See the initial 2000 entry for the full background. I'mdoing this based on the show's start date and memorable is not the sameas either good or significant. Date information comes from Wikipedia and Anime-Planet .

(Because it may be relevant this year, I'm mostly listing things inalphabetical order instead of any implied quality or preference order.)

Standouts:

• Fullmetal Alchemist : People argue about whether this or Brotherhood is the better FMA experience, but I hope that we can

I've wound up with tangled feelings about Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (henceforth Yamato ), although I quite enjoyed watching it. Overall Ithink it's an excellent show that falls just short of greatness and ishard to unconditionally recommend because of one issue. That issue iswith the structure of the overall plot, so let me describe how I see Yamato .

The core of Yamato is a bunch of excellent real characters who are putinto an overall story that is somewhere between epic space opera and

I have been rather down on Arpeggio so far but itsending actually managed to change that; not because the ending is greatby itself but because it forced me to change my idea of what the showwas about. I still don't think Arpeggio is great but for me it is nowsomewhere on the decent to good line.

(My reconsideration started from the thought that the ending felt prettysatisfying, and then I wound up thinking why it was that way despitewhat happened in it.)

On the surface

Gilgamesh (also ANN , MAL ) is a 2003 animeseries with a distinct and somewhat offputting art style and a bunch ofreasonably interesting characters and things going on. That's about allyou can read of this entry if you want to avoid spoilers, but this isone time I think that you should embrace them even if you're planningto watch the show and read on.

(If you don't know Gilgamesh and want to follow the rest of this entryI recommend reading the

Kyoukai no Kanata has not been a particularly wellwritten show and it recently concluded with an endingthat's fairly broadly considered unusually tacky and bad( personally I wasn't bothered too much but I had low expectations ). However allof this got me thinking .

Kyoukai no Kanata is by KyoAni and we've been blaming them for itswriting flaws (partly because KyoAni has done excellent work in thepast), but it's based on a light novel series. It seems highly unlikelythat KyoAni made

I've got to say: 2002 was an awesome year for anime, or at least forthe type of anime that I really like. Several of the standouts from thisyear are more like 'extreme standouts that are among my classics list'.

See the initial 2000 entry for the full background. I'mdoing this based on the show's start date and memorable is not the sameas either good or significant. Date information comes from Wikipedia and Anime-Planet .

I finished watching RahXephon last night and I want to jot downsome reactions while they're fresh in my mind. First, one strikingthing about the show is that it was almost compulsively watchable . I ran throughepisodes at a really high rate (for me), often watching four or five atonce until I ran out of time, and there was almost never a time whereI didn't want to watch the next episode.

Overall I feel that RahXephon is a good series that is somewhat letdown

I'm not one of the people who insist that their favorite characters cannever die, because that's absurd. I don't even demand that charactersget heroic ends or 'good deaths' or the like, instead of petty casualones; the furthest I'll go is to say that a character's death should fitin with the feel of the show, but that's just good writing in general.However there are a number of ways for a show to anger me (sometimes

See the initial 2000 entry for the full background. I'mdoing this based on the show's start date and memorable is not the sameas either good or significant. Date information comes from Wikipedia and Anime-Planet .

Standouts:

• Spirited Away : See my discussion of it in my favorite Miyazakimovies .

• Earth Maiden Arjuna (or Earth Girl Arjuna ): This has so manyexcellent aspects to it that it's a pity its environmental messageturns people off. It has great secondary characters