seasonal anime

Log Time Seasonal Podcast | Beginning of Summer 2021 — The Backlogger Deities Know Only Summer Anime

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The Winter 2021 anime season was, scientifically speaking, both the longest and shortest season of anime in recent history. We were with these shows for what felt like ages, and they were gone before we knew it. Parting with anime is After taking the Spring 2021 anime season off because it would have burnt us out beyond all repair, we’re back for the newly-minted (and much less densely-packed) Summer 2021 season! Although there is nowhere near the amount of must-watch absolute bangers as last season, take it from us – this season is going to still be delightful, and a lot less hard on your plan-to-watch lists.

While that is the case, there’s still a good few shows that Matt and Zack have picked out that you should absolutely be watching this season. Strap in for Matt’s undying love of continued Love Live! franchise entries with Superstar!!, the desperate hope that Girlfriend, Girlfriend could be the next Gamers!, talking different anime tastes via The Case Study of Vanitas and The Detective Is Already Dead, and the reveal of sleeper hits of the season, such as Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan and The Idaten Deities Know Only Peace. Get yourself a nice boat drink and set your sails, because The Backloggers are driftwood for the summer season, baby!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded July 22nd, 2021.

Spring 2021 in Review

generaltofu 1 Comment

This past anime season, counting holdovers from the Winter 2021 season, I watched 26 anime. Of those, I completed 22. Normally, we at the Backloggers would do an end-of-season podcast covering a select few shows in the hopes that we can get some good discussion for those handful of titles and not have a days-long episode on our hands. However, with our sort-of-official-but-not-really-announced two-month-long anti-burnout blog hiatus, we didn’t exactly have that structured outlet for putting our seasonal thoughts out in the open.

For everyone involved except for me, this was a mistake. Without the set three-to-five-ish shows per end-of-season podcast restriction holding me back, there is nothing that can stop me from talking about 26 anime from this season, which I will do, in no particular order, starting RIGHT NOW.

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Log Time Seasonal Podcast | End of Winter 2021 — It’s Still Good!

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The Winter 2021 anime season was, scientifically speaking, both the longest and shortest season of anime in recent history. We were with these shows for what felt like ages, and they were gone before we knew it. Parting with anime is always so bittersweet, y’know?

This go-around, Zack and Matt narrow down the huge field of anime from this season to just a select few Backloggers’ Choice Shows™ for you to chew on (along with some honorable mentions and a real stinker). Join them as they talk some big ideas of the season, like what makes Re:Zero so good, season after season, why does the high school setting work so well for Horimiya while it feels stagnant for others, and what on EARTH happened to The Promised Neverland? You’ll just have to hop on in to hear about these and more!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded April 10th, 2021.

Log Time Seasonal Podcast | Beginning of Winter 2021 — Winter Anime Priority (or, WAP)

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Hey folks, there’s a whole dang lot of anime in the Winter 2021 anime season. And I mean a LOT of anime. It’s almost as if the Winter season is consistently and objectively the best anime for seasonal shows, year after year (editor’s note: It is!).

Since we’ve been blessed with another season chock-full of bangers, Zack and Matt have a whole lot to geek out about in this installment. Whether it’s the incredible sequels such as Attack on Titan’s Final Season, Re:Zero Season 2 Part 2, or a whole slew of newcomers like Sk8 the Infinity, Horimiya, and Wonder Egg Priority, we’ve got you covered on all of the must-watch shows of the season. Fortunately, we also have you covered on what you should absolutely *not* be watching (I’m looking at you, Ex-Arm). It’s an absolute smorgasbord of great anime, so hop on in and see what’s up in our fireside chat!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded January 28th, 2021.

Log Time Seasonal Podcast | End of Fall 2020 — “It’s Been a Good Year for Anime, I Guess”

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The Fall 2020 anime season, and 2020 as a whole, has finally come to an end (to our displeasure and our delight, respectively). As was the case with the beginning of the season podcast, we came to the conclusion that there was STILL too much anime! That said, it was a blessing, and we took some time to chat about the highs and lows of the season, as well as the hits of the whole year.

