Top 25 Opening Themes for Fall 2012

Perhaps it's more due to the expectations I had assigned to the fall season after such a fruitful spring session, but I had high hopes that we'd get some creative approaches to the openers this season. Overall, while I think the music itself has gotten easier on the ear and catchier in the brain, I'm finding myself sighing more after the first ninety seconds of the episode.

I'm uncertain if it is due to the content of the shows. Long-distance hikes such as Space Brothers and Gintama' have resigned themselves to glancing out the window and appreciating the scenery, while shows granted a second season such as Sword Art Online and Medaka Box are sleepwalking, plenty satisfied with their content keeping the viewer's interest. Outside of the eternally-enjoyable Polar Bear Café and the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure remake, all of the shows in the Top 10 are first-time appearances.

The decent shows have managed to make ripples, but I can guarantee you this: the bad shows sank like shrapnel. You won't see To-Love-Ru Darkness and Girls und Panzer in these rankings, but you will see a show I wish we could scrub from the collective fanbase's memory, only for its incredible failure. I'm sure you've already guessed by now.

With that, I give you the hardest rankings I've ever had to sit through—the Top 25 opening themes of Fall 2012.

(Clicking the title of the song will bring you to the YouTube'd OP; clicking the artist will bring you to their PV for the song.)

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Golden Ani-Versary of Anime: HOMEWORK TIME

It took us a little less than three weeks to completely fill out the Golden Ani-Versary of Anime roster. Our listing has a pretty good cross-section of bloggers and reviewers, writers and scholars, Ph.Ds and underclassmen, and I'm proud as fan to be a part of this deep analysis into the history of anime. The past fifty years have been both glorious and rocky for the medium in terms of critical acclaim, commercial success, and global acceptance, and considering its dependence on both human genius and electrical energy, the output in the next fifty years can be anyone's guess.

Now, it's time to...you know...do actual homework. A project this big is going to need some standards.

As the editor for this project, I've been debating many different aspects for our essays. After a few questions to the Tweeting public (and a mechanical pencil to the palm to get my thought process moving), I think we've come up with a general rubric for the blog's entries.

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The Golden Ani-Versary of Anime: Full Blog Panic!

You've got me wondering, Japan. You got Tatsunoko Productions to celebrate their 50th anniversary six months before their actual 50th anniversary, but we still haven't seen a Tetsuwan Atomu 50th anniversary anime poster yet? No matter. Tatsunoko's 50th is good enough for me.

Regardless, the outpouring of support for the Golden Ani-Versary of Anime has been duly noticed. This was just some uncertain shot-in-the-dark project that I thought a handful of fans would be into. Instead, we filled up the roster in the span of two weeks! Incredible! It may not have gotten the attention that a petition for political or social awareness would get, but it's still impressive!

So let's get down to business.

Currently, we're trying to develop a sensible rubric for all of the essays and rankings, but we can definitely say that we have a time frame in mind. In the next few days, we'll develop a strategy for essay length and content, but for now we can at least settle on a pattern.

We've been hemming and hawing with various release schedules. Should it be year-long? Month-long? All done in the span of 24 hours? Should we start at 1963 and work our way to 2012? Reverse order? Should we throw darts at a Masamune Shirow calendar to randomly pick dates?It's been decided that we shall meet in the middle, both in duration and in sequence.

Once the calendar flips to 2013, we will start with our first year, 1963, the year that Tetsuwan Atomu debuted on Japanese AND American televisions. Within the same week, we will also roll out an entry on 2012, thus book-ending our fifty-year trip in the first seven days. The next week, we'll roll out 1964 and 2011, then progress inwards until we get to the late 1980s / early 90s. Once we get to the last ten entries in late June, we'll randomize the order and finish with 1989, the year that the great Osamu Tezuka passed away.

Each week, we'll accompany the entries with a profile of the year's timeline, covering the important events that defined the industry in both Japan and globally. Hopefully, approaching anime from its past and its present might give us all insight as to how we will view anime in the future.

