if he really thought it was worth that much, he was welcome to cancel the order, refund my money, and try to find another seller, though since I was the only one who had expressed an interest in it, that might be asking too much. After taking almost a week to think it over, he finally decided to honor our original deal and sent it off.

I debated for a few days about whether or not to open the box, but it just seemed stupid to pay that much for the thing and not even get to see the main reason I bought it, so I did end up opening it. Luckily, it was very easy to take it out of the box without destroying anything, so I don't think opening it will affect the value that much as long as I keep the toy and box in great condition.

This is what it looked like straight out of the box. There's a velcro closure on the bottom, which lets you open and turn the bell inside out to transform into...

( You'll never guess... No, of course you will. )

Loved this episode of Crystal! It was rather fast-paced, but considering that this chapter in the manga is really long, that's to be expected. (I don't think they even got through all of the chapter yet.)There were some nice moments for minor characters, like Reika and Motoki's interactions with Setsuna and Kyousuke giving the Sailor Moon cup he made to Chibi-Usa as their classmates draw the obvious conclusion. I also loved the scene where Minako comes to visit Makoto and Makoto ends up attacking the evil flower with a knife. Huh, I know there was a lot more that I wanted to talk about, but there was so much that happened that I can't even remember it all. Oh, well. The best part of all, though, is that Pluto is officially back in action! The "floating" scene was lovely, and I liked how even Mamoru could sense that she had reawakened. (Probably due to his ever growing psychic abilities, but you could also use it as shipping fuel...) And perfect ending for the episode with Pluto calmly saying "Dead Scream" and defeating Tellu even after Sailor Moon's attack failed.

New episode of Crystal is out! Still really loving this season. Not really much to say about the episode itself, but I do think everybody's clothes at the concert were gorgeous. Oh, and it was Minako's turn to be the most adorable character -- loved all her fangirling! It was also fun to see her use her Sailor V compact. I always loved Mercury's Aqua Mirage from the "Ami's First Love" special, so it was nice to see Crystal's version of the attack, which was lovely as well. I will say that there were some really strange translation issues in the subtitles, namely Michiru saying her mirror isn't such a "sweet stuff", but, eh, you can't really expect perfect subtitles for a simulcast anyway. Hopefully they will clean that up for the physical release.

In other news, I'm majorly bummed about losing out on this super-adorable and rare Pegasus plush. Technically, the auction hasn't ended yet -- there's still about two more hours as of this posting -- but bidding is now up to $150. I was willing to go up to $80 -- maybe $100 at the absolute highest -- but I just can't justify spending that much on a plush toy, even if it is of my favorite character. Oh, well, since I'm not getting that one, I can make an offer on this Saturn plush I've also had my eye on to complete my Outers set. Fingers crossed that I can get a good price on it.