2016 Recap

Ah, 2016 is finally over...

Good riddance. 2016 was just a flat out awful year and I'm glad we can all kiss it goodbye. We have a lot to discuss. 

Where to begin? 

Well we had at least 2 major disease outbreaks in the form of Ebola and Zika. Then there was a good few weeks where the only thing you'd hear on the news were debates about which bathroom people should be using. Let's not forget after people got over that there was the presidential debates. Which sucked no matter who's side you were on. It just dragged on and on and wore a lot of us down. And I don't know about you but hearing Hillary and Donald argue during the debates was frankly more annoying than Good Neighbors. 

Oh yeah, I went there. 

In the end America decided that a man with no political experience would be the best person to run our country. Not that I think Hillary would've been much better. So I'll remain optimistic about our new president. 

The worse part of the year though has to be how awful humanity itself has gotten. I've heard people before say things about losing faith in humanity, however I've never lost this much hope in it before. I've remained optimistic and I thought most of the awfulness was just isolated incidents. It became a lot less isolated in 2016 and the hatred and intolerance that lies in certain people has become a lot more noticeable. It's frankly sickening. Racism, intolerance towards Muslims, it all became a lot more apparent. Heck, one of my friends (well...now ex-friend) was posting on facebook about how all Muslim's should be banned from America because it's the religion of hate or some bullcrap like that. 

Lots of celebrities died this year as well. So much that I'm not even gonna try to list them all due to fear of forgetting someone. My condolences of course go out to all their families, friends, and loved ones. 

But hey, there was still some good this year. Especially in the world of entertainment. 

To be honest the only games I played from this year were Pokemon Go, Pokemon Sun, and Kirby Planet Robobot. They were all really fun games. Pokemon Go kinda died rather quickly though so that's sad. We got a reboot of Full House, Fuller House. I enjoyed it way more than I probably should of. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure for me just like the original series. In terms of animated shows here are the ones I saw from this year. 

Elena of Avalor which was good. 

The Loud House which was also good.

Milo Murphy's Law which was amazing.

Kuu Kuu Harajuku which was bad.

The Powerpuff Girls reboot which I still think is better than people make it out to be. 

Justice League Action which is actually really fun. 

Mighty Magiswords which is...OK. Not the best. 

There was also Flip Flappers which I need to catch up on, but I enjoy it. 

There's a few other that really aren't worth mentioning. We really didn't get anything bad in terms of TV. Well...I heard Legends of Chamberlain Heights was bad, but I can't make that judgement. Haven't seen it yet. 

Of course there was also a lot of good movies. I saw a lot more animated movies this year than I did last year. 

Kubo and the Two Strings was not as good as everyone said, but it was a fun movie and I enjoyed it. Had a few problems though. 

Finding Dory was pretty good. Not quite as good as Finding Nemo, but pretty darn close. Which for a sequel that no one really asked for released years later is pretty commendable. 

Zootopia was probably the best movie I saw all year both animated and live action. Can't wait to get to it during Evan Vs. Disney. Though that's gonna take awhile. Considering I'm still only now just getting ready to review the third film in the canon, Fantasia. 

I heard there was also a lot of good movies I didn't see. Like The Little Prince, Moana, Kung Fu Panda 3. I heard there was also some bad ones. Norm of the North for example seems likes it's going down in history as one of the worst animated movies of all time. Whoops. But other than that it seemed like a really strong year for animation, television and movies. Both based on my own personal experiences and from critic reviews I saw. The biggest negative this year really was the fact that the 3 Biggest networks for western animation have really lost a lot of respect this year. Nick, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network.I feel like I could make a full rant about that in the future though so I'll keep quiet until that happens. 

In terms of live action movies I saw Rogue One which was awesome. I saw Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them which was a fun movie. I also saw Civil War which is probably one of the best superhero movies I've ever seen. I also unfortunately saw two of the worst superhero movies this year as well. Batman V. Superman and Suicide Squad. Both movies caused a lot of divisiveness. I hated both movies though. Suicide Squad was definitely the worst movie I saw all year. It was apparently so divisive it caused a petition to ban Rotten Tomatoes for their low score of the film. Which is idiotic since Rotten Tomatoes doesn't make the reviews. They only collect them and give a percentage based on the amount of positive reviews compared to negative reviews. Speaking of which, there was a lot of internet drama this year. 

James Rolfe not seeing Ghostbusters 2016 for example (which I saw and it wasn't that bad honestly.) Listen he thought it'd be a bad movie though, so he has the right not to see it. Calling him a sexist when he didn't even really seem to care they were female is just stupid. Which seems to be another problem with 2016...everybody was just being plain stupid. Then there was React World. Which was a dumb idea, but oh the memes made from it were great. Keemstar and Leafy also got the drama spotlight this year. Then Vine shut down. Honestly the only bit of drama that actually really mattered or had any worth was #WTFU where's the fair use? To combat YouTube's broken copyright system. Which I think is great....it seems to have died though. Oh. Great. 

While we're on the topic of the internet let's talk memes. There was of course the presidential election memes. The Bee Movie also became a meme. Which by the way I rewatched this year and it honestly isn't bad. Just OK. We Are Number One, the Lazy Town Song, also became a meme. And honestly the lengths some people went to make those memes is kinda ridiculous but great at the same time. Joe Biden memes were probably my personal favorite memes from this year. Oh, and we can't forget about Harambe. Cause after all the beloved celebrity deaths we had this year a stupid gorilla nobody knew the name of until he got shot was clearly the most important.

