Miscellaneous / Poll

Reader’s Choice – Best Anime 2013 Poll

The end of the year is here and it’s time for the Eighth Annual Reader’s Choice poll! Do you have a favorite series you’d like to see win? Are you just curious to see what everyone else enjoyed this year? Either way, the microphone’s in your hands now. Make your vote count.

As per the usual, there will be two polls for you to vote on this year – one for regularly broadcast TV series, and another for OVA/movies. We’re asking you for your top 5 picks in each poll, which should stop the results from being heavily skewed towards the mega-popular shows. This year we have an astounding 160~ TV series (shorts are included this year) and 120~ OVA/movies/specials for you to choose from, so make sure you look over the entire list before deciding. Keep in mind that like all entertainment, anime is subjective. There is no one size fits all here. Please respect the opinions of others, even if you may disagree vehemently with them.

More after the jump.

Note: The polls will close at midnight PST on Thursday, January 2nd. This means the morning of the 3rd, or 8:00 AM GMT on the 3rd. Results will be posted in the Best of Anime 2013 post, which will be written by myself and Stilts (the two active writers who have watched the most anime this year).

Miscellaneous

Introduction – “I Prefer the Term ‘Enthusiast'”

KairiI never so much as imagined that a casual remark could lead to the fulfillment of a dream, but here I am, still pinching myself every few minutes to make sure I’m not making it up.

My experience with anime has been a deeply personal one. I was a sheltered child whose television programming was carefully controlled in order to weed out “bad influences”, so my first true encounter with anime came one day in the eighth grade, when one of my teachers decided that it would be fun to watch the original Fullmetal Alchemist in class. Never before had I been exposed to something that mature and thought-provoking outside of books, and Hylia-be-damned, I wanted more. It wasn’t long after that I discovered the internet and its proliferation of anime.

In 2006, a year that marked a very difficult time in my life, I stumbled upon Eureka Seven. I found myself in the characters and themes in a way I never had with any other work, and suddenly the crushing depression that had driven me to some very dark places began to dissipate. The experience was so powerful that some six years later, I’m still watching E7 at every opportunity, despite having seen it over thirty times.

More after the jump.

Final Impressions / Miscellaneous

Conclusion – “I’d rather be a comma than a full stop”

Sometimes life kicks you in the teeth. This isn’t really one of those times. Sometimes things just change for the better and as a result, certain others begin to suffer. It’s no exaggeration to say that RC has changed our lives – that it has meant a lot to us during our year here and will continue to do so after we’ve left. Without RC, neither of us would have met, lives would have remained unchanging, and who knows where we’d be today. Writing for RC exceeded our expectations in ways we never would have seen coming. There were fun times and there were hard times. Being a writer for a site as large as Random Curiosity isn’t always sunshine and roses, but at the end of the day, we’re both thankful to the site for giving us an opporunity to write and bringing us together. But RC is a well oiled machine – it’s not about the individual writers, but the site as a whole, so things will always continue as normal.

For a while now it’s been hard to find enough motivation to blog. Blogging has become something that needs to be done quickly to get it out of the way so that we can spend more time together. Having that kind of attitude towards blogging won’t do the shows we cover any justice. It’s better to go all out for something than doing a sloppy job. With our new priorities, perhaps it’s time to set aside blogging for those who remain motivated to give series the love and attention they deserve.

More after the jump…

Miscellaneous

Introduction – “Denpa Revolutionary, Seishun Extraordinaire!”

Seishun - Intro

For more than a year, I’ve had the crazy idea to embark on this venture that could throw my peaceful life into disarray. Writing for Random Curiosity, to put it mildly, is no easy task and the great team of writers has certainly set a precedent that would be hard to follow. I won’t deny that such a notion has not been met with resistance, but beyond my usual claptrap, there’s nothing too obscure about the appeal of writing for one of the most popular anime blogs in existence. There’s certainly no other platform quite like Random Curiosity and the large readership that it enjoys allows me to share both my passion and viewpoint with anime fans all around the globe. Just as important as figuring out what to do will be actually making it happen, and here I am today as your newest writer in Random Curiosity.

More after the jump…

Miscellaneous

Shin Sekai Yori – Potential Translation of the Novel

ShinSekaiYori

For fans of the Shin Sekai Yori series (especially those that wish to see a translation of the source material), North American publisher Vertical Inc. has expressed interest in releasing a translated version of the Shin Sekai Yori novels. Due to the cost and time requirements for such an undertaking however, they are unwilling to do so unless enough people express interest.

…More details after the break.

Final Impressions / Miscellaneous

Conclusion – “Adieu, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye”

huey

It is with a heavy heart that I must take my leave from Random Curiosity, the home to all of my musings, ramblings, and essays for nearly a year and a half now. Back in the olden days of fall 2011 when my blogging career here first began, I was nervous as all hell. Worries about what people would think of my writing raced through my mind as I began watching that first episode. Yet with every word, every paragraph, and every post, I discovered that although my vocabulary may not be as expansive and my sentence structure not as eloquent as some of the other writers, I still loved to write.

In every post, I hoped to have a thesis that would help readers see an episode in a different light and more importantly, appreciate it in a different way. This was my philosophy behind writing for Random Curiosity, and now that my time here is over, I hope that I have been able to accomplish this goal once in a while so that my time and yours have not been spent in vain. Even on the days when an unfinished post seemed to stare at me for hours on end, my fingers would continue their staccato rhythm and my mind kept searching for an episode’s common thread – all because I wanted to present my best work to the readers.

I cannot express enough of my gratitude that you, the readers, have actually read and even liked my thousand-word plus essays, and I especially cherish the wonderful comments you’ve left that have helped me realize what my strengths as a writer are, what my voice is. More after the jump.