Series Review- Kemono Friends

Kemono Friends is an anime which follows the adventures of a human child named Kaban (bag/backpack in English) as she travels through Japari Park, a land filled with various ‘Friends’; anthropomorphic versions of animals, in an attempt to find out about her identity. Along the way, Kaban together with different Friends, especially her self-appointed chaperone Serval work together to overcome both personal and environmental difficulties in their quest for knowledge.

Advertisement

Spring 2017 Preview

As one bunch of series starts to wrap up, more shows are about to begin, and it’s time for me to have a look at what I’m planning to watch in the coming season. I’ll only mention series which have caught my attention, for a more complete preview, you can look at Livechart or Anichart. I also may end up checking out episodes of shows not on this list, either based on the interest of others, or just from idle curiosity. I’ll probably end up watching a lot of first episodes to be honest, but these are series which I’m pretty sure I’d like to watch in their entirety if they are available.

Series Review – Long Riders!

Long Riders! (hereafter referred to without the exclamation point) is a series which follows first year university student Kurata Ami as she becomes interested in cycling and embarks on a number of cycling-related activities with her friends. I wrote up episodic posts for the series which you can find here, so you can see my views on the series in more detail if you were interested.

As the typical ‘protagonist who has no hobbies or strong passions prior to the commencement of the series’, Ami sees someone riding a cute folding bike one day and decides to take up cycling. Together with her childhood friend Aoi, and new friends Hinako, Yayoi, and Saki, she transforms from a beginner into an experienced cyclist, participating in different activities and also building friendships. Long Riders is packed with cute cycling and cute food, two things which I find enjoyable.

The Return of Pasta?

This is a quick post to say hello to my readers after my long absence. I suffer from an as yet undiagnosed chronic illness (I affectionately refer to it as ‘mystery chronic illness’ owing to lack of a better name, although I can tell you a number of things which I do not have) which flared up to the point where I was unable to read any quantity of text from a backlit screen without feeling extremely dizzy for a few weeks. Having my energy levels return to normal (for me) seems to be a pretty slow process, but I’m gradually feeling a bit better and trying to get back into the schedule of things I do regularly to create routine.

One small positive of all this very quiet downtime is I have watched a lot of anime! A lot of anime! I’m excited to be able to hopefully write about some of the series I have seen and and thoughts I have had while lying quietly on the lounge. Content may come out fairly slowly though as I recognise the need to take things easy and not put too much pressure on myself to put content out on a regular basis.

Owing to wanting to take things easy, I’ve decided to stop doing episodic posts for the time being. I enjoy reading other people’s episodic posts (particularly of shows which I know that I won’t care to watch myself but have some level of interest as to how they play out), but owing to the time pressure, or at least the perceived time pressure of needing to have an episodic post out in a timely fashion, I don’t feel that it’s realistic for me to commit to posting. I’d rather use my blogging time to write analytical posts or reviews, both of which I’d been finding more fun to write leading up to my break. I’m still very much feeling things out and trying new things in order to see what works and what doesn’t work for me, so this may be subject to change later on.

Coming up, I’m hoping to do a season preview of the Spring anime season and highlight some shows I’m excited about which are coming up, share a few reviews, hopefully write something about the amazing Kemono Friends, but overall, I’ll just be trying to take things easy. I probably won’t do the crazy thing I did at the end of last season where I tried to push out reviews for all the series I’d watched in the couple of weeks following their conclusion. I have watched a number of shows this season (including a whole pile of shorts), and I do hope to share my thoughts about them on the blog at some point in the future!

I’m planning to spend a bit of time trying to catch up on what other people have been writing, but I feel that getting up to date with everything would be somewhat insurmountable. So, if you saw something which was really good (or you wrote something cool yourself), if you post it in the comments I’d be happy to check it out! I’m hoping to take things slowly but be a bit more on top of everything in the coming weeks.