Some of you might be too antsy to wait to see who has been selected for what years. We've provided the entire listing beyond the jump and hidden for spoilers, so if you want to remain surprised, don't access the jump!

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The Golden Ani-Versary of Anime: Introducing the Payroll!

We're still working on some of the kinks for the Golden Ani-Versary project, including details surrounding the length of the essays, the frequency that each post will be made, and the order that they will appear. We also have to figure out what we're going to do if we can't fill in the final ten spaces, but we still have a good three weeks or so until we'll start getting submissions.

We will also announce a new blog for all of these posts, so that means we may be seeking help for designing the banner. (Hey, I'm not art-smart.)

However, what we can announce is the list of the bloggers, writers, and Twitter accounts who have made reservations to contribute to this 50th-anniversary celebration for the debut of the Tetsuwan Atomu anime. We won't go so far as to say who will be writing for what year, but we'll at least give you a list of who will be lending a hand.

(Mind you, we're not paying people in Tetsuwan Bucks...)

Here we go! In no particular order...

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The Golden Ani-versary of Anime: Mark Your Territory!

What has anime evolved from?
What will anime evolve into?
Will the future involve a Mawaru-Penguindrum dub?

In barely under two months, a very important milestone will be reached in anime, and it is likely that many fans, no matter what genre they worship, will not realize what has come and gone.

If you take a look at the overall anime timeline, you'll notice that we've already missed an important anniversary. Back on January 15, 1960, Japan ran its first animation on a TV broadcast, a three-story, 30-minute animation called The Three Tales (Mittsu no Hanashi), so we've already missed the opportunity to celebrate the golden anniversary for televised anime. We've also missed the 50th anniversary of Japan's first TV series, as the show Otogi Manga Calendar debuted in 1961.

I don't know about you, but I feel bad for missing two anniversaries. I'm not going to miss the next one. Neither should you.

January 1st, 2013 will mark exactly 50 years since the mighty ground-breaking anime Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu) debuted on Japanese television.

Let that sink in.

FIFTY. YEARS.

All of the DVD sales, global conventions, cosplay, maid cafes, Haruhi dance gatherings, Twitter and Tumblr conversations...all of it could be considered the product of the seed planted on January 1, 1963, when Astro Boy debuted on Fuji Television. Back in that first year, Japanese television ran a total of seven animated programs. This year, we're likely to have at least 120 new shows alone.

In honor of this immense milestone, I'm going to try something new and adventurous, and it's going to require help. A Herculean amount of help. After all, 50 years of fandom would be impossible to distill from even the most talented experts, let alone a tiny reviewer like myself. We're going to need a gigantic contribution from all the fans to do this.

No fancy names, so we'll call this...

The Golden Ani-versary of Anime

(1963-2013)

(Name under construction)

The plan: Take that initial year of 1963. Take the most recent year of 2012. That's 50 years of solid televised anime that we need to chronicle. Therefore, including myself, we're going to need a total of 50 anime writers, bloggers, historians, and scholars to target 50 total years. It could be the year you were born, the year you first turned your attention to anime, or a year that has fascinated you historically. Regardless, we need 50 writers to write about anime, a year at a time.

Your job: Here's what you have to do.

• Get in contact with me, either through Twitter (at @GTebbetts) or through e-mail (geoff.tebbetts at gmail.com).
• Reserve a single year (from 1963 to 2012). Do it fast before someone else does!
• Provide a ranking of the top shows of that year, no more than ten, and explain why. (This isn't necessarily a ranking of your favorites, but it can be. There may not be many for the earlier years, so an entry with just one show for 1963 would be fine.)
• Over the next year, we will go from 1963 to 2012 (or the opposite direction if it is easier), but we WILL cover every year. In order. It might go a year a week, or we might rattle through all 50 in two months, but we WILL get through them.
• Recommendations: we're going to need more people who want to tackle the earlier years, so be adventurous!

