I know it’s a martial arts reference (I hope it’s a martial arts reference), but when I saw this on the way to work this morning, I immediately thought of something else entirely.

Ah, to be an anime fan.

Nagi lost. By a mere 22 votes.

Japanese voters chose Nagi over Rika, 53% to 47%. Foreign voters, on the other hand, chose Rika, 60% to 40%. Of the total votes, 24% belonged to foreign voters.

I take back everything I said.

I like to use anime images for desktop wallpaper on my computers at home. Big surprise, I know. Typically, I like to match the wallpaper to the season: cherry blossoms in Spring, swimsuits and festivals in Summer, and so on. There’s one season that always gives me trouble when searching for suitable images, however. And it just so happens to be my favorite season of the year, making it all the more frustrating.

Yes, it’s Autumn.

Sometimes, I wonder if the anime industry has something against Autumn. Perhaps there was a premium on orange and red paint back in the cel animation days? Who knows. All I do know is that Autumn rarely makes an appearance in anime, and when it does, it’s often for only a short period of time.

If you think about it, a fair number of anime series - especially those with a high school setting - begin their stories in Spring. It’s the season of new beginnings in Japan, and a lot of anime series kick their stories off just as the cherry blossoms are blooming and the new school year is getting underway. It can’t be Spring forever, however. Spring eventually gives way to Summer.

Swimsuits, festivals, vacations… Summer is another staple of the seasonal landscape in anime. Some short stories take place exclusively in Summer; “natsuyasumi” shows are perfect for telling stories about adolescent characters outside of a classroom setting, for example. Also, shows that begin their stories in Spring often morph into Summer in short time. It’s a season ripe with romance, fanservice potential, and general debauchery. It’s no wonder a lot of anime series spend their entire middle sections on the months of July and August. Gotta get the cute girls out of their school uniforms and into swimsuits, after all.

But it would be premature to end a story in Summer. A Summer romance is meant to be temporary. The protagonist in a bishoujo game adaptation, for example, must eventually leave the smorgasboard of swimsuits behind and come crawling back to the chosen girl. And, for the sake of the production budget, those classroom backgrounds should probably be put to use once again. So, back to school we go… except, we’re now 3/4 of the way through our episode run. Time to start thinking about wrapping things up.

Well, what better setting for a dramatic and romantic conclusion than Christmas Eve, right? The twinkling lights, the hand-knitted scarves, the falling snow (it always snows on Christmas Eve in Japan, after all)… time to blow the budget on particle effects and go out with a bang! See you again in the sequel!

One question, though… what the hell happened to Autumn?

I wouldn’t be writing this if it wasn’t true. Nine times out of ten, Autumn is completely passed over in anime series that have stories which, theoretically, should pass through the months of September, October, and November. And the number of shows that take place almost exclusively in Autumn can be counted on one hand; of what I’ve watched, only To Heart and Tenchi Muyo come immediately to mind. There are others, I’m sure, and there are a few shows that place extra emphasis on the season (the final season of Cardcaptor Sakura, for example, takes place in Autumn), but compared to Spring, Summer, and even Winter, Autumn just doesn’t get much respect in anime.

So, I suppose it’s no surprise that anime artwork with an Autumn theme is difficult to come by. And that’s why, every October, as I go searching for something new for my desktop, I return to the same few images I use every year. This year, I went with naked Mahoro and a takoyaki bandit…

Although, given how it looks outside my window at the moment, I should probably just break out the Kanon wallpaper. What the hell happened to Autumn, indeed.