Yooooooooooo!! I mean, ahem, why hello there. So let’s just get this out of the way, I’m really, really excited about this post and I’m trying deperately hard to not let my hyperness andd excitement mess with this post. That being said, do you know how bloody long I’ve been waiting to do this post? Three and some weeks ago when I first started the Yearlies series fo 2013. Seriously, it took all of me to not say fuck it and mess up the order I had in mind for how this would work.

Now that I don’t have to hide my excitement. Let me start off by saying that I am an avid anime watcher. If you read my previous post, I made mentions/hinted at it. However, let me explain again. Much like gaming, anime has been a part of my life since I was a child so I hold anime on the same pedestal I do gaming, web design, and technology.

Anyway, while I do love anime and am an extremely avid watcher, 2013 anime fell a bit short to me. As it is I’m very, very picky with what I watch (is it becoming clear why anime came after gaming yet?) and I felt that 2013 had nothing but really predictable releases. You either had post-apocalyptic/dystopian, cutesy, or overly shoujo-esque type anime. While I do love post-apocalyptic/dystopian anime, after a while it gets rather boring and I’ve never been one to properly enjoy cutesy/shoujo anything (it’s a rarity). Now that’s not to say that all of the anime in 2013 fell into these categories, but there just was very few series that engaged me as much as it could have.

Despite that, I’ve managed to choose 3 of the many I watched in 2013 that just remind me of why anime is probably one of my favourite past-times: Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill, and Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle.

Attack on Titan Trailer: The trailer found on Funimation’s channel.

Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人): What can I say about Attack on Titan that can be considered not a spoiler? Attack on Titan is a dystopian, tragic manga turned anime that revolves around the premise that a hundred years prior to the beginning of the anime humanity was wiped out by giant humanoid creatures named “Titans”. To protect what is leftover of humanity, the survivors are made to live in one country and surrounded by three walls: Wall Maria (outer), Wall Rose (middle), and Wall Sina (inner). For the hundred years after the inital demise of most of humanity, the ones leftover lived in peace until the Colossus Titan (no, seriously...that’s it name and trust me, it’s definitely warranted) breaches the outer wall, Wall Maria. You can only imagine the shit storm that follows that. The story follows Eren Yeager, his adopted sister Mikasa Ackerman, and their friend Armin Arlert.

The thing about Attack on Titan that captured me was that it makes no qualms about being dark and tragic and pushing the limits. That’s something that anime has been thoroughly missing; shows that push limits and aren’t afraid to do so. Another thing that captured me about the show was the overall premise of the show. I love that Eren Yeager (the main character) is so typical male protagonist, yet at the root of him, so much more. And speaking on characters, I love that most of the characters either have their own sense of self, are charaters that can stand on their own, or characters that grow in some way. For the most part, Attack on Titan does it right.

And here’s where I have to talk about the letdowns. I’ll start off with a letdown that didn’t bother me as much as it could have, but was still enough that it left quite a taste in my mouth. Towards the ending of the series, it started to seem a bit rushed. It started to feel like things were flying at you at an absolutely unnatural pace and it was horribly disconcerting and discombobulating. Now that’s not to say that series overall doesn’t pass relatively quickly and that’s understandable because there’s a lot to cover, but the ending moved way too fast for me to be proper comfortable with it. However, while that was a letdown, I could/can overlook it because there’s another season on the way.

The real letdown for me comes in the form of character development of one of the main characters. Mikasa Ackerman. Now what can I say about Mikasa’s lack of character growth without getting proper angry or giving away too much? Basically, Mikasa as a character does not grow for the entirety of 26 episodes (25 episodes of the series and the OVA). Like I told my mate, NIL and his friend, Tree, Mikasa has all the makings of what I consider to be the perfect main female heroine in an anime like this. She’s strong, incredibly intelligent, she can lead if she wants to and perfectly, she quick witted and light on her feet, if need be she can be the voice of reason, she’s gorgeous. Really, damn near perfect heroine in my eyes and then they bloody muck her up by giving her no depth. They tease the fact that she could have more depth to her, only to take it back and leave her at square one once again. I can’t really go deep into my reasonings behind the anger I feel over this because, again, trying not to spoil the show for anyone who reads this and hasn’t watched it yet. Just know that because of the lack of character development, even if she were to develop and develop in the right manner, I’m already past the point of caring.

