Dragonar Academy – Review

Yeah yeah, laugh it up. Clearly I had so much fun reviewing Strike Witches’ first episode that I needed a full series dose of High Quality Anime. Dragonar Academy was roughly as terrible as you’d imagine it to be, possessing essentially no redeeming factors whatsoever. It earns the distinct honor of being the worst full series I’ve ever reviewed for ANN, beating out such luminaries as the Bayonetta movie, Looking Up at the Half-Moon, and .hack//Legend of the Twilight. Congratulations, Dragonar Academy. You are basically as bad as a show can be.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my despairing notes below.

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Fall 2015 – Week 11 in Review

This week in anime wasn’t the best, I’m sad to say. My reliable favorites were reliable-to-great, but… well, there are only two of those. And everything else kinda let me down. I feel like I’ve more or less set myself up for disappointment this season – instead of accepting that it’s a bad season and relying wholly on backlist shows to get me through, I’ve basically just assumed a handful of shows are permanently in “dud episodes” and keep feeling disappointed when they consistently prove their dud episodes are actually just their normal episodes. It’s no way to live, frankly, and I don’t actually know if next season offers any escape – considering how tentative my excitement is for basically everything on my preview list, it seems pretty likely that Monogatari and Iron-Blooded Orphans will be next season’s best shows, too.

But I don’t mean to depress you. Even if this week’s shows were bad (and even when it comes to what I was reviewing for ANN, they were), that doesn’t mean I don’t have stuff to say about ’em. And hey, not every show tripped on its face – in fact, Owarimonogatari pulled off an episode that I’d probably count among the best of the year. So let’s put on a brave face, assume a stiff upper lip, and contort your muscles in any other way you feel appropriate as we RUN ‘EM DOWN.

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