Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt - Demonic angel sisters fight monsters made of poop and snot I can't remember whether I finished this late in December 2010 or at the beginning of January this year, but it's not like it matters. To be fair I'm definitely not part of the target audience, and the only reason I decided to suffer through the mess of all the possible bodily fluids, a large assortment of weird fetishes and excessive swearing was Stocking's delicious hair (true story). And she's pretty cute too when drawn in the bishoujo style. Because of the angels' constantly changing outfits I've had a dress up of this on my to-do list ever since I saw it, but it looks like it'll suffer the sad fate of being buried under a lot of other ideas. UNNNGH I just can't resist dat hair Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Cute mascot critter hires moe girls to fight the forces of evil with their magical girl powers This would be the best of the year for me if a surprise challenger hadn't appeared towards the end of the year. Still, I believe it had the best plot of the year, even if I was left hoping something more from the finale. The series handled its characters very well too; at first it made it look like they were just another stereotype moeblobs but then it went into a completely different direction. My favourite things were probably that one Mami scene and Homura's backstory and her epic fight. And I love the ending theme and Mami's theme song~~ Most disappointing thing was probably the characters' limited wardrobe; their magical girl uniforms were amazing but that was all they had. Or they had the same identical school uniform and Madoka had pajamas and Kyooko had her casual outfit, but that was all. So the dress-uppability was horrible. I've never really understood the hate on Kyubey. I love it as a character for being exactly what it is. Starting here the series is pure awesome. Bakemonogatari - A high school student helps girls with supernatural problems in psychedelic visuals I watched this because it was by the same dude as Madoka and even topped it in DVD and BD sales, but it didn't live up to my expectations at all. It was too "Hurr durr I'm all artistic" for me, even if I found the characters likable (Shinobu and Hachikuji were my favourites, and the male lead was a lot better than your average generic harem magnet hero). Apparently I liked it enough to make a dress up of it, and I guess episode 12 was pretty good. Somehow it was cute how she used Oshino's last name. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai - A deceased childhood friend appears to the hikikomori main character as a ghost; angst and drama ensues. I kind of hoped more from this considering all the hype it had. I heard it was supposed to make you cry all the time because of the characters' drama, but for me it was a bit too melodramatic. There were touching crying scenes, but I can't really remember any particular one because there were just so many of them towards the end of the series. Not that it was necessarily bad, the characters were sympathetic and all that but I just couldn't get properly invested emotionally. The premise was very good though: I'm all in for stories about childhood, and somehow I've always loved seeing different aged versions of characters. Plus the kids were just so damn cute. I will make that Menma mini dress up some day. With Photoshop graphics, this series needs soft lines. Revolutionary Girl Utena - The prince-wannabe heroine figths in weird sword duels for the possession of her rose bride classmate Mixed feelings about this one, I believe I'd need to watch it a second time to appreciate it more. There was far too much "don't get what's going on? Well it's symbolism hoooooo it's deep and metaphorical!!!" going on for my tastes, and the black rose arc consisted of too many "I'm a side character and I have a backstory so let's duel!" episodes. On the upside, however, I liked most of the characters and got a few very good laughs at some of the amazing moments. At first I hated Chu-Chu but then he had to go and get stuck in that bottle and make the most hilarious chu chu chuu~~ voice ever so now I'm more tolerant towards him. Also, the... erm, creepy relationship between Anthy and Akio was very interesting to follow. Plus Saionji and Touga's relationship towards the ending made my bromance radar beep uncontrollably which is always a good thing, even if it's just me reading too much to it considering how big a jerk Touga is. And. The ending. It was fabulous, I salute to the creators for having the balls to take that route instead of the more obvious option. Now that I think of it, overall it might have been the best ending of my 2011. In the end the great ending, the crazy Utena-Anthy-Akio triangle and Saionji in general easily outweight the negatives, but I still find the series a bit inconsistent with its quality. There is a dress up coming from this series if I ever get it done. Right now it's on the "sketches drawn but nothing done with computer" level. "We've been waiting for you, Touga! Say your line, please!" Tiger & Bunny - Corporate sponsored superheroes fight crime and provide yaoi fangirls source material for doujinshis My current obsession. Madoka might have had a more solid plot, but the characters in Tiger & Bunny have made me a hopeless fantard, and I've spent so much more time on browsing T&B fanart, blogs, forums and other stuff than what I did for Madoka that it hurts. I kind of like friendship between male characters by default. Romances just tend to not... move me unless they're extremely well written, and girl friendships have the danger of going either too cheesy or tee-hee-hee-yuri-fanservice for foreveralone otakus. Of course manly bromances have the yaoi fanservice treath but at least they're less cheesy. And while the awesomeness that is Tiger & Bunny (and especially its fanbooks and creator interviews) has tons of romantic "hints" for fangirls to fawn over it is fairly easy to enjoy it just as friendship. Also, almost all the characters were adults. Whoa, a series without teenagers