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How To Build a Series: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Reawakened
Okay, the Saiki K. series is a whole franchise built around a gag manga, and like any gag-based show, as long as the jokes keep coming, so do…
Week off, no post
Yeah, like it says, I’m taking this week off because I am CRANKING on my novel. Be back next week. Pinky promise!
Irrelevant Post: Camp NaNoWriMo
Many of you know that November is National Novel Writing Month, and those of you who have been following this blog religiously – both of you. Thanks! –…
How To Build a Story: Descending Stories
I know there’s a Descending Stories anime. I think it’s on Tootsieroll, or whatever that service that Sony just bought is called, but I haven’t seen it. But…
Stopped Reading This: Golden Kamuy
A while back I posted about anime I’d stopped watching, and someone, Irina maybe, said, “You know, it would be instructive if you could tell us why you…
How to Cook a Series: Demon Slayer
Everyone thinks writers start with a plot and write. I don’t. I think about what I want to write about, and then cook up whatever other pieces I…
Character Analysis: Taiga Aisaka
I think Toradora is a really well-constructed story, and I think I’ll write about why sometime in the not-so-distant future. But here’s part of it: it’s a classic…
Story Drop
Okay, this time I’m plugging another of my stories. They paid me! Yay!! No, it wasn’t a lot. I will not be quitting my day job this week/month/year.…
How to Cook a Series: Domestic Girlfriend
Okay, let’s throw something on the floor here: You got this high school student named Natsuo. He’s got a heavy crush on this girl named Hina. In the…
Partly Relevant Aside: Comic Book Weekend
Okay, so I have a writing buddy named Kate Kulig. She writes a series called the Bloody Murder Mysteries. Yeah, that’s a link to her Amazon page. I’ve…
Character Analysis: Faye Valentine
I have said before and will say again that Shinichiro Watanabe treats his female characters more fairly than just about any director either of us can name. Well,…
How to Build a Series: Teasing Master Tagaki-san
I’ve been watching something utterly inane called Teasing Master Takagi-san on Netflix. To qualify, “Teasing Master” is a title, not a verb: Takagi does the teasing rather than…
Buddy’s Book
I love anime and I love manga and I love talking about anime and manga. But I make no bones about the fact that I’m a writer. And…
Oh, So Tropical: The Stupid Harem Protagonist
You’ve seen harem shows. Just admit it. Admit that you are powerless, and put yourself in the hands of a higher power. No, wait. That’s for alcohol. But…
Anniversary Post
I started this blog three years ago. It’s my second attempt at blogging. The first lasted one post. Yeah, that didn’t work. The theme here is that I…
How to Build a Series: Strike Witches
I’ll just say it: the neat thing about Strike Witches is that it’s like a good stew, a whole bunch of things thrown together that work together to…
Rotoscope and You: The Flowers of Evil
