It's not a blood sacrifice, but it will have to do.

1. Mayu just shrugs off the high-intensity workouts. You don't get to be an I-1 Club center for nothing.
2. We all knew they weren't really going to vote Airi off the island, but I'm still glad it didn't drag out into full-on drama
3. I was relieved Mayu didn't start crying when Yoshino and Airi did.
4. I'm looking forward to the Nanami episode even though it will probably be about how she's filthy rich and the other girls aren't.
5. Tange needs more Gunbuster pose.
6. Do the I-1 Club workouts include weapons training? Wait, that was AKB0048.
7. Minami needed more character traits other than "girl who eats a lot" and "likes elderly ladies." So now she's "good at crane games."

Pilder fucking on!

I should probably put together a season introduction for Winter 2014, considering that half of it has already passed. At this time, I'm still following 14 15 of the shows currently airing this cour (Jesus Christ, fourteen FIFTEEN?), and may add Gundam Build Fighters if I ever get around to starting it. I present the following shows in order of their precedence on the chart at the time I started writing this sucker, but you shouldn't put too much weight on their positions or particular ratings because this ain't anime titration, you know.

You're a blockhead, Ghost Banri!

I just wanted to point out how pleased I was to see this tribute to Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comic strips. A single shot isn't quite as dedicated as the Evangelion parody strip drawn in the Peanuts style, but it's something. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the last man standing at Studio ADTRW translated that manga to English before the site fell off the World Wide Web.

True love.

KILL la KILL and Golden Time continued without interruption from the previous cour. Both remain about as good as they were previously, and for pretty much the same reasons as before. Thus, if you liked the shows the first time around, you'll probably still like them now. Gin no Saji (Silver Spoon) took a short break after its first cour, but also proves to be as good as it was now that it has resumed for winter 2014.

It's a good thing this gun doesn't have any mass.

Everything I know about Japan's Sengoku era I learned from manga and anime. However, even in that respect, my knowledge of this period of history is woefully incomplete. There are a ridiculous number of Nobunaga-themed anime and manga, and I've watched or read basically none of them. In fact, most of what I do know comes from one anime, Oda Nobuna no Yabou and one (excellent) food manga, Nobunaga no Chef. Considering that at least one Nobunaga anime appears to have aired nearly every season of every single year since his death in 1582, that's a lot of Nobunaga anime I've missed.

New character.

The excellent Gin no Saji (Silver Spoon) from summer 2013 returns winter 2014. This second cour picks up where the first left off. Through two episodes, it appears to be as good as it was. Joining Silver Spoon is another show with an agricultural theme: No-Rin (also spelled Nourin). Although Silver Spoon is not necessarily "better" than No-Rin, the former does appeal to me quite a bit more than the latter.

This is just like the Mushishi special!

Most of the initial reactions to Wake Up, Girls! seem to be profoundly negative. In particular, they caused me to expect poor production values, unattractive art, and terrible voice acting. Now that I've seen the one-hour prequel movie and the first episode, I find most of these complaints to be somewhat overblown and likely inspired (at least in part) by the running joke Yamamoto "Yamakan" Yutaka himself has become. I consider myself "Yamakan neutral" with regard to the typical attitude serious anime fans seem to hold towards him. I enjoyed some of his pre-controversy shows (e.g., Kannagi), disliked some (e.g., Lucky Star), and generally feel all his "saving anime" baggage is silly, undeserved, and irrelevant.