Will this project be big? Quite big, likely requiring its own blog. (Names being considered.)

Time consuming? All signs point to YES.

In need of help? You bet.

I have no idea who we can draw together for such a large aspiring project, but I think we can do it. I currently have no plans to make this bigger than a mere blog, but I think a project like this will do a lot to educate people on the history of such an amazing cultural industry, as well as unify generations of fandom under a single ideal. Who knows? Maybe all you Naruto fans will understand where your anime was derived from, while all the Ribon no Kishi scholars will appreciate what your habit has developed into.

1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972

1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982

1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Red: Requested

Blue: Tentative

Black: Still available

Reserve your year! Hopefully we can assign dates quickly and have our essays ready to roll by the first day of 2013! As the years are reserved, I will scratch out the dates below, so act fast and spread the word!

UPDATE: We now have a Twitter account (@GoldenAni), so be sure to look for a new blog location in the future.

UPDATE (11/19/2012): We now have all 50 spots filled!

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[Anime Survivor 2] Final: Binbôgami Ga! vs. Humanity Has Declined

It is the spectacle, the enamoring uncertainty, which lurks in Survivor that has made it last for such a long time. All of the competitors are so unknown that first glances do no good at predicting a winner. The weak may be able to outsmart the strong, the strong may be able to out-muscle the weak, and those in the middle may end up victorious due to both eating each other in the process.

That apparently isn't the case with Anime Survivor. If anything, this was more a Lord of the Flies approach to survival, the weak constantly getting picked off each week, while the strong survived due to momentum (the strength of previous episodes) or genetics (how well the staff had performed in other shows). Those shows that had a bad premise didn't stand a chance at making it to the final round, while those with weak plot lines were exposed in the middle of a feeble season.

Really, Anime Survivor was a miserable idea I came up with. Better than BTOOOM!, perhaps, but certainly worse than Battle Royale.

And that leaves us two shows that many predicted would have legs this past summer. It was all between Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Binbôgami Ga!, and Humanity Has Declined (Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, or hashtagged as #Jintai) from the starting gate, and while shows like Kokoro Connect and Moyashimon Returns pulled hammies halfway through the race, these three showed staying power. That is, until Natsuyuki Rendezvous displayed one of the weaker dramatic endings and collapsed yards from the finish line.

So which show—Binbôgami Ga! or Humanity Has Declined—wins in this photo finish in the last ever failed Anime Survivor experiment? Well, let's just say that the cameras weren't required for the end.

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Ixion Saga DT: The Trollingest OP Ever?

Kid plays video game. Kid entranced by a virtual heroine coming onto him. Kid "falls" into the video game to become a true warrior, eventually thwarting his clever enemy by punting him in the junk with a spiked boot.

Before you laugh at this premise behind Ixion Saga DT and call it immature, perhaps you should follow the lyrics to the actual song. Go ahead and access Crunchyroll to follow the opening theme, "DT Suteru" ("I'll lose my DT") by Golden Ixion Bomber DT. Go ahead. I can wait. Just be sure to note that our hero is swinging a sword that turns into a thick-tipped giant hammer when he holds it juuuuust right.

Getting a little bit of a hint that there's something trolling under the surface of this sub-standard adventure anime? Maybe the lyrics might give you a hint. Just be aware that the underlined lyrics were what was written on the screen, while the lyrics underneath are the actual sung song.


「戦士の称号」捨てる                 I will give up my title as a knight!
ＤＴ捨てる                                     I will lose my DT!

僕に戦士の称号捨てさせてよ       Let me lose my knightly title.
僕に「ＤＴ］捨てさせてよ           Let me lose my DT.

普通の男に戻りたいな                   I want to become a regular guy again.
おとこになりたいな                         I want to become a man.

とても悲願しい運命                        My extremely long-cherished fate
とてもかなしいたからもの              My extremely woeful treasure

宿敵に返上したい                          I will return that to my enemy.
きみにささげたい                            I will give it all to you.

