2005 series I watched (a.k.a. possible candidates)
*=continued from 2004, not eligible for awards

Winter-
Air
Peach Girl
Jinki Extend
Girls Bravo 2nd Season
Mahoraba Heartful Days
Ah! My Goddess TV
Mai HiME*
Zoids Fuzors*
Bleach*
Naruto*

Spring-
Fushigiboshi no Futago Hime
Erementar Gerad
Tsubasa Chronicles
He is My Master
Futakoi Alternative
Honey and Clover
Sousei no Aquarion
Eureka Seven

Summer-
Okusama wa Joshikousei
Gun x Sword

Fall-
Black Cat
Happy 7
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s
Jigoku Shoujo
Rozen Maiden Traumend
Paradise Kiss
Mai Otome
Canvas 2

Best Series:
1- Peach Girl- Brilliant and addicting
2- Black Cat- I’ve become a bit too obsessed with this one
3- Paradise Kiss- Living up to the manga in every way

Runner up- Air- Amazing story, best production values I’ve ever seen

Best Male
1- Kiley- Peach Girl- Super hot angsty playboy
2- Train- Black Cat- Broody and hot
3- Fukuyama- Girls Bravo 2nd Season- Hysterical pervert, hot

Runner up- Jun- Rozen Maiden Traumend- Umm… Jun’s just cool.

Best Female
1- Saya- Black Cat- Why did she have to die?
2- Hina- Rozen Maiden Traumend- Adorable.
3- Mina and Nami- Happy 7- Adorable enough to make me forget about how clichéd they are

Runner up- Sugintou- Rozen Maiden Traumend- received amazing development

Funniest series
1- Girls Bravo 2nd Season- Making it more perverted was a great move by the staff
2- Mai Otome- Not really a comedy, but it has some great moments. The whole pool episode gave it this spot
3- He is my Master- From the little I saw, it’s quite amusing

Runner up- Happy 7- Amano’s klutziness and Mahiru’s fish amuse me

Best OP
1- Lonely in Gorgeous- Paradise Kiss- Constantly stuck in my head. I love it!
2- Daiya no Hana- Black Cat- addicting with great animation too
3- Forever- Erementar Gerad- nice animation, great song

Runner up- Eternal Blaze- Nanoha A’s- great song and animation

Best ED
1- Namidaboshi- Black Cat- cute chibis, catchy tune
2- Na na Iro- Canvas 2- the animation is a bit disturbing, but the song more then makes up for it
3- Loop- Tsubasa Chronicle- The show wasn’t very good, but I really like this song

Runner up- Bokura no Jikan- Futakoi Alternative- Probably the only likeable thing about this series

Most Annoying character
1- Sasuke- Okusama wa Joshikousei- Argh! I usually like perverts, but not him
2- Brickhead/Toji- Peach Girl- He’s a brickhead. Enough said.
3- George- Paradise Kiss- Not that I dislike him, but he’s distractingly difficult to understand

Runner up- Kiri- Canvas 2- Not that I dislike her personally (in fact I rather like her) but because of her existence there’s a very slim chance that Elis and Hiroki will get together

Special Awards-

The “I can’t believe I didn’t drop this” award- Jinki Extend- Not bad, just entirely forgettable

The “I kind of regret watching this wildly out of order and skipping episodes” award- Erementar Gerad- I really liked what I saw of this. I’ll have to fill in the blanks someday. Maybe when the DVDs come out.

The “Pleasant surprise” award- Okusama wa Joshikousei – I swear I downloaded the first episode on accident, but I watched it and it was quite fun

The “Surprisingly bad” award- Tsubasa Chronicles- With all the hype I expected this to be at least watchable. ZZZ…

The “deserves another season” award- Happy 7- It’s so fun. Why only 13 episodes?

The “surprisingly likeable character” award- Sakura- Okusama wa Joshikousei- I figured that she’d be as annoying as her son, but she’s actually generally nice

The “best developed character” award- Sugintou- Rozen Maiden Traumend- I went from hating her to loving her

The- “most anticipated” award- Rozen Maiden Traumend- I was dying to see this from the day it was announced. It did not disappoint

This was a pretty good season in all. While I wound up dropping everything I was watching in spring and starting over from scratch next season, that was for unrelated reasons, and I rather liked some of the stuff that came out then. I‘d be hard pressed to say whether this year or last year had better anime, so I think I’ll just call it a tie. As we move on to the next season, hopefully the ends of Okusama wa Joshikousei and ParaKiss will be fansubbed. Black Cat and Fushigiboshi no Futgo Hime will be continuing for a while, but the next season will feature the endings to Jigoku Shoujo, Rozen Maiden Traumend, Mai Otome, and Canvas 2. I’ve got a lot to look forward to. Until then, I hope everyone has a happy New Year.

Also, my CD Japan order shipped, so I should be getting a nice package in the new year. ^_^