Despite the lack of development on Mikasa’s end and the slightly faster pacing towards the end of the first season, Attack on Titan is still worthy of a watch for anyone who’s a sucker for dystopian tragedies done right without holding back.

Kill La Kill Trailer: The first trailer found on AniplexUS’s channel.

Kill la Kill (キルラキル): Too put it simply and really is just a paraphrased version of what you’d find on Wikipedia: Set at Honnouji Academy in a post-apocalyptic Japan that is dominated by the school’s student council, often referred to as The Elite Four (四天王), led by Kiryuin Satsuki. The members of the student counil, wear uniforms called Goku Uniforms or 極制服 which they use to oppress the school’s students and staff. Insert Matoi Ryuko, a seventeen year old girl who transfers to Honnouji in hopes of finding the person who killed her father to avenge his death. She wields one half of a scissored long blade through defeating the person who killed her father, she hopes to find the other half of the scissor blade to complete it. Immediately upon her arrival, she is beaten by the Student Council members after interrogating Satsuki about the identity of the kiler. After that fight, she comes across Senketsu (a kamui) that puts himself on her. With Senkentsu, Ryuko fights her way through The Elite Four and towards Satsuki in hopes of not only finding out more about her father’s death, but to lierate Honnouji.

So here’s the thing, Kill la Kill is a really, really good show. A lot of people complain about the over sexuality of the show and the rape joke that was made in the first episode of the show and honestly, I’m over people’s complaints. Honestly, the rape joke was in terrible taste and even I flinched at it, but getting past that bit proved to be far beneficial in the long run. The over sexualism doesn’t bother me because I get it. Someone on Tumblr made a lovely post breaking down Kill la Kill and why it’s worth a proper watching (which, of course, brought out all the twats on Tumblr. Do they really think they help or...?), but I can’t for the life of me find it anymore. Anyway, I would like to point out that so many people find death and murder and killing wrong, yet love things like Attack on Titan or Phi Brain or even Another. How does your sense of morality work there? Hypocrites, I swear.

Anyway, the series moves at a pace that isn’t too fast nor too slow and I have never walked away from an episode unsatisfied, even including the first episode. The action is badass and as we all know, I’m a sucker for a couple badass female mains who know how the fuck to handle their own and learn from their mistakes. Often times in the series, I find myself wondering who I want to prevail. Of course, I want Ryuko to because she is the protaganist and I always root for my babies, but at the same time Satsuki is such a good antagonist that it’s absolutely lovely and leaves me absolutely conflicted and gutted when it comes to making a decision.

Overall, look past the sexuality of it all try to understand what it means. The show is full of metaphors and similies and Loki above, is that not the most beautiful thing I have ever seen an anime do. Especially an anime that’s based off nothing but the sheer genius of its creators. Oh, did I mention the motherfucking Trigger is behind this anime? Yeah, the same badasses behind Little Witch Academia.

Phi Brain: Puzzle of God Trailer: The Season III opening found on mattbourne001’s channel.

Phi Brain: Puzzle of God (ファイ・ブレイン 神のパズル): Last but not least, we have Phi Brain: Puzzle of God. There isn’t much I can say about the series that won’t give it away. Pretty much this series follows Daimon Kaito, a high school freshman who enjoys solving puzzles and is selected as a “Phi Brain”. One day, he and his friend Nonoha (given the nickname ‘Nightingale’) go to solve an unsolvable puzzle near the school and soon find out the puzzle was a life-threatening puzzle, a philsopher’s puzzle, created by a group name P.O.G (Puzzle of God). Solving that puzzle, Kaito is designated as a Solver and soon given the title of ‘Einstein’. He is soon joined by other Solvers to take on various members of the P.O.G all over the world by solving these supposed “unsolvable puzzles”.

