Top 10 Best Anime Eyebrows of Winter 2019: The Thick Brows That Warmed Us

April 10, 2019April 10, 2019 ~ Jenn ~ 3 Comments

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS, FOLKS! That’s right, it’s about a week after the end of the last anime season, which means it’s time for my to put on my Eyebrow Assessment Monocle and distribute the coveted award of Best Anime Eyebrow.

my hero academia hot girl monocle.png — A+ monocle, but C- eyebrows.

Believe it or not, I actually followed a lot of series through this season. I was BIG into Boogiepop and The Promised Neverland in particular, and of course Mob Psycho 100. If I were a better blogger, I would write a review of those series, but alas. I only review eyebrows here, not entire anime series.

Now, infamously, I write these Top 10 lists without having actually seen any of the season’s offerings. This time, I actually watched, but somehow that made this list HARDER to write. I was busy paying attention to insignificant things like a character’s pErSoNaLiTy and bEhAvIoR. But no worries, I have now adjusted the monocle and am ready to list.

tsumugi-kotobuki-tsumugi-kotobuki-e7-90-b4-e5-90-b9-e7-b4-ac-16562145-1920-1080 — May the Queen of Anime Eyebrows guide us through this list…

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Should You Watch Boogiepop and Others? Well, it’s complicated…

March 10, 2019March 10, 2019 ~ Jenn ~ 13 Comments

This Winter anime season gave us plenty of highly anticipated anime to choose from. We got the long-awaited adaptation of Shonen Jump hit The Promised Neverland, new JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, an adaptation of an early Osamu Tezuka work, and – the series I was most excited for – a special 20th anniversary entry into the Boogiepop canon.

Boogiepop and Others is a surreal psychological horror with supernatural elements thrown in. It’s about an entity, Boogiepop, who lives within a teenage girl. Boogiepop appears when the world is troubled, and believe me when I say this world is TROUBLED! There’s a shady organization drugging and brainwashing people, aliens(?) are popping down to Earth, and another highschool girl is running around in a catsuit and scaring the shit out of her peers…there’s a lot going on. It’s kind of hard to explain.

Which is the thing about Boogiepop. It’s kind of hard to explain…and hard to follow…and sometimes even hard to like.

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Winter 2019 First Impressions: Who Will Land In The Hell Zone?!

January 18, 2019May 31, 2019 ~ Jenn ~ 1 Comment

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a stab at seasonal coverage, huh? Truth be told, the past few months on the blog have been extremely inconsistent. In 2019, though, expect to see way more from The Anime Hell Zone! This Lexapro is kicking in and I am ready to TAKE ON THE WORLD! SEROTONIN, ACTIVATE!!

Ahem. Since it’s been so long since I’ve done a seasonal first impression list, let’s take a moment to review my personal rating system for first impressions.

Heaven Zone: these look like some real winners! They’re the most highly recommended (so far, anyways…), and are the series that I’m most likely to stick with through the whole season.

Purgatory: these shows haven’t sold me just yet, but they’ve got promise. We’ll see if they can ascend to Heaven by the end!

Hell Zone: these were painful to get through and are absolutely not recommended. If I continue watching anything in Hell Zone, it’ll only be to cruelly mock them!

Though I am training to become a Real Anime Critic one of these days, I’m obviously not getting paid to cover anime seasonals. That being said, I’m skipping over quite a few of the Big Boy Hype shows. I have a finite time on this planet, and I will not waste it blogging about things I don’t care about!

The only series left that I have to check out is Mob Psycho II. I’m waiting to watch it together with my boyfriend, and I know he wouldn’t appreciate me jotting down notes during our anime date night, so that’ll have to wait until the end of the season round-up.

Also, I know that we’re technically on the second week of seasonal anime, but this post is only based on the first episodes (or first two episodes, in Boogiepop‘s case). I’m slow! Sue me!

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A Love Letter To The Mature Psychological Anime of the 1990s/2000s

August 13, 2018August 13, 2018 ~ Jenn ~ 24 Comments

I recently started watching 2004’s Monster after seeing it listed on “Best Anime” lists for years. It’s been on my to-watch list forever, and I had been putting it off simply because it’s 74 episodes and I figured that was too big of a commitment. I mean, I hesitate to watch stuff that’s 26 episodes long. I like the feeling of finishing a show and moving quickly on to the next one, you know? It clunks up my completionist goals if I have to commit to an anime for more than, like, ten hours.

I’m about twenty episodes into Monster (my attention span is doing good this time, guys!) and I love it. It’s an atmospheric, perfectly paced psychological horror with some dashes of historical fiction and medical drama thrown into the mix. Maybe a bit of magical realism, too. Oh, AND it’s a mystery. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. The only thing that could make it better would be having some lesbians in there. Which, who knows, there’s still a chance – I have 54 episodes left, after all!

large — You know what else is non-existent? Legal streaming of Monster. I’m watching that shit on YouTube in the worst quality…tragic.

Not to sound like a cranky old get-off-my-lawn anime fan (again), but I can’t help but watch this and think, “damn, they don’t make them like they used to.” I generally keep up on seasonals, and I really can’t remember the last time I saw anything with a creepy atmosphere or drawn-out pacing quite like that of Monster’s, or like any of my other favorites from this late 90’s/early 2000’s era, for that matter. I’m talking about eerie, semi-experimental shit like Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost Hound, Ergo Proxy, Paranoia Agent, and others of its kind. Where have all the good psychological horrors gone? Where are all the mature, existentialist seinen series that I love so much?

I guess I should start by defining what it is about these series that I love so much.

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[My Anime Week] Thank you, anime gods, for blessing us with new Ikuhara, new Watanabe, and new Boogiepop

March 10, 2018 ~ Jenn ~ 4 Comments

This week has felt like a hazy dream to me – all I’ve done is work, drive home, and sleep. I’ve barely even had time to think about anime, let alone watch it.

sad-thinking-sleeping-on-a-pillow-anime-girl — Me, lying in bed, thinking about all the seasonals I have to catch up on…

Now that the work week has ended, though, I can finally catch up on anime news and anime writing. And I can also finally SCREAM ABOUT HOW EXCITED I AM ABOUT ALL OF THESE NEW ANIME ANNOUNCEMENTS. Teasers for the new Kunihiko Ikuhara project, Sarazanmai, were released, a new Shinichiro Watanabe project was announced, and a new Boogiepop Phantom anime. We love 2018!!!!!!!

minori-taiga — Thank you, anime gods, for delivering these gifts unto me after a week of hell.

So without further ado, please allow me to yell and scream about all this good anime shit.

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