Most of my January reviews never ended up on Booklikes because I skipped out on the site for a while out of frustration. Thankfully, BL seems to be back to normal (and will continue to work well, I hope).

The most enjoyable stuff I read was probably:

- Mayday by Chris Strange - I loved the Maydays (aka kaiju) and ended up enjoying this despite the overly violent and misogynistic main character.

- Azumanga Daioh Omnibus - A reread. The final volume in the omnibus adds emotional depth to the series' general ridiculousness and still has the power to give me warm fuzzies.

- The Ancient Magus' Bride, vol. 1 - This shows a lot of promise so far.

TV watching went even better:

- Big Windup! - A rewatch. Although I don't like sports, I am often drawn to sports anime. Go figure. This is one of my top favorite sports anime of all time, and it boggles my mind that it didn't earn Funimation great gobs of money.

- Big Windup! 2 - I'm so glad Nozomi Entertainment licensed the rest of this series. I didn't think it was as good as the first season, but it was still fun, and it addressed one of the weaknesses of the first season in a way that had me wishing there were a third season or that the manga was available in English.

My favorite covers of the month:

Although I'm happy for the author that she got her rights back from Torquere and was able to self-publish this, I have to admit that I prefer Torquere's cover (pictured here) to the cover the author used in her rerelease. That said, I think the new covers for the rest of the series are way better than Torquere's.

This cover is one of the things that prompted me to give Mayday a closer look.

I love how gleeful Rocket looks.