Best of Anime / Miscellaneous

The Best of Anime 2010


Now that 2010 is over, here’s a look back at some of the best series the year had to offer. Due to the subjective nature of it all and the fact that I’m constrained to what I’ve seen, I’m not trying to pick series that the vast majority finds agreeable. Instead, I’m here to convey my personal favorites for 2010, after which you’re more than welcome to chime in with your respective choices. Carrying over from last year, there’s an increased number of categories separated into corresponding areas, namely Production, Miscellaneous (fun stuff), Genre, and Notable Others. Also included at the end are the final results to the Reader’s Choice Poll.

 

Disclaimer: These are purely my personal opinions based on the shows that we’ve seen in the past year. While I’ve watched a lot of series (56 this past year), please keep in mind that I haven’t watched everything. For a show to even qualify for consideration, it had to have met the requirements outlined in the Reader’s Choice Poll. For OVAs/movies, the additional requirement is that it’s been either released on DVD/BD so that viewers outside of Japan have had a chance to watch it.

Miscellaneous / Poll

Reader’s Choice – Favorite Anime 2010 Poll

It’s… TIME! Time to look back at 2010 that is, so I’d like to present the Fifth Annual Reader’s Choice Poll.

Similar to last year, there are two polls for you to vote on — one for regularly broadcast series and another for OVA/movies. The subtle change is the number of votes has increased from three to five for series and one to three for OVA/movies to further diversify results so they aren’t heavily skewed. With 98 series and 71 OVA/movies to choose from, we’re now asking for your top five and top three of 2010 respectively.

The criteria for a regular broadcast anime to be included is that it had to have been a TV series that finished airing in 2010. The general idea here is that you can’t really judge a series until it’s over, so shows such as STAR DRIVER and To Aru Majutsu no Index II will appear in next year’s poll. For OVA/movies, it has to have been released on DVD/BD in 2010 to qualify, ensuring that viewers outside of Japan have had a chance to watch it. This mostly pertains to theatrical offerings. I’ve loosened the requirement on being complete though, which is why you see Gundam Unicorn episodes one/two and Break Blade movies one/two included in the list as single entries.

As far as I’m aware, the anime series list is complete. The OVA/movie is purposely less so since there are a lot of really niche OVAs that aren’t really worth considering. However, if you feel there’s something the deserves consideration, please send me an e-mail and I’ll add it. Otherwise, you are welcome to vote for it in the Others option. Let the voting begin!

Note: The polls will close on Sunday, January 2nd at 8:00 AM GMT. Results will be posted in the upcoming Best of Anime 2010 post.

The Reader’s Choice Polls are after the jump.

Polls are now closed. Thank you for taking the time to vote.

Miscellaneous / Poll

Poll: Winter 2011 Anime Season

Time is counting down to the new year and I still have the year-end Reader’s Choice poll to put up soon, so here’s the seasonal one first. I’ve decided to stick with the five-vote maximum used this past fall, since it allows for a more diverse range of results. While some people may not think so, I actually find this upcoming season rather interesting, offering twenty-two new titles with a fair bit of variety. At the moment, I’m not even sure what to make of some despite their potential, whereas others I’m eagerly looking forward to because I have a good idea what I’m in store for. What that translates to is a good season to start, with the possibility of turning out to even better if one or two hidden gems are discovered. Anyway, if you haven’t already, please refer to the Winter 2011 Preview for detailed information on each of the shows listed. As always, comments are welcome if there’s anything you want to add about a particular show or the winter season in general. Let the anticipation begin!

Note: The same poll will also be available on the sidebar. It will automatically close on January 3rd at 4:00 PM GMT to coincide with the start of the new season.