Besides celebrity deaths and stupidity this year was also the year of anniversaries. 

Pokemon-20 Years 

Star Trek-50 Years 

The Legend of Zelda-30 Years

The Beatles held their finale concert 50 Years Ago

Elvis made his national TV debut 60 Years Ago

Rocky-40 Years

Top Gun-30 Years

Rugrats-25 Years 

Cars the Pixar Movie-10 Years 

Monster House (the first movie to ever scare me)-10 Years 

Independence Day-20 Years

Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame-20 Years 

Space Jam-20 Years 

Jingle All The Way (The Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie)-20 Years

The Matilda Movie-20 Years 

Happy Gilmore (still my favorite Adam Sandler movie)-20 Years 

Aliens-30 Years 

Ferris Bueller's Day Off-30 Years 

Metroid-30 Years 

Castlevania-30 Years 

Bubble Bobble-30 Years 

Kid Icarus-30 Years 

Diablo-20 Years

Super Mario 64-20 Years 

Crash Bandicoot-20 Years 

Super Mario RPG-20 Years 

Resident Evil-20 Years 

Tomb Raider-20 Years 

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion-10 Years 

Bully (Game)-10 Years 

Okami-10 Years 

New Super Mario Bros.-10 Years 

Class of 3000-10 Years

Curios George TV show-10 Years 

Code Geass Anime-10 Years 

Ergo Proxy Anime-10 Years 

Powerpuff Girls Z-10 Years 

Case Closed Anime-20 Years 

The Vision of Escaflowne Anime-20 Years 

Arthur Cartoon-20 Years 

Blue's Clues-Began 20 Years Ago and ended 10 Years Ago

Dexter's Lab-20 Years 

Dial M for Monkey-20 Years 

Hey Arnold-20 Years Ago 

Shrek-15 Years 

Monster's Inc.-15 Years 

Ren and Stimpy-25 Years 

Doug-25 Years 

Disney's Beauty and the Beast-25 Years 

Taylor Swift released her debut album 10 Years Ago 

Wonder Woman/Plastic Man/Captain America-75 Years

The DC Comic event Infinite Crisis turned 10

And clearly the biggest one of them all

Animated Critic-1 Year

I know amazing. 

I know there's more, but these are the ones I care the most for and that I feel are the most important.

Anyway enough about all that though. Let's talk about me. 

One of my resolutions for 2016 was to do 2 Animated Critic episodes per month. I started off good...until summer. Then things went downhill. But I did a lot this year and I feel this was a much better year quality wise than 2015. I expanded the blog a lot and introduced a lot of new shows. Evan Vs. Disney, Catch Up Session, Anime Critic, and Animated Critic Shorts. I also started a Web Video Show with Animated Critic...The Show. 

My best reviews from this year were definitely Beauty and the Obese and Legend of the Titanic (the 1 year anniversary special). You know honestly I'm beginning to feel like I'm making my mark on the internet and finding my niche and own style. Other notable reviews were my first foray with Teen Titans Go, The Season 10 premiere of Fairly Odd Parents, Joking Victim (which is what I consider my worst review), and Driven to Tears. 

Other than the reviews though we had a lot of behind the scenes stuff. Nothing unusual though. Just normal everyday stuff. 

I began the year by finding out my friend Kevin is my guardian angel. Then my old childhood friend, Adora, tried to shut down my blog. Then I met a ghost who may be an ancient ancestor of mine and now I have to help him find his brother. My cousin got a girlfriend who happens to be some sort of magical creature from another planet, and I traveled back in time because some sort of time Crystal thingies were knocked out of place. You know....the usual. It's been a long, busy, year. And besides stuff with me the world on general has been getting a lot weirder. What with witch sightings, and in Chicago there's currently a duo of vigilantes who have fought a variety of weird villains. Including a Bug Man. I feel like this is a sign that life is about to get a lot weirder. Not just for me, but for everybody in this universe. 

With all that said let's end 2016 off with a special message. This year blew. It blew hard for a lot of people. Some may choose to give up, but that's the last thing you should do. The best thing we can do is keep up hope that things will get better. I know that's easy to say and it doesn't really help much, but if we turn our hopes and dreams into a reality we can make 2017 an excellent year for everybody. So I challenge you to dream big and try as hard as you can to make those dreams a reality. Hope is really all we can have for a future that's so uncertain so don't give it up. 

Now onto my personal new year's resolutions for this blog. 

1-At least 2 big blog post a month. 

1 of those said big blog post will be an Animated Critic episode. The other will either be an Anime Critic, Evan Vs. Disney, Catch Up Session or another Animated Critic Episode. Keep in mind it says at least two so I could do more. 

2-Keep expanding the variety of shows and movies I watch. 

I did a great job of watching a lot of stuff I wouldn't normally otherwise last year, and found some stuff that could make for a good review. I hope to keep doing that in the future. 

3-Keep improving the quality of my content. 

This one goes without saying much. 

If 2016 was a good year for you, great. I hope that keeps up in 2017. If your like me and your 2016 sucked I hope 2017 is much better. Thanks for reading see you all later. Peace.