Mainichi Anime Yume
I’m getting close to six years of blogging now and during this time I’ve picked up on the variety of ways people comment on blogs, whether they own a blog themselves or just read them. Naturally the diversity of blog comments and the authors behind them can’t all be categorized nicely, but I have noticed some interesting blog commenter trends…
The spring ’12 anime season started rather late this year, with some series already five episodes in and others only two or three. Because of this, I was debating whether to make my seasonal “first impressions” post or not. But since I ended up watching more shows than I originally intended, and I have a lot to say about them, I decided to go ahead with it despite being further into some shows than others…
Here’s Part 2 of my ongoing Fundamentals of Japanese post series. In Part 1 I went over how to pronounce Japanese and read it using English letters (romaji). Now I’m going to discuss how it’s read using the three Japanese alphabets…
An interesting thought occurred to me recently in terms of how anime series are structured. It seems that most anime series focus on “building” one out of three narrative aspects – either building the story, building the characters, or building the world. Some focus on two out of three, a few manage to focus equally on all three – but it’s intriguing to think about which of the three each series is most concerned with…
It’s been a while since I wrote a standard anime review post (I believe the last one was for Steins;Gate in September). Since I can’t think of any theme-based post to write for Mirai Nikki, I opted for a general review of the series…
Welcome to the first installment in a series of posts I’m going to be writing about the fundamentals of the Japanese language. Part 1 will be an introduction to the post series as well as covering an aspect of the language I feel is the very first step one should start with when learning it – pronunciation…
This topic was a recent entry on AnimeNation’s Ask John column. It begs the question of why American anime fans are often vehemently opposed to moe, fan service, or any other type of anime that sexualizes its characters, while anime that feature extreme violence are rarely opposed and are instead praised. The opposite seems to be true in Japan, with the Japanese fandom adoring fanciful, cute series while the dark, violent series are fewer and less adored. So what determines this difference between how American and Japanese fans react to sexuality in anime versus violence in anime?…
I’m a little late with posting my thoughts about the last fall ’11/winter ’12 anime I finished watching, as well as picking what anime I’ll be watching this spring season. To get them done faster, I decided to put both on one post…
It’s not unusual for people who become anime fans to also become interested in the country that anime comes from – Japan. I’ve seen this interest in some form or other in most of the anime fans I’ve encountered, ranging from mild to extreme. There are people who take up a slight interest in an aspect or two of Japanese culture, and perhaps learn a few Japanese words, but otherwise don’t pursue Japan/Japanese things…all the way down to what the Internet calls “weeaboos” and “Japanophiles,” or people who convince themselves that Japan is superior to other countries and they insist on incorporating Japanese words and cultural habits into their everyday lives, becoming a Japan connoisseur in terms of things like music and food, yearning to go to Japan, and even wishing they were Japanese. But does every person who gets into anime necessarily take up an interest in Japan, whether mild or extreme?…
Despite being produced by the respected Noitamina and Production I.G., Guilty Crown has garnered a lot of criticism from fans, especially amongst bloggers. By the first episode, people were already deriding it as too full of cliches and having an annoying protagonist, many dropping it before the episodes even hit the double digits. But while everyone around me was hating on it, I continued to enjoy it (seriously not mockingly). Throughout its 22 episodes, I tried to see what’s so despicable about it and couldn’t find anything that was that bad. Do I think it’s a great anime? No…but do I think it’s a good, or at least a decent anime? I’d like to argue so…