Before that though, awesome participation sauce by Behind the Nihon Review, Anime Strip, Anime Evo, Mecha Guignol, She’s Lost Control, Anipulse, OASG and Otaku Champloo, while good luck to WanAbrar, Silence is Golden, Shades of Grey, Cafe Daifuuku, Lost in America, World of Yamaguchi Hoshiko, Lower Mid-Table and YumeState. PS: Like I said before in the series, if a poll is not working (the ones in future date, they will in time).

113. Omari’s Sister

Thoughts: Here we are in round 2, where things will start getting more intense! Up to bat first for review is Omari’s Sister, which is a blog for the scanlation group of the same name. It’s run by Kuroneko003 and Karent97 helps as well, although there’s no about page to tell you that (you’ll have to actually go through their scanlations). Once again…please make an about page, guys. It’s nice to know what the hell you’re reading if you haven’t been following the site for a while before hand.

Oddly enough, this aniblog has very little…blogging. They post regularly, but with links to their most recent manga scanlation releases. There is very little writing on this site aside from the occasional news post about manga releases. I didn’t even know sites like this could enter the tourney but uhh, I guess so! Once I recovered from being stunned at this prospect, I went through their scanlations. They look pretty nice and clean! I’m not familiar with any of the manga they’re translating, but they’re doing a good job, so do check them out if you’re a manga bookworm.

114. Calamitous Intent

Thoughts: Hello and welcome to my first stop for round 2 anime blogs with Calamitous Intent, a small team blog that reviews anime and Visual Novels. From reading their blog, I can tell their strongest point is their large collection of Visual Novel reviews by Choux. Now I have never really played many VNs, but I can see they really have a huge fan following! Each game review breaks down the story, art, music, programming and gut feelings for the longer reviews. As for the actual anime reviews each post contains a few screenshots from the episode followed by a few quick paragraphs about what they enjoyed, which works really well if you don’t feel like reading a long winded story about the episode. As far as that I can tell, Sakura is quite busy with real life and Hoshi appears to be missing, but Choux is keeping things busy for them so it works out for content.

Design wise Calamitous Intent looks a bit dated for my taste, but yeah wordpress blogs are all about the layout you choose than actual design points. Color scheme works nicely with the dull yellow and green for the font colors, but I did like the quick access to the long and short reviews for the Visual Novel section; oh and that awesome Durarara banner with the cast wearing tuxedos. Overall the design works and it really doesn’t feel all cluttered or messy, but maybe they could do some updating in the future. So, if you are into Visual Novels and like reading short quick anime reviews, then stop by Calamitous Intent.

115. Experiments in Manga

Thoughts: Experiments in Manga is a personal blog run by a librarian who is also a self-described “manga addict”, and I loved every bit of this site! The blog focuses on manga (of course), but also covers other aspects of Japanese culture on occasion, everything from anime to light novels, and it’s done in such detail that I’m sure any manga lover would instantly be hooked. Every week the writer publishes a “My Week in Manga” post, not only going into detail about recent news, but also outlining their thoughts on a handful of manga currently being read. For people not wanting to read a full review to get some insight, these posts are excellent. Speaking of reviews, there’s a great number of them to be read, which from the few I checked out are very descriptive and give off that feeling of being professionally written.

Apart from reviews there are also occasional giveaways, the most recent of which I entered for the hell of it! >< I for one will definitely be returning in the future. I loved the style of the blog both writing wise and visually. My only little criticism would be the mess of a sidebar the blog has going on. It stretches the page WAYYY further down than the actual posts, I think a drop down box could be a nice addition, but I don’t know much about CSS and whatnot, so that might not even be possible with tags!

116. Anime Princess

Thoughts: Anime Princess is one of the seeded blogs in the tournament, largely due to the popularity it has gained in the past 4 years or so of operation. While I’ve never been there myself before, just looking at the lively discussions in the comment section is enough to know that this site attracts lots of otaku and encourages them to share their opinions. Lostty has got quite a nice little thing going on with Anime Princess! There are one or two posts every week, it’s easy to navigate, and doesn’t look TOO plain.

