The Best Anime on Netflix Instant (12 Days of Anime 2014 Day 1)

If you're on vacation or break this time of year, and have a Netflix subscription, why not get away from all the cold and instead stay inside and marathon anime? So, get some snacks, a nice blanket, perhaps a hot drink, and be prepared for some awesome...

There are no movies on this list, sorry.

For the sake of people with different amounts of free time on their hands, this will be divided into 3 categories. Short, medium, and long.

First off, short anime. (11-13 episodes)


Puella Magi Madoka Magica 
Length: 12 episodes+Rebellion movie (Not on Netflix)

I've already reviewed this anime, and the good thing about Netflix is that their version is the fully touched up Blu-Ray release version, not the terrible TV version ones. It's actually one of the few anime series I've seen that actually comes close to its hype. A very wonderful magical girl deconstruction, it tells a great story, and wraps it up perfectly in a small, 12 episode package. But I won't exactly same the same about the Rebellion movie...


Princess Jellyfish
Length: 11 episodes

Josei anime is not very common. Which is a shame, because they can be sooooo good, without a lot of the superficial stuff shojo is known for. Princess Jellyfish tells a simple story of an apartment complex full of otaku women and a crossdressing male that enters their lives. Sweet, positive, and tastefully mature, Princess Jellyfish will even have the guys laughing from time to time.


The Devil Is A Part-Timer!
Length: 13 episodes

Sure, it's a fish-out-of-water comedy, but it sports a surprisingly good English dub, unique characters, and the comedy is actually refreshing compared to all those moe/ecchi-loaded otaku humor shows out there these days.

For those of you with a little more time and/or want to sink your teeth into a longer story, here I have the medium length shows (20-40 episodes).


Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 
Length: 27 episodes (26, in my book, because episode 16 is an unnecessary recap episode)

From episode 1, this anime just swells in size so rapidly, no anime has matched it (though some come close) But this anime actually isn't as dumb as it may seem, there's some great character development and even social commentary wonderfully mixed in.


Death Note
Length: 37 episodes

Honestly, if you haven't seen this, put this RIGHT ON THE TOP of your priority list. Death Note is a constant cat-and-mouse mind game, but you never really know who is the cat and who is the mouse. Seriously, this is a must-watch.


Ouran High School Host Club
Length: 26 episodes

Having loved the anime so much that I went out to read the entire manga, this is probably my favorite romantic comedy anime ever. Bones made this anime look astonishingly gorgeous, and the comedy is suitable for both male and female audiences.

Lastly, if you've got a lot of time to kill, here are the long anime (around 50+ episodes).


Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
Length: 51 episodes+Conquerer of Shamballa movie (Not on Netflix)

While its much better counterpart, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, is my favorite anime of all time, part of the reason I'm recommending the original series is because Netflix is missing the last 12 episodes of Brotherhood. Neverthelss, what original series does better is making the adventure feel more natural, instead of havng this massive influx of PLOT thrown at you every single episode, no matter how good that plot may be. The original series also sports one of the best "anime exclusive endings" I have ever seen.


Hunter x Hunter (2011 version)
Length: 148 episodes (Only the first 100 are on Netflix)

I know many people have seen this, but, for being the #4 highest rated anime on MyAnimeList (Yeah you read that right), I actually haven't heard a lot from the fandom about this anime. It's a tournament based shonen from the crater of Yu Yu Hakusho, I mean COME ON!

Fairy Tail
Length: 175 episodes (First 48 are on Netflix)

Yes, all three long anime on this list are shonen anime. But the reason I recommend Fairy Tail is its entertainment value. I don't recall ever being bored while watching this anime, and the strong sense of comradire between our four main characters is unlike anything I've see in anime. And these 48 episodes stand on their own quite well, actually. 

Whew! That's all from me! (Applauds self for publishing this on time...sort of)

What are some of your favorite anime series on Netflix Instant?

Cheers, 

~Selena

Last Updated: 14 December 2014

Originally Published: 14 December 2014

I will (try to) do 12 DAYS OF ANIME!!!!!

I KNOW, I KNOW, I'M NOT DEAD!!!!

First and foremost, I would like to apologize for my lack of blogging recently. I've been over-piled with work, and lacked motivation to write any reviews or even Taste Tests (even though I've sampled quite a few shows.)

BUT THAT ALL ENDS! Because from December 14th until Christmas Day, I will post something on this blog! *Gasp* Yes, I'm jumping on the bandwagon, and I know I'm not a vlogger, but still, I think you guys deserve a stream of content from me after my unannounced hiatus. I'm NOT, however, sticking to a particular theme, or reflecting on this year's anime, because I don't really watch simulcasts. I'm going to post ANYTHING related to anime and manga.

So, what can you expect from me during these days?

-At least one review
-At least one Taste Test
-At least one Tops list (I'm thinking of renaming that...)
-Something a bit along the lines of #EducateAnime
More, More, More...

So, yeah. Gonna start getting posts ready.

*Looks at pile of work*

Yeah, I'll just see how his goes.

Cheers,
~Selena

Last Updated: 10 December 2014
Originally Published: 10 December 2014

2,000 Pageviews!!!

Whooooooo!!!! This time it only took about 3 months to get another thousand pageviews!

I am VERY grateful to everyone who has seen this blog, and I am happy that my advertising has payed off (especially at Geek.Kon!)

Still, I am always open to any intelligent feedback on my posts and how I can improve the quality of my posts and this blog.

Here's to another wonderful 1,000 pageviews!

Cheers,
~Selena

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Last Updated: 31 October 2014
Originally Published: 31 October 2014

Squeaky Clean Manga Volume View: Natsume's Book of Friends Vol. 1

Ahhhhhh! It's been forever since I published something manga related!!!

