Interpretations of time-travel in anime

Time-travel has been a popular trope in science fiction media for a long time, and anime is no exception. While not extremely common in anime, there are nevertheless a handful of titles where time-travel plays an important role. Today I want to examine how time-travel is interpreted differently in a few such anime…

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Anime’s three “building” categories

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…

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The value of silence in anime

A couple of weeks ago I went to the theater to see The Secret World of Arrietty, the latest Studio Ghibli film being released in the US by Disney. Unfortunately I saw the movie on President’s Day, so the theater was packed with kids and families who had the day off. But despite this, the kids weren’t as loud as they could have been throughout the movie and it was indeed a very good film. However, it also got me thinking about a very noticeable difference between an anime production like Arrietty, and most other animated films kids here are exposed to nowadays…

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What it means to be nostalgic – a tribute to old anime

As I’ve grown out of student-hood these past few years and moved on to being what the Japanese call a “shakaijin” (person of society), I’ve been taking the word “nostalgia” more to heart. I’ve often wondered, “How old does one have to be in order to feel nostalgic?” And while pondering this questions, I’d like to pay tribute to some old anime that hold particularly nostalgic memories for me…

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My 12 moments of anime for 2011

It’s now New Year’s Day here in the US, and like always, I want to do a “picks of the year” type post to celebrate. I started participating in the blogsphere’s annual “12 moments of anime” project in 2009. Since last year however, I’ve preferred to list my moments all in one post, unlike other bloggers who give each moment its own post. I usually reserve New Year’s to countdown my favorite anime of the year, but since I’ve already done that via The AniBloggers’ Choice Awards, I’ll be posting my 12 moments today instead. So, without further adieu, here are my 12 best anime-related moments of 2011…

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Are you ever too old for kids anime?

Kids anime like Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! was the first kind of anime I watched and my gateway into becoming the major fan that I am today. Many of us share a similar story in that watching dubbed kids anime on TV when we were younger was what began our anime fandom. But as we’ve grown older and discovered more “adult” anime, the appeal of the kids anime we used to love has faded for most of us. For me however, I’m still very much a fan of kids anime…

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My top 10 anime endings

*Notice: For some strange reason, commenting on my blog was not working from roughly 1pm yesterday to 1pm today (PST). If you left a comment on the blog during that time, your comment has been lost. I sincerely apologize for this – I don’t know how it happened, but luckily my fellow blogger chikorita157 was able to fix it. Commenting should be back to normal now but please let me know if you experience any problems.*

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I recently counted down my top 10 anime openings, so now it’s time to move on to endings, as difficult as it was…

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My experience with bootleg anime products

If you’ve been an anime consumer for any length of time, I’m sure you know that there’s a ton of bootleg anime products out there. From biggies like DVDs and figures to minute things like posters and pins, bootleg products can be found in stores, online, and anywhere anime is sold. I wouldn’t say I’m obsessive when it comes to buying only guaranteed official products, but with few exceptions I’ve recently been making a conscious effort to avoid bootlegs…

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Real pokemon

This week has been unexpectedly busy for me, so today I’m just going to share something easy and fun…

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Pokemon Black & White: questioning the morality of the franchise

Everyone interested in the new Pokemon games, Black and White, has more or less dabbled in some part of the games by now. Even in the anime blogsphere, lots of reviews and daily gaming logs have been popping up. But since I’ve already written a review of the game when I got the Japanese version, and I don’t have that much to add after playing the English version, I decided to focus this post on the specific conflict of the games’ storyline. It’s a conflict that has intrigued players because it does something unexpected – it questions the very morality of the Pokemon world…

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