I came into the fall season with high expectations. I prepared myself for keeping watch on a lot of new shows (for me at least), since I was sure I’d be watching several classics-in-the-making in these autumn months.
It didn’t take long for that illusion to fall apart. I dropped Robotics;Notes, which I’d really been looking forward to (and which I’ve heard has gotten much better). Other series slowly fell away from my viewing list, including Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, Suki-tte Ii na Yo., and Psycho Pass. With the exception of Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!, which has surpassed my expectations, even those series I continue to watch (Sword Art Online and Little Busters) have been underwhelming.
What a disappointing season. And what a blessing.
Sometimes I have a struggle between giving time to my hobby and to the important things in my life. There’s almost never a moment where I actually have to choose between Toradora and taking my kids to the park, for example, but I do have to choose between sleep and watching anime. And when I choose the latter, I’m sometimes not-so-nice to my family and not-so-productive at work the next day.
This season, luckily, I’m well-rested. 😉
More than that, I have time to focus on things that specifically came up around the holidays, like busyness with family (including a couple of birthdays), a renewed enthusiasm to be healthy, and freelancing jobs I’ve taken.
So, I’m thankful for the disappointing season. And here’s hoping for more terrible anime during the winter!!
Just kidding. 😉
How about you? What have been your favorite series this season? And what blessings have you experienced lately?
I understand your dilemma. Recently, my Mondays all look like: “Ok, I’ll get ready for bed early and won’t act like a zombie at work on Tuesday again.” And then there are all those tanks blowing up left, right and run! run! run! oh no omg UTEEEEEeee!
It’s difficult to get proper sleep with your blood pumping and Russian war songs stuck in your head -_-.
Ha!
The worst are nights when I decide to marathon a series – “It’ll only be on bad day!” And that day invariably always is.
While I am enjoying this month myself, I feel like I was in the same boat as you over the summer. There just weren’t many shows that I found very compelling, and my schedule was good with that 🙂 Like you, I’m hoping that the upcoming winter season isn’t too intriguing since I’ll be in the process of a job hunt and moving! It’s good to hear that you’ve got your priorities straight with your family and work, but still have the time to spare to drop a word in for your readers now and then 🙂
Good luck with everything – and happy graduation! Exciting, exciting! So, what kind of job does one with a newly-minted advanced degree in English (right?) apply for?
I’ve got the similar impression as yours, except for these two:
Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo, has the DNA of Toradora.
And the dark horse of the season: Girls und Panzer. No. Seriously. Best show of the season 😀
Hmm…DNA of Toradora? I’m intrigued!
And you know what? I’ve heard good things about the tank show, so I’m not surprised!
What is funny right now is that the last two episodes of Girls und Panzer are delayed until March. It is also said that “2ch is now comparing the delay of GirlPan with the delay of the last 2 episodes of Madoka.” 🙂
Now, the agony of waiting at least two months before the finale. Urk. > <
Hmm…I wonder why the delay?
They ran out of time keeping up crazy CG quality and stuff. I have the director’s apology translated on my blog.
I actually have a decently long list of shows that I’m watching this season. It’s tough to keep up with them all with college being college, but I’m still enjoying most of them.
One of my favourite shows this season – and one I’m actually surprised at how much I’m enjoying it – is Magi. I’m not usually one for shounen, but there are quite a few times where the author shows he’s actually a really good writer.
Or maybe gg just got a really good translator for the show, I don’t even know.
Ah, the beauty of anime. It’s a medium where most of us can find a show we like in almost any genre, even if we generally don’t like it.
I used to like Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun but I dropped it, but still reading Suki-tte li na yo, both mangas. How come you dropped both?
Time. I liked both, but I just couldn’t keep up, and they were victims of my schedule. I’ve found that I can only handle about 3 anime series a season!
I couldn’t disagree more Charles. This season is entertaining me greatly. The only show on my list of Autumn 2012 Recommendations that has disappointed is Jormungand. http://wp.me/p1Gaby-BM And for me, Psycho-Pass is easily the best anime this season.
The other top 8 have only continued to get better and better and the surprise for me this fall has been Shinsekai Yori, which had a slow arc in the middle of this season, but has really picked up in recent episodes.
No surprise that we disagree here, though maybe it’s mostly because I haven’t seen too many shows this season. I wonder how I’d feel if I had kept up with Psycho Pass and some of your favorites.
I agree that this year’s anime offerings have been nothing compared to last year’s, but for me the Autumn season has been the strongest overall. Zetsuen no Tempest has me on the edge of my seat every week, Psycho-Pass has gotten over most of the character development issues that were the only gripe I had with the show early on, and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is… a special series.
I’m enjoying Robotics;Notes now that the plot has really gotten going, but I nearly dropped it at the end of the first episode, and again after the second – only my love for robots was enough to make me keep going. The male lead just wasn’t interesting at all in those early episodes – I don’t want to stare at a screen for half an hour watching other people staring at screens! 😛
Addendum: I read your Top Anime of 2012 post before this one, and (likely because I’m tired) the two posts merged into one in my head. Hence the comment about agreeing that last year was better, even though you didn’t say that in this post. My bad. 😮
Haha, that’s alright – they were meant to accompany each other anyway. 😉
Ah, Robotics;Notes. I did drop that one after a couple of episodes, though I’ve heard from more than one person that it’s worth picking back up. Well, that’s what Christmas break is for!
The Fall lineup never really struck be as being particularly strong; that being said, I did become interested in shows I had previously intended to skip.
I haven’t wached Robotics;Notes in a while, but I’m thinking about following up on the show once the season is over. Chuunibyou and Girls und Panzer surprised me with how much I had come to like them; while the former took awhile to warm up to for me, Girls und Panzer was the real show stealer this season IMO, sucking me in early on with its oddball yet well-executed premise and earning my vote as [easily] the best show this season, production issues and delays notwithstanding. I still hum the Soviet military song “Katyusha” on occasion thanks to a visceral scene from Episode 8 (I’d spoil too much if I said what the scene was).
Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo has been pretty neat thus far and is, in my opinion, the most entertaining Slice-of-Life offering this season and maybe even this year; it’s certainly outdoing fellow J.C. Staff production Little Busters. I had seen part of the Little Busters VN and from what I’ve experienced, everything just worked better in the Visual Novel; the cheezy gags, the dialogue, the character interaction, everything seemed to come together better. At this point, the only thing keeping me watching Little Busters is my fandom for Yuiko; she easily became my favorite character [and possibly my favorite Key heroine] after experiencing the Visual Novel, though it is a shame how her character has not been explored very much in the anime.
Great breakdown – thanks for sharing! Maybe just watched the wrong shows this season!