This week made me once again realize how my choices really fail at times. Especially when I decide to not bother with certain series and am later proven so very wrong... Case 1: Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight!. First series ever to get a 10 from me on MyAnimeList. And I only started watching it after a few episodes were already out, just because I was bored and gg was translating it (and I was watching their Code Geass releases at that time). Since it was so different from what I usually watched, I just didn't expect to like it at all.

On a side note, without this series I would probably never have heard of Eclipse, therefore quite likely never seen most of the shows they (and Static) have translated. Which would mean no Shana, no Kanon, no Clannad, no Claymore (first Eclipse release I watched after Manabi), no Hayate, Index, Rental Magica or Fate/stay night (although the latter would arguably be not such a bad thing to miss), no Oinari-sama and no Erin. And I'll be mentioning another Static release later as well.

Now let's jump a few seasons. Menclave is translating Gundam 00 and then I suddenly notice something called ef - a tale of memories on their site as well. Which, once again, I don't pick up before half of it is translated... How wrong I was again - ef gets my second 10 on MyAnimeList and is still my absolute favorite...

Which brings us to this week and Hyakko. Sounded quite like Manabi from the descriptions (and also was), had some amazing names in the cast list, but somehow I was never interested that much. There was something about the art style that kept me away a bit as well at first. So I really didn't care much until Static released the last episode and promised to have a batch torrent out at some point as well - at which point I decided to give it a try once they've done that. They still haven't... Well, not the first time to download a series as separate torrents at the same time (try 50 episodes of Hayate the Trap Combat Butler - started watching that just a couple of weeks before it ended), so this week I somehow finally decided to just do that. And another initially skipped series got a high score. A 9 instead of a 10 this time, but still... Once again, my failure was made so very clear by its awesome characters.


Timed Icon Meme: Round 3