having their teenage problems!? And I found all the characters well written, and especially the main character was particularly lovable. So I will be a hopeless fangirl for an indefinite time in the future no I don't ship him with Barnaby. The plot... was really neither spectacular or particularly bad. I thought it lost steam in both its mid-series climax and the grand finale, and I found Kotetsu's visit to his hometown episode filled lazy writing but the series still won me over with its endearing characters, its enthusiastic and tongue-in-cheek attitude towards itself and genuinely fun and sad moments. Loved Kotetsu's attempts at reading the English episode titles. Also I demand a fried rice scene to be animated! Dress up wise this series sucks but I won't let it stop me. Counting in all flashbacks, formal outfits and sport clothes there ~is~ enough material! I kinda seriously considered going through all the 60k pictures on Pixiv TIGER&BUNNY tag. Ghost Hunt - A group of people investigates supernatural problems Not counting the ending I kind of liked this, but I believe it falls in the "ok, but not exactly memorable" category. While the main character utterly failed to impress me I found myself really liking the side characters. I even bothered to check out what was bo-san's real name again... The series suffered from the fundamental problem that such a scaredy cat as me really doesn't make a good combination with ghost stories though, even if I really like detective-style stuff. Also I found it a bit funny how the characters spent five minutes explaining the current supernatural phenomenon in minute detail, and after all the info that probably was very accurate when it comes to real world occult terminology my take on it was just "...okay so it's magic and they're in danger". The large and changing wardrobe of the characters pleases both my dress up heart and my nitpicky mind against the stupidity of a character always wearing the same thing. Also while the opening animation was a large waste of my time I really liked the audio even if it was just instrumental. This arc. I did not fare well with it. Usagi Drop - A thirty-year-old barchelor ends up taking care of a kind of an orphaned little girl OH MY DOG IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE I think that there are two types of relationships in stories that get me interested by default. The first one is the aforementioned manly friendship, and the other one is father/daughter relationship (so T&B served me not only the delicious TaiBani bromance but the relationship between Kotetsu and his daughter as well). And as mentioned in the AnoHana part previously I also like stories about childhood. So of course I had to take a peek at Usagi Drop, and it was a very good decision. I even ended up buying the first manga volume out of the blue when normally I have planned my purchases months in advance and read the series on the internet before even considering putting money on it. But HNNNNGGH was this cute! It made me feel all warm and fluffy inside... All the kids were sweet, even Reina who seemed very annoying at first. Rin and Reina hiding under a blanket in the sleepover episode was just too cute and Kouki getting a father figure from Daikichi was... cute too. Plot-wise the series wasn't even trying to go anywhere, but it definitely wasn't needed anyway. The peaceful slice-of-life style episodes about a single parent raising a child were just so heartwarming and I really didn't want any stupid and unnecessary unrealistic drama to take the focus away from it. The dress-uppability possibilities warm my heart as well. I have to make one of Rin! They'd better animate the rest of the manga too, I hear there's a time skip coming right up after the events where the anime ended. MOAR PLZ Mawaru Penguindrum - A penguin hat revives a dead little sister in the exchange of the brothers obtaining the Penguin drum Ummmmm yes. I liked this thing a lot. It was a... strong experience. Especially the finale, it was amazing. Or at least what I understood from it anyway. It just kinda left me speechless. Loved the penguins. And extra points for Yuri for using the word "fabulous" a lot. And the art was amazing. I guess I'll have to add "siblings" to the list of my preferred relationships My Little Pony : Friendship Is Magic - Six colourful girlfriends and a dragon do stuff together Everyone and their mother was going on about how amazing this is so I had to take a peek as well. I lasted two episodes and decided that it just isn't my thing. I thought it was going to be full of witty jokes and stuff like that, but I'm having really hard time finding the "Zomg after solving the obstacle course with an obstacle specifically designed to the each of us we will beat the bad guy with the element of friendship!" BS amazing writing. Also hearing that the rest of the series will be episodic is a bad omen anyway; I prefer my series with a well-thought plot. Also, Pinkie Pie is so far away from my comfort zone when it comes to tolerating characters I don't like that I don't think I can handle a single episode with her any more. Kind of a shame anyway, I like the colourful artwork and the customisability of the ponies (dress up wise). And I really enjoy fanart of personifications of the ponies No I'm not into furries, they have to be fully human for me to be interested. I even hear that the series gets good right in episode three, but I think I'll spend my time on something else than finding out whether it's true. Besides one thing that attracted me about the series was that it'd be delicious to make a pony creator, but someone else already made one it'd take me a decade to learn to top. So I feel that whatever I would be able to create really isn't necessary when a perfect one already exists, so I'll use my time on something else. Also worth mentioning that this is one of the few cases where I've been forced to do my best at understanding the foreign dialogue from what I hear. With anime it's easy to read the subtitles, but my understanding of spoken English isn't nearly as good as that of written English. But