Do I really have to explain why this is on this list? Technically, this is allowed on the list because season 3 came out late last year and is ongoing. But never mind that.

It’s a bloody anime series about solving puzzles and creativity and thinking outside of the box while still incorporating save the world ideals. How bloody amazing is that? First of all, if you can’t already tell, I absolutely love anything that is puzzling and invokes a sense of outside the box thinking and Phi Brain has so much of that and does it so well. I love that it’s nothing aside from an adventure series because there’s hardly been a series in recent times that was just focused on adventures and friendship while everything else was seemingly backburnered without adventure and friendship seeming too overwhelming.

The characters are amazing. Kaito reminds me so much of Ikki from Air Gear and I mentioned this in a comment to someone on YouTube, but their personalities: brash, adventurous, never one to back down, wanting to be and do more, having the ideal that nothing is ever enough, the sense of determination and motivation are so similiar. It’s such a breath of fresh air to encounter a male main character that is filled with more adventurous determination than righteous determination because it’s no longer a norm (and it barely ever was). I find myself drawn more and more to characters like Kaito, Ikki, and Mamoru (from Inazuma Eleven) as opposed to the stereotypical male proganists you get now.

I could rave on and on about Phi Brain because it’s on its third season and since season one back 2011, I haven’t been let down or uninterested in the show. And that’s saying a whole lot.


Whew, that was a lot but was drawn out way more than I intended it to because I suddenly found all my anime OSTs and was jamming. Totally got sidetracked by the epic. I also forgot to add in a couple Wikipedia links: Attack on Titan and Phi Brain. You can find out more about the shows by heading over to their Wikipedia pages or searching them on the Anime News Network Encyclopedia.

I hope you enjoyed this post and if you have an anime that you think should have been instead, leave a comment down below and if I haven’t watched it, I’ll check it out. Until next time, darlings! ❤

Labels: [anime], [reviews], [videos], [yearlies], review: anime, review: shortened, video: trailers

Yooooooooooo!! I mean, ahem, why hello there. So let’s just get this out of the way, I’m really, really excited about this post and I’m trying deperately hard to not let my hyperness andd excitement mess with this post. That being said, do you know how bloody long I’ve been waiting to do this post? Three and some weeks ago when I first started the Yearlies series fo 2013. Seriously, it took all of me to not say fuck it and mess up the order I had in mind for how this would work.

Now that I don’t have to hide my excitement. Let me start off by saying that I am an avid anime watcher. If you read my previous post, I made mentions/hinted at it. However, let me explain again. Much like gaming, anime has been a part of my life since I was a child so I hold anime on the same pedestal I do gaming, web design, and technology.

Anyway, while I do love anime and am an extremely avid watcher, 2013 anime fell a bit short to me. As it is I’m very, very picky with what I watch (is it becoming clear why anime came after gaming yet?) and I felt that 2013 had nothing but really predictable releases. You either had post-apocalyptic/dystopian, cutesy, or overly shoujo-esque type anime. While I do love post-apocalyptic/dystopian anime, after a while it gets rather boring and I’ve never been one to properly enjoy cutesy/shoujo anything (it’s a rarity). Now that’s not to say that all of the anime in 2013 fell into these categories, but there just was very few series that engaged me as much as it could have.

Despite that, I’ve managed to choose 3 of the many I watched in 2013 that just remind me of why anime is probably one of my favourite past-times: Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill, and Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle.

Attack on Titan Trailer: The trailer found on Funimation’s channel.

Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人): What can I say about Attack on Titan that can be considered not a spoiler? Attack on Titan is a dystopian, tragic manga turned anime that revolves around the premise that a hundred years prior to the beginning of the anime humanity was wiped out by giant humanoid creatures named “Titans”. To protect what is leftover of humanity, the survivors are made to live in one country and surrounded by three walls: Wall Maria (outer), Wall Rose (middle), and Wall Sina (inner). For the hundred years after the inital demise of most of humanity, the ones leftover lived in peace until the Colossus Titan (no, seriously...that’s it name and trust me, it’s definitely warranted) breaches the outer wall, Wall Maria. You can only imagine the shit storm that follows that. The story follows Eren Yeager, his adopted sister Mikasa Ackerman, and their friend Armin Arlert.

The thing about Attack on Titan that captured me was that it makes no qualms about being dark and tragic and pushing the limits. That’s something that anime has been thoroughly missing; shows that push limits and aren’t afraid to do so. Another thing that captured me about the show was the overall premise of the show. I love that Eren Yeager (the main character) is so typical male protagonist, yet at the root of him, so much more. And speaking on characters, I love that most of the characters either have their own sense of self, are charaters that can stand on their own, or characters that grow in some way. For the most part, Attack on Titan does it right.

And here’s where I have to talk about the letdowns. I’ll start off with a letdown that didn’t bother me as much as it could have, but was still enough that it left quite a taste in my mouth. Towards the ending of the series, it started to seem a bit rushed. It started to feel like things were flying at you at an absolutely unnatural pace and it was horribly disconcerting and discombobulating. Now that’s not to say that series overall doesn’t pass relatively quickly and that’s understandable because there’s a lot to cover, but the ending moved way too fast for me to be proper comfortable with it. However, while that was a letdown, I could/can overlook it because there’s another season on the way.

The real letdown for me comes in the form of character development of one of the main characters. Mikasa Ackerman. Now what can I say about Mikasa’s lack of character growth without getting proper angry or giving away too much? Basically, Mikasa as a character does not grow for the entirety of 26 episodes (25 episodes of the series and the OVA). Like I told my mate, NIL and his friend, Tree, Mikasa has all the makings of what I consider to be the perfect main female heroine in an anime like this. She’s strong, incredibly intelligent, she can lead if she wants to and perfectly, she quick witted and light on her feet, if need be she can be the voice of reason, she’s gorgeous. Really, damn near perfect heroine in my eyes and then they bloody muck her up by giving her no depth. They tease the fact that she could have more depth to her, only to take it back and leave her at square one once again. I can’t really go deep into my reasonings behind the anger I feel over this because, again, trying not to spoil the show for anyone who reads this and hasn’t watched it yet. Just know that because of the lack of character development, even if she were to develop and develop in the right manner, I’m already past the point of caring.

Despite the lack of development on Mikasa’s end and the slightly faster pacing towards the end of the first season, Attack on Titan is still worthy of a watch for anyone who’s a sucker for dystopian tragedies done right without holding back.

Kill La Kill Trailer: The first trailer found on AniplexUS’s channel.

Kill la Kill (キルラキル): Too put it simply and really is just a paraphrased version of what you’d find on Wikipedia: Set at Honnouji Academy in a post-apocalyptic Japan that is dominated by the school’s student council, often referred to as The Elite Four (四天王), led by Kiryuin Satsuki. The members of the student counil, wear uniforms called Goku Uniforms or 極制服 which they use to oppress the school’s students and staff. Insert Matoi Ryuko, a seventeen year old girl who transfers to Honnouji in hopes of finding the person who killed her father to avenge his death. She wields one half of a scissored long blade through defeating the person who killed her father, she hopes to find the other half of the scissor blade to complete it. Immediately upon her arrival, she is beaten by the Student Council members after interrogating Satsuki about the identity of the kiler. After that fight, she comes across Senketsu (a kamui) that puts himself on her. With Senkentsu, Ryuko fights her way through The Elite Four and towards Satsuki in hopes of not only finding out more about her father’s death, but to lierate Honnouji.

So here’s the thing, Kill la Kill is a really, really good show. A lot of people complain about the over sexuality of the show and the rape joke that was made in the first episode of the show and honestly, I’m over people’s complaints. Honestly, the rape joke was in terrible taste and even I flinched at it, but getting past that bit proved to be far beneficial in the long run. The over sexualism doesn’t bother me because I get it. Someone on Tumblr made a lovely post breaking down Kill la Kill and why it’s worth a proper watching (which, of course, brought out all the twats on Tumblr. Do they really think they help or...?), but I can’t for the life of me find it anymore. Anyway, I would like to point out that so many people find death and murder and killing wrong, yet love things like Attack on Titan or Phi Brain or even Another. How does your sense of morality work there? Hypocrites, I swear.

Anyway, the series moves at a pace that isn’t too fast nor too slow and I have never walked away from an episode unsatisfied, even including the first episode. The action is badass and as we all know, I’m a sucker for a couple badass female mains who know how the fuck to handle their own and learn from their mistakes. Often times in the series, I find myself wondering who I want to prevail. Of course, I want Ryuko to because she is the protaganist and I always root for my babies, but at the same time Satsuki is such a good antagonist that it’s absolutely lovely and leaves me absolutely conflicted and gutted when it comes to making a decision.

Overall, look past the sexuality of it all try to understand what it means. The show is full of metaphors and similies and Loki above, is that not the most beautiful thing I have ever seen an anime do. Especially an anime that’s based off nothing but the sheer genius of its creators. Oh, did I mention the motherfucking Trigger is behind this anime? Yeah, the same badasses behind Little Witch Academia.

Phi Brain: Puzzle of God Trailer: The Season III opening found on mattbourne001’s channel.

Phi Brain: Puzzle of God (ファイ・ブレイン 神のパズル): Last but not least, we have Phi Brain: Puzzle of God. There isn’t much I can say about the series that won’t give it away. Pretty much this series follows Daimon Kaito, a high school freshman who enjoys solving puzzles and is selected as a “Phi Brain”. One day, he and his friend Nonoha (given the nickname ‘Nightingale’) go to solve an unsolvable puzzle near the school and soon find out the puzzle was a life-threatening puzzle, a philsopher’s puzzle, created by a group name P.O.G (Puzzle of God). Solving that puzzle, Kaito is designated as a Solver and soon given the title of ‘Einstein’. He is soon joined by other Solvers to take on various members of the P.O.G all over the world by solving these supposed “unsolvable puzzles”.

Do I really have to explain why this is on this list? Technically, this is allowed on the list because season 3 came out late last year and is ongoing. But never mind that.

It’s a bloody anime series about solving puzzles and creativity and thinking outside of the box while still incorporating save the world ideals. How bloody amazing is that? First of all, if you can’t already tell, I absolutely love anything that is puzzling and invokes a sense of outside the box thinking and Phi Brain has so much of that and does it so well. I love that it’s nothing aside from an adventure series because there’s hardly been a series in recent times that was just focused on adventures and friendship while everything else was seemingly backburnered without adventure and friendship seeming too overwhelming.

The characters are amazing. Kaito reminds me so much of Ikki from Air Gear and I mentioned this in a comment to someone on YouTube, but their personalities: brash, adventurous, never one to back down, wanting to be and do more, having the ideal that nothing is ever enough, the sense of determination and motivation are so similiar. It’s such a breath of fresh air to encounter a male main character that is filled with more adventurous determination than righteous determination because it’s no longer a norm (and it barely ever was). I find myself drawn more and more to characters like Kaito, Ikki, and Mamoru (from Inazuma Eleven) as opposed to the stereotypical male proganists you get now.

I could rave on and on about Phi Brain because it’s on its third season and since season one back 2011, I haven’t been let down or uninterested in the show. And that’s saying a whole lot.


Whew, that was a lot but was drawn out way more than I intended it to because I suddenly found all my anime OSTs and was jamming. Totally got sidetracked by the epic. I also forgot to add in a couple Wikipedia links: Attack on Titan and Phi Brain. You can find out more about the shows by heading over to their Wikipedia pages or searching them on the Anime News Network Encyclopedia.

I hope you enjoyed this post and if you have an anime that you think should have been instead, leave a comment down below and if I haven’t watched it, I’ll check it out. Until next time, darlings! ❤

Labels: [anime], [reviews], [videos], [yearlies], review: anime, review: shortened, video: trailers