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12 Days 2014 (Late) Day 7 – Seeing the Kotoura-san Manga Get Translated

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Last year, I started watching the Kotoura-san anime and fell off after 7 episodes. I liked much of its humor – I just moved on to watching other things.

When I saw that DMP had started publishing the original manga by enokids through its Digital Manga Guild imprint in May, I bought the first three volumes as they were released that month through their eManga site (those three are also currently available through the Kindle Store: vol 1, vol 2, vol 3). Further volumes have not been put out yet – there are six collected volumes so far in Japan.
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12 Days 2014 (Late) Day 6 – An Entertainingly Distracting Classmate (Tonari no Seki-kun)

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Tonari no Seki-kun was a pleasure to watch over the course of 21 weekly seven-minute episodes.

There’s not much I want to say about it other than I laughed a lot at Yokoi’s reactions to what her classmate Seki was doing at his own desk, I’m looking forward to Vertical Comics’ January release of the manga’s first volume, and I would recommend at least giving the first couple episodes a try if you haven’t seen the show already – it’ll only take about 15 minutes of your time.

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12 Days 2014 (Late) Day 5 – A One-Episode Character Romance (Sailor Moon)

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When Viz brought back the original Sailor Moon anime this year, I started watching it because I’d never seen it before. Anime-original episode 6 had a music-focused plot that stuck with me.

Jadeite’s minion Kyurene tries to use a cassette tape in a broadcast studio to steal life energy from people but the tape gets mixed up with a demo recording made by jazz pianist Yusuke Amade. Yusuke is in love with Akiko Yanagi, a record company employee that he sees often, and when she gets taken hostage by Kyurene, he and Usagi/Sailor Moon work together to rescue Akiko from danger.

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12 Days 2014 (Late) Day 4 – Experiencing Manga Nostalgia Through Blue Blazes

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Honoo and Kishimoto fondly remembering Susume!! Pirates.

Blue Blazes (Aoi Honoo) was a fun J-drama series to watch during the second half of 2014 and part of my enjoyment – apart from the reaction faces by main character Honoo – came from seeing references to what are now “classic” manga and anime series.

There are many scenes of characters reading Shonen Sunday, Big Comic and other manga magazines, numerous mentions of Mitsuru Adachi and his storytelling & character design traits, and particular manga scenes are displayed on screen at times with voice overs reading the panels’ dialogue. Also, Honoo aspires to become a professional manga author so he often thinks about how to create a popular manga by trying to combine genres and/or character types.

The title of this post is sort of deceptive because I wasn’t around when the series takes place (1980-1981) so I don’t think I can really have nostalgia for Yamato, Urusei Yatsura or Touch.

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12 Days 2014 (Late) Day 3 – Watching “Terror in Resonance” on a Weekly Basis

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Each anime season, I desire a good dramatic series I can watch on a weekly basis. In the recent past, that was satisfied through titles such as Mawaru Penguindrum and Madoka Magica. This summer, one I stuck with the whole way was Terror in Resonance (Zankyou no Terror). Like the other two series I mentioned, it had its own flaws but it prompted discussion and speculation among the people watching it including posts like Emily’s (aka ajthefourth). Those conversations propelled me along in conjunction with enjoying the plot of the show, similar to how I kept watching the American TV series Lost to the end despite its lackluster final season. Yoko Kanno’s fantastic score adding to the tension in certain scenes also contributed to me liking the show enough to call it one of my favorite anime of 2014.

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12 Days 2014 Day 2 – A Couple of Character Crossovers (Wooser Season 2)

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Miss Monochrome was one of my favorite shorts from last year so I was happy to see the lead girl from that make an appearance in front of an alkaline batteries supermarket display during Wooser‘s second season.


The Chihaya birthday surprise was a more attention-grabbing crossover from later in the season.

Despite these two moments, the second season was disappointingly less funny overall than the first one. (I can’t remember what else happened in season 2 other than the character appearances I just mentioned.) The ending song was up there among the catchiest of the year, though, so that was a plus.