Twelve Days of Anime 2015 Part 6: Make TV Gundam Great Again

TV Gundam has had a rough go of it in the last decade.  Ten years ago, the legendarily poor Gundam SEED Destiny was finishing up its run.  A couple of years later, there was the improved-but-not-great Gundam 00.  In 2011 Gundam AGE failed to excite fans with both character designs and plot moves that were almost universally derided.  If you don’t count Gundam Build Fighters as a Gundam show proper and consider it a spin-off, then last year’s enigmatic Reconguista in G was the most recent television Gundam series before this year’s Iron-Blooded Orphans (IBO).

This track record is less than stellar; however, IBO has turned out to be something that is easily the best franchise entry in the last ten years and may even be the best TV Gundam since Turn A aired in 2000.

Twelve Days of Anime 2015 Part 5: AniTwitter Necromancy

When Symphogear first aired in 2012, I haaaated it.  I mean, I thought the first episode was cool, but by episode four, I was out.  No thanks.  Then, a funny thing happened earlier this year.  AniTwitter brought Symphogear back from the dead.

Twelve Days of Anime 2015 Part 4: One-two Punch

One Punch Man has been the hit show of Fall 2015, a fairly unsurprising fact   People love this show for a lot of different reasons.  Sakuga nuts adore the care and attention that the animation staff clearly takes with OPM.  Some probably dig that a solid meat ‘n potatoes shounen fighting series is on TV again.  Both of these points resonate with me, but neither conveys what I chiefly enjoy about the show.  For me, OPM works on two separate but interdependent levels, and this is possible because the show takes itself quite seriously.

Twelve Days of Anime 2015 Part 3: Sharing The Things You Love

One of my absolute favorite anime-related experiences this year was watching From Up On Poppy Hill with my wife.

Twelve Days of Anime 2015 Part 2: 80s Anime Adventure

You know someone really cares about you when they push you toward stuff animated by Mutsumi Inomata.  Luckily, I had a friend do just that for me this year.

Twelve Days of Anime 2015 Part 1: BEARsona

There are check boxes to every subculture, and anime fandom is no exception.  I normally don’t write about video games in this space, but there’s just something about the modern Persona series that seems to resonate with weebs the world over.