17 different shows from the summer ‘09 anime season, analyzed and ranked from the bottom up.

Disclaimer: These rankings are purely a reflection of our own opinions and tastes, which are admittedly rather different from your average anime fan. Just because we don’t like a particular show doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. Your mileage may vary, etc etc. However, if you do have a different opinion about a show, by all means post a comment so that people reading have more than one opinion to go by.

Summer often gets a bad rap as the “filler” season in between the generally much more packed spring and fall anime seasons. This season, however, summer boasts an excellent crop of new shows for fans of all different genres. Although I’m ranking these shows numerically according to my favorites, almost all of them are enjoyable in at least some respects.

Almost all. Read the rest of this entry »

First, I should clarify that I have nothing against Pete Zaitcev; I like him and the stuff he writes. I just can never resist the opportunity to heckle him about his backwater “no comments” policy, especially when his excuse for not allowing them seems to be “well it’s just too much work”.

Of course it’s just my personal preference and I can’t reasonably force that on him, but I find it incredibly frustrating when I can’t just leave a comment on someone’s post to provide feedback. It also eliminates the interesting group conversation that helps enrich a good post and fosters online community.

This issue has already been beat to death, and I very much doubt that Zaitcev will change his ways, so I suppose I’ll have to content myself instead with gnashing my teeth in frustration and hassling him at every opportunity.

OK, so about Google PageRank. In my previous post I mentioned that one reason I removed my normal blogroll was because it’s damaging to the site’s ranking.

Pete responded to my comment with the following:

“UPDATE: Blogrolls do not “damage” PageRank. For one thing it’s impossible to “hemorrage” to begin with. We know that Google applies certain modifiers to the calculated PageRank postfactum, and some of them discourage link farms. However, there are also ad-hoc modifiers for dealing with blogs.” Read the rest of this entry »

For a long time now I’ve been dissatisfied with my  current blogroll, and indeed I’ve never been particularly keen on the concept for traditional blogrolls to begin with. The standard “list of links on the sidebar” doesn’t give much useful information, hardly ever generates any clicks, and also damages your Google pagerank.

Thus, I’m very pleased to present a much more detailed blogroll listing that I feel properly gives credit to the sites that I enjoy the most and which recommend to you, my readers, as being Worth Your Time. This page will be added onto my top menu shortly, so you can always refer back to it if you’re bored and want a good anime blog recommendation.

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The first three blogs in this list, by the way, are my “holy trinity of anime blogging”, writers who I admire and who’s works I read without fail, regardless of subject matter. These guys don’t just write generic episode summaries. They really engage with the work on a creative and intellectual level that gives credit to the under-appreciated depth of animated works, and helps me to better appreciate the artistry of this genre.

If these guys recommend it, it’s probably worth checking out. Read the rest of this entry »

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” – Seneca the Younger

It’s no mistake that Yuuki’s name means “courage” (勇気). Throughout the story of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Yuuki more than anyone else has been the one who held on to hope, who had courage in the bleakest of circumstances.

And now, even in death, Yuuki leaves behind his namesake. Read the rest of this entry »