2008 in media -- retrospect

Film : apart from the handful at the Film Festival, cinema seemed to be either the standard extruded product from the bowels of Hollywood, or English-miserablist. The only one I saw was when taking Karen to see Georgiana, and that I didn't rate.

Books : almost everything I read was software related -- for SF, see above about extruded product. My recommendation on the software front would be F# for Scientists, which did the basic teaching necessary to make the other books (Foundations of..., Expert...) somewhat more comprehensible. Foundations in particular is a poor introductory text as it hides the descriptions of syntax (as opposed to accidents of the examples) in solid paragraphs of text -- you need to have grasped the language before you can really get to grips with the book.

Anime : the year when Aniplex hired an outfit to send out DMCA notifications, where fansubs were slow, but some titles were for the first time officially simulsubbed or nearly so (of which only Strike Witches took my fancy). A fair number of OK-to-good series from the middle of the year, but nothing as outstanding as '07.

No real highlight, unless Mouryou no Hako delivers as it has begun, and only one that was so bad that I regretted having watched the one episode (Mnemosyne); though quite a lot that failed out of boredom (Spice & Wolf, Shigofumi Telepathy Girl Ran).

Other titles get separate mentions earlier, or get covered in spring and summer round-ups.