Planning to:
Anime:
Date a live: Seemed like a deconstruction/parody of dating sims, so it sparked my interest
Maria Holic: Catchy intro, seems interesting
Saint Seiya Omega: The art immediately reminded me of, like, a hybrid of some sort between Pretty Cure and Casshern Sins, so I'm willing to try it out.
Dog and Scissors: Premise seems interesting. I mean, a guy helps a girl but dies in the process and gets turned into a dog and lives with said girl? What?
Nyaruko: Theme song, general curiosity
End of Evangelion: I've been putting off this mindrape for long enough
One Piece: I hear it's really good, it's just so bloody long
Not technically Anime:
Kamen Rider Gaim: Fruity
Kamen Rider Faiz: I started this, but I stopped because of that ass KUSAKA
Finished
Manga:
Necromancer (technically re-finished): Oh please somebody read this, I love it so much. It's really short and sweet--just 20 chapters. It's set in a very dark and stark mood, and the sparseness of the pages compliments it really well. I also love this guy's art style. The character designs are quite cool too. It also features the only instance, that I know of, of a guy using Reimu's sidelock hair ribbon/clamp things. I hope he/she makes more.
Currently watching/reading
Anime:
JJBA Stardust Crusade: Not much to say here, I mean it's JJBA. On the other hand, I do like part 2 with Joseph more. Joseph always had to use his head to defeat more powerful foes. Jotaro just waits until the end to STAR PLATINUM the guy just for the lulz.
Manga:
Naruto: Guilty pleasure, but it's kind of this thing I kept up with since way long ago and I must see it through to the end. It's a been pretty typical shonen ever since Shippuden power creep, but it's enjoyable at least, even with all the ridiculous retcons. At least it's not Bleach.
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu/Assassination Classroom(aka AssClass): Possibly one of my now favorite mangas of all time. I think it handles its own situation very well, not afraid to be serious or humorous when the story requires it to be.
Detective Conan: omg don't even
D.N. Angel: Seriously wth Amano, it's been over THREE YEARS. DON"T MAKE ME LIVE WITH THIS CLIFFHANGER
D. Gray-man: Seriously Seriously WTH, two series that I liked that have been on hiatus for more than a year (almost two years in this case) and they both start with 'D.'s. Well, at least Allen got to be in the new Jump Victory VS game, so at the very least I know that Jump still acknowledges his presence. Or lack thereof.
Light Novels... though not technically Manga
Nanana's Buried Treasure: I haven't seen the anime, and I don't intend to until I finish all the volumes I bought (which is just 2). I seriously want to like this; I want to be hooked. I just have no clue how to take this seriously--it's so bad. And I don't mean not-interesting bad, I mean my-brain-cells-are-dying bad. The book starts off with obviously evil dad casting son out to some distant academy island's academy. MC meets titular Nanana, who (or is it 'which'?) happens to be a ghost bound to the room he's to live in. As if this isn't bad enough already, but if handled smartly it could be good. Heck, as a guy it is a rather... a bit of a hook. The first thing they do is decide who is the 'owner of the room'. They do this by wrestling. Whee. Now apparently this ghost girl is a genius who also knows actual wrestling, not to mention she can make herself intangible at will, so now he's pinned down. Now comes the stupid part. Apparently he's being pinned in a position such that his hand is between her breasts. So the guy goes through this entire 2~3 pages of monologue of stupid BuShwa of how as a man, he has to take the opportunity to "touch god", aka: grope OPPAI. He even outlines his plan to do so while not being seen as a pervert by taking advantage of the wrestling context he's placed in. So he does so and gets his arm dislocated (not because of his act, per se. He had to provoke her into doing so so that it would give him the few microseconds of freedom of movement to move his pinned arm. She remained unaware that this happened) in the process, which good for him. I wish the arms of every transparent, dull, and obviously self-insertable MCs of retarded harems that perform contrived and avoidable-to-anyone-with-even-a-handful-of-neurons OPPAI grabs would break (Shinji of Evangelion doesn't count though; that was more of a character defining moment for Rei). I recently read about people's gripes with how Light Novel MCs are usually always so snarky, meta-aware, and arrogant. It wasn't until I actually read this LN that for the first time I understood why people had this problem. As an example, the MC is then lead around the campus grounds by the class representative girl. After being toured around, he thanks her and immediately she does this stupid "D-don't misunderstand" crap. I hate hot-off-the-mold tsunderes anyway, but the MC has to be obnoxious enough to POINT OUT that: oh, isn't this a tsundere phrase? Omg, this is so exciting! stupid bushwa. Meta and 4th wall breakage is an interesting use of comedy, but not when the MC has to obnoxiously be aware of every single damned anime/manga trope out there and comment on it. I'm not necessarily saying that he does this all the time, but every single occasion that it does happen is laced with such an overwhelming flair of otaku-inside-joke-ism that it's really aggravating. I'm not hooked, but it's frustrating because I want to like it. I'm not even half way in and all this nonsense is happening. I'm reading it because I want to like it and I want to learn to read Japanese. Too bad it's so unintelligible. It's especially bad because I just finished reading Enders Exile and Earth Unaware (prequel, if you're curious) from the Ender series by Orson Scott Card. His books are amazing, and his dialogues are very clever, witty, and intelligent (although I did feel that Enders Exile carried a bit too much of this in a way that kind of delivered this sort of pseudo-voice heavy handed, though I reread it and the feeling passed). In fact, I realized from Enders Exile that sexuality/sexual-ness is a very powerful tool; it has the ability to instantly hook into my young hormones and keep my eyes and mind glued on every word. It also only worked because of how masterfully, emotionally, and intelligently Card handled this one scene. And I feel that this very powerful tool is very gravely misused in Nanana, and perhaps many other cheap fanservice-y scenarios in other anime/manga/light novels. I don't object to their use much though, since this medium's purpose--more of less--is to provide easy entertainment, and fanservice-y scenes are often funny because of how ludicrous they are. Also I'm a functioning male. Anyway, I'm hoping it gets better because I'm going to keep reading. But did I really have to use the word 'stupid' 4 times in the same essay (holy crap I just wrote an essay)? Five times now.
Baka and Test: Liked the show, bought the LN
TMoHS: Part of the reason I'm not going to watch the anime of light novels I want to read from now on--until I finish, that is--is because of how dull reading this LN became because I've already watch both seasons and the movie.
SAO Progressive: I hated the anime, but since I watched it so dismissively, I'm going to give it another try
