| 10:09pm | Timelessness and anime / Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG | | | | In the four weeks since this blog was last updated, I’ve seen at least 80 episodes of anime! Not bad, eh? But to write anything of decent length, more than ever, I need to feel like what I’m writing about is really worth your time. That isn’t to say everything airing right now is poor,... |
| 8:01pm | When all that’s left is dust | | | | When I think about Boogiepop Phantom, I’m also reminded of other recent Madhouse anime, like Shigurui and Casshern Sins. Each has a strange aesthetic; seductive yet tinged by an under-lying sense of sadness and desolation. It would be easy to categorise them as dark and depressing, but they are... |
| 10:00pm | Why Boogiepop? You wouldn’t willingly escape into a nightmare, right? | | | | The coolest thing about Boogiepop Phantom is that it’s just really fucked up. Too often in anime are teenagers romanticised. Everything’s so sweet, so melodramatic; no permanent damage. It’s just easier to watch something like Toradora, where everyone’s so cheerful, ready to... |
| 12:00am | Naruto Shippuuden episode 82 is a masterpiece | | | | After all these years, I still love watching Naruto. I’ll place it on hiatus every now and then, but it still is, and always will be, one of my biggest favourites. This past weekend marked the end of my latest break from Shippuuden, but already, here I am again; writing away. I couldn’t... | | |
| 8:15pm | Bee Train’s bullet ballet Phantom is really good | | | | Bee Train doesn’t exactly have the best of reputations, be it their bias for girls with guns or their notoriously poor production values, fact is their work polarises opinion and attracts its fair share of detractors. I’ve seen neither Noir nor Madlax, was horrified by the low budget vibe... | | |
| 6:00pm | Fullmetal Alchemist is overlooked as horror | | | | Something that ‘outsiders’ probably don’t realise about Fullmetal Alchemist is just how grotesque and disturbing it can be for mainstream shonen; it has never been a story that shys away from death, even when the victims are cute little girls and their pet dogs! This lurched back into... |
| 4:00pm | The quietness of Cross Game | | | | When writing about Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, I noted that I think it’s great because it has moments of exciting, fluid animation. I realise that’s a fairly superficial thing to say, but I think it’s true, too, and now, as if to immediately contradict myself, I’m going... |
| 2:24pm | A love letter to FMA: Brotherhood #19 and why I love anime | | | | I still read my fair share of blogs and forums, so I had something of an inkling that this episode of Brotherhood was going to be quite special, but even still, I loved it to pieces, and once the credits were finally rolling, all I could think is that this was the exact moment that Brotherhood finally... |
| 3:57pm | Island manga: an isolated town enclosed by huge, unscalable walls… | | | | The island is an isolated town enclosed by huge, unscalable walls, where the outside world is a mystery that no-one even has laid eyes on for 400 years. As its culture dies a slow death, the town’s people have forgotten how to read and write, but the children still dream of escaping, wondering... |
| 10:34pm | Cross Game and Touch, and feminism in Japan | | | | I wasn’t aware Mitsuru Adachi (mangaka) even existed until the spring season of this very year, but all that changed after I’d seen the first two episodes of Cross Game. I realised I’d missed out on a lot of great anime of his and, to fill the gap in-between episodes of Cross Game,... |
| 2:20pm | The scent of flames: Armored Trooper Votoms | | | | To be honest, I doubt there is much I can say that will convince you to take a look at Armored Trooper Votoms. It’s an old series, with a heavy emphasis on war. Chirico is no Kamina. The characters are gritty and unrefined. When it can be hard to sit through just the 1 episode, 52 feels impossible,... |
| 7:21pm | Slice of life | | | | I know it has been a long time since I published anything, but I hope you haven’t given up on me just yet. There is warmth in these embers still, I can feel it. I just need stoke them up is all, with a bit of hard work and guts. The stupid thing is, it’s not as though I’ve stopped... | | |
| 6:02pm | Embracing the end of the world | | | | I’ve seen Ghost in the Shell many times; the most recent happened to be Friday night. It is a beautiful film, both beautifully animated and beautifully directed, only 80 minutes long too, and just as importantly, every time I watch it, I feel like I’m interpreting it in a slightly different... | | |
| 7:59pm | For your consideration, Blue Comet SPT Layzner | | | | Mecha anime has always been a bit hit or miss for me. I’ll often find that I’m not as attracted to the mecha as I am to the science fiction stories they inhabit. That is to say, I enjoy a lot of good mecha anime because I enjoy a lot of good science fiction. I suppose it was inevitable,... |
|
![[Valid RSS]](/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/images/valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
