editorials – Page 5

What do you like in an anime couple?

January 18, 2013 by Yumeka 25 Comments

In a post on the blog Shojo Corner, author starsamaria discusses what qualities the best anime and manga couples possess. Like many other things in the fandom, what makes an anime couple good to one fan could be quite the contrary to another, so it was interesting to read the points she brought up and think about my own criteria for a good anime couple. I’m sure there are some who care little about romance in anime, but I for one am quite the sucker for a good couple, whether it’s a big part of the overall story or not…

The significance of the second viewing

November 24, 2012 by Yumeka 27 Comments

I’ve always believed that any great work of fiction that you enjoyed the first time should definitely be watched at least a second time – the first time it’s new to you and a lot of the value comes from surprises and novelty, while the second viewing allows you to focus on things like thoroughly examining the story, characters, and writing, and seeing how well its entertainment value holds up when you already know what’s going to happen. Anime is no different in this respect and there are many titles I’ve watched over the years where my opinion did change for worse or for better upon a second viewing…

Anime for people who don’t like anime

November 17, 2012 by Yumeka 39 Comments

A recent post on Japan Powered talks about certain anime titles that even people who hate anime could watch and enjoy. The idea it’s bringing out is that, despite how much we love it, we know that all anime – from shonen to slice-of-life – is full of tropes and character archetypes we see over and over again. Many of these cliches we love, some we don’t, but generally what makes us stay fans is that we don’t mind such things in our anime or even have specific tropes we can’t get enough of. But for some people, anime-specific tropes such as bishy guys, moe girls, giant robots, wild fantasy battles, and cuteness for cuteness’ sake, just aren’t their thing. So today I wanted to think about what anime are virtually free of these cliches and seem to cater to universal tastes rather than otaku tastes…

The appeal of trading card games

November 4, 2012 by Yumeka 19 Comments

Lucky Star Weiss Schwarz cards

I know trading cards have been around for a while, but if you were a kid growing up in the 90s or later, you’ve most likely indulged in them somewhat, whether it was Magic the Gathering, Pokemon cards, or just regular cards to collect such as baseball cards. Every major anime and other media franchise, especially those aimed at a younger audience, usually has some kind of trading cards fans can buy. Today I want to share my experiences with trading cards and discuss why they have such appeal, especially in our world that’s vastly becoming more digitized…

Our expectations for anime

October 11, 2012 by Yumeka 25 Comments

kevo’ over on Desu ex Machina recently wrote a post about an upcoming anime he can’t help but highly anticipate, while simultaneously realizing that it doesn’t always pay for us to set our expectations for an unknown anime too high. As someone who rarely hypes up an anime I haven’t yet seen, it got me thinking about how our expectations can make or break our opinion about an anime…

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Posted in Editorials and Ramblings
Tagged anime fandom, editorials

My favorite and least favorite anime cliches

October 4, 2012 by Yumeka 24 Comments

As much as we love anime, there’s no denying that the medium is, for better or worse, full of cliches. But as I’ve mentioned in past posts, this isn’t always a bad thing; I’m of the opinion that a cliche doesn’t necessarily equal poor writing if it carries out an appealing cliche well or adds something memorable to it. Not only does anime have its own set of unique cliches not found in other mediums, but because it caters to a lot of different genres, it naturally has cliches to match all kinds of tastes. We all have our anime cliches we like and don’t like, so today I’d like to look at my favorite and least favorite ones…

Visual realism in video games versus anime

September 29, 2012 by Yumeka 20 Comments

In a recent post on deluscar, Kai brings up the fact that video games have become a lot more “realistic” than they used to be, especially in visual terms thanks to advanced technology. But he also argues that even though they’ve taken on this new level of depth, they still can’t display the same level of realism as anime and perhaps other animation can…

Expanding casts of anime characters

September 24, 2012 by Yumeka 14 Comments

Ace Railgun recently brought up the topic of how casts of characters in anime are handled, whether the series has a large and gradually expanding cast or a small, consistent one. It’s interesting to think about how the number of characters in an anime can affect the overall quality, especially in regards to how many episodes the series has…

Anime tastes I’ve acquired

September 10, 2012 by Yumeka 36 Comments

A recent post by Leap250 talks about how, through our years of being anime fans, we often acquire tastes for certain genres and tropes in anime that we didn’t originally have. Even though I’ve always been pretty open-minded as far as the types of anime I watch, there were a few I was hesitant about back in the day that I like now…

How we judge anime characters

September 6, 2012 by Yumeka 22 Comments

A couple of blogs have recently posted lists of anime characters who are well loved among the fandom, but they personally don’t care for. It got me thinking about what each of our individual idea is of a likable character versus an unlikable one, and just like our preference for favorite anime in general, one person’s “worst” is another person’s “best.” However, because anime characters don’t have as many facets as anime series in general, I think our opinions about them tend to be more polarized – we either love (mostly) everything about them or we dislike (mostly) everything about them. So today I felt like examining how we judge anime characters…

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Posted in Editorials and Ramblings
Tagged anime fandom, editorials