It’s my birthday! I’m 27 today. I’ve been blogging since I was 22!

I’ve celebrated five birthdays on Otaku Journalist now. Here are the entries for my 23rd birthday, my 24th birthday, my 25th birthday, and my 26th birthday.

Since I’m participating in the Twelve Days of Anime blogging event this year, I want to take this entry to write about my five absolute favorite anime right now. Most of these shows did not come out in 2013. But I did watch each one of them this year, whether for the first time or the fifth:

Natsume’s Book of Friends

I first heard about this anime in Charles Dunbar’s yokai panel, so when I saw that there were four seasons on Crunchyroll, it was a no-brainer pick.

There’s not much more I can say about this show that I didn’t already write in my April review. But never has taking a chance on an anime I only knew about abstractly paid off so much. Though heavily Shinto-inspired and fantastic, it’s the bittersweet, character given plot that gives Natsume its soul.

The Eccentric Family

Clearly, I’ve been having a yokai moment in 2013. Here’s another Shinto-inspired fantasy—this time featuring a family of tanuki—that made my list.

As I wrote in my October review, this anime affected me most deeply as a sincere portrayal of human nature in mythological Kyoto. This drama takes place against rich, color-saturated backdrops of what this foreigner has always assumed Japan to be. It’s a magnificent flight of fancy that imagines a world humans unknowingly share with the yokai around them.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

I’ve wanted to write about this anime since Halloween, but I was reluctant to promote an anime that could only be gotten illegally or for around $500, no matter how much I loved it.  Now, however, this unsettling horror can be gotten on Amazon Instant Video for about $2 an episode.

What really got me about Higurashi was that the art style is so moe blob and boring that I expected a storyline that’s equally bland. It lulls us into complacency with unimportant subplots about Keiichi’s games with his friends at school. And then—BOOM—killer lolis.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam

They’re called the classics for a reason. And the reason I’m still watching this ‘94 show now is because it’s too over-the-top ridiculous to ever be forgotten. For example, it’s the only show in which an actual horse pilots a horse-shaped Gundam.

Needless to say, John and I have watched a lot of the Gundam franchise, but G Gundam is the black sheep of the family. Gundams are piloted with martial arts instead of technical know-how, and all the outrageous tropes of fighting anime can be found here. The Racist Robot Olympics, as the Gundam fights can be called, are rife with ridiculous stereotypes, like Mexico being portrayed by a cactus Gundam, or India by a cobra in a giant bowl. But with every nation equally ridiculed (except, of course, Japan), G Gundam is more hilariously out-of-touch than harmful.

Nerima Daikon Brothers

It’s been almost a decade since I first watched it, and still can’t seem to shake this one off the list. As I wrote in my review about a year ago, this is a very silly and cheaply produced anime, but it’s a fast-paced musical that never fails to make me feel good.

This year, I was a bit of a bridezilla about my wedding, stressing out about details that ultimately turned out not to matter at all. One night, after—I admit—crying over the reception menu, I popped in my Nerima Daikon Brothers DVD. John must have thought I was in hysterics as I went from inconsolable to laughing and singing in 20 minutes.

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This post is the eighth installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year. 

“Nibun no Ichi,” Gundam Build Fighters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cdt1jdh_t4

In direct contest to the typical power-ballad Gundam opening, this pop OP makes a great soundtrack for a show that’s just as much a slice-of-life as it is about giant robots.

“Dou Kangaete mo Watashi wa Warukunai,” Watamote

At the end of another depressing chapter in Tomoko’s life, this upbeat ending theme reminds viewers why we like her in the first place.

“Genshi, Joshi wa, Taiyou Datta,” Genshiken Second Season

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv33KF_wrmk

I love Genshiken’s girly makeover, going from a boy’s club to a fujoshi heaven. This song could have been tailored especially to be the new club’s theme song, and probably was.

“Guren no Yumiya,” Attack on Titan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jTHfdgCiDU

Much has been said about this high-energy—and highly addictive—anime opening. Makes a great alarm clock and an even better addition to your workout mix!

“SPLASH FREE,” Free!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uomsEhfkAJ8

For me, Rin’s antics in the ending theme make the animation just as replayable as the song. Another Easter Egg for you: in the club, are the background dancers wearing gimp masks?

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This post is the ninth installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.

The irony of anime fandom is we’re all a little awkward. Before you write me an angry comment think about how awkward it is to be fighting about cartoons over the Internet. See?

At least in my case, I felt a connection with anime because I didn’t feel like there was a place for me in mainstream society. I was able to lose myself in a world that was completely foreign to me. Even slice-of-life anime was a complete inverse to my everyday life. Anime was my escape.

With Watamote, however, there is no escape. Tomoko is even worse than we are.

