#but she’s straight so I have to just constantly overwrite that to be normal

[himblebo]

Hmmmmm all this cc Babcock content has reawakened way too many feelings about [REDACTED] and brother I am beating them back with a stick

[rocketbirdie]

Can we hear more about your mind meld Zakkura au? Either by itself or with the others, your choice.

OHOHOHO........ cracking open a giant can of worms now are we........

The core idea is that, due to their 4 year involuntary mako jacuzzi session courtesy of Hojo, their "threads" of the lifestream become irreversibly tangled together. You'd have a very hard time telling where one soul ends and the other one begins. Their bodies are separate, and they receive not only their own sensory input, but the other's as well, sort of. More like a distorted, incomplete "echo" of the sensation?

For example if Zack listens to someone talk, Cloud won't necessarily hear what the person is saying, but he'll sense what Zack wants to say in response, so he can get it through context. And if one gets hurt, the other won't feel the pain, but know what the injury is and how bad it is, and have a hard time thinking straight due to it. Etc. It's not that they can hear each other's thoughts— it's that their train of thought is one and the same. So if Cloud wants to leave, he doesn't have to consciously think "hey let's gtfo," Zack will just know.

Because of this, they're very much in sync when they're near each other. Everything feels nice and normal when they have the same experience at the same place at the same time. But when they're apart, hooooo boy...

The au kicks off immediately following Zack's last stand. Everything plays out fairly normally for a bit, Zack is (presumed) dead, Cloud drags the buster sword to Midgar and stumbles his way into Sector 7, yadda yadda. Except he never really shakes off the mako coma all the way. He feels like he's still half asleep. His movements are disjointed and his reflexes are poor. His head is filled with fog, and he forgets things constantly.

So when his health starts to improve a little bit, it's a huge relief to Tifa and the rest of Avalanche! Except it's NOT a relief to Cloud, because all of those problems just get replaced with new ones as some hidden part of him resurfaces bit by bit. It starts out small. Almost like those little Jenova headaches in canon. Intrusive thoughts overwriting his own, emotional outbursts, feeling disoriented. Every now and then he gets struck with a panicked HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME feeling, but he doesn't know how to articulate it, so everyone else thinks he's just losing his marbles.

It escalates when Zack fully regains consciousness, only to find that his "dead body" was taken to another one of Shinra's secret labs to be further experimented on. The result is a total mental cataclysm, as they both slowly but surely begin to understand what Hojo did to them back in Nibelheim, and fear what might happen next.

Cloud tries so hard to convince the gang that they need to go back to Midgar, they need to rescue Zack, they need to do something. Of course Tifa is freaking tf out, because she had just finished convincing herself that the buster sword is standard issue and definitely not Zack's, and that Cloud is just having a little psychotic break and he'll be ok when they get him to a proper doctor...

Haven't thought of much more past that yet. But I do have some ideas for late-game CC... Cloud in his coma, Zack shambling along like a zombie, dragging him to Midgar because the thought of leaving him behind feels like death, with an unshakeable sense that Cloud really IS still in there. He can't prove it, but he's certain of it.

[highladyluck]

Mat’s Types, or On Tricksters

I recently made a joke about Mat's 'type' essentially being the Shadar Logoth dagger, and while I stand by it, I also think there's a lot more to it than that. I believe Mat actually has two types, which is entirely appropriate for a trickster archetype. One of his types is playful, joyful, generous people, who reflect his early- but persistent- personality. The other is sharp, powerful, existentially dangerous people, like the person he becomes over the course of the series. Like a raven- itself a trickster figure in Haida storytelling- Mat is attracted to shiny things, mirrors, and death.

