AnimeSuki Forums

Nice catch on your sister's part.

I got Mami/Nagisa:
http://tinypic.com/r/a11h1y/5

Bonus: My eight figures, including the one my brother just got me, are on a shelf in the background but out of focus. Guess who they are.

Something I wanted to share with you. ^_^

A friend of mine likes to joke that anime makers must hate Christmas since they use it a lot for darker episodes and/or climatic fights (such as in Nanoha A's).

Probably the best use of Christmas in anime that I've seen was in Amagami SS.

Lovely cosplay pictures by the way. Those are extremely well-made costumes. It looks like it was made out of very good material. The cosplayers did a great job of capturing the look and style of the characters that they're acting as. I have to admit I chuckled at Homura standing behind the Captain America shield.

It was strange to see a Charlotte/Nagisa taller than Sayaka, and a Mami shorter than Madoka, but aside from that, great cosplays!

Merry Christmas to you two!

I'm not sure what to answer regarding Christmas episodes. If anything, I tend to associate Christmas in anime with romantic angst due to stuff like Toradora and EF's second season (which gets really dark in parts) - probably not quite what you're looking for. My girlfriend and I pretty much did "watching Bungaku Shoujo at home" as a Christmas date in 2010 (I think) but I don't think that's what you're looking for either.

Merry Christmas. I hope it's a mightily mirthful moe-filled time for you and your family and your girlfriend.

I'm curious - Which anime episodes do you think make the best "Christmas specials" and/or "episodes that happen to take place during Christmas" to watch during this time of year?

Thanks also for your comments on the theater atmosphere in general. One body pillow isn't too bad, especially for a movie like this (if this was a Ghibli film, I'd be a bit more worried, lol). Glad to hear it had a packed audience (or close to it) and some cosplayers show up. I'm glad that it sounds like you mostly liked the movie.

My feelings on the third Madoka Magica movie are similar to your own. My long review of it can be found here. More comments in spoiler space below.



As for your comments on 2013 anime as a whole, I largely agree. The way I would describe 2013 in anime is that there's great depth, a lot of shows worth watching, a lot of shows that are entertaining and interesting, but there's nothing that impressed me to the extent that the original Madoka Magica TV series or Steins;Gate did. I very much loved Love Live!, and I do think it has very good writing, but I'm not sure I'd call it a masterpiece work (maybe a masterpiece of moe, though, lol).

Okay, going to expand a little on this quickly:
-For the most part, I felt the film was great. I'd credit most of that to the roller coaster of a storyline.
-While I generally consider myself a Shaft fan, I found some of the visual effects too abstract. That combined with some of the early music choices mean it took me a little longer to really get into the film than it should have.
-I mostly lean towards the toasting Urobuchi for having the guts to write in the big twist, but there's a side of me that thinks he went just a little far with it. (Collecting my thoughts on this was the main reason I didn't want to give much in the way of impressions last night.)
-As good as the film was, I found it I couldn't manage quite the level of enthusiasm I had for the original Madoka in both TV and movie forms. I've been having the same issue with Shaft's other big sequel this year: Monogatari's second season has had some of the franchise's best arcs, but I find I'm just not getting quite as into it as I did in 2009 and for the first sequel in 2012. Which is odd since I really got into some of the non-Shaft sequels this year - the Hanasaku Iroha movie felt all too short and the new Rozen Maiden felt like an excellent reinvention of the franchise.

Though to be honest, that kind of fits with how I've been feeling about most of the anime I watched this year. There's plenty of great shows and movies that I've loved, but very few we're I've felt "this is a candidate for best anime of 2013". In fact the only two that immediately stand out as such candidates for me are Shin Sekai Yori and Wolf Children. The former of which half aired in 2012 (in fact, since I do include incomplete shows in my best of lists, it made last year's list) and the latter of which is technically premiered last year even if I think of it as a 2013 film because it wasn't widely available to western fans until this year.

Madoka 3 report:
-I think I may need to digest the film when I'm not in exam mode. That was a lot to take in.
-While I didn't find the actual events of the film that complicated on the whole, the presentation was trippy enough (even by Madoka standards) that watching it felt like a bit of a mindscrew. It was like I could sense Shinbo and Urobuchi laughing clear across the Pacific.
-Body pillows spotted: one. And it was a Madoka one this time rather than being OreImo or Strike Witches related. I'm not sure if that makes it worse or not.
Crowd: If it wasn't sold out, it was close.
Cosplayers: We had a few, many whom I recognize from other conventions and in a couple cases other costumes.
-The screening included a pre-recorded message for overseas fans from Yuuki Aoi and the rest of the cast.
-As with many of the other Canadian and US screenings, they handed out autograph boards to the first people to show up - I got the Mami/Nagisa one. There was some speculation among attendees as to whether the Kyoko/Sayaka board actually exists... one guy (who I actually know from the Vancouver/Seattle con scene) offered to pay cash for one on the spot to complete his collection of the five and nobody seemed to have one.

So I guess tonight is Madoka night in Canada. Unlike the US schedule which is pretty scattershot, all the Canadian theatres screening Madoka 3 are screening tonight at 7:30 and at 12:55in the afternoon on the 15th - I'm doing the latter because I have an exam tomorrow morning.