Miscellaneous / Seiyuu

Seiyuu: The 7th Quiz

[flv:Random_Curiosity_Seiyuu_Quiz_7.mp4 512 288]You guys ready for it? ARE YA? (Can you guess what anime the intro song comes from?)
This one is extra easy since I decided to be nice around Christmas time (:

Winner of the Contest – DarkWind (Seiyuu and Almost All Characters)
Second Place Goes to Elijah for being second to get it all correct (Seiyuu and Almost All Characters)
Third Place Goes to Rei and Pedobear (One Wrong Seiyuu, Almost all Characters)
It took 4 Hours and 48 Minutes for someone to solve the quiz. Good job to everyone who participated!
NOBODY got number 11’s character correct and good job to those who got Mahoraba for the intro song (:

Answers:
Show Spoiler ▼

Miscellaneous / Seiyuu

Seiyuu: The 6th Quiz

[flv:Random_Curiosity_Seiyuu_Quiz_6.mp4 512 288]Another one, already? Don’t worry, it’s A LOT easier this time.


Winner of the Contest – nikici
Winner of the “I Named Most Series” and got really close – Nhelraios, Rei, and Dusk
It took 8 Hours and 42 Minutes for someone to solve the quiz. Good job to everyone who participated!

Answers inside the post!

Miscellaneous / Seiyuu

Seiyuu: The 5th Quiz

[flv:Random_Curiosity_Seiyuu_Quiz_5.mp4 512 288]
Do you want your name to be forever stamped somewhere in the thousands of pages that is Random Curiosity? NOW IS YOUR CHANCE!

Instead of actually watching anime or doing something productive with my life, I decided to continue on the Seiyuu Quizzes! Inspired by Patrik’s hard work and because someone mentioned that they wanted another one, here it is – THE 5TH SEIYUU QUIZ!

Here are the ground rules;

  • Please post your answers in the comments with a spoiler tag!
  • I just need the Name of the Voice Actor! (Imaginary bonus points for the character name or the name of the show they’re from)
  • I will post up a list with all the correct answers later (In a day or so?).
  • First one to get it correct will be forever immortalized.. in this post
  • Even if you can’t get them all, still post your answer! <3

    • Good Luck Everyone! I hope you enjoy this! Tell me what you think about the quiz down in the comments!

    RESULTS ARE IN (DETAILS IN THE POST!)

    Miscellaneous / Random Musings

    Thank You For Your Continued Support!


    Since taking over Random Curiosity, various generous individuals have e-mailed me asking if they could show some financial support for the site. While I had thanked them for their kind gesture at the time, I was intent on keeping the blog self-sustainable as a fan site, regardless of how much my double-edged personal standards made it feel like a second job. What’s more, it just wasn’t in my “style” to accept donations even in light of some trying times when I was forced to change web hosting earlier this month. However, I admit the thought of just dropping all the extra work that goes into maintaining the site and looking forward to days of an abundance of free-time did cross my mind at one point. I found myself working tirelessly for four days straight exploring options to configuring software to get things back up, and ran into one problem after another both in setting up the new server and in real life, and seriously started questioning why I’m working as hard as I am — almost always at the expense of sleep.

    * More after the jump…

    Miscellaneous / Random Musings

    Random Musings – Changing Web Hosting

  • As I’m sure all our regular readers are aware of by now, the site’s been down since Wednesday afternoon. I’ve had a bunch of people contact me about it already by e-mail and on my MAL page and had no ETA on when I would get things back up. Well after working on the issue for the better part of the past three days, I’m happy to announce that Random Curiosity is back up and ready to go.
  • Long story short, my web host suddenly pulled the plug on me with no warning, forcing me to find an a new provider. With the help of Mentar from Eclipse, I was able to get things up and running much quicker than I was anticipating, so a big thank you goes out to him for helping RC out both past and present. If you’re seeing this post, it means the updated DNS records have already propagated to your machine and you’re already on the new server.
  • Migrating the site over and re-uploading all the content took the longest time, but I ran into a few hiccups with the server-side configuration and had to spend long hours sorting them out as well. Aside from the time lost blogging-wise and significantly more expensive cost, I think the downtime and money invested is worth it in the long-run. Gone are the days of sharing CPU and only having ~700MB RAM, as the site now resides on a dedicated server with an Intel i7 920 quad core, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and dual 1TB drives in RAID-1. What that should translate to is a much faster loading site and possibly even a Random Curiosity forum in the future.
  • In terms of the blogging backlog, I asked the other writers to continue working on posts offline, so there has been some progress even while the site’s been down. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for myself since I’ve been working endlessly to get the server back up, so it’ll take me a while to get through my shows. Regardless, you can probably expect a huge influx of posts in the upcoming days. Personally, I’m a bit drained from working on all this server stuff, so I won’t be posting anything until tomorrow. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
    		•
    Miscellaneous / Poll

