For the fourth year running, I’m going to have to confess that I’ve still not watched Gundam Unicorn. Yes, I have all, what is it, six episodes that they’ve released thus far sitting on my bookcase, but that this point, I may as well wait until the last episode is released rather than struggle, as I did with the second episode of Code Geass Akito a couple of days back, to remember what happened in the previous instalment once the long wait for the finale is over.

As for how the rest of the year ended up panning out, at least anime-wise, I feel it’s gone pretty well. Maybe it’s just a warm afterglow of this last season of the year, with shows like Kill la Kill, Kyousougiga, Build Fighters and Yozakura Quartet, it’s been a really strong last quarter in terms of the kind of cartoons I enjoy watching, even if the New Years episode of Sword Art I’m subjecting myself to whilst trying to finalise this post leaves a bit of a bitter aftertaste.

Anyway, on with the usual Token End of Year Post format. Just bear in mind that this is in no-way an Anime of the Year post, more just a bunch of things I feel like writing about – otherwise this’d be a whole mess of words about Yamato 2199 or Gatchaman Crowds (looking forward to that BD-version final episode) or some other show that isn’t about Attacking Titans that I don’t really mention. There’s plenty of others out there expounding the virtues of their version of the best of the year if that’s what you really want to know.
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Have a pleasant festive period and a happy new year, folks, and remember that the new check-in period on iM@S Channel starts today!

And… that’s pretty much it.

Those of you who have been looking up the list of shows for the upcoming anime season have probably noticed the inclusion of Go! Go! 575, the TV show in which best friends Azuki and Matcha (who go together like… green tea and red-bean buns, I guess) decide to form a Haiku club at their school. And also sing and dance, because that’s what you do these days. The show is based around SEGAs Project 575, a media-mix project that is mostly spearheaded by the two game titles, the iOS Utayomi 575 and, probably more significantly, the upcoming Vita game Utakumi 575.

They released a trial version of Utakumi on PSN yesterday. I’ve heard (but haven’t bothered to verify) that they’re limiting it to 200,000 downloads for some reason I can’t quite fathom, though I’ve seen no particular indication that they’ve hit that limit yet (I’ve seen nothing through their Twitter, at least). You might want to grab it promptly if you have a Vita and are *cough*in Japan*cough*, though.

I have, of course, downloaded and played through it several times already.
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The second series of Love Live doesn’t start until April, which leaves them having to come up with some way of selling more CDs. Concert ticket application forms can only go so far, and that’s been milked as far as it can go for the time being elsewhere. Instead, throwing in a goofy short OAV (particularly given that they were going to have to animate a music video anyway) was the solution they came up with, then they doubled-down on it by throwing in a bunch of dumb extras in for the LE release (which was only just a little more expensive than the regular BD-coupled version), just to allow them to maximize the benefit of the fan-cash-extraction process. Also, continuing the same smart move they’ve been running with all along, they used fan voting to determine it’s characters focus, ensuring that the audience has some incentive to pick it up.
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I’d imagine the following post isn’t going to be news to most people reading this, at least at first blush, but since I still seem to be getting an unusual (for me) amount of traffic for that post about Katyusha being missing from the Crunchy stream of Girls und Panzer, despite there being a number of better-written posts on the subject elsewhere, I figured I may as well make another post now that the US disk is in retail channels.
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