次元転移したときから　強く引力れ合い  Since the time I jumped dimensions, I've felt a strong pull
であったときから　強くひかれ合い          Since the time I met you, I've felt a strong attraction,

眠るたび悪夢をみた                      And when I sleep, I have nightmares.
眠るたびゆめをみた                      And when I sleep, I dream.

ハイペリオンの覚醒にうなされてしまうよ         I've groaned in my sleep from my awaking Hyperion.
からだのほてりにうなされてしまうよ                 I've groaned in my sleep from my body's warmth.

オーラの冷まし方をおしえて         Tell me how to calm my aura.
ねつの冷まし方をおしえて            Tell me how to cool my heat.

どうしてだろう　宿敵と対決すれば対決するほどに    Why is it that the more I fight with my enemy,
どうしてだろう　きみをしればしるほどに                      Why is it that the more I know about you,

僕はもう　アルマギアが戦闘状態になる         the more I'm thrust into Armagia's open warfare?
僕はもう　あいつがかたくなる                          the more that part of me gets so hard?

僕に戦士の称号捨てさせてよ         Let me lose my knightly title.
僕に「ＤＴ］捨てさせてよ             Let me lose my DT.

主君の右腕と決別さ                        This is goodbye to my master's right-hand man.
みぎてとさよならさ                           This is goodbye to my right hand.

ライバル同士で戦おう　決着は      Let us fight as equal rivals. The conclusion to it all...
ふたりでしよう　これからは             Let us do this together. And from now on...

宿敵を逃さない                                 I will not overlook my enemy.
きみをはなさない                              I will not let you go.

宿敵と対戦しかない                         I can only fight my enemy.
きみとはなれない                             I can never leave you.

Can you perhaps guess what "DT" means then? (Check below.) Well, considering the main villain (whose initials "ED" could now stand for "erectile dysfunction") basically had his balls literally busted by the hero, I think you can tell.

* DT = "doutei", the Japanese word for "virginity".

Top 25 Ending Themes for Summer 2012

To tell the truth, part of me didn't want to do these rankings. I honestly never made it as far as the ending theme in some shows (Dakara Boku wa H ga Dekinai, Ebiten), so it's required some forced research. That may be why some shows fell through the cracks this season, but in all honesty I'm rating the OPs higher than the EDs this summer. There was just part of me that appreciated the beginning of some shows instead of their ending.

What did I see a lot of? Scrolling. Miles and miles of top-to-bottom scrolling that probably didn't need to be done. Hey, I suppose it beats "running shots" by a mile, but at least five shows tried that pan.

What didn't I see a lot of? Good endings. Apart from the Top 5, a good season may have left a lot of these endings off the chart. I suppose the producers were as sleepy as we all were this summer.

So let's get on with it already. Here are your Top 25 EDs of Summer 2012. Cuddle up to them and get some good Z's.

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Top 25 Opening Themes of Summer 2012

This summer desperately needed good music.

You could have put an anime to just about any song (as the above video has so eloquently showed us), and I would have considered it rankable before I considered it rank. Mind you, that doesn't mean it's time to see a K-On! "Gangnam Style" parody at the next convention's anime music video contest, but at least there was something good to watch for a few minutes before I turned the streaming service off.

So I present to you this season's Top 25 opening themes. It took a while to weed through so much. Perhaps I should have kept things short, since it was pretty hard to settle on one, but I think I've made the right call.

And not one horse trot in any of 'em.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 3rd Place - Natsuyuki Rendezvous

Let's make this short and sweet before the shine is gone, folks. I'm going to hate myself for this review miles more than you might.

I had convinced myself that we had a sure thoroughbred this season once we saw what the moe train wrecks had wrought. No matter how many times Tori got punched in the crotch, no matter how many lingerie shots Campione! gave us, no matter how many ping-pong balls got eaten by Chinatsu's hair in Yuru Yuri...we were doomed to have a long, hot season of anime that we would forget once the first episode of Robotic;Notes was screened.

