We are back with our review of 2016’s Myriad Colors Phantom World, and while this series isn’t one of KyoAni’s ‘masterpiece’ shows, it might just be their most underrated.

Today we return to the wacky world of Love, Chuunibyo, and Other Delusions for its second season, Heart Throb! 

We discussing the next series made by the ladies behind K-ON!, 2013’s Tamako Market! 

We are back for Part 5 of our Kyoto Vacation with 2012’s Love, Chuunibyo & Other Delusions!

Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, passed away this week at the age of 68, and in this special episode, we look back on his incredible work and influence.

We review the 2012 slice-of-life mystery HYOUKA, which may well be the most beautifully animated show in the history of anime.

We review NICHIJOU, which follows three high-school girls, a genius child inventor, the robot big sister she invents for herself, a talking cat, and many more increasingly strange characters in a very bizarre world of madcap, gorgeously-animated comedy.

We’re finishing our journey with Hokago Tea Time by following the girls to London for an overseas adventure in K-On! The Movie.

We’re discussing the 27-episode second season of K-ON!!, which follows Yui, Ritsu, Mio, and Mugi-chan in their third and final year of high school

We’re reviewing what may be Kyoto Animation’s most popular series to date: K-On!, the musical slice-of-life anime sensation following the girls of the Sakuragaoka High School light music club!

It’s December 25th, and Christmas has finally come to Otaku Town – and with it, the final episode of Part 2 of our Kyoto Vacation. For today’s very special episode, we are finishing our journey through the world of Haruhi Suzumiya with the 2010 film The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the nearly-three-hour climactic story in Kyoto Animation’s beloved adaptation of Nagaru Tanigawa’s light novels. It’s an absolute masterpiece of a film, telling its story of Kyon waking up in a world without...

Part 2 of our Kyoto Vacation chronicles ‘When Christmas Came to Otaku Town,’ and that holiday is drawing ever nearer with Season 2 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Aired in 2009, this season collected the 14 episodes originally produced in 2006, re-arranges them in the story’s chronological order, and then intersperses 14 new episodes amidst them, to make for a new 28-episode version of the series. We already talked about 8 of those episodes in last week’s in-depth, extra-long breakdown...

Part 2 of our Kyoto Vacation chronicles ‘When Christmas Came to Otaku Town,’ and in this episode, we do an extremely deep-dive into the single craziest experiment ever attempted in commercial anime: The infamous ‘Endless Eight’ arc from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2. We will be talking about the rest of that show’s second season from 2009 in next week’s episode, but as we worked our way through these episodes, we realized the Endless Eight were something special, and needed a...

Part 2 of our Kyoto Vacation chronicles ‘When Christmas Came to Otaku Town,’ and following the wild success of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyoto Animation moved on to one of the defining slice-of-life anime comedies, 2007’s Lucky Star! Simultaneously a very dry, down-to-earth ‘atmospheric’ show and an absolutely absurd slice of post-modern anime surrealism, Lucky Star is a singularly entertaining show. Based on the 4-panel manga by Kagami Yoshimizu, Lucky Star in anime form quickly takes on a life of...

Part 2 of our Kyoto Vacation chronicles ‘When Christmas Came to Otaku Town,’ beginning with a look at the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Based on the light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, Haruhi is a seminal work of 21st century anime, with the first 14 episodes from 2006 creating an absolute sensation with major impacts on the future of the industry. It’s also an incredible set of episodes, presented in an out-of-chronology ‘shuffle order’ mixing stories from all over...

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first movie based on Persona 3, a game that is one of our all-time favorites here at Japanimation Station. We reviewed each of those films as they released over on The Weekly Stuff Podcast, and hold them in extremely high regard as some of the greatest video game adaptations of all time, in any medium – and an undeniably great work of anime. So this week, as a special Thanksgiving bonus, we’re bringing back our original Persona 3 movie reviews,...

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first movie based on Persona 3, a game that is one of our all-time favorites here at Japanimation Station. We reviewed each of those films as they released over on The Weekly Stuff Podcast, and hold them in extremely high regard as some of the greatest video game adaptations of all time, in any medium – and an undeniably great work of anime. So this week, as a special Thanksgiving bonus, we’re bringing back our original Persona 3 movie reviews,...

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first movie based on Persona 3, a game that is one of our all-time favorites here at Japanimation Station. We reviewed each of those films as they released over on The Weekly Stuff Podcast, and hold them in extremely high regard as some of the greatest video game adaptations of all time, in any medium – and an undeniably great work of anime. So this week, as a special Thanksgiving bonus, we’re bringing back our original Persona 3 movie reviews,...

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first movie based on Persona 3, a game that is one of our all-time favorites here at Japanimation Station. We reviewed each of those films as they released over on The Weekly Stuff Podcast, and hold them in extremely high regard as some of the greatest video game adaptations of all time, in any medium – and an undeniably great work of anime. So this week, as a special Thanksgiving bonus, we’re bringing back our original Persona 3 movie reviews,...

Part 1 of our Kyoto Vacation, ‘Crying is the Key to Happiness,’ comes to a close with Clannad After Story, the second and final season based on the legendary visual novel by Key VisualArts. And after speaking for 3.5 hours about the first season, we somehow go even longer on the second, which follows Tomoya and Nagisa progressing into adulthood and becomes an ever-deeper, richer, and more emotionally impactful experience as it goes along. These are, simply put, some of the finest episodes of...

Part 1 of our Kyoto Vacation, ‘Crying is the Key to Happiness,’ continues with 2007’s Clannad, the first entry in a two-series journey adapting the legendary visual novel by Key VisualArts. And it is, immediately, a major artistic leap for Kyoto Animation, a stunningly animated, beautifully written, alternatingly hilarious and poignant portrait of high school friendship and romance. Before we even arrive at the darker, bolder narrative turns of the second season, Clannad After Story, the...

Part 1 of our Kyoto Vacation, ‘Crying is the Key to Happiness,’ continues with our review of Kanon, a fascinating snapshot of two groups of storytellers finding their way: The team at Key VisualArts, for whom Kanon was their first original visual novel, and the artists at Kyoto Animation, who had already made Air the year before, and were now working with double the episode order and an even more confident sense of style. Sean and Jonathan disagree on exactly how effectively it all comes...

Part 1 of our Kyoto Vacation kicks off with ‘Crying is the Key to Happiness,’ a series of episodes on Kyoto Animation’s adaptations of the acclaimed visual novels by Key VisualArts. We begin with 2005’s Air, the strange, sad, and surprising tale of a wandering boy, a girl obsessed with dinosaurs, an empathetic crow, and a winged girl in the sky. Air is a hard show to describe, but it’s a powerful watch, adapting the hit visual novel into 12 episodes (and 2 OVAs) that put Kyoto Animation...