Reader’s Choice – Best Anime 2012 Poll

It’s that time of year again – welcome, one and all, to the Seventh Annual Reader’s Choice poll! Do you have a favorite series you’d like to see win? Or perhaps you’re just curious what everyone else enjoyed this year? Well either way, this is the time to cast your vote and make your voices heard!

As has become our habit, 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 132 TV series and 71 OVA/movies for you to choose from, so make sure you look over the entire list before deciding. Also, please respect other people’s choices in the comments, and keep in mind that entertainment is subjective. People like what they like, so even if you might think they have terrible taste (ooo, ooo, ooo, that’s me!!), please try to respect their opinions.

More after the jump.

Note: The polls will close on Tuesday, January 1st at 8:00 AM GMT. Results will be posted in the Best of Anime 2012 post, which will be written by the three active writers who have watched the most anime this year.

Update: Polls closed. Thank you for taking the time to vote!

As You’ve Probably Noticed…

…the site’s been down for the past couple of days. I managed to put up a maintenance message for a good part of time, but for those who missed it, the server had a hardware issue that required some emergency maintenance. The short story is that the hard drive was failing. To make matters worse, the RAID-1 mirrored drive that’s supposed to have me covered in this situation actually failed back in July without my knowledge, which left the site running on a single faulty drive that needed to be backed up and swapped out immediately so that both drives could be replaced.

With the help of Mentar and his friend Fruit, I managed to get a full up-to-date backup of the site, so nothing was lost — not even a single comment — unlike the crash we had back in the day on Aniblogger. It took me longer than I would’ve liked to reconfigure the server with a new Debian (Squeeze) distro, but everything should be up and running now. I expect there to be some hiccups, so please let me know if you encounter any issues (performance or otherwise). Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Note: Expect a flurry of posts to be published, as the writers have been staying on top of things during the downtime.

RC Contest – Guess That Chibi!

Random Curiosity has a new banner – this time, it’s not from an anime. This banner is a collaboration project between me and Prooof. I’ve drawn the RC crew (current writers) as chibis while Prooof did the amazing equalizer background.

When I finished my drawings, the other writers suggested that we should make you – our dear readers – guess which writer each chibi represents. I thought I’d make a little contest out of this.

Hints so far: 6 (inside the post)

Note: This is a sticky post. Scroll past this for the regular posts! This post will be probably be stickied until someone wins. We have a winner!

Looking for Graphic Artists in Our Community

She Needs Your Help!


The guidelines are simple — design a RandomC T-shirt for use at Anime Expo!

  • Design the Whole T-Shirt.
  • One-Sided or Two-Sided.
  • Design a Character! I attached one that my friend drew for me but they can be tall, short, skinny, or skinny Rihoko Size — be creative!
  • Deadline is May 31st, 2012! Gotta get the shirt made in time for the convention!
  • Please submit your creations to takaii @ randomc.net.
  • More Details after the Jump!

    Podcast – “Is this mic on?”


    Many of you probably remember and greatly enjoyed the old Monthly Retrospectives, but unfortunately, they became too much work to put together because they were almost as time consuming as the season previews, except every month instead of every three. Then, I had a brilliant idea! What if Random Curiosity turned the written retrospectives into podcasts instead?

    And so I set off to learn about podcasting. One of my friends introduced me to her friends at METANORN, another excellent anime blog who have graciously allowed me to be a guest on their METAVERSE podcasts. The fine people there were a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal about podcasting too – so please support me, RandomC, and METANORN by listening to their 15th podcast and let me know what you think!

    The facepalm is because now you all know what I sound like, haha!
    Podcast Link

    Introduction – “Arriving at Random Curiosity Station.”

    Communication bouys down….rerouting power to emergency comms system. Establishing link with remote server…link established. Cleaning up external noise. Boosting signal strength to acceptable levels…

    Asobi here. Apologies for the late update. My sad attempt at an excuse for being the last of the new guys to go is that the Reaper invasion has been relentless and all my resources (ie. my computer) were devoted to gathering support. Ahem. Progressing with status report.

    It’s a funny feeling, writing this introductory post. If you had asked me anytime before this last week, I never could’ve imagined myself contributing as an anime blogger, much less on a site with as much recognition in the community as Random Curiosity. So it is with trepidation that I step off at this stop, filling shoes that I’m unsure I can step into. I’ve been an on/off lurker on RC for some time now, checking in after episodes of the shows I was following to read up on the posts and comments, but this marks my first real involvement with the people on the site. As they would say in Japan, よろしくおねがいします。(Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu; I’m in your care.)

    More after the jump…