Been watching through a curated list of anime this past year; recommendations coming from here at HLP and from subreddits for the series that I liked. So far, I have in total seen (in order):
Space Battleship Yamato 2199
Legend of the Galactic Heroes (OVA + Movies)
Arpeggio of Blue Steel
Kancolle
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Hunter X Hunter
I found
Arpeggio and
Kancolle to be wholly mediocre and mostly just tried them out of my interest in naval history.
FMA:B and
HXH were excellent. I even started reading the
HXH manga that Togashi has been updating to stick with the new arc.
However, I would consider none of these to be my favorite, as that distinction goes to the collection of Ghibli films that I just finished watching over the last 2 weeks. I'd heard of the minds of Miyazaki and Takahata before but never gave them any attention. That was a mistake. Those were some outstanding movies, from
Nausicaa to
Kaguya.
Going to be taking a bit of a break for a week or so to focus on my research, but the next on the list is
Death Note. I've heard good things, so we'll see.
As for non-anime related entertainment,
Downton Abbey has recently caught my attention. Didn't think I'd ever care for the lives of English nobles or that they'd be entertaining but this has been an excellent series. Just finished season 2 and will be starting season 3 shortly.
That is all