On top of the shoe-locker there, to the right of the screen, though the box on the left could possibly be one too.

This post has been a long time in coming. Well, possibly a long time in coming, which is why it’s kind of a relief that I’m actually able to post this. The story goes is that I saw this movie back in May last year at a screening at Londons BFI, which was actually before the movie opened in Japan. The movies director, Koji Masanari, and the producer were in attendance, and they did a Q&A session after the screening.

So I asked him about Mikan Boxes. Really.

Of course, the Mikan box above is only a small element on display, and even then it was only up there for a couple of seconds. Whilst I obviously have the powers of my finely-honed Mikan Eye, it was quite possible that I’d not seen what I believed I had. This confirmation is important to me, as it means that I only asked a really dumb question, as opposed to a really dumb and inaccurate one.
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Presently speaking (well, as I type this, probably not when I actually get around to posting this), I’m sat on a Train heading toward Scotland. There’s many a reason for this (well, at least more than one reason, I suppose your quantification of “many” may differ from mine), but but one of these reasons is that there’s a screening of the Sunrise movie King of Thorn in Glasgow tomorrow (or, likely, yesterday by the time I post this).

Not that a movie where the most strongly worded comment regarding it I’ve heard beyond it’s terrible CG, positive or negative, is that it’s a movie that exists, was reason enough for to submit myself to a three hour train ride, but added to another opportunity to see The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya theatrically, it played a significant part.
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Of course, “TV anime” is assumed at the moment, because outside of movies that’s what “anime project” tends to mean these days. Also, the comic only makes sense if I come up with an excuse to ignore the Live4You OAV, since Miki was actually in that. But, yeah, I actually already had my comic lined up for today, then someone went and did something crazy like announcing they’re making an iM@S anime that isn’t transmogrified into a giant robot show. Cool beans and all that, but queue rush-job on my part.

Although speaking of iM@S and giant robot shows, can I just reiterate that Xenoglossia is actually a pretty good show. Sure, it was offered up to Sunrise as a sacrifice for them to be a little subversive with, and as a result doesn’t really bare any similarity with the original work, but compared to most recent Sunrise works it’s not only unusually consistent, but downright coherent. Not that many tend to agree with me, but whatever. I’m content to know that at least I’m right.

(Although on a purely objective level, Zegapain is totally the best Sunrise TV show of the last decade. Probably).

Except I don’t really usually make this kind of end of year post, meaning that this is less of a token post than it is an anomaly.

It’s been a weird kind of year for me anime-wise. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of stuff, but I’m not really sure that’s actually the case. I mean, the likes of Kurogane talk about having seen some 40+ shows, and I know for a fact I’ve not seen that many (at least, not that many from this year). Sure, I’ve seen a fair amount of older shows on home media formats, but I doubt even that would make up the difference.

No, in actuality, I’ve been watching a lot of anime these last three or four months, whilst the first half of the year was pretty barren. I don’t think this is anything to do with the quality of the shows airing during those periods, more just where my mind was at the time. In addition to that, with the anime events at the BFI back in May, Scotland in October and at the Leeds Film Festival in November, I’ve certainly seen a hell of a lot of anime movies theatrically this year (Actually, I’ve just seen a crapton of movies theatrically in general).

But, hey, it’s certainly been another year of anime. I don’t really think it’s necessarily been any better or worse than any other given year in recent memory, even though we are in a still downturn in terms of the number of shows being produced. I think my biggest disappointment of the year is that Sunrise have been in some regards quiet. Of course they still made those Gundam Unicorn OAVs I’ve not got around to watching, the Gundam 00 movie and a few other bits and pieces, but at the same time they’ve not made any of the kind late-night otaku fare I’ve tended to get far too obsessed with in the last decade. If it wasn’t for the fact that it ended with what felt like a clear set-up for an OAV series they didn’t sell well enough to fund, I’d say that it probably explains the whole tone of last years SoraKakeGirl – somewhere between a loving tribute and a scathing mockery of everything Sunrise was in the 00’s. Kind of an “out with the old, in with the new” thematic purge, if you will.
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Merry Christmas, y’all. Because, you know, I feel the inclination to at least throw something together to post today. I would call Milky Holmes the Secret Best Show of the season, but given that I’ve sat through several discussions about how awesome the shows last episode was the last couple of days, I don’t really think it’s quite so secret. Also, when I say “sat through”, I really mean “ignore”, since I’ve yet to watch it myself (waiting anxiously for the Crunchy stream tomorrow…).
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