But first, some definitions. I'm calling Mat a trickster archetype, so what is that? The trickster archetype is built on a kind of dual contrast. To trick someone, you must change things in a surprising way. Tricksters introduce chaos into an ordered system, or reveal order in what was thought to be chaos. (It's not surprising, or a change, to add order to order, or chaos to chaos.) So tricksters are transformational, liminal figures, who defy expectations and subvert the preexisting order- but who therefore *require* predictions and structure to have any kind of impact or meaning at all. Playing a game requires there be rules; revealing a loophole requires there be a contract.

Within this definition, there's still a huge range of characters you can call tricksters, and it's useful to categorize them across spectrums. One axis of a trickster is "effectiveness", which refers to the trickster's ability to effect change; this is 'incompetent to competent', 'foolish to canny', 'harmless to dangerous'. Another axis is "motivation" which refers to the trickster's ethical structure; this is 'good to evil', 'generous to selfish', 'just to unjust'. There's another kind of axis that's related to motivation, which I'll call "comprehensibility", and which refers to the trickster's transparency of motive; the range there is 'knowable to unknowable', 'familiar to alien', 'clear to mysterious'. If you wanted to chart them all I'd make effectiveness the horizontal x-axis, motivation the vertical y-axis, and comprehensibility the z-axis perpendicular to both of them, but this is starting to get into 'gesturing at the wall map with crazy eyes' territory and I'm mostly just going to be talking about effectiveness and motivation anyway, so let’s move on.

Tricksters can be foolish figures, always getting caught, often the butt of their own joke. That's our early impression of Mat- a prankster who never really seems to get away with anything, or a fool caught in a trap of his own making. Mat is also generous, insofar as he has apparently been rescuing people his whole life, plus he's very 'easy come, easy go' about money, and has a decent instinct for gift-giving, whether those are compliments or actual physical presents. He has a strong sense of justice that puts him at odds with people who have (unearned) privilege and who are abusing power, and he loves verbally trapping people into confronting their own hypocrisy.

He keeps these traits throughout the series, but he also develops ones on the opposite side of the axes. Stealing the Shadar Logoth dagger is the catalyst for Mat's development from 'harmless, benevolent trickster' to 'dangerous, morally complicated trickster'. It literally overwrites first his personality, and then his memories. While he gets the personality back- sort of- he never gets the memories back, and his quest to do so sets him on the rest of his path.

By the end of the series, Mat has undergone enormous trauma and developed a much stronger sense of self-preservation. He becomes a canny and multi-talented figure, a brilliant tactician and strategist, a dangerous enemy to have. He's most selfish and cruel when under the influence of the Shadar Logoth dagger, but it turns out he's also never been in the rescuing business for free, he wants to be needed and will get a little pissy if he isn't (although to his credit, he respects people's wishes if they say they don't want to be saved from themselves.)

His greed for adventure and shiny things was what got him into trouble with the dagger, and he never quite loses his appraiser's eye (or taste) for luxury goods. And Tuon is entirely right to name him 'Devastation' or 'Ruin'; he's constantly blowing things up, killing enormous amounts of people directly or by proxy, and while everyone in this series commits war crimes, he's got the dubious honor of having another character (Teslyn) actually say to his face, "You know you just did a war crime, right?"

Mat spends the early books- when he's in good enough health to do so, and has the opportunity- pursuing women, wine, and song, and I mention them all together because that's the vibe he's going for. Mat genuinely loves flirting and dancing for their own sake, as fun things to do with receptive people, and that extends to sexual activities as well. It's a joyful, generous, playful way of interacting, and Mat's joie de vivre seems to attract people with similar attitudes.

Yes, Mat sometimes puts his foot in his mouth, but he's not actually disrespectful of anyone else's agency, so he's doing better than the rest of the Two Rivers boys. He doesn't make assumptions about whether there will be a next interaction or not, or how far each interaction will go; each step is negotiated with input from both players, which makes it a kind of game. Mat doesn't have long-term relationships with these fun, playful people, but he's not looking for that, and neither are they.

