Have a Happy New Years!

よいお年をお迎えください!

Hope you guys are having a Happy New Years. Lack of time has kept me from posting a “12 Days of Anime” countdown like I did last year, but I’m still up to share some of my anime-related highlights of 2013 all in one post.

Live-Action Rurouni Kenshin sequel announced

As evident in my review of the live-action Rurouni Kenshin film, I very much enjoyed it and was glad to hear that there was a sequel in the works planned for 2014. There’s just so much material in the manga left unadapted, and while it’s a loose adaptation, it’s still a nice thought that the live-action movie series has high chance of finishing the manga’s story, something the anime failed to do. As a Rurouni Kenshin fan, I appreciate the movie series for renewing interest in this all-time classic.

Steins;Gate: Limited Edition — English Version

Seriously! It’s always nice to see a visual novel that’s not a nukige (a.k.a. 100% porn novel) being translated and released to waters outside of Japan. C’mon and preorder it, guys! Heck, they might bring more STORY over to the United States if STORY proves to be more marketable than sex.

It might restore some of my faith in humanity as well. 😛

Image Credit: ぜりーfrom Pixiv

Watamote

Can you say, “best comedy of 2013”? I was so happy when I heard that this strange dark-humored manga was being adapted into an anime. Needless to say, I ended up enjoying the adaptation as much as the manga (the chapters that I got around to reading, at least) by the time it finished airing, and I’m looking forward to a possible second season.

Re-watching a bunch of classics with my little sister

As much as I still enjoy anime, I do admit that modern anime is missing that certain “something” I enjoyed while watching anime from those old-school days. This year I’ve been introducing my little sister to several anime series from my childhood, among them being: Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Yuu Yuu Hakusho, and Digimon Adventure. She’s been enjoying them quite a bit, and it’s pretty much anecdotal proof to me that something doesn’t have to be brand spankin’ new in order for a kid to enjoy it.

Evangelion 3.3

I watched this during my Fanime Con 2013 weekend! The waiting period between the releases of the Rebuild movies is always such an impatient time, but I always enjoy them when they come out… and then get tortured by the cliffhangers. 3.3 has one of the most interesting cliffhangers yet and knowing I’ll have to wait a few more years for the next movie to come around really makes me grumble.

That being said, I love it whenever I see a series that originated before the switch to digital animation being adapted to a modern animation format, without losing the charm that made the art great, unlike a certain other series I know (note that aside from the crappier art, it’s also a completely new feminine character which is pretty much the final nail in the coffin for me, but that’s a rant for another time).

Fanime 2013

As always, Fanime Con was a fun experience for me and was a good time to just let loose and go crazy with my love for this hobby. I already summarized my experiences with Fanime Con this year in these posts, so feel free to check those out if you haven’t read them yet.

Watch as the English version denies us of Madoka costumes

Acquisition of a PlayStation 3

Thank god I got it before the sale at GameStop ended. Along with it being region-free and having a bunch of cool PS3-exclusive JRPGs in its library (and the Tales of series!), I’m enjoying Blu-Ray anime in glorious 1080p. I kind of wished I can enjoy my Japanese RPGs in 1080p without framerate drops as well, but ya’ know, console gaming… Always have to be in 780p for some reason. Why are consoles so behind on the times? Well, at least the controller’s pretty sweet and the games are still fun otherwise. If I ever manage to magically conjure up finances, I might import used copies of games like Monster Hunter Frontier G in the near future.

You know, I always thought it was funny… I never liked Sony as a gaming company (I used to like Sega during its console era and Nintendo before they started getting even more obsessed with integrating gimmicks into everything), yet I own all of their pre-PS4 consoles besides their handhelds. If they didn’t get such awesome third-party support along with the whole “region free” thing, I’d probably wouldn’t even look at the PlayStation. I would totally be a Sega guy if they didn’t go out of the console business. The Dreamcast? Hands down, best video game console I’ve ever owned (Shenmue, guys! Oh, and Jet Set Radio along with a bunch of awesome danmaku games).

Image Credit: 秋山さいふぁい from Pixiv

Pocket Monsters X & Y + The Origin

As a longtime Pocket Monsters fan, I have my fair share of problems with the XY games, but I’m really enjoying the gameplay itself so far, and I’m having a blast with all the fun features like playing with your monsters on Amie/Parley (my Nymphia is my baby) and dressing your Player Character up (why would you play as Calem? Serena gets more costumes!). I think I’ll write a review about the games eventually, as I’ve clocked well over 200+ hours on the game. Yikes.

There was also the release of animated special, “The Origin” – a thinly-disguised advertisement for XY coated with nostalgia for the original Red/Green video games – which I enjoyed simply for the nostalgia. As detailed in my review of it, I didn’t think it was all that great outside of that. But it was nice seeing another animated take on the original games (and it was certainly preferable to the current anime, which is now only a shell of its former classic self), like how there are various manga interpretations of the franchise. Hopefully this leaves room for any of those to be animated? Once you make one alternate continuity in animated form, you can showcase a whole bunch of them without confusing people. Then again, the concept of “alternate canons” is too hard of a concept to grasp for the international fanbase.

Image Credit: 瀬無あるは from Pixiv

I’m pretty sure there were other sweet anime-related things that were notable to me this year, but I’m running out of time and these are the first ones that come to mind right now, so I’ll just end it off here.

Have a great New Years, everyone! The upcoming Winter Anime season is sure to be a enjoyable one: I’m already planning on watching the second season of Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! and Pupa. I’ll probably blog the former episodically like I did with the first just for the sake of consistency, but in general, I’ll continue with my new congregated throughout the New Year because it eats up less time and I feel it’s to-the-point. Plus, it’s much better than getting burnt out writing episodic posts. I’ll also continue my Cardcaptor Sakura rewatch blogs that I’ve left hanging for quite some time as well as the Haruhi ones (hopefully). Until next year, guys… it’s only a day away. 🙂