Something interesting happened while I was watching the last few episodes of Kill la Kill: I found myself cheering on the villains. As Satsuki and the Elite Four launched their assault on the neighboring schools, I was eager to see them bring down the proverbial hammer on their opponents. At first glance, this shouldn’t make any sense. Having spent a [Read more…]
I bought exactly four anime series on DVD or Blu-Ray in 2013. If you went back to 2008 and presented my past self with that number, he’d probably assume that I’d either gone broke or simply stopped watching so much anime. I haven’t gone broke (though I’m working on it), and I watch more anime now than ever before. So, [Read more…]
Space Dandy has been grabbing a lot of attention this season, and it’s not difficult to see why. It shares some major creative staff with Cowboy Bebop, and offers a similar sense of sci-fi stylishness. On top of that, it’s airing in English on American TV in sync with the Japanese broadcast. But is it any good? With all the [Read more…]
After an onslaught of man-eating titans and terminally unpopular high school heroines, another year of anime is officially in the rearview mirror. As we all huddle indoors and wait for the first Big Thing of 2014 to appear, I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon of year-end award columns. After all, it’s a natural part of the otaku lifestyle to [Read more…]
I was making a futile attempt at organizing my anime DVD collection the other day when I noticed something interesting: a huge number of heroes in anime are mercenaries, assassins, or other miscellaneous guns for hire. Perhaps more intriguing is that by comparison, very few good guys seem to work for a real national military. The thought stuck in my [Read more…]
While Kill La Kill has been grabbing the lion’s share of attention this season, it’s not the only series to offer clever commentary on a well-established genre. In contrast to Kill’s shark-jumping action parody, Samurai Flamenco has been subtly questioning the core elements of masked superhero franchises like Kamen Rider. While the show’s biggest strength has been its witty deconstruction [Read more…]
It seems like the Blu-Ray release of Girls Und Panzer from Sentai Filmworks has put the fan-favorite series back into discussion lately, and it’s not difficult to see why. It has the sort of delightfully crazy premise that only anime could bring us, and show itself is surprisingly entertaining. It’s also not the only recent anime series to combine the [Read more…]
I’ve been keeping up with the simulcast of Non Non Biyori this season, and at first glance it’s a bit difficult to explain why. Like most shows in the “slice of life” genre, there isn’t really much of a plot to speak of, and any conflicts that arise among the characters are pretty mundane. If I had to summarize the [Read more…]
At the start of the fall season, I decided to try out a pair of sports anime series: Ace of Diamond and Yowamushi Pedal. Six weeks later, I’m thoroughly enjoying one of them, while the other has fallen off my radar completely. Since both follow a fairly typical genre structure, why the vast difference in my lasting interest? As it [Read more…]
Way back when I was in high school (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), there was a mythical idea floating around within groups of awkward teenage geeks. “Imagine,” we would whisper, “if the school library had… manga.” Fueled by wild rumors that some school in some town in some state had started lending out volumes of Death Note or Dragon Ball, [Read more…]