The other kind of people Mat is attracted to are what I'll call 'dagger people', who are sharp (smart, competent, possibly literally an edged weapon), powerful, and existentially dangerous. It is *possible* that Mat might have acquired this taste without the Shadar Logoth dagger's influence. He likes battles, he likes adventure, he generally treats women as respected equals, he might have gotten to 'date a woman who can kick your ass' all on his own. But Mat loved that Shadar Logoth dagger, they had a whole entire fucked-up relationship, and when they broke up he got a bunch of rebound knives and also some sharp, powerful, and existentially dangerous people's memories shoved into his head. Like calls to like, blood feeds blood, etc.

And boy, does Mat find these ladies, or more accurately, boy, do these ladies find him. Case in point: Melindhra, the sexy darkfriend Maiden of the Spear. I think Aludra partially fits, too- sharp, confident if not powerful, dangerous (though not so much to him as like... the world.) Mat isn't pursuing or attracted to either Joline or Tylin, but they also fit this description, and they definitely pursued him. (I'd love to add Lanfear to the list of 'dangerous ladies who made passes at Mat' but I can't quite do it with a straight face.) I don't think Mat's thing for dagger people really reaches its full flower until he starts getting to know Tuon, though.

Mat spends much of the series looking for both his types, and tends to find either one or the other, but not both in one person- until Tuon. Like Mat, Tuon is actually both these types in a sometimes uneasy coexistence. For all their many differences, they think about each other much the same way. They both find each other very layered and confusing, but also are surprisingly quick to trust each other, which is striking in people who are very suspicious, in a fraught situation, and on opposite sides. I think most of the reason they trust each other is because they have the same very contractual personal honor system, where 'my word is my bond'. That's a trickster thing; tricksters have to keep some kind of rules, or how else will they play games and know whether they've won or lost? But their rules can be hidden or idiosyncratic (that's the z-axis, comprehensibility) as you see in 'bargains with the fae'-type situations. Personal honor is also a feature of royalty, though, where the personal and political are bound together, and a person's promises can be treated as legal contracts, as well as honor-based societies in general.

Mat and Tuon take their promises to each other very seriously, but are also always both looking for loopholes so they can get the upper hand. They also are both following the script of prophecy, which I mention because they both devote a lot of time to subverting their own expectations about how exactly that prophecy is going to play out. Mat buckles down and says “I’m going to make this come out in my favor somehow, even though it’s not what I wanted,” yet he’s still surprised at how and when Tuon completes the marriage ceremony; Tuon does not find Mat anything like she expected, and she also is surprised at her own feelings for him. Near the end of the series, they take a break from playing tricks and mind games on each other, and instead bluff everyone else on the battlefield, tag-teaming their trickster powers for one last surprise attack.

Ok, so how is Tuon Mat’s first type, playful, joyful, and generous? She loves playing games with Mat, both actual literal games like stones, but also their weird flirting/power plays. She's super competitive, because anyone who wasn't who was in her shoes would be dead, but she's a good sport, "satisfied when she wins and determined when she loses". She's also got "mischievous" smiles, and turns the tables on Mat in a super trickster-y way, writing the letter that puts everyone in the circus under her protection except for Mat and his crew; which means he and his coterie are still 'not safe' and thus he has to keep travelling with her rather than bringing her back to Ebou Dar right away, by the terms of their promise.

Mat gives us really lovely descriptions of her in moments of joy, and one of the first things we learn about her is that her genuine smile makes her look completely different from the normal Resting Bitch Face she affects for self-preservation reasons. She's generous in the sense that she's (often) willing to consider other points of view and give people second chances, when others in her position wouldn't and don't. She has the generosity of privilege, which I admit is not the most laudable form of generosity, but it's still a form of generosity. She also has a natural compassion and merciful impulses that have been trimmed and hemmed and twisted into only the forms her society deems socially acceptable, but they're still there.

