I continue to work my way through the current anime season, doing my best to keep up with the shows I’m following but usually failing. While there have been quite a few good shows this cour — Bakuon!! (moe girls and motorcycle jokes), High School Fleet (moe girls on ships), and Bungou Stray Dogs (the great names of modern Japanese literature made into hunky guys who solve supernatural crimes) — my favorite would have to be Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World. At first it felt like the latest installment of the “male otaku from Japan finds himself in a fantasy world where his knowledge of RPGs enables him to succeed” trend that started with Sword Art Online, but the show is much more, refusing to fit neatly into one genre. It’s got great characters and S-rank voice actors, a Steins;Gate-level dramatic story, plus Ram and Rem. If you’re not watching it yet, give it a try!
I’m interested in the way you can quantify the popularity of a thing by seeing how much attention it receives from fan-artists on the Internet. When I try to estimate which shows in a given anime season are the most popular, I sometimes check for Pixiv fanart, which lets me compare the popularity of, say, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress with the new Takahashi Rumiko anime Rin-ne. If a show gets a lot of fanart or becomes a source of Internet memes, I can assume it’s likely to be popular, and plan on buying extra stock for J-List. It’s also funny how some things are never portrayed in Japanese popular culture while others are extremely well-represented. In Japanese classrooms, students stand, bow to their teacher once then sit down before each lesson, and I’ve noticed that this is rarely shown in anime, perhaps because it’s mundane and boring to young Japanese, though interesting to “outsiders” like us. But if you want pictures of anime characters cleaning each other’s ears with traditional “mimikaki” ear cleaners, well then, Japan has you covered.
J-List is getting ready for a great Anime Expo, and if you’re going to be at the show, make sure to come by our booth (#2624) and check out the thousands of awesome products we’ll have there. We’ll be putting on a big panel, too, with new game announcements and a special original gift for everyone who attends. If you can’t make the show for some reason, we’ve got a great consolation for you: a sitewide Pre-AX Sale starting now, with 5% any order of $75 or more using code AX2016. Get shopping!