luckily such a children's show didn't have too complicated dialogue. I guess it's kind of unusual for such a nerd to be the main character in a girls' show. Manga and Dilbert One Piece - The hero sets out to the sea to do pirate stuff; adventure ensues. My long time love. This year my interest kind of lessened but with the recent revelations it's back again. Not at its peak where it was around 150 chapters ago when I counted days until next spoilers but still higher than what it was in the middle of the Fishman island arc. But anyway it is still placed very high in my all-time favourite manga and anime list and it's fabulous how well the author has managed to keep the quality high for so long. Really liking Shirahoshi for being cute and all that, but because of her size it'll be difficult to draw her in an updated Luffy harem picture (such a thing is being planned). Maybe I'll just shrink her down to normal size and think of a lame excuse to explain it. Also, Otohime is awesome. It's kind of funny how OP totally outsold everything else this year (more than the 7 next best sold titles combined). Though I believe it has a lot to do with the success of movie 10, but still awesome job Oda! Luffy the ladies' man acquires a new girl to his harem. Trinity Blood - A cheap Mary Sue steals the spotlight from an interesting vampire story Actually this probably shouldn't be on my 2011 list because the point is that it didn't really have much new material to read this year. When I started planning the Mary/Jane dress up I said something about how the current manga arc would give me plenty of new outfits for both characters, unless the author pulls a random half-a-year hiatus out of nowhere. Then there was this announcement that the manga would take a break for half a year... Not really liking this arc. Or the previous one either for that matter. The story has so many interesting elements in its millenium-long history and its main character, but I have to read this beautiful, brave, mature, righterious and determined female lead who can speak six languages and lead an underground group of partisans at the age of seventeen get more and more special every arc. While knowing that I won't ever hear the ending of the story due to the death of the author of the source material novels makes me a sad panda at least I won't have to see how the female lead's glorious mercy and understanding finally manage to cure the hero's wounded heart or something. I really don't want to see my favourite character be derailed any more just for the sake of miss secretly-important-heritage getting to showcase her glorious healing abilities and compassionate heart on the most important problems of the main character yet again. Oh well, at least the art is still nice and I got my young Lilith, Cain and Abel flashback in one chapter. Now if someone just bothered to translate this chapter, it's been close to a year since the scan came out. Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth - Everything that was once good about Naruto While I've stopped reading Naruto I find myself really enjoying its awesome spinoff. It has fun humour, focus on side characters, emphasis on hard work, ... Not to mention it has TenTen! She's easily my favourite out of the Konoha girls (though it doesn't take much to beat the competition) so it's really nice to see her get even her own chapter. On Arlong Park Forums this has been more or less dubbed "the real Naruto" which everyone eagerly awaits while hardly anyone takes the original series seriously. The cute chibi artwork pleases my eye as well. Kakashi finally unmasked! Dilbert - Being an engineer sucks I don't know why I didn't know of the existence of this awesomeness until this year but better late than never I guess. I love the cynical humour and all the characters being complete sociopaths (especially Dogbert), and how Wally has made avoiding work a form of art is particularly beautiful. Also the completely absurd bureaucracy problems and idiotic bosses just warm my heart. Things turned slightly less fun when I realised that this will probably be my future career. For some reason this is one of my favourite strips. And some mentions to stuff I read but didn't like Naruto - The destined hero from legendary heritage brings peace to everyone This is what I meant when I mentioned "friendship between males" having the treath of going too yaoi. I had been reading Naruto out of habit every week until last spring when I finally decided that it really isn't worth my time any more. Once the series had such values as "teamwork is important" and "destiny and origins don't matter, work hard and you can be awesome!", but apparently they've kinda been completely forgotten. And with all the bad shiptease moments + pairing wars, character derailment, lame treatment of female characters, lazy artwork and random plot twists that seem like they're ripped from someone's fanfiction without foreshadowing I kind of had enough of it. I still read spoilers though and at least in the light of the plot twists they describe stopping reading was a very good idea. And I still frequent a couple of fanclubs on NF for the other posters are awesome. Princess Ai - A perfect Mary Sue diva saves the world with her singing Competes for the dubious honor for being the worst manga I've ever read. I believe I was supposed to like the main character and root for her, but I found that impossible. She may be the most blatant Mary Sue I've ever seen (and I've actually read the first book in the Twilight series): She's so beautiful that everyone remembers to comment on it, she's such a fabulous singer that the music companies beg for her to sing for them even when she has no experience or reputation and she acts like a complete jerk in general, when she is given clothes she rips them to pieces because othewise they won't fit her AWESOME PUNK STYLE but it doesn't matter because she looks ~so good~ in them anyway... The plot was a joke as well. The only good thing I can think of is that the heroine's insane wardrobe would make a nice dress up if I didn't feel such a large animosity towards her. Back