So, how exactly did I end up picking this up? Well, I was browsing the manga section of the library, when this caught my eye; something new. And I knew that the anime adaptation of this is somewhere in the top 30 on MAL, so that had me interested. So, what did I think of this volume?

We are introduced to a character I initially thought was a girl, Takashi Natsume. The reason I thought he was a girl was I thought his name was Reiko, which is actually his grandmother's name (she's important). His whole life, Takashi (he's referred to as Natsume in the manga, which I found to be very confusing) has been able to see yokai, spirits/monsters of Japanese folklore. (Gee, how many times have we seen this premise?) He then accidently releases a cat yokai, who informs him of his grandmother's "Book of Friends." It contains the names of all the yokai she met, and having these names, she can give them any order and they will obey. But yokai are after Takashi for their names, so he decided to return all of them, though doing so takes a great deal of energy.

What I found unusual about Natsume's Book of Friends is that this is a shojo series, but so far, has no sign of romance anywhere. This is evident in that Takashi is the only main character, while the others merely appear in their respective chapter alone. Sure, we do get some implication of possible recurring characters, but it was so focused on Takashi doing his "job" that it felt like I was watching the younger sibling of Mushi-shi. And like Mushi-shi, Natsume's Book of Friends took an episodic approach, something that manga-ka Yuki Midorikawa stated had never done before this. Episodic manga and anime tend to not sit very well with me, and this held true while I was reading this. Sure, there are implications of themes and ideas that stemmed from decent writing, but the manga focused more on "how to return the name" instead of fleshing out its potential for a quiet but powerful philosophical series. I just couldn't get attached to the story or characters, which usually is my problem with episodic manga and anime.

Takashi Natsume so far seems to have the personality equivalence of a loaf of bread. He's useful and necessary, but he's lacking in the personality department. Sure, he's smart enough to figure out the "little mysteries" associated with returning the names, but this doesn't equal a personality. Plenty of smart characters in anime/manga have personality traits other than their intelligence (Light, Lelouch, Ed Elric). Being taken in by distant relatives of his, he has to keep his new duty a secret, but that just seemed cliché to me instead of adding to his character. His "Sensei" Nyanko (the cat yokai) is also only hanging around because he wants to eat Natsume after he's returned all the names, so this didn't help his likability. These two have a very strained relationship, and I'm skeptical that it will change, really. I really don't think I need to mention any other characters, just because I know so little about them so far. This is not a character driven story, and that's a bit of a shame, because being character driven is usually the saving grace of an episodic anime/manga for me. 

Now, for the (semi) easy part. The art looks, I don't want to say sloppy, but...Natsume's Book of Friends even looks like the aforementioned Mushi-shi. The faces are simple, the backgrounds both realistic and surreal, and the designs of the yokai are very unique. I do, however, like Midorikawa's style of drawing hair, and Nyanko's small form. Midorikawa seems to be very fond of using the angry-vein makrks, but I guess this helped show the strained relationship mostly between Takashi and Nyanko.

So, what do I think of this volume? Well, I was kind of disappointed, but I might check out the anime, seeing as it's gotten a lot of positive feedback from the community, but I'll probably be skipping the first 4 episodes. Do I regret reading this volume? Of course not. But I'm probably not going to be picking up the second volume at all.

I would REALLY appreciate feedback on my posts and how to make them better!

Cheers,
~Selena

Last Updated: 25 October 2014
Originally Published: 25 October 2014

Squeaky Clean Anime Taste Test: Danganronpa: The Animation Episode 1

I said something earlier about not doing first reactions on short anime, didn't I? Well, this here is a different case (heheh) because I'm watching one episode a week of this with my school's newly reinstated anime club. Since 13 weeks is a good long while, I think this deserves a taste test. Okay?

We start off our story with our bland *sigh* main male character, Makoto. He seems to have a personality equivalent to that of Yuki Amano from Future Diary, being somewhat wimpy but determined to protect the girl he loves, who he actually just met. Him and 14 other gifted students enter Hope's Peak Academy, only to be trapped inside, and the only way out is to murder one of their classmates and to get away with it. The principal of this school, a demented stuffed bear/robot...thing Monokuma, seems to only have one purpose for this death game: despair. From what I've heard, this is actually a very poor adaptation of the original game, but because I don't plan on playing the game, I will somewhat disregard this when writing my full review. All the other characters have some sort of special talent that got them invited to the academy in the first place, whether it be academics, sports, or performing arts. Hopefully, this anime will establish the personalities of at least some of the characters in the anime.

The animation was done by Studio Lerche, who is actually quite new, and their only other notable work is another video game-to-anime adaptation, Persona 4. I guess I can't give too much credit for the character designs to Studio Lerche, but they are very unique. However, I will say whoever designed the characters was either a) determined to make each and every one of them look unique, or b) was ridiculously high. The set pieces all look fine, as there's nothing really exceptional about them.

For some reason, there is no dub out yet, even though it's been more than a year since this anime first aired. I'm assuming Funimation only has streaming rights to this and not a home video one. The Japanese voice acting is fine, but I will give special mention to the voice of Monokuma.
On the music side, both the opening and ending themes are quite unique, but seem to need an (ahem) acquired taste (I put that in italics because I'm not sure how else to word it.) AGAIN (ahhhh!) I didn't pay much attention to the OST, so no comment from me there.

Overall, I think this anime is going to suffer many of the same problems that Future Diary did (weak protagonist, a somewhat nonthreatening death game, horrible ending) but I did find myself at least somewhat engaged during the episode, but only because I was expecting a death right away, which did not happen.

So, those are my thoughts on the anime so far! Yes, I will review this when I finish it, so don't worry.

Cheers,
~Selena

Last Updated: 21 October 2014
Originally Published: 12 October 2014