It's January and ASIFA Hollywood has has released their listing of films nominated for the 51st annual Annie Awards.
With the second season of Arcane still months away and not having seen many of the features or television series, I'm a little out of sorts on who to cheer for.
At this point, I've seen Suzume but only have a couple of the nominees on my list of films to watch--those being: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Boy and the Heron, Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia, Robot Dreams, The Inventor, and White Plastic Sky. I also need to watch Invincible: Atom Eve before the second half of Invincible, season two is released, but that's neither here-nor-there. The rest of the nominated films really don't seem to be capturing my interest. They may be good films for all I know, but when I look at the trailers, I'm just not feeling them.
I have the same problem every season when the new anime is released. I start out with a sizable list of shows that look good from the trailers, but when I get two or three episodes in, the luster fades. Out of the eight shows I've started this season, so far, only Delicious in Dungeon, The Unwanted Undead Adventurer, and Solo Leveling are holding my attention (I'm still on the fence with A Sign of Affection). And last season, I started with four and only season two of Goblin Slayer made the cut. On the bright side, it does give me enough time to go back and finish watching Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and Skeleton Knight in Another World. I discovered those a little late in the season, so fortunately all those episodes are out right now. Though I really do need to finish those two series before the Spring as Kaiju No. 8 is due out in April and Loner Life in Another World is due out "sometime" in 2024.
Then, in February/March, the DIA is showing the Academy Award Nominated animated films so I'll be driving down to Detroit to watch those... and my copy of the late Paul Bush's film Babeldom arrived from England... want to rewatch that film sooner rather than later... and the last two Arpeggio of Blue Steel animated features arrived from Japan earlier this month... ah, so much animation, so little time to fit it all in. A good problem to have now that I think about it.
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