Home Anime/Cartoons Otaku Digest – Anime You Should Have Watched In 2014 (Part 2)

Otaku Digest – Anime You Should Have Watched In 2014 (Part 2)

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Twas the Sunday before Christmas – we are bringing good feelings of the season to this week’s installment of Otaku Digest. Continuing last week’s installment I am covering the anime I think you should not have missed this year! There have been some fantastic titles released this year and it was hard to narrow down to just three so I will list a few contenders at the end this week. This week’s anime is also from the summer season – not a surprising fact since companies hold big titles for the summer. Disclaimer – There titles are my must watches of 2014 – you may disagree and I welcome your comments. In particular this week’s anime which I already covered on a first episode basis weeks ago – it is an anime very close to my heart and deserves the mention.
This weeks must watch is sailor-moon-crystalPretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal.
Everyone knows I am a wannabe magical girl – it’s no secret. This all started back with the original Sailor Moon series – so you can imagine my excitement when the reboot was announced. This reboot gave a new generation a chance to become just as engrossed as I was with Sailor Moon.
The reboot Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal originally aired on the 5th of July – the first half of the 26 episode series would leak into the fall season as there was only two episodes a month released – keeping the fans waiting for more after each episode. For anyone unfamiliar with the Sailor Moon story we follow our main protagonist Usagi Tskukino after she discovers a cat with a mysterious crescent moon on its forehead – the cat reveal that Usagi is the legendary warrior of the moon – Sailor Moon! Together with her fellow Sailor Senshi they must fight against the evil forces of the dark kingdom or the negaverse to some – find their long lost princess and the “Legendary Silver Crystal”.
There was always going to be a backlash for this reboot since it is essentially a remake of the most popular magical girl anime in the history of anime. Whether it be the animation, the narrative, the character design or even just the voice acting fans were going to disagree or not like certain aspects of the reboot. The reboot is essentially a strict to the manga retelling – from the animation to the narrative the entire show stayed true to original manga. For the most part I truly enjoyed the reboot – the narrative was all that I remembered about the original story just with less of the filler story to draw out the series.

The biggest grievance I have heard from fans is the animation style used in the reboot – I will admit it does take a while to get used to when you have been so accustomed to the original anime animation style. The funny thing is that the animation style used in the reboot is similar if not exactly the same as the manga design – it shocked me when fans were near outraged by the change of animation style when it is the original design. Saying that the main thing that shook me when I first watched the reboot was the use of new age animation tricks – such as the use of CGI in battles scenes. New age animation for a new age reboot – makes sense for the most part but I see where fans would not have liked it – I however really enjoyed the reboot animation and I would be a hard person to please when it comes to Sailor Moon. The animation I found to be refreshing and nostalgic at the same time – where some fans of the anime may have never read the original manga wouldn’t not be familiar with the animation style this can be in particular to the way the Sailor Senshi themselves were styled. Long limbs and very slim – not a usual aspect of anime women but there girls are quite extreme but again this is how they were originally drawn – what you have here is the original manga character designs rebooted for the new anime.
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This brings me right into the center of this grievance – the transformation scenes. I mentioned the “new age” animation techniques used, the transformation scenes took the biscuit with the CGI – I can see where they were going with it attempting to make the girls look 3D during their transformations but where I thought it was an interesting restyle of the old transformations it did sort of take you away from the story because it is very noticeably a lot of CGI. I can see where fans were put off but I feel like this is only one aspect which is not even that bad – just something fans can nit-pick over. I found the animation bright and enjoyable – it made the series easy to watch and most important it brought back all those nostalgic warm and fuzzies from the original anime but with aspects of new.Sailor-Moon-Crystal-201404292
I have to speak about the narrative in this series because it is phenomenal – for a reboot of such an iconic series which in truth had quite the murky storyline, it took that and ran perfectly with it. There is excellent character development, the villain’s motive is clear and there is a developing relationship between Usagi and Mamoaru. They took the original manga narrative which is quite different to the original anime – similar but different. There are many aspect that are the same but the major differences that I found was the fact that even though this anime is far shorter than the other it put across the story the same – even with the twists that come from the original manga narrative. No spoilers here but be prepared those of you out there who haven’t read the manga. My personal peak from this narrative is the fact we are given characters in their original states for example Zoisite is actually a man – a fem man but a man all the same – this leads me to what I loved about this story, everyone one had an ark or some sort of development – where the original story has the four generals just there to get beat up on by the Sailor Senshi this narrative gives them their own existence and development however small it is there. I found this anime’s narrative more captivating than the original perhaps because it is following the manga and maybe because we aren’t forced to sit through the hours of filler episodes that comprised the original.
You may be asking why are you recommending this as a must watch of 2014 if so many people had problems with it and didn’t like it? The answer is simple because they may have given out stink about it – they still watched it and will continue to watch it into the New Year. It has polarity, people either loved it or hated it – I personally loved it and feel it holds its own as an anime even when faced with the competition of the original looming over it. The animation style is fresh with captivating narrative and believable characters. It is my choice to put here as a must watch of 2014. I look forward to the second season in 2015.

Honorable mentions:

DRAMAtical Murder

Akame ga Kill

Kuroshitsuji – Book of Circus

Free! Eternal Summer

Tokyo ESP

Cross Ange

Disagree with me? Feel there was better out there? Let me know in the comments!

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