Kyle was unfortunately not with us for this recording, but that didn’t stop us from slamming this cast full of stuff. Our highlights include gems like Zack cackling over Matt’s trip into the pit of Hypnosis Mic (easily one of the best shows of the year, fight me), coming down from a heavy-ish discussion about Wandering Witch by way of Love Live!, some legitimate (maybe?) hot takes about some of of the hits(?) of the season, and reassessing some of our takes from the beginning of Fall 2020 cast. There’s a bunch to see, and we had a blast with this one, so hop on in!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded January 7th, 2021.

Log Time Seasonal Podcast | Beginning of Fall 2020 — Over the Moon for Anime

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The fall 2020 anime season has decided to be merciful to us – it has deigned to not be full of complete and utter suffering shows, unlike its predecessor, which is great. However, there was a price to be paid for this. There is now just too much anime! As a result, we…just go over a bunch of it and probably only hit about half of the shows that are actually airing this season. Kamisama help us all.

Unsurprisingly, with such a huge amount of shows airing this season (or with things just getting back to a normal fall season airing load), we’ve got a lot of great stuff to cover. We gush about how much of a mood Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle is, the unbridled joy (or newly brided joy?) of TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You, some surprising hits of the season such as Akudama Drive, Warlords of Sigrdrifa, and Moriarty the Patriot, and we even manage to get in some discussion about the surprising (and not surprising) additions to our drop piles, like Assault Lily: BOUQUET and Noblesse. This is a packed one, so strap in, get comfy, and enjoy the ride!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded October 22nd, 2020.

Log Time Seasonal Podcast | End of Summer 2020 — Summer of Suffering

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Get your band-aids and tissues ready, because the end of the Summer 2020 anime season has come out swinging. And good god, is it swinging hard.

Thankfully, we’re able to talk about the fun (read as: not as bleak on a weekly basis) stuff, like Appare-Ranman!, Deca-Dence, and Rent-a-Girlfriend, before we got back into the Suffering Zone, the Sequel, which is still sponsored by Re:Zero and OreGairu. Seriously, though, there was a incredible amount of good shows this season, and you’ll be kicking yourself if you don’t give them the shots they deserve. Get on in here!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded October 1st, 2020.

No, this is not Fate – Summer 2020 Week 6 Check-in

generaltofu 4 Comments

Well, folks, here we are almost at the halfway point of the Summer 2020 season. This just feels…weird. The middle of a season always seems to creep up on me, and it always feels as though it gets here so much faster than anyone would really expect it to. And as a teacher, it took me by surprise even more than usual, since I’m preparing to be back in the classroom in a handful of days. However, I am pleased to say that everything I’ve stuck with has yet to really disappoint me, even this deep into the season. This week, as with last week, I’m going to highlight a few series that I want to give some special attention to. Check ‘em out!

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Seasonal Showcase — Re:Zero’s Confrontation With the Past [Summer 2020: Week 4 and 5]

Owningmatt93 2 Comments

In the past two weeks of Re:Zero, we’ve seen two perspectives of confronting the past regarding how Subaru and Emilia handle their own issues. While we still don’t have the full details of Emilia’s situation (although we can make assumptions at this point with some of the backstories from the OVAs), there is no doubt that they’ve both had their own troubles and issues when it comes to how their past selves have handled particular situations.

Looking back to Season 1, we’ve had a large overview of Subaru’s mentality regarding how self-righteous and selfish he was when it came to trying to fulfill his own desires and wants, to the point where it took several episodes in order for him to get knocked out of that mentality due to the hardships he faced at the time. While we still see bits of that shine through Subaru’s personality now, he’s obviously undergone a full transformation thanks to those hardships as well. By looking at Episode 29, we can get a lot more context about Subaru’s past life before he was isekai’d off into the universe of Re:Zero as we know it. 

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Growth, Beating It, and Despair – Summer 2020 Week 5 Check-In

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I think we’ve lucked out in the seasonal anime department, y’all, because this is going to be another week where pretty much everything was rock-solid. While it would be fun as always to briefly highlight everything I watched, I think it would be more fun to switch things up a bit for this post, though, and focus on just a handful of shows that were really on point this week. So without further ado, let’s dig in!

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