Thirty-ninth week of 2019 edition!
This is a Crow’s eye view of the posts that caught my attention this week. I especially look for posts that celebrate amazing moments in anime or otherwise blow me away with their wit and charm. Every week I check hundreds of sites, and I’m humbled by the quality and volume of work that the ani-blogging community creates! I hope this article helps you find some of those works!
What sites do I check every week? You can see the list of the sites here!
Review Order
This week, I reviewed the sites in alphabetical order (A to Z).
AniTAY
Kizumonogatari: Reiketsu Collector’s Edition Blu-ray Review: In which Doctorkev discovers blood-drenched slapstick is the best slapstick.
I’ve loved the Monogatari series since I watched Bakemonogatari — a couple dozen times. When the three Kizumonogatari movies came out, I was really bummed I couldn’t see them in the theater. I did splurge on the Blu Ray editions, though, and I’m really glad I did. Have you ever tried to describe the series in general or these movies in particular to anyone? It’s hard! Like, really hard! That’s why I was so impressed with Doctorkev’s post on AniTAY. The article makes it look easy to capture the thrilling, wildly artistic, and sometimes wildly inappropriate work that is the hallmark of this series. And for the record? The article is absolutely right when it says, “It’s the insane grin that really gets me.”
Honey’s Anime
Top 10 Ugliest Creatures in Anime [Updated]
One of the many things I love about anime is how it can bring us a breathtakingly wide spectrum of creatures. It can bring us adorable creatures like the penguins from Penguindrum, or it can bring us ugly creatures like the ones described in this article from Meghan May Dellinger on Honey’s Anime. This article lists 10 of the most ugly creatures in anime. Given how expressive anime can be, you can expect some seriously ugly creatures to be in the list! I might have put #8 a little closer to #1, and I might have dropped #5 down to #9 or #10 (I mean, they’re more terrifying than ugly!) but the the #1 choice? Spot on! See what you think.
I Drink and Watch Anime
Why do Midnight Occult Civil Servants Avoid Looking Out of Windows Before Lunchtime? So they’ll have something to do with the rest of the shift!
Midnight occult civil servants is one of those series that I keep thinking about, even though I’ve forgotten about some of its contemporaries. There are a lot of reasons about that. For one thing, there was a Zashiki Warashi that reminded me of the character with the same title in xxxHOLiC series, which remains one of my all time favorite series (I think I overuse that phrase — to be clear, if someone threatened to shave my cat if I didn’t name my favorite anime, I’d honestly say xxxHOLiC). But here are some more substantial and, frankly, believable reasons to love the series. Irina’s post on I Drink and Watch Anime lays those reasons out in delightful detail. And as usual, she gives us a wonderful selection of screen caps to illustrate her points. Can’t get enough of those caps? She even provides an imgur gallery and a Pinterest board. It’s a multimedia event available within a single article!
Random Curiosity
Fall 2019 Preview!
Well, it’s official. Fall 2019 is almost upon us! In light of what I’m about to say, please understand that I mean absolutely no disrespect to other preview posts. Everyone of them has a perspective and a voice that’s interesting to me. But season after season, one site’s preview post gives me everything I need to plan my viewing. And that post comes from Random Curiosity. For Fall 2019, the writer is Zaiden, and I can only guess at the amount of effort that went into the research, formatting, and fact-checking for this post. If you aren’t sure what you want to watch, please do check out this post. It’s comprehensive, easy to read, and honesty, it gets me excited for the new season. Looking through its entries, I’ll probably review Fairy Gone 2, but I have to say that Azur Lane has some appeal, too. I guess I should warn you — this article might make you overcommit for the new season!
SCOOP’S ANIMATION CORNER
“Zombie Land Saga:” the Ouran High School Host Club of the 2010s
Zombieland Saga is one of those series that arrives on the scene, looks around, and says, “You know what? I’m gonna be a comedy, but I’m going to go from ha-ha to sobering universal truths in a heartbeat. So strap in, okay?” I don’t often say that an anime episode, much less a series, rises to the level of literature (I haven’t said that since Made in Abyss episode 10), but you know what? Right here and right now, I’m saying Zombieland Saga transcends genre. It’s literature as much as anything I’ve ever read. It represents the human experience. I’m completely comfortable talking about The Master and Margarita, The House of Seven Gables, King Lear, and Zombieland Saga in the same discussion. And it’s not just because Irina from I Drink and Watch Anime reviewed it. It’s because of some of the ideas that this article by Sam ‘Scoop’ Cooper from Scoop’s Animation Corner presents. Don’t believe me? There’s only one way for you to be sure!