I have less of a job to do proving that Tuon is a 'dagger person'. You remember how I joked about 'sharp' meaning 'literally an edged weapon'? Well, I don't know how else I'm supposed to interpret "Tuon’s right hand swept across, bladed like an axe, and struck [the footpad's] throat so hard that he heard the cartilage cracking". SHE'S LITERALLY A WEAPON. MAT HAS FINALLY FOUND A REPLACEMENT FOR HIS SEXY EVIL KNIFE. :') She's also super smart, super canny, and a snappy dresser to boot. She's one of the most powerful women in the world, and by the end of the series Mat is absolutely into it. (The bit where he's like "She's so good at giving orders! *heart eyes*" is simultaneously hilarious and alarming. I get it- I simp for Kuvira from Legend of Korra, I can't throw stones at anyone who’s like ‘hot evil Empress, please step on me’- but there's a time and a place, Mat.)

And, of course, she's an existential threat to the world, Mat's family and friends, and (theoretically) Mat himself. The Seanchan Empire, despite not being bigoted towards the Tinkers and having pretty good gender equality, is committing massive human rights violations left and right, thanks to the slavery, channelerphobia, and imperialism. As a tool of the Empire, unless he works on extricating himself, Mat's going to be culpable for that (he already is, really, but it could be worse), which is a stain on his soul that I don't think either he or the readers want. Being a tool of the Empire is an existential threat to Mat's idea of himself as an independent agent and good person, and I guess also an existential threat to his life since he's getting all those assassination attempts from his coworkers. (I am excluding Tuon from the assassination attempts; as I've mentioned in a previous essay, her threats to Mat are not serious and are in fact a form of deranged flirting.)

Tuon and Mat are both dual-axis tricksters, in their way. Tuon- or I should really be saying, Fortuona, Lady Luck- is more on the bringing order to chaos side, and Mat falls most characteristically on the bringing chaos to order end of things. But they switch roles- Mat shores up the proper order of things when he reminds Tuon to keep her promises, and Tuon is often a chaotic influence at court, with her mercy or willingness to change her mind. They also both understand what it's like to be both a person and an archetype- Mat worries about losing his individual choice and freedom by becoming a hero, and Tuon worries about becoming too vulnerable and individual to be the strong and impartial hand she thinks the Empire needs.

They've also both experienced their instincts and worldview being overwritten by external forces; for Tuon it's been happening since birth and she's almost entirely embraced the process; for Mat, it was the consequence of a choice he made and he fought it every step of the way. They have very different responses, but they've experienced weirdly similar 'erasure' experiences. And they both have good and evil impulses entwined in complicated ways. Tuon is a survivor and a monster; a preserver and a destroyer; a person and an empire. And Mat builds a relationship with her when- and because- he accepts that he is both a lover and a fighter; generous and thieving; a person and a weapon. You may not like it, but this is what peak narrative compatibility looks like.

[vanilla-blessing]

qb anime of the year list 2018

Anime of the Year 2018 - the year of girls going to aquariums together

I’ve seen at least one person who claimed that 2018 was the best year for anime in recent memory and I’m inclined to agree. A large majority of my top ten list is shows that I would consider perfect and even shows that blew away what I thought was possible in the medium. It was a revolutionary year and makes a strong argument that anime wasn’t a mistake after all. - qb

#1

Hugtto! Precure blew away my expectations every week for close to a year. I don’t exactly know what to say about it here, since this isn’t the last time I’ll talk about it for sure. It doesn’t even end in 2018, but it was such a huge part of my 2018 in anime that it would be inaccurate to not include it. The only way I can think to explain Hugtto! Precure is to talk about the Netflix She-ra reboot. She-ra’s a pretty basic modern Dreamworks cartoon, with some interesting ideas thrown in and likable characters, but mostly held back by what they could realistically allot for production. Because of this limitation, She-ra goes hard on a single perfect episode (if you’ve seen it, you know which one) that stands out in a big way and shows the full potential of what they set out to make. Usually, Precure is lucky to get a handful of these stand-out episodes in a season, and most of the time just gets by, due to being an annual series that can never, ever take a break. Normally, the first few episodes of a Precure season can be counted on to be strong, but the realities of anime production being hella tough inevitably catch up.

