Shaft

In short, why do you watch anime?

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I’ve always been rather hit or miss about following new anime each season. Even with a Crunchyroll subscription, I’ll go one season following several new shows, or at least giving several new shows a chance, then go a season without watching a single thing. I hesitate to call this a “busy” season, since what counts as “busy” for me is light compared to the more serious fans out there, but I am watching a few things so I figured I would share my impressions of the handful of shows I’ve checked out. (Oh, and note that I’m only covering new shows here, so this is in addition to other things I’m watching, i.e. Fist of the North Star and my film backlog).

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Recently, my sister and I were talking about our favourite anime, and she said that she finds it difficult to separate her top three, Madoka Magica, Gurren Lagann, and Mushi-Shi. Now, ‘favourite’ is a subjective term, so there’s no need to try to be scientific about it, but this did get me thinking about how one would objectively judge between works that, though in the same medium, are so different from each other. Obviously, art will never be mathematically precise, but it is possible to make some judgements of quality. So, as a little exercise, I thought I’d consider these three.