Prelude to ... Anime (and Manga) in Review

New Year's brings about many "best of" or "worst of" lists, or even a plethora of "Year! In review!" posts. I couldn't bring myself to do something like that. Very few things withstanding, 2010 pretty much sucked all the way around the record player (and scratched the heck out of my record, I might add).

But...it was the year that I swam the depths of manga and anime, so I figured, what the hell. Hence, ANIME (and manga)IN REVIEW!! Or rather, a prelude to what will be ANIME (and manga)IN REVIEW!!

Titles will include, in no particular order:
Red Garden, Loveless, Hellsing, Vampire Knight, Captive Hearts, Ouran High School Host Club, Texnolyze, Bleach, Ergo Proxy, Boogie Pop Phantom, X:1999, X - the series, Requiem for Darkness, Gundam 00 Season 2, Gurren Lagan, Descendents of Darkness, Blood+, Blood The Last Vampire - anime & live action, Kekkaishi, Vampire Hunter D, Trigun Maximum (and for comparison, Trigun), Appleseed, Rave Master (cringe), Inuyasha, and Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit. Maybe more. We'll see how my memory holds out.

I got my first manga sometime in 2008, I think. Maybe 2007. I'm not sure, obviously. I got it (and a set of series-related comics...of which I'm still missing 4 or 5 copies) more because I was collecting things pertinent to a specific series and less because it was manga. A little later on, I got a the three book Cowboy Bebop Shooting Stars set. Then...darkness fell upon the land...

Wait. What?

Okay...I never finished reading the Cowboy Bebop set. See, I have this *fear* of reading the last of something and then being done forever...so I put it off and it never gets done - so I can always go back to it see? It makes PERFECT sense!! I do the same thing with video games and anime series on occasion. Like Silent Hill 2...put it on the shelf probably 7 years ago and haven't touched it since. But it was scary. Or Gungrave, an excellent series that I didn't want to end...so I stopped watching just shy of the last disc, I believe. I need to finish watching it. I want to know what happens!! But...I digress.

So there was a slight lag between my first manga and finding true appreciation for the craft. It began blossoming near the end of 2009 when I got the first 21 volumes of Bleach in a boxed set (Bleach is awesome). Since then, I have found so many wonderful series - some new and some not. Some I eagerly await the next volume, some I bought in bulk, and others, one really, had me so intrigued that I used fanslations online to read the as yet unpublished volumes. I had to know what was going to happen! O_O (There was a massive delay in publishing...like years...but once they were available I bought them and read them again.) For my favorites, I even ran out and purchased the anime versions!! Or, I start with the anime and run out and buy the manga!! O_O!!

Soooo...this is just the prelude to what will probably be the super most longest ever blog post EVER. So, like, bye! (For now.) ^_-