Hugtto! Precure started with an incredible opening arc, then never let off the gas pedal. Nearly every episode of Hugtto is a stand-out, never-before-seen, innovative tour-de-force. The combination of production miracles that resulted in Hugtto has been talked about by me on this blog before, (http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/176000267859/hana-is-getting-unstable-a-pink-precure) but the length of time that Hugtto stayed in the paint, going extremely hard every single week with few exceptions, was just absurd. Every season of Precure has one or two peaks, sometimes a good season gets lucky and has even more, the best seasons bat a solid average, but are still expected to be held back by reality. Coming out of the fifteenth season of Precure with a majority of the best episodes in the entire franchise isn’t something that I can wrap my head around, but it definitely happened, mostly in 2018. It’s simultaneously a love letter to the franchise’s past, present, and future made by the biggest Precure fans on the planet, and it’s unquestionably the best season. Hugtto threw what we all knew was true and had accepted about Precure clear out the window, retroactively made older seasons better, watered my crops, brought world peace, ect.

Oh yeah and boys can be cures now. 

#2

I’m definitely not done with Revue Starlight and this won’t be the last time I talk about it. Revue Starlight essentially carried the Summer 2018 anime season on its back. Starlight absolutely dominated my anime watching schedule; my week was seriously just waiting for and watching different translations and releases with every other show being almost incidental, far less important than waiting for the song lyrics to get translated for an episode I had seen three times already. I won’t get into everything here, since I’ve already talked about it on this blog after all (http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/179023723689/subtext-is-for-cowards-revue-starlight), but I need to reiterate that it was such a commanding, unique, stylized experience and didn’t drop a single episode in its entire absurdly high-level production. The only reasonable explanation for this is devil magic, and hell, it was worth it. Revue Starlight is probably in my top 5 anime of all time and I wouldn’t get this list out if I said everything I wanted to say about it. It’s great. Watch it twenty times. 

#3

Pop Teen Epic, or Hoshiiro Girldrop, was the most wildcard that has ever been in seasonal anime, and could have been absolutely anything. What none of us predicted was just how much of anything this show would be, encompassing an unprecedented range of artists, voice acting talent, and whatever AC-bu are, each giving their very individual takes on a self-described shitpost comic strip, sometimes covering the exact same material two or three times, with no regard for any sort of cohesion or structure.

Nothing about this idea should have been funded, nothing in Pop Team Epic has any reason to work, and as a straight adaptation probably wouldn’t have worked. PTE spun gold from trash through the raw effort of artists doing their own thing, which captures the original spirit that made the formerly-cancelled comic popular in a way that’s much too intelligent for haters to understand. Also it got a dub, which is the most ridiculously bad idea i’ve heard in my life, and it owns that it happened.

#4

Spider-man into the Spider-verse is legit the best comic book movie ever made. It’s a fun, expressive twist on the most tired superhero origin story of all time, and showcases some of the most sssssssssstyle and raw, real emotion I’ve ever seen in animation. Its particular selection of influences is brilliant and poignant, rising far above the simple fanservice you’ve come to expect from Spider-man. The unrelenting individualistic spirit of this movie will stick with you the longest in the soundtrack, bravely incorporating a side of pop music that you don’t usually get to see in big-budget productions, pulling soundcloud rappers out of their grody (i’m told) dens into the spotlight with equal importance alongside the heroic score. Spider-verse is all about establishing your own unique flavor, and it manages to overwrite every other entry in this cursed franchise with its bold taste.

#5

It doesn’t make sense to me how amazing Aggretsuko’s dub is. The impeccable timing of each line, the perfect integration with the comedy, and the optimal length of the episodes are all far beyond what I expected from a Netflix show. It not only converted the original series of shorts that I already had on my top 10 the first year into a godlike longer series I didn’t know I wanted, but went to the effort to bring real metal singers in for the karaoke. Honestly just repeat everything I said in my 2016 list and multiply it by five. I hope they make more. They’re making more.

