for just over a year now, my friend group has been having twice-weekly anime nights in our discord server. i've been making posters for them, and i thought it'd be fun to talk about a few of my favourites here.

this post is fairly long, so most of it is under a read more. give it a look if you want!

toonami nights 1

this was the first poster i made, and i think it's still pretty good. it's very clear and readable, and has a nice style to it. i still really like what i did with the show images for this one. showing the half hour times as ".5" was a suggestion from a friend, since i think that was something the actual Toonami did in the past. i dropped that in future posters since i like how the normal times look more.

the shows in this block were pretty good. Nozaki was fun, Big O was fantastic. i hadn't seen Haibane Renmei before now and i think that show changed me to some degree, i still think about it sometimes. it hit me hard. really great show! Flip Flappers was my pick since i'd been trying to get people to watch it for years, and Eizouken is still an all-time classic.

toonami nights 3: third impact

here's what i made for the third one. out of the vertical posters i've made so far, i think this one's my favourite. the idea for this one felt solid from the start and it didn't really change a ton. the logo for this came out pretty much exactly how i wanted, and i'm still happy with it! overall though, i think the readability on this one isn't the best, and i could've done a bit better with it. looking back at this now, i think i got the perspective and the size of it wrong, too, but it worked well enough for what it is.

this lineup was pretty decent too. Zombieland Saga was a fun watch (lily!), finishing Big O was wild, and Kino's Journey was great. Ranking of Kings was decent but it definitely has problems. the stuff in the ending sucked, the imperialist shit stuffed into it is bad, i don't remember what else there was that bugged me about it... Ergo Proxy was a fun surprise. it's a show i've been wanting to watch the rest of ever since we went through the first half. some neat 2000s sci-fi mystery stuff in it. also a really funny title drop moment that none of us have forgotten about.

toonami nights: version 5

this is probably my second favourite out of all of the posters so far. i had a different idea i was working on for this block, it wasn't working out, and then this one came to me out of nowhere and i just had to do it. this is a screenshot from a virtual machine that i installed XP on entirely just to make this poster with. this turned out pretty much exactly how i wanted it to and its so good. i think one thing this could've needed in retrospect was having the titles of the shows visible past just the window titles, but i'm not sure where i could've fit those while keeping the look i wanted.

this block surprised me quite a bit. there was a lot i wasn't sure about going into it, but i enjoyed most of it! Yowamushi Pedal was probably the biggest surprise in this. i expected this show would just completely bounce off of me, but i was hooked on it. i wouldn't have thought a show about cycling would be so engaging. its great!

i'd heard a fair bit about Rose of Versailles and it was cool to finally get to see it. there's a lot of shows we watch half of and then maybe finish the rest of later, but we ended up seeing Rose of Versailles all the way through to the end. i think most of it is really good, but the ending chunk seems really weak compared to what the manga does, and i'm hoping to read through it sometime since i've heard it's a LOT better overall.

Lain was interesting for sure. i knew barely anything about the show going into it, and i think that made it a bit better of a watch. i still don't really know what to think of it now. i don't know much about this show's popularity, but it kinda feels like one that people would misinterpret or like, get the wrong ideas about. i dunno. all i know is its pretty well-known.

toonami nights: episode 8

and here's the most recent one, finished last week. i think currently this is my favourite poster. it's not overly complicated, it's readable, and has a really nice look to it. not a ton to say about it, really.

we're only two episodes into this block right now, but it's been great so far. Rozen Maiden was my girlfriend's pick since we watched it earlier this year, and people have been enjoying it! it's a fun little show and i'm glad we're getting to show it to people. Nichijou is as good as it always is. Ghost in the Shell is still one of my favourites, i think. we watched the first half of it in block #6 and it was a huge hit. i'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of it.

Princess Tutu is one i knew nothing about going into it, and it's a weird, fun show about ballet and fairy tales. in the second episode there was a literal anteater girl called Anteaterina and it was great. Petshop of Horrors has been a fun watch so far. it's a short 4-episode thing and the first half of it has been pretty alright. some problems for sure, but the horror stories are good.

last thoughts

i really like getting to make these posters. its a lot of fun, and is pretty good practice for some design work. it's neat looking back at the older ones and seeing how my style and my skill has improved over time, and thinking of what things influenced these. i'd like to get to make more stuff like this - these posters are pretty much the only time i do stuff like this. these group watches are one of the few things that get me to actively watch different stuff, and i'm really glad we've been able to stick with them for so long. soon enough we'll have done 10 of them!

thanks for reading this big post about the posters i've made.

if you liked this post and wanna see more of my stuff, i have a print store here.