| 6:27pm | Japan's increasingly superficial pop culture? | | | | Superflat is a new phrase I have discovered today. It sounds like an obscure 60s rock band but is actually a growing artistic movement subverting, rejecting and critiquing Japan's increasingly superficial pop culture; often by lampooning it with artwork that features the cute, smiling face of a |
| 2:06am | Berserk - 3 - The Hawk that soars ever higher | | | | The moustache twiddling decadence caused by extended aristocracy is an issue central to the narrative of Berserk. Regardless of social standing, we all like to dream that we are destined for greatness, to achieve something worthwhile. Aristocracy exists to elongate wealth and protect respect no |
| 6:30am | Red Garden - Only in death do they find true happiness | | | | I've been an advocate of Red Garden since the first episode, but until this past weekend I hadn't seen beyond episode three. Red Garden isn't easy to watch - if the characters aren't paralysing my brain with screaming, tearful grief, they start singing instead. I like that the show is trying | | |
| 2:01am | Berserk - 2 - Sparks fly as the wheels of fate spin | | | | Episode two introduces us to the important characters that make up the "Band Of The Hawk" - in other words, the personalities that dominate the rest of Berserk. The dark-skinned Casca is an exceptionally talented swordsman who just so happens to be a woman. That she commands so |
| 6:57am | Global culture infects the generations (with hip-hop) | | | | Later today IĀ'll get to watch some raw anime Ā episode one of Afro Samurai. And this time the Japanese can fansub it. A perverse notion if ever IĀ've heard one, but quite clearly Western culture is directly infiltrating (a nicer way of putting it would be influencing) JapanĀ's anime industry, |
| 6:26am | MP3 Spotlight: Conquer the world with Death Note | | | | IĀ'm sitting here feeling like I can take on the world, IĀ'm listening to the Death Note soundtrack. This is the music that makes Light scribbling in his notebookĀ
, hell, eating a packet of crisps, rock us like itĀ's an earth shattering moment. Understand then that this music is overblown and | | |
| 11:16pm | Berserk - 1 - An introduction to obsession | | | | IĀ'm just going to come right out and say it Ā Berserk is my favourite anime of all time. I became an anime fan because of Naruto, but Berserk and its alluring quantities of bloody violence, epic action and tragic friendship immediately captured my heart and held onto it ever since. I still | | |
| 5:37am | D.Gray-man - 12 - Limitless sacrifice? | | | | Like most of its Shonen Jump brethren, D.Gray-man is weakly balanced on a thin line between generic and fun. Just this evening IĀ've caught up to episode 12 and feel torn by the somewhat superficial character development. Moody bishonen Kanda is a good example of how utterly archetypal some of | | |
| 5:41am | MP3 Spotlight: Highlights of Welcome to the NHK! | | | | Looking back on 2006 we have seen a handful great series come and go, but even fewer great soundtracks have enlightened our senses. And when I say great, I mean music you can listen to at home, at work and on the bus. Toshio Masuda's beautifully sparse work on Mushishi was a relaxing and naturally | | |
| 1:52am | Welcome to the NHK [END] - And so dies the NEET | | | | It was cute to see NHK end with a role reversal between Misaki and Satou - there are big differences between a lazy hikkimori and having a genuinely mixed up life. In spite of his personal problems Satou was always a fairly normal person just in need of tough love. When his parents' money dries up, | | |
| 1:00am | Again the fate of the world is in the hands of 14 kids (Bokurano) | | | | Its been a while readers, 7 days to be precise, and as we all know, 7 days on internet may as well be a lifetime. I won't labor you with the details, but suffice to say that this gradual slow down in blogging is sadly down to cliche reasons; I have found a new job that forces me awake by 6:30AM- an |
| 8:13am | Observations of Everything: Bye-Bye November | | | | Still hopelessly hooked onBlack Lagoon (2nd Barrage)Episode 19 and countingThe bog-standard Naruto fillers would be a lot more interesting if they managed to nab the creative bastards working on Black Lagoon. With that said the 2nd season has often flattered to deceive and appears to be more | | |
| 9:27am | Welcome to the NHK! - (Never) Learning to Fly | | | | Having just finished watching episode 19, this must be the first time I've left off Welcome to the NHK feeling happy! It was fantastic to see a smiling Torotoro-san biking around and about the streets of Tokyo; you can see in his grinning face that suddenly life is worth living again.Despite | | |
| 2:36am | Reflecting on Kemonozume - Too cool for otaku | | | | It's fair to say that the creative staff "working on" (more like playing with) Kemonozume must have had so much fun, from flying heads and sexed up monkeys to a perverted old man shoving a pair of severed female arms down his skanky speedos - this is a show that clearly had no | | |
|
![[Valid RSS]](/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/images/valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