#6

I was pretty slow to pick up anime in the Winter 2018 season, but I never missed Hakumei and Mikochi, maybe because it was like, the only simulcast on my favorite online anime streaming subscription service HiDiVE. The subs weren’t great, and it certainly wasn’t all that popular, but it was just the relaxing show I needed. Hakumei and Mikochi brought me back to my favorite non-racist parts of the Redwall series of books: friendly animals, delicious foods, alcohol, and rustic songs. I was ready to put it on my list for simply being a cute healing foodie anime, but to my surprise, it had much more in store within its tiny world: stark confrontations with mortality, a shy riverside necromancer, the inexplicable remake of The Raid: Redemption in miniature, fashion trends, frogs, carpenter weasels, carpenter skeletons, ghost celebrations, a country beetle with lofty dreams. The list of memorable people, places, and things contained in the gnomish roommates’ tiny world goes on and on.

Masaomi Ando’s directing went completely along with the storybook aesthetic, maybe even to an overall detriment, which is exactly the kind of reckless commitment to style I love to see. The distinctive paneling, constantly gorgeous backgrounds, and deliberate pacing perfectly captured the imaginative stories I loved to read as a kid, but with more alcohol, and more sophisticated themes under the surface. Even something anime rarely get right, endings, were perfectly capstoned every week with a short digest that explored more of the history, legends, and very personal lore of their small, unique world. At its core, Hakumei and Mikochi is the calming story of tiny roommates you think it is, but it’s also so much more. They have day jobs and get drunk and remodel their house after it explodes that one time. They gamble dangerously to escape a blizzard, help a photographer give herself a little credit, and rescue their neighbor from a fancy grave of her own making. By the end of the show Hakumei practically built half a town. The collective stories from their everyday adventures build into something tremendous, and it all wraps up on the most perfect ending sequence I could have hoped for, which calls back to every story thus far as a new verse of the show’s central duet is sung. In any reasonable AnimeOTY Hakumei and Mikochi would be my top anime of 2018, but this year, the competition was unreasonable. This show will just have to settle for being the best regular anime of the year.

#7

Bloom Into You is an incredible adaptation of an apparently yuri romance manga that raises the bar for anime adaptations in general. I don’t know when, but somewhere along the line I stopped expecting that serious capital R Romance anime would have a distinctive style, and gave up to the notion that there was no demand anymore and a stylized, seinen/josei romance would just never get made. Well that was 2016 and then Scum’s Wish happened which this blog has covered extensively.(http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/168842023559/how-lerche-adapted-an-average-trashy-romcom-into, http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/168789506264/scums-wish-and-our-messy-uncomfortable) To me Bloom Into You feels similar in concept, as a difficult romantic situation with no easy answers or completely happy people. The main perspective character, Yuu, is among my favorite romantic leads in any series; she doesn’t get romantic feelings, although she wants to, and despite being easily motivated, is kind of dispassionate. Her relationship that she was pushed into with Touko might as well be out of mutual convenience, since Touko doesn’t want to fall in love with someone who would love her back, and Yuu doesn’t think she can.

Yuu filters the developments of the series as they grow closer through a very different perspective compared to more emotional leads of usual romance stories, methodically breaking down and considering where she’s at, observing where others are at, before taking an action that makes sense to her. Her growth through the series takes a very different direction than the common dramatic formula; instead of running headfirst into misunderstandings to overcome romantic challenges, she’s compelled to take a step back and position herself in a way that allows her to understand and confront her girlfriend’s issues. The changes that she experiences herself during this process are extremely gradual, but are no less significant to her. Although the dramatic weight of the series is obviously all about Touko, the central thesis of Bloom Into You is to explore Yuu’s complex feelings, and ask to what degree our actions are dictated by our emotions. It’s a heavy topic to be sure, but what makes this anime adaptation special in particular is how the directing and production pull it off, to maybe an even stronger degree than the original material.

