It is entirely possible that I am getting old(er) and grumpy(er), but I found this years anime selection very lacking. Lowlights included a series about anthropomorphized guns and one about licking drool left by another student resulting in a drool addiction.

As in previous years, I only consider anime that have finished their run during 2012. So any series that started this year and has not finished yet is not included. Also, I do not do real reviews, but just make my opinions known on a selection of anime that I thought would be interesting enough to watch.

Anime of the Year

Another
(TV Series, 12 episodes)

Admittedly, all horror anime series are fairly predictable and much of this is no exception. So how did this get my “Anime of the Year” stamp? Because when it killed people, it did so very gruesomely! That is enough when there is a lack of better choice… The beginning of this series was so slow that I was considering moving on – I am really talking up the winner this year – then something happened and I had to immediately see the next episode. Still, it is a sad year when an anime with a beach episode (in a horror series, really?!) makes it to this not-very-coveted-at-all spot. And I made it through this without using “another” in a pun, which was a struggle…

Recommended

Fullmetal Alchemist – The Scared Star of Milos
(Movie, 110 minutes)

Side story to FMA: Brotherhood, which I gave Anime of the Year in 2010. If you like the series, you will like the movie although it really does not add much as it is essentially a long episode.

Kids On The Slope
(TV Series, 12 episodes)

There was not a chance of me skipping this anime given the director and who provided the music. This is despite it really not being a usual choice for me as, unlike Watanabe’s usual series, this is appeared relatively slow moving drama. However, I get the impression of there being quite a lot of content when I look back on the 12 episodes, so it can not have been that slow. I think the slower points were a needed tool to give room for the characters to develop. I am no expert on jazz or 1960s Japan, but I hear only good things about the attention to detail in both aspects. A surprisingly good series for something I went into with a mildly negative outlook.

Average

Fate/Zero
(TV Series, 25 episodes)

At one stage I was lacking much to watch and I remembered Fate/Stay Night being quite good. But watching this reminded me why as a rule any series based on a video game is bad. Lines like “Sabers parameters are particularly high. Most of them appear ranked A.” are just awful. There was enough dumb action to get beyond that.

Humanity Has Declined
(TV Series, 12 episodes)

I try watching at least one thing that seems a bit weird each year and here it is… My main issue with this series is that there was not enough of it. Most story-lines were two episodes long, which makes a 12 episode series too short to really achieve anything. Saying that, the short stories really do not link together very well, so extending it further could have made the series too disjointed.

Kokoro Connect
(TV Series, 13 episodes)

Everything I saw here made me thing this was a Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya wannabe that tried hard to be different enough. The body swapping was entertaining enough and I was amused at one of the girls saying she was getting good a peeing standing up. But then the ideas for where to take the series ran out. Well, they obviously did not run out, they were just bad.

Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing
(TV Series, 23 episodes)

Another sequel that yet again did not live up to the original. Part way through this I got the intense feeling that I did not understand the end of the original, so I went back an watched the final episode. That did not help… It turns out there is a manga that covers the gap between the two stories, but I guess most people (at least outside Japan) have not read it. But we do get a history lesson at the end of this series. That is not good for a series that really relies on the greatness of the original.

Sword Art Online
(TV Series, 25 episodes)

This was my pick of the “this video game just got real” genre for the year – there were quite a few series in it. How it approached the long-term effects of being stuck in a virtual reality world was quite interesting. And the over-the-top battle scenes were absolutely fine, because this is a game. And then there is the second half. Not only was the ball dropped, it was… (I got stuck thinking of a good enough hyperbole to use here). In fact, just don’t watch the second half; the ending of the first arc is just fine.

Sub-par

Bodacious Space Pirates
(TV Series, 26 episodes)

So… I watched this entirely because it had “Bodacious” in the title… Had I done a bit of research and seen that it is based on a light novel called “Miniskirt Space Pirates”, I probably would have reconsidered. Because this is the future, pirating is all about cyberwarfare and so we get to watch people type fast. To be fair, there is also lasers to counteract that boredom. And because the series is so seriously slow in places, there is plenty of boredom. One thing that did surprise me – well, because this is a bad anime and usually such an “opportunity” would be taken… – is that miniskirts do not lift up in zero gravity. Probably for the best given the ages of the characters.

K
(TV Series, 13 episodes)

I read this was a bit like Durarara!! so I took a look. I need to find that review, identify its author, buy a plane ticket, knock on their front door and tell them NO! Although at one stage I saw artwork that was similar and there was a large number of characters, any similarity ended there. The final episode is good and potentially could have done some redeeming if the second series was not announced in the middle and essentially gave away part of the ending.

The Future Diary
(TV Series, 26 episodes)

Only one can survive and there is no doubt which one it will be even though he is absolutely useless. His one advantage is the writers have no qualms using many, many contrived leaps of logic to help him. The one redeeming feature of this series is that it does teach a valuable life lesson: “Don’t stick your dick in crazy”.

And that is it for the year as far as I am concerned… Technically Hellsing Ultimate fits my criterion of finishing in 2012, but I doubt I will get ahold of the final OVA for a while yet – not that waiting is an issue with that series (the first OVA was released seven years ago). At this stage next year’s list looks to be improved, with the four series I am watching now (Space Brothers, From the New World, Psycho-Pass, Blast of Tempest) all worth a look at this stage.