Lostty has two main post types on her site: anime review and editorial. Her anime reviews give a detailed overview of what she thought about the series, and why she felt that way. It’s surprisingly spoiler-light, so if you dropped an anime and want to know what you miss, it gives you an excellent idea of whether or not you might want to pick it up again. The editorial posts are all enjoyable as well. You know you’ve got a good contender in the competition when you come across thought-provoking, revelations such as these.

117. Anime | Otaku

Thoughts: Next up for review is AnimeOtaku! This is a solo blog with the writer Micheal who mostly reviews anime, but due to some internet issues hasn’t been able to episodically make post on Ano Natsu, which sucks because I wouldn’t mind reading more of his posts. Every post that Micheal works on uses at least one or two screenshots from the episode with a quick rundown of his thoughts. I enjoyed reading his posts because they are short and to the point. I recommend you read his posts on episode one of Sakamichi no Apollon! After reading it you can’t help but feel the need to watch the first episode…other than that I enjoyed the flow of every post because like I said they were easy to read and follow.

Design wise I like the combination of purple, black and grey theme throughout his blog and it looks really clean without all the usual sidebar stuffs to clutter the layout. Oh and I really liked the cool looking banner at the top…so yeah design wise it looks nice so there are no issues from me for that. Overall AnimeOtaku is a balanced anime blog, so you should stop by and leave him some comment love.

118. Ani-Gamers

Thoughts: Ani-Gamers, that’s what a lot of us are. These guys do a combo of video game reviews and some first impressions/reviews of recent airing anime. There isn’t really a consistency when it comes to anime vs. gaming content (as I’ve found out doing a site that tries both), so not every article is going to grab all the readers, but they are very informative reads if the subject matter appeals to you.

Site design: I think save a couple minor things, Ani-Gamers almost has the appearance of a reputable game site like the many others that are notable in the world of game journalism. I like their search area which is advanced enough to find specific authors, categories, etc.; many team blog sites could benefit from this. When it comes to their posts, nice format with text-wrap and I like when significant quotes are made big to provide emphasis and encourage further reading. The ani-gamers do have a podcast, but the last recording was done in February.

119. TypeNights Anime Blog

Thoughts: First and foremost you should know that the writer of Typenights, Rednights, has been watching anime for over 10 years, so you should know he has enough experience. Apart from covering a few different shows each season (even branching off to American animation with the new Avatar), Rednights also posts reviews for manga, by volume, and full reviews of anime, both new and old. To quote him, “I’m not overtly analytical when I’m watching any show. I just sit back and let it all soak in.” And I understood that after reading a handful of his posts. They’re to the point and he writes with a very down-to-earth feeling of watching for enjoyment, rather than watching for deep metaphors and symbols. The posts themselves aren’t too lengthy, but Rednights gives the reader a general consensus on whether or not it’s worth watching or reading, with both an insightful perspective of on all the best qualities of anime and manga, and a personable writing style that (from what I read) focuses on highlighting the positive rather than dwelling on the negative.

From what I can tell the blog used to be much less actively updated, but recently it seems to update almost every day. Visually the blog is very appealing; I love the post layout and the scrollable header. (I have no clue what they’re actually called!) Not a lot of color or eye-catching parts, but I guess that lets the screenshots stand out more. Good blog! ;D

120. Reverse Thieves

Thoughts:  Fufufu one more blog to go and this time I head on over to Reverse Thieves. This is a duet blog of Hisui and Narutaki; specializing in reviewing episodes of anime, manga, editorials and a podcast. I only listened to one of their recordings, but I really loved their episode about One Piece. For the actual episodic posts, you can find paragraph after paragraph of a play by play guide to the episode with a few shots from the episode. Right now it looks like Hisui is the only one doing the episodically reviews for Fate Zero, but Narutaki appears to do more tag posts with Hisui or participates in the various editorial works. The content on this blog is great and it really does pull you in to read more posts, tot to mention the podcast; both of their voices are clear and they are more conversational than rambling on about topic at hand.

So, yes the content is good, but how does the design work? I loved the layout and mixture of green and blue for an overall color scheme of the blog. Now this is a themed blog as in detective work and you can see where they play up the whole “investigation” thing with the clever sidebar like Investigate, The Filing cabinet, Monthly Dossier, Dig up clues, Recent cases, Recent Interrogations and finally the twitter links for their “sleuthing”. I really liked how they played up the theme like that along with the header banner.So, yeah, an interesting blog; do stop by and show them some love.