Bloom Into You’s most striking and noticeable feature is the incredible conservation of small movements that connect expressions naturally. Minute changes in characters’ faces are vital to observe the almost imperceptible changes in Yuu over the course of the series, and every aspect of the direction is in service of highlighting these subtle moments. In addition, repeated cinematic themes are reinforced over the show’s run, such as the use of light to impart a blinding realization, flower language to inform deeper personalities, even using a literal (not literal) cinema. Symbols such as trains, masks, and mirrors are used constantly and consistently to reinforce the show’s themes, which should be immediately obvious from the opening animation. I’m still kind of stunned that Bloom Into You’s ending theme is such a banger and managed to use an oscillating sine curve in a metaphorical way. These details might be lost without the brilliant layouts, intentionally resembling a stage, which always push the minute differences front and center. As an anime adaptation, Bloom Into You adds so much value in such a subdued, conservative way that it puts uninspired adaptations to shame.

#8 

Thunderbolt Fantasy 2 rounded out the year with a good old new-fashioned Japanese-speaking Chinese-Wuxia Taiwanese puppet show. The novelty of this wild series, like, existing at all, is still incredible to me, but I was really wowed by the new characters and the direction the series went in after the already high standards of the first season. Following the outrageous action and fights of the previous season, I did not expect that season 2’s introductory goon would 1. Live past the first episode 2. So quickly become my favorite swordfighter and 3. Have inarguably the most complete character arc of the entire show thus far. The Princess of Cruelty’s struggle against her inner and outer demons in a unreasonably stacked, desperate situation developed her into easily the most compelling character of the season, and the rest of the cast including a corrupt police officer with extremely disconcerting and bad puppet teeth, a ventriloquist rock-lutist, and a nihilist monk each bring their own unique flavors to the table. The table that they throw the puppets in the air from to make the show. All of the new elements of Thunderbolt Fantasy 2 improved an already strong formula even more, and revealed an emotional depth to the series that I’m excited to see developed further. Some people might not call this anime, but those people haven’t seen Thunderbolt Fantasy for longer than 2 seconds. It’s so anime.

#9

I blasted all available seasons of Star vs the Forces of Evil early in 2018, and it was basically my first foray into straight-up American cartoon magical girl, despite watching all the Japanese ones, which was probably an oversight on my part. That’s because Star Versus is really good, and provided a flavor of magical girl I had been missing out on. I could talk about the excellent sparkle witch aesthetic of the show, fluid animation, and hilarious comedy, but I’d rather spend this blogspace posting Star Butterfly faces. 

#10

A Place Further Than the Universe, or YoriMoi, or my preferred moniker That Antartica Anime, wasn’t on my radar until well after it had finished airing, but it stuck with me for most of the year. Although it’s definitely melodramatic at times, it utilizes this tendency in exactly the right way to enhance the individual characters’ emotional arcs. Even though I was personally sort of taken out of it for many of the girls’ personal trials, :penguin emoji: is obviously thoughtfully written and carefully constructed, and especially knows how to orchestrate an immense emotional reaction with pitch-perfect timing. If there’s one particular aspect this anime has absolute mastery over, it’s hitting that perfect note and cue to create a memorable narrative climax. And for all my bellyaching about not fully relating to some of the characters, Miyake is definitively the #1 qb-relatable character of the year.

Here’s the rest of my list. Don’t @ me about it because if its not on my top ten then it doesnt really count anymore i dont make the rules thats just how it is

11. Yuru Camp

12. Hisone and Masotan

13. Asagao to Kase-san

14. Devilman Crybaby

15. After the Rain

16. Planet With

- friend of the show @queuebae on twitter 

That’s why the 2018 anime of the year award goes to Kaiju Girls 2.