    Poll: Fall 2010 Anime Season

    Now that you have a better idea of the new shows around the corner and my personal outlook on each of them, here’s your opportunity to voice your opinion and see what others are looking forward to. If you haven’t already, please refer to the Fall 2010 Preview for detailed information on each of the shows listed. I’ve also added several more promotional videos to the various entries, so they’re worth checking out to get a better impression of what they’re like. Due to the vast number of shows (27), I’ve increased the choices from three to five this time around, so that there’s more room for some lesser anticipated shows to be highlighted. As always, comments are welcome if there’s anything you want to add about a particular show or the fall season in general. Let your voice be heard!

    Note: The same poll will also be available on the sidebar. It will automatically close on October 1st at 2:00 AM to coincide with the start of the season.

    Miscellaneous

    Introduction – “I Get to Write for Random Curiosity? Really?”

    Hi everyone. Nice to meet you. My name is Takaii and I’ll be hopping on board to write for Random Curiosity! I never thought that I would get the opportunity to write for RandomC, but sometimes amazing things happen, right? I’m here to post my thoughts on whatever series I may be blogging, and listening to what you have to say down in the comments. I love reading comments and can’t wait to see what you guys have to say.

    The Name's Takaii.

    I was exposed to anime back in 2000, when Rurouni Kenshin and Outlaw Star were still the newest thing out in America. Once subtitled anime got more popular, I began watching just about anything I could get my hands on. Anyone remember streaming videos through Winamp? I was able to watch my first Japanese animated movie, Appleseed, off of it. Some of my old favorites that will never leave me are Mahoromatic and Love Hina, with Love Hina being the first anime I watched with the original Japanese voice actors and Mahoromatic introducing me to Ayako Kawasumi (voicing Mahoro, Saber, and Alice among many others). For anyone that watched the English dub, Mitsune’s voice was so bad that I vowed to always watch shows in their original language. And thus, the door to anime had been opened.

    For series that are a little bit more current, my favorites from the past few years range from Clannad, Gurren Lagann, Lucky Star, to Toradora and Ookami. While I’m not the most well versed on all the different types of anime out there, I do have a very open mind when it comes to things I will watch. My favorite genres though are romantic comedies, slice of life shows, and those really, really GARR type of shows that get your adrenaline pumping (Gurren Lagann anyone?).

    I also enjoy listening to music from anime, especially the OSTs. For the past few months, the most notable songs in my mind are Angel Beat’s Brave Song (GlDeMo Ver!) and Bakemonogatari’s 君の知らない物語 (Kimi No Shiranai Monogatari by Supercell). I’m very open to different types of music, and I would love to hear some of your song recommendations. (Anything Japanese is fine, it doesn’t have to be from an anime necessarily.) From the OST viewpoint, Maeda Jun‘s work on Angel Beats is what’s been on repeat for me while I study. It makes for really, really good studying music. Completely off topic, but I managed to get Eri Kitamura’s signature on Yui’s picture on the Thousand Enemies album (Eri Kitamura voices Yui). I know that she doesn’t sing it, but it feels right having her sign it.

    On the writing aspect side of things, I tend to focus on the important events during an anime, while trying to still bring out the gist of what’s going on during the entire show. I’m not going to focus too much on summarizing, and express my opinions on the important points instead. I value any feedback you may have, and I hope that in turn I can entertain you guys to the best of my ability. I’m very, very excited to start writing for Random Curiosity and never thought that I’d be here writing an intro post for myself. I hope that I will be able to provide entertaining posts for you in the near future.

    On that note, I hope I didn’t bore you too much, and here’s my formal introduction;
    タカイイです。どうぞよろしくおねがいします。 (Takaii desu. Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu)
    -Takaii

    I’m still trying to get MyAnimeList setup, but I’m having trouble recalling everything I’ve ever watched. For what I’m blogging, I’m fairly sure I will be covering Bakuman and Yakumo.