Winter 2014: What I'm Watching (Part 2)

It’s time for the second part of my Winter 2014 initial impressions on shows I plan to follow. Included this time is one short show; I don’t normally cover them in these posts, but since said show is somewhat on the longer side and one of the better shorts to come out lately, I’m putting it in here. Beyond that, there’s a fair variety in this set, including a number of sequels. No point delaying this any further; let’s go straight to the shows.

Winter 2014: What I'm Watching (Part 1)

The new season of anime is underway, and despite thinking that I’d try to limit the number of shows I’d watch this season, once again, I have ended up with a full slate of shows to follow. Go figure. I will be following 15 new full-length series, which is already a lot, and that’s not including the four shows that are continuing from last season—that’s a total of 19 shows this season that I’m following! It’s like Summer 2013 all over again.

Anyway, like I have done for the last two seasons, I will introduce the new shows I am following this season in two separate parts.

As a side note, there will be a number of shows from Funimation this time around, and as usual, they put their videos on both their (new) website and on Hulu. However, as of this season, they have adopted the Crunchyroll model of delaying new episodes by one week for those not subscribed to their Elite Video Subscription service. This delay also applies to the episodes they put up on Hulu.

Time to introduce the first of the new shows!

There are a lot of great comedies this season.

Edit Note (1/27/13): I have changed some of the "objectionable content" sections.

Anime Best of 2013, Part 5: Top Female Characters

Man, this took me a while to write. Real life got really busy.

Anyway, it's time to look at the characters that made up 2013. This post will be dedicated to female characters (male characters will be covered next), so expect this post to be filled with plenty of moe. But also expect the actual list of my favorite female characters to go into actual character writing and development.

Special Rules: In additional to normal eligibility rules, only one character per show is eligible per list. Other good characters from the same show will be mentioned as honorable mentions. I've also tried to avoid overlap in the lists, though there will still be some here and there.

Of course, there'll also be plenty of beautiful, adorable girls, such as Kin-iro Mosaic's Aya. 

Anime Best of 2013, Part 4: Visuals

So this post will look at the best visuals in anime. As a fair warning, though, I am no visual artistic specialist, and these particular "best of" lists will largely be based on what stuck out in my mind as having memorable visuals.

And while I would love to have a screencap spam for this post, I am rather busy at the moment, so that will have to wait until perhaps later. Most of these shows can be found streaming online, so check out an episode if you want to see all those cool visuals.

And finally, while I will include some traditional "top 10" lists, this post will largely be a look at each season of anime and its animation trends.

I'll say this: Free! has the most fluid animation of any anime this year. In more ways than one.

Anime Best of 2013, Part 3: Top Opening Sequences

Let's open up 2014 by looking at 2013's best openings!

Same rules as for the Top Closing Sequences apply: the sequence must have originated in 2013, only one per series, and Fall 2013 sequences are eligible. This time, I will start with the Top 10 Opening Animations. Lots of video embeds following the jump!

Anime Best of 2013, Part 2: Top Ending Sequences

Yesterday, 2013 came to an end, and today opens up 2014. So let's look at the best openings (OPs) and endings (EDs) of 2013! I will be looking at both the opening and ending themes themselves, as well as the animation sequences. Since we first had things come to an end, I will first look at the top endings (EDs) of 2013.

Special Rules: Only EDs that originated in 2013 count. For the Fall 2012 shows that went into 2013 and changed EDs, only the new ED is eligible (Little Busters's ED is not eligible, as it originated in 2012 and did not change). Also, Fall 2013 EDs are eligible. If a show has multiple EDs, only one per show is eligible.