Animetics Podcast: The Winter 2013 Season

Live from what may or may not be a filing cabinet, we bring you the Animetics Podcast, a (presumably) monthly recording of our panelists jawing over various topics. If the very thought doesn’t scare you, you can download it from the following link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?dtwsd2810g366d0 (94 minutes, 85 MB)

In this inaugural episode, we’ll be talking about the Winter 2013 Anime season. This discussion is a two-pronged assault. First, we cover the shows we’re watching, trying hard but not too hard to stay on topic. Second, we discuss the season in historical context with recent previous Winter seasons, taking on the oft-disseminated “worst season of all time” rumors.

If you’re strapped for time or only want to follow a certain portion of the podcast, you can find each particular segment at the times listed below:

Tamako Market [0:50]

Maoyuu [5:58]

Blast of Tempest [12:13]*

Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman [17:05]

I Don’t Have Very Many Friends Next [20:07]

Sasami-san@Ganbaranai [26:42]

Cuticle Detective Inaba [32:38]

Senyu [35:40]

GJ-bu [41:12]

Koutoura-san [44:12]

Mangirl [54:00]

Problem Children [55:24]

Puchimas [58:32]

Vividred Operation [60:56]

The Unlimited [63:30]

Comparison with past Winter seasons [72:47]

Seasonal Charts We Used:

Winter 2010

Winter 2011

Winter 2012

Winter 2013

Winter 2011 full chart (w/ Madoka)

*Blast of Tempest is technically a Fall 2012 show. It’s in there mostly because Sam and I wanted to hash out a topic we had argued over the past week. One that I proved myself wrong about 2 days after emphatically declaring that studios didn’t really matter.

First Reactions: Blast of Tempest Episode 20

First of all, let me say I’m continually entertained by the willingness of this show to place serious discussions alongside characters lounging around in massage chairs. With that out of the way, the more pertinent comment; wow, did that episode ever floor me (in any number of ways, really).

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Fun With Numbers: Studio Cred vs. Director Cred

This column is motivated by a discussion I had two months ago, about whether ARMS, a studio with Queen’s Blade and Hagure Yuusha no Estetica in its recent past, could really pull a good anime out of the Maoyu franchise, even with the writer/director team behind Spice and Wolf helming said show. It was a long, drawn-out debate, and it got me thinking: what names were really most important (in terms of both quality and sales) in predicting how an anime will do? For anime fans without enough time to watch every first episode in a season, it’s certainly an important question. I’ll be attempting to approach the answer to this question by remove my own biases from the equation as much as I can.

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