I'm just stunned that noitaminA would royally let us down. The wide-open net was there. All they had to do was nudge the ball through, but Moyashimon Returns shanked the kick, missed completely with its complete change of character profiles and drab storylines from the first season. The second show clanged their shot off the crossbar in the 90th minute. (Pardon the soccer metaphor—finally saw the US National Team win!)

Considering the severe letdown, I really shouldn't devote much time to this review. Third place in Summer 2012's Anime Survivor is Natsuyuki Rendezvous.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 4th Place - Kokoro Connect (Blogger Random)

Yes, "Freaky Friday" was called "Fortune Cookie" in Japan.

We've seen this formula before, back when Lindsey Lohan wasn't a druggie and both Judge Nelson and Fred Savage were still inexplicably popular. The whole "body switch" thing. I mean, it's not so foreign a concept, and manga such as Your & My Secret already beat other shows to the punch. Hell, even off-the-wall comedies such as Excel Saga and Binbôgami Ga! gave it a shot.

But if the human body can be treated like a vehicle, why stop at just changing drivers? Why not see what happens if someone resets all the radio stations or puts diesel in an unleaded-only tank?

That's the concept behind the 4th Place...

Excuse me.

Hello to all of you people reading this blog. I hope you don't mind, but I've decided to involve myself. You all know me as "Heartseed", the real star of Kokoro Connect.

I noticed recently that the person who writes this electronic mumbo-jumbo doesn't have all that much to provide for fandom. His biases against harem shows are crimes against humanity at times, and he's grumpier than Clint Eastwood at an Ikea. He thought that Nobuna Oda show was worse than that show with the chrome-plated chests, and this was after he teased us with a review of Kids on the Slope that never actually manifested itself.

So I have decided to intrude and make things more interesting. From now on, this blog will switch with another blog randomly. No matter who the reviewer is, they must review the show without skipping a beat.

And that brings us to the show that comes in 4th Place in this season's Anime Survivor, Kokoro Connect. Let's see who shows up to review...

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Selling the Sizzle: The Summer Anime Season in Logos

Call me a sucker for commercialism, but a well-crafted logo sometimes is enough to draw me into purchasing a mindless product. You could throw all the testimonials and infomercials at my proverbial wall and hope that something sticks, but more often than not, the five-year-old in me will opt for the colorful mascots and neon signs. I'm the type who can't really enjoy the wooden nature of Wheel of Fortune or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, but Press Your Luck is a different animal altogether.

I found myself applying this to Summer 2012's selection of anime. Amongst those that qualify as "mindless drivel", I found myself disliking three shows to the point of not bothering to care how they end (Campione!, Love and Election and Chocolate, Ebiten). All are chock-full of mindless plot lines and unnecessary sexual escapades, but I found myself ranking them in a manner that correlated to how bad their logo was.

Love and Election and Chocolate (Koi to Senkyo to Chokoreeto) wasn't as bad as the first episode suggested, but it was still bad. Like its logo, a melted and messy confection, the show was good in construction, but bad in organization. Perhaps it was too complex for such a simple design?

Campione!, like its own logo, was incredibly difficult to view. If there is symbolism surrounding its "Pick-Up-Stix" design, I certainly can't see it. I mean, considering the show started in Italy, I haven't the foggiest idea why the exclamation point is stuck with a rose bloom. It's like the staff assumed France and Italy were the same country.

This brings us to Ebiten, a show so horribly disfigured by multiple personalities that it can't decide on an anime logo. I'd show you what they look like, but I don't want to be reminded that there's a train wreck like Ebiten out there. I'd be doing a disservice if I even showed the logos to people. (Out of mind, out of sight.) The manga's logo is relatively better, but a logo written solely in Sans Serif would look better.

So that got us thinking—which anime shows from this season have the best logos?

