CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

With the year ending, there will be tons of 2009 retrospectives. In fact, there may be more than usual, what with the decade ending. But for now, here's a simple one from some anime magazine that goes over the most shocking stories in anime news of the year.

1. Gonzo goes bust!
2. Bakemonogatari crushes K-ON!
3. Evangelion gets yet another movie
4. Summer Wars a big hit
5. K-ON! marketing mania
6. Endless Eight repeated eight times, fans revolt
7. Toradora gets simultaneous novel/anime ending
8. Sora no Otoshimono pantsu take flight
9. Gegege no Kitaro suddenly canned
10. Seiyuu Yuu Kobayashi’s fantastic art broadcast on TV

A good number of these are kind of, "oh, okay", namely 8-10 (although Kobayashi Yuu's art was hilariously bad).

Then we've got Evangelion and Summer Wars. Well, we all kind of knew Eva was in the pipeline. And if you knew anything about Summer Wars, you were expecting it to be amazing.

Now the rest of the stories were pretty big. Gonzo actually going and dying was not something that I think most people expected, especially not with Saki doing so well. And yet, even that and Strike Witches couldn't save them. And if anyone thinks Strike Witches 2 is going to do it for them, think again: they were recently replaced by AIC as the main production studio.

K-ON! was a huge hit this year, as was to be expected from KyoAni. KyoAni is really good at what they do. But Bakemonogatari was only on the radar of people like me who really like Shaft productions. It brings me great joy that a show like Bakemonogatari, focused on and packed densely with dialogue, managed to crush K-ON! in sales.

That's not to say K-ON! was a disaster. It was amazing how any product that showed up within a metre of Mio was instantly bought in large quantities. Fender Japan sold out of Mio's specific bass. Maybe a lot of bassists needed basses? Well, that's a lot of left-handed bassists. Also popular were Mio's phone and Mio's headphones. I'll be Azusa was able to push some Stratocasters as well.

And Endless Eight. I'm sure we're all very familiar with Endless Eight by now. It was a lot more fun watching it while it was airing, because you could hop online and commiserate with everyone else who was watching it each week.

And finally, Toradora's ending was pretty interesting. Here, we had a studio dodge the classic adaptation problem of the anime catching up to the source material too quickly. Instead, the entire show was planned out so that the ending coincided with the release of the final novel. Of course, the anime and novel endings weren't exactly the same, but the gist of it was still there. I wish more studios would take this approach instead of creating their own terrible version of it, effectively killing any chance of the later material getting animated (FMA is a very, very unique exception).

All I can say is that I'm quite suspicious as to what site you pulled this from XD

Also Bakemonogatari >>> K-On!, even as much as I like the latter.

What, nothing about the giant Gundam in Tokyo?

Also, the decade's final year is 2010, what with there being no year 0 and all.

minakichan (post: 1358933) wrote:All I can say is that I'm quite suspicious as to what site you pulled this from XD

Also Bakemonogatari >>> K-On!, even as much as I like the latter.

It's from a blog that conveniently quoted the list so that I wouldn't have to go to certain terrible sites. Ahem.

The Gundam was huge news, but I wouldn't say it was shocking.

Gonzo went bust? But they made some good stuff...

I don't really understand how "Summer Wars" being a hit was shocking. Between coming from a long-standing production company with a strong record and being Hosada's next feature length film after "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time." it would have been more of a shock if it failed

I lucked out and got to watch it recently on a flight from Tokyo to Manila. I liked it a lot. Even better than Tokikake, although I did feel it had the potential to be even better than it was.

And I also agree on Bakemonogatari. Great stuff.

I'll give them No. 1 and 2 and 4 through 7. I can't see how Evangelion getting another movie is really a shocker since they planned four of them from the get go, let alone No. 3, but I'll let that go.

Gonzo took me by surprise though, if only because they've been around so long. Uneven quality makes this more understandable though.

Also, Endless Eight, hilarity.

blkmage (post: 1358959) wrote:The Gundam was huge news, but I wouldn't say it was shocking.

True enough.

I'm suprised nobody mentioned the ADV split-up. I think that was pretty big in terms of Anime.

And so another 10 years come and go in the history of our beloved pastime. Maybe this topic would be better served if it focused on the top ten moments of the last ten years. Just a thought.

I forgot to mention that the list that I got was from a Japanese magazine, which is why almost nothing on that list will have any impact on North America.

blkmage (post: 1358959) wrote:The Gundam was huge news, but I wouldn't say it was shocking.

Well, yes, being a Gundam, it was bound to be huge...

EricTheFred (post: 1358964) wrote:I don't really understand how "Summer Wars" being a hit was shocking. Between coming from a long-standing production company with a strong record and being Hosada's next feature length film after "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time." it would have been more of a shock if it failed

I lucked out and got to watch it recently on a flight from Tokyo to Manila. I liked it a lot. Even better than Tokikake, although I did feel it had the potential to be even better than it was.

And I also agree on Bakemonogatari. Great stuff.

Since I need to talk about how great it was some more, Summer Wars is shockingly good. I just finished watching a low quality version of it that was floating around. I liked TokiKake and was expecting Summer Wars to be as good. I guess I must have underestimated how good it was going to be because I was pretty much blown away by it.