Kurogane's Anime Blog

This post is dedicated to the good, the bad and the WTF’s of this year. It’s really been an interesting year…..

Heh, I was supposed to post this yesterday, but with all the shopping, satelite tracking, celebrations and epic rickrolling, I only finished it today. I guess this will be my first real post of 2009, hehehe.

Anyways, the point of this post is to relive the more memorable moments of 2008 for me, in terms of anime and such. Another year filled with good things, bad shit and “just WTF were they thinking?!” craziness.

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Another year passes. Man, it’s hard to believe I’m already in to my 9th year of being an otaku as well as my 4th year of blogging. Time sure flies. I’m now well over 1500 posts with nearly 16k comments, and it’s thanks to everyone’s support that I’ve gotten so far.

This year was marked by an increased number of good shows, but surprisingly, it wasn’t as “happening” as last year. To put it in another way, while the average increased, the top end of the bell curve wasn’t as high as last year. Nevertheless, this year still had its moments.

My choices here aren’t particularly graded using a strict measure, it’s more of an overall rating of shows of this year that I greatly enjoyed in one way or another, so please view it as that rather than a solid indicator of quality.

Of course, being a mere mortal with a real life outside of the Internet, I will inevitably miss a few gems here and there, so feel free to voice up any other shows that you, my dear reader, believe I should have watched and not missed for this year.

With that said, here’s the list.

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The 3rd years all graduate except for Nagisa who collapses. Guess it’s good bye to Kotomi, Kyou, Ryou and the School Life arc.

I don’t know if I’ll keep on talking about CLANNAD now that the AFTER story is going to be begin. I’m not very good at sad things. We’ll see as the show goes on I guess.

Thanks Kyo Ani for the Botan appearance. I have a feeling we won’t be seeing much more of him now too…

Yuki-nee hizamakura!!!!!!!!

Oh wow, Nagisa is so sporting.

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I don’t seem to have to anything to say about Yukine’s episode except that Tomoya had an Alto-hime moment this episode. Nagisa going all depressed at seeing that and Tomoya overreacting to that was pretty much the highlight of the episode to me.

This is also probably the closest CLANNAD will get to “harem anime” as possible.

Yes, I know it’s kinda sad but I actually downloaded this to watch after hearing “rave reviews” about it. Just don’t ask me where I got it or where I heard the “rave reviews” from.

Surprisingly, for a TMA work, it’s quite epic wei…! Not only it follows the anime so darn closely in terms of plot, it also emulates some of the more crazier moments and even includes the emotional moments (tennis scene). Thank god they had the decency to not put in Fuko LOLOLOLOLOL. It also makes me realise how short the main CLANNAD plot is too!

And, oh, the sex scenes were epic too. Hell, the AV was 26 mins exposition, 14 mins sex, another 20 mins exposition and 26 mins of sex. in short, the AV was half plot and half sex! Hell, that’s actually quite different from the usual AV’s which jump in to sex straight! And the sex scenes are only of Kyou (in the gym storage room OMGLOLWTF~!) and Nagisa too, with the others “untouched”. Saving them for CLONNAD ~After Story~… or perhaps they paid a bit too much for the actors to actually act? We shall see… LOL.

Quality of the “performers” are quite above average, with the girls actually looking decent for once! Kotomi was quite fugly though, but Nagisa, Kyou and Ryou looked relatively pretty when compared to some of TMA’s stuff I’ve sampled before. Hell, they have styled out Nagisa’s ahoge on her actress using copious amounts of superglue hair gel. But the best part of the show has to be Tomoyo KICK… “faithfully reproduced”, LOL.

The rotoscoped/green screens of the later half of the movie somehow actually added to the charm of the production, even if they looked terribly cheap hahaha. I wish the guys weren’t so fucking fugly though, since that’s really the only major gripe I have about the production.

Now I wonder if there will be a CLONNAD ~After Story~ after it ends and whether will Mei be included in the “star-studded” line up for it, HAR HAR HAR.

Misae’s mini-arc ends. Ahh~ it was too short.

It turns out that it was a flashback shown by Shima to Tomoya, not the other way round, so my misconceptions are cleared.

If anything, the arc ended a bit too fast for me to feel emotionally attached to the story, so when it ended, I was left a bit dry, hoping the “dream” would’ve lasted longer but it seems even KyoAni has a schedule to stick through. A bit of small consolation comes in the form of trap Shima… but I wished they would’ve spent the time forming a much more deeper bond between the viewers and the characters.

Hillarious, but wasted the time a bit too much.

Still, I felt touched when Tomoya conveys the words that Shima wanted to tell Misae, thereby giving Misae a closure… no, a sense of it rather, to her relationship with Shima. At least she now knows that he’ll be with her always, and she can finally move forward from it. Or, at least, that’s what I felt from watching this episode.

The next episode will finally center on Yukine, and I have a somewhat high expectations of it, thanks to Guncannon’s worshiping of her.

Misae’s flashback arc begins and I’m surprised. It’s the stork story, only in reverse. Literally. Reverse. In gender-wise or time-wise. No wonder the cat had more screen time than Botan had, LOL.

I am really surprised to see this happening though, because it’s so…. magical, yet so familar and also with a dash of outlandishness to it too. Does this mean they’ll retroactively change the past so that the present happens? It’s all so weird though, mostly because the show has been pretty “normal” throughout the series so far. I guess this means KyoAni is finally ready to throw in the mystical parts of CLANNAD to us, the viewers, already.

Younger Misae was… not what I expected, hahaha. She’s so much more violent than her older self will be and it sure seems she’s been pretty well schooled in the arts of tackling, armlocking and suplexes. Now I kinda understand why Satsuki Yukino is her voice actress *coughchidoricough*. Poor Shima-kun getting a real nice taste of Misae’s “skills”, heh.

Also, seeing her trying desperately to attract the attention of her crush, Igarashi-kun, seriously made me think, “Ahhh, youth is as youth does.” The ending of this episode was a really heart-wrenching moment though, even made more so by the unintentional cruelty of Misae’s own words. It’s actually the first time CLANNAD has touched so close to the purse strings in my heart and if this story continues on like this…. well, we’ll see.

Final episode in the Sunohara arc and everything resolves just fine. But Mei is kinda naive, really, to try and get Sunohara back in that soccer club that’s populated by assholes. Didn’t he quit because they were bullying him? If I were Mei, I wouldn’t even try to think of getting my brother back in to a club that bullied him until he snapped.

Anyways, I’m pretty damn surprised they kept the “Sanae is Nagisa’s sister” lie for that long. God, it was hillarious when Sunohara tried to ask for Sanae’s hand from Akio. Tomoya can be such a bastard at times. Must add though, his flashbacks of his time with Sunohara sure was…. “suggestive”? Ahahahaahaaaa

Next week is surprisingly Misae’s arc! Apparently we get to see her in her high-school days too! Woot!

I. REALLY. SHOULD. STOP. MAKING. THIS. THINGS.

Disclaimer: I am not a lolicon or a siscon. I hope you people don’t misunderstand moe for fetish!