After I’d watched two or three episodes of Watamote, I wrote a blog post about how relatable I found Tomoko’s experience to my own high school years. The next two thirds made me regret what I’d said. Sure, I remember being shy and socially inept. But I don’t remember intentionally sabotaging every potential friend’s effort to alter that. I wasn’t great, but I was better than Tomoko, who is a parody of excessive teen awkwardness. Kotaku’s review called it “mean spirited,” implying that it goes to such lengths to placate the rest of us at her expense.

Tomoko wants to appear as an enigma. But we’ve all figured her out. She says she wants to be with people, but she avoids most of them at all costs. And then when she realizes everyone else is hanging out without her, she feels envious and personally wronged.

I hoped that eventually, somehow, Tomoko’s life would improve. It’s not even much of a spoiler to say it never does. The real wonder is how this anime remains so engaging with so much internal monologuing and few recurring characters.

For me, Watamote is summed up with the scene in which Tomoko wants to watch the fireworks on the roof with somebody. Of course, she can’t find anybody, but she gets up the courage to ask two boys who are already there if she can watch with them. They acquiesce—but it turns out they’re actually there to spy on the love hotel next door. Yet another bittersweet, cringeworthy conclusion for Tomoko, and a dose of reluctant schadenfreude for all of us at home.

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This post is the sixth installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.

As author Cory Doctorow has said time and again, science fiction can only predict the present. That’s exactly what makes Psycho Pass so great.

Psycho Pass ostensibly takes place one hundred years from now. But through its increasingly unforgiving lens, we see our modern issues merely magnified. As machines take over people’s lives, they solve some problems of comfort and convenience, but make far bigger ones that may even put human rights at stake.

Portrayed in a stark palette of cool colors and smooth surfaces, this gritty cyberpunk mystery leaves us with more questions than answers. One of the biggest being, can we truly identify and prevent criminal inclinations before a crime is ever committed?

This scenario has a lot in common with Philip K. Dick’s short story turned blockbuster, Minority Report, in which a policeman has an ordinary life arresting pre-criminals… until he discovers the machine in charge of identifying murderers has named him as the next.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but Philip K. Dick is my favorite author. Though clouded by his occasional misogyny, he understands human nature like nobody’s business. And, as with all the best science fiction, his stories tell us more about the times he lived in (the mid-20th century) than some nonexistent future.

Dick is regarded as a genre writer in America (though scholars’ leanings are changing in recent years), but his books have been bestsellers in Japan since the 70s. It may owe no little credit to the fact that many of Dick’s postwar works feature Japanese protagonists in positions of power, as a reverse future where the Axis beat the Allies was one of Dick’s favorite themes.

So you could say I had a fangirl moment when the series’ villain, Shogu Makishima, encourages a crony to read Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? Makishima says he sees the town, ruled absolutely by the Sibyl System, as a parody of the novel. Do Androids begs the question of what it means to be human. Makishima is a man both frustrated and freed by his inability to be recognized as a normal human by the Sibyl System. And this sense of alienation, paired with his intelligence, makes for a truly formidable antagonist.

It’s no wonder anime academic Charles Dunbar called Psycho Pass the show that made him love anime again. Forget the pandering and panty shots. Psycho Pass is truly an anime for the intellectual mind, forcing us to contemplate sometimes uncomfortable truths about our time.

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This post is the fifth installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.

Today is John’s birthday! This is one of the reasons I married him. With a birthday just four days before mine, he’ll always understand what it’s like to be overshadowed by Christmas.

But today, I’m not writing about my husbando. I’m writing about my favorite 2D waifu, at least formerly— Kuroneko from Oreimo, the show also known by the name My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute!

I wasn’t all that enthralled with Oreimo, but Kuroneko kept me watching. I loved her attitude, her opinionated nature, her endless creative endeavors from cosplay to fanfiction to art. Have you ever watched an anime where one character made the show for you? That was how it was for me with Kuroneko, and no doubt with plenty of other viewers.

I watched the second season for more Kuroneko, but I shouldn’t have bothered. Her personality is completely different. Kuroneko builds a new cosplay—to get a boy’s attention. She painstakingly writes a book—of things she wants to do with Senpai. I was even disappointed when we learned her real name; the old Kuroneko would have seen that as a privacy violation.

There’s no getting around it—in season two, Kuroneko was ruined. She went from a well-rounded character with plenty of endearing personality traits and imperfections, to just another part of the harem. There’s never any reason given for why she’s even in love with bland everyman Kyousuke in the first place!

Then again, I don’t know what I expected about an anime about dating your sister. So long and good riddance, Kuroneko. I’ll always have my Nendoroid figure of you.

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This post is the fourth installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.