(This entry has spoilers for Perfect Blue that you should avoid if youhaven't seen it already.)

Perfect Blue presents itself as a psychological thriller. That's whatthe advertising copy will tell you, that's what Wikipedia will tell you,that's how people tend to describe it, and that's the face that thefilm first puts forward when you see it, especially at the start. Asa psychological thriller the film is powerful, affecting, and genuinelysuspenseful and mysterious;

Aroduc famously dislikes flashbacks. I'venever entirely understood that, because I have a more moderate view onthem (as I do on most narrative devices); most of the time I just gowith the flow, although I admit that some of the long ones in shonenfighting shows have gotten to me ( Naruto 's, say, where we might spendan episode or several in one). But recently, writing about SpaceBattleship Yamato 2199 's episode 14 caused a littlecoherent

See the initial 2000 entry for the full background.I'm doing this based on the show's start date and memorable isnot the same as either good or significant; in fact there is oneshow in this list that stands out based on how much I viscerallydisliked something it did. Date information comes from Wikipedia and Anime-Planet .

2004 is not the awesome year that 2002 was but itturns out to have a lot of plain good shows. The

As before , so again. Every season I do an earlyimpressions post to organize my thoughts and also so that later onI can laugh sadly at my naive and optimistic views. This season Iam either grumpy or being more selective than usual, depending onyour perspective; as I put it on Twitter :

I'm increasingly feeling that I've been burned too many times by showswith 'promise'. Stop the excuses. Deliver something right here andnow.

Quite a lot of shows failed this test

This is much like last year's best N , namely what Iconsider to be the best or most enjoyable N anime that I saw in calendar2013 (regardless of when they were made or released). The top threeshows this year are extremely close, so close they're almost a tie. Icould wimp out by declaring it an actual tie but if I'm being honestthe three shows are not quite equal in my affections.

(See also the winter , spring , summer

(There are plenty of spoilers here.)

This is sort of a reaction to Bobduh's articulate review ,where he covers both why the show is excellent and why despite this itleaves him cold. While I've come to sort of agree with him about some ofits flaws, what elevates Shin Sekai Yori to greatness for me anywaysis the power of its ending, specifically roughly the second half of thelast episode, and how I read it . Rather thansimply give us an action show resolution to

One of the things I've found is that I learn more about my tastes fromthe anime that I strongly dislike than from the anime that I like. Itcan be hard to figure out why I like something, whereas with stuff thatI dislike there's often something in specific that I can point at andsay 'that, I can't stand it'.

Which brings me to School Rumble , a well regarded 2004comedy series, which I watched two episodes of once upon a

(Major spoilers here.)

The following is probably obvious, but once you start following the dotsat the end of the show it's clear that what happened with the queerratsis almost inevitable. Right now I feel like laying out why this is so.

A core ingredient in the precarious stability of Cantus humans is deathfeedback, which makes it so that almost no Cantus human can use Cantuson another human to any dangerous degree. In its flashbacks to historythe show gave us a fair number of examples of

It all started when @A_Libellule and I got into a Twitter discussion about this particular issue. Inthe course of the discussion I had a realization about my core moralposition here :

If a group has to choose between living as slaves or committinggenocide, picking the latter is morally legitimate.

It would certainly be nice if the queerrats (and interested Cantushumans) could find some solution short of genocide (genocide is uglyand invites counter-genocides and so on), but they are not obliged todo