Yerocha’s 2011 Anime Awards – Part 1

I’m sure some of you know that in addition to running a blog about manga, I’m also an anime fan. There are so many anime blogs out there that I usually leave it to the other bloggers and focus on manga. However, now that the year is almost up and I missed my chance to do the 12 Days of Christmas, I thought it would be a good idea to say a few things about the shows I saw this year.

Now I could do a Top 10 of 2011, but there’s a little problem with that. For various reasons, I wasn’t able to watch all of the really popular shows from this year. To give you an idea of the shows that aren’t included in these posts:

• Deadman Wonderland, Blue Exorcist, Toriko, Bakuman II and Usagi Drop were series I read instead of watched. The first three will be on the upcoming Manga Countdown, but it didn’t feel right to include them here when I obviously haven’t watched them.
• Tiger and Bunny and Fate/Zero are shows I just haven’t watched. I actually saw the first episode of Tiger and Bunny, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to watch the next episode. Fate/Zero just plain doesn’t appeal to me, though I may take a look after it ends.
• Mirai Nikki, Mawaru Penguindrum, Usagi Drop and Steins;Gate are shows I haven’t watched yet. I eventually plan to, and I considered holding off on this until then, but I wanted this to be out at the end of the year.

In spite of all that, there are still quite a few shows I watched this year that I wanted to discuss. And so I put together my 2011 Anime Awards. For each series I saw this year, I’ll give it an award and explain what I thought overall.

The Problem with Madoka Magica

Not too long ago, I wrote a post discussing a few things I found irritating about many review series. One of those things was the mindless praise that some series end up getting. I mentioned how it hurt the review process by both reducing the amount of valuable information the viewer gets and bundling all viewers into a single group, which hurts no matter how you feel about the work. But there’s another thing that bothers me about this kind of praise, and that’s the effect it can have on anyone who doesn’t feel the same way.

Have you ever had a series that everyone around you enjoyed except for you? The reason you don’t like it could be anything, but it’s something that can’t easily be changed. It can make you feel annoyed or possibly disturbed when everyone else praises it for reasons that have nothing to do with you. I’ve seen it happen before, particularly when one review disagrees with the others and gets shunned for it.