Sakura of DOOM

I watched A LOT of anime this year. I largely blame credit rilina and umadoshi for this, although octopedingenue and rachelmanija also deserve incriminating glares praise for their enthusiasm.

It seems a little lopsided to have 5 out of the 10 series I watched in the "favorite series" section, but I watched a lot of good anime this year. Also, it helped that I was getting the cream of the crop; rilina was doing a lot of the screening for me by watching a whole lot of series and then pimping her favorites to me. I also finally watched some oft-praised series which I've had on the to-watch list for a few years (namely, Princess Tutu and FMA).

This was actually a great way to watch anime, since I got the fun experience of the FMA and Princess Tutu pile up, and I got to squee to other people most of the time.

Unsurprisingly, I watched a whole lot of shoujo. Again, unsurprisingly, most of my favorite series were shoujo.

No spoilers below for any of the series. I'm also including pimping information for my favorite series, since I naturally want people to watch them. If you want more information on the other series, I'd suggest checking out rilina's giant 2006: the Year in Anime post, since she includes helpful links and info for all the series she watched, which overlap all of my series, with the exception of Gunslinger Girl. Or you can check out the series-specific tags below, or my Memories in the sidebar.

Series that I am not really fond of but don't actually dislike

( Bleach )

( Last Exile )

( Yami no Matsuei )

Series I am fond of

( Gunslinger Girl )

( Saiunkoku Monogatari )

Favorite series of the year

( Honey and Clover )

( Ouran High School Host Club )

( Princess Tutu )

( Samurai Champloo )

And my very favorite series of the year was easy to pick this time:

( Fullmetal Alchemist )

These are going to be brief notes rather than an actual argument, largely because my brain is still broken from watching all of FMA and from the beginning episodes of Princess Tutu.

Disclaimer and standard grain of salt: My understanding of shounen tropes is taken from sports anime/manga, fighting anime/manga, and some mecha anime, though most of the tropes that I'm used to come largely from the arena of fighting anime/manga. Also, my samples pretty much consist of Bleach, Naruto, Hikaru no Go and Kenshin. I also don't read/watch that much shounen, so again... grain of salt.

Also, I generalize a ton with regard to shoujo and shounen; I don't mean to imply that female equates emotion while male equates physical. I'm being more descriptive than prescriptive in terms of the genres, given what's largely out there in the market.

Spoilers for all of FMA

( 1. Dangerous Sekrit Techniques that Usually Aren't All That Bad )

( 2. Very Precious People )

( 3. Speshul Abilities )

( 4. Fight scenes )

( 5. Violence and war in FMA )

Anyway, I am running out of bullet points.

In conclusion, go watch Fullmetal Alchemist!

Spoil me and die. Usually I am less up-in-arms about spoilers, but since this show is so tightly plotted and has such great cliffhangers and OMGWTF moments, I will very vehemently yell and spew venom at anyone who spoils me.

( Giant spoilers up till 42, not split up by episode! )

Look! I finally made myself a FMA icon! I figure I will be posting on this enough to warrant one.

( Spoilers for all three eps )

I spam LJ because I need a break.

At least having bright red toenails makes things somewhat easier to bear. And must remember, am watching Batman tonight. Batman pretty. Fire bad.

Note: I watch episodes in chunks, so I am not too good at differentiating between episodes.

( Spoilers )

Ok, you can now count me as hooked onto FMA. I was somewhat interested in the first six episodes or so, but not really hooked. A lot of it seemed like any other anime, with the exception of the resurrection scene of Edward and Alphonse's mother.

Anyhow, the series seems to be about Edward and Alphonse Elric, who have done some pretty bad damage to their bodies due to the previously mentioned botched resurrection scene, and are seeking a way to put things right again. I'm really not quite sure what the series is really about, theme-wise, but I'm going to make a wild guess and say that it has something to do with equilibrium and that you can't get something without paying for it in equal weight. At the beginning of every episode, we hear Al's voiceover, reciting the law of equilibrium in alchemy, basically something like Newton's law of the conservation of mass. Everything has its price.

Episode 7 was the real hook. I watched that and thought, wow, this series really isn't going to pull any punches! I am now very excited and interested ^_^.

I wasn't all that interested in the boys' stories... well, I like Alphonse a lot, because he's so sweet and cute and in a giant suit of armor too! I like seeing a giant suit of armor looking really sheepish. And I feel sort of bad for him because it looks like his story is going to be overshadowed by Edward's. Also, I am still slightly irked that all the female characters are perfect mothers or sweet little girls. Ok, maybe except for Winry's grandmother, who I like. And Lust, who is instead the evil sexy woman. But I am interested in her, just because she is evil and sexy, so there. Oh, also, Roy is awesome and manipulative and really really cool.