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[Anime Survivor 2] 5th Place - Uta Koi

Vanilla. Mayonaisse. A one-dollar bill. A named background character in a Rumiko Takahashi manga. You're the Nami Hitô of anime.

This feeling of "normal"—this is sadly the feeling I had last season when I had gotten to the midway point of this whole "contest". By getting to the peak of the anime season, you've gotten past the indigestible curd, but you still have a ways to go before dessert is served. I have that exact feeling right now; I haven't the energy to scowl at the middle of the pack, but there's really nothing to praise about the work.

Considering Medaka Box, Mysterious Girlfriend X, and Folktales from Japan parked their Hyundais in a lot full of shiny sports cars and broken-down Edsels, I'm expecting mediocrity at this point. We got it with Moyashimon Returns, and it's likely we'll get it with our fifth place show, Chôyaku Hyakunin Isshû: Uta Koi.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 6th Place - Moyashimon: Reloaded

For the longest time, I had hoped that noitaminA would target the right shows for a sequel. So far, the only sequels have been Honey & Clover (back in 2007, before the first streaming anime shows were screened) and a few follow-ups to Nodame Cantabile. Since 2010, we have had a few two-cours shows, but one of them was Guilty Crown, and I'm pretty sure most of fandom isn't hammering down doors to get that one green-lighted for a return.

There could be many arguments that some don't deserve sequels (No.6, Hataraki Man) and that others would have continuity ruined by a second season (AnoHana, House of Five Leaves), but many could say that shows like Princess Jellyfish, Shiki, Eden of the East, and Fractale Tatami Galaxy are ripe and ready for one. You could say they are practically fermenting in potential.

How appropriate that I mention fermenting. It's just too bad this show wasn't left in the vat for a little longer. Sixth Place in Summer 2012's Anime Survivor is Moyashimon Returns, a noitaminA show that didn't deserve a half-hearted attempt at a sequel.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 7th Place: Tari Tari

I will be one of the few that will admit the luster wore off Hanasaku Iroha after the first season.

P.A. Works did a wondrous job animating the series, and it felt great to see an anime focus on something closer to the heart of Japanese culture and the whims of society. I think a lot of people take the small tourist-based businesses of Japan for granted when they watch them in an animated form, so it felt good to get a sense of realism surrounding the onsen inns of Japan.

However, that sense of realism seemed to eat at my core like a grater to my inner daikon. As time went on, I found myself disliking the false disconnect between the "realism" of an animated show and my own. I couldn't find myself accepting the characters as real people, and some of their personalities got under my skin. If anything, I found myself appreciating the stern leadership from Sui, the inn's matriarch, more than the bubbly effervescence of the shiny-skinned youths working at the inn.

When I learned that P.A. Works was going to release a show that had that same sort of feel and animation, I wondered if I'd be able to stand the characters, now that a connection was made to Hanasaku Iroha. I suppose that's a reason why 7th Place for this season's Anime Survivor goes to Tari Tari.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 8th Place: Total Eclipse (a.k.a. What Hath Shirow Wrought?)

One of the first titles that rooted me in anime and manga (and eventually reviewing) was Masamune Shirow's Appleseed for two very different reasons.

When I bought the compiled manga volumes from Dark Horse Comics, I wasn't exactly sure what kind of manga I liked. I was partial to Rumiko Takahashi's works, but mecha hadn't thrilled me that much. Voltron had caught me as a kid, but I never got into Macross and Gundam (as much of a sin that might be to some). Bubblegum Crisis didn't catch me right away, as it was still an expensive get. When I opened the pages to Appleseed, I finally got the picture. Machinery was cool, especially if there was an underlying point to all of this technology. The translation was complex, and the conversation was foreign enough for me to get lost in the electric traffic jam that Olympus brought with it.

Of course, then I saw the digital wreckage that the OAV series spawned. Limp animation was coupled with ham actors, and all of the philosophy and mechanical jargon were stripped to leave the beat-up heart of a jalopy. It was then that I discovered the power of a good mecha show—a good distribution of detailed technology, deep thoughts, and even a svelte body sliding into the mechanical shell was what made a good mecha show to me.

Well, it looks like we found a show that left just that last part. 8th Place goes to Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse.

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[Anime Survivor 2] Nobuna Oda (a.k.a. Desperately Seeking Shôgun)

From now on, we're through with the whole "survival" angle.

Really, this season feels like "survival" applies more to the viewers than the actual shows themselves. Shows like Dakara Boku wa H ga Dekinai will be there when the season ends, but our resolve to endure all the harem shows absent from Spring 2012 won't be there. Many have already tapped out from the Boston Crab that the second season of Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere slapped on us. Those who have survived that wringer just for the sake of a happy ending in Natsuyuki Rendezvous will have to gut this one out.

That being said, it's going to be much more difficult this time around to get to the cream of this crop, but one thing still applies—a show that involves a gender-swapped ruler of Japan from the past can never be seen as a truly noteworthy accomplishment.

Ninth place in Summer 2012's Anime Survivor is The Ambition of Nobuna Oda.

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[Anime Survivor 2] 10th Place: Arcana Famiglia

Now that our second Anime Survivor is underway (the first having contributed heavily to a desire to eat whitefish and a staggering fear of owls), I can honestly say that I have no idea what show will wear the heavy crown this time around. There are a handful that may make it to the finals, but I can't guess which would make it to the top. Perhaps this is a sign that I randomly chose all the good anime shows (or all the bad ones) for this contest.

In analyzing the other shows at their face value, I'd say that we're in for crazy weather. It seems that the bountiful harvest from spring (Kids on the Slope, Tsuritama, Fujiko Mine, and the close of Fate/Zero) has dried up into a dustbowl of barren choices. Again, I blame the lack of relief on the immense gains usually left for the equinoxes—Summer and Winter just aren't for fans.

That being said, I'm going to try to remain optimistic. There is still a chance we found some roses growing among the thorns. That's not to say that it's impossible to pluck the stinkweed from the bouquet. And La storia della Arcana Famiglia is a story in desperate need of some Prada perfume.

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Summer 2012's Anime Survivor (Live From Otakon!*)

Hello from Otakon 2012! AniMaybe is having a great time in Baltimore! We're partying with cosplayers and attending all the big panels and industry announcements and glowstick-glowstick-glowstick dacing at raves and

Yeah, yeah. That's all one big fat lie.

Hardy har, Geoff. Joke's on you. Everyone and their tsundere sister is having more fun without you at Otakon, while you're stuck back home with your work and lack of a decent personal budget.

Fine. You know what? I am totally prepared to have fun without you guys. Screw y'all and your collective Haruhi dances. I'm going to have just as good a time partying with Crunchyroll and Funimation during...

Summer 2012's Anime Survivor!

(Oh. That's right. Everyone's at Otakon, so the announcement loses its punch.)

No matter! I'm going to run my own panel from the solitude of my apartment called "Geoff Tebbetts Actually Liked Hand Maid May: My Year With A Tsutaya Records Rental Card"! Just go ahead and party with the bigwigs from ANN! I'll be fine by myself!

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Top 25 Ending Themes of Spring 2012

It took me a few minutes to get myself together for the 25 Best Endings to Spring 2012's anime season. By the time I was done a few hours later, I liked only one of the positions, and that was naturally the top spot.

So to hell with keeping it a secret until the end—I loved the music in Kids on the Slope, and its ending was naturally the best and only one I wouldn't change. Hell, I may end up building my own soundtrack from the jazz greats that appeared in the show.

I will say one thing about the endings this season—I was severely disappointed. In a way, I put a positive spin on that statement, as there was so much that was good about Spring 2012 that there was very little to find flawed in general. Therefore, by default, the endings get my scorn, as I really only liked about ten of them.

So perhaps we should guess to see which one I didn't like at all? Come on. Guess. Betcha you get it right.

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