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 )

The anime is based on the manga, of which I've only read two volumes.

The little tagline above the silhouetted girl and her violin case reads: "The girl has a mechanical body. However, she is still an adolescent child." That basically sums up the series.

The Social Welfare Agency takes young girls who have been in some sort of traumatic accident, rehabilitates them with mechanical parts, and trains them to be assassins. The girls are all assigned a fratello, a partner who is always an adult man. It sounds like a set-up that could lead to many squicky scenarios, and yet, the anime is a very slow character study of all six of the girls and their relationships with their fratellos. Some, like Henrietta, are lucky and are basically treated like daughters or younger sisters. Others are treated as mere tools.

The animation isn't gorgeous, but it's not shoddy either, and the movement makes up for a certain blockiness in the character design and the manga panelling that made the manga more difficult to read. I also love that it's set in Italy and that it has completely gratuitous landscape shots of Florence and the Duomo and Rome and the Spanish Steps and etc.

There's not a real plotline so far. Each episode is very much a stand-alone, and while Henrietta gets most of the focus, the other five girls each have episodes dedicated to them as well, and their Tragic Backstories, along with the Tragic Backstories of their fratellos. (Tell me I'm not spoiling anything. This is anime! What did you expect?)

As a whole, the series seems to be playing off on the girls' innocence (most are pre-adolescent) and their bloody work. Strangely, though I could see this being fetishized, it really doesn't feel like it. We see that the girls are doing it for their fratellos, sometimes in a dysfunctional way, but that's more the fault of the Social Welfare Agency. What they do isn't presented as cool or glamorous; it's grunt work that they do because they have to.

Also, I love that the series can have lines like:

Triela (the only adolescent girl): Man, I hate cramps.
Henrietta (unemotionally): Oh, I never get them. They removed my uterus.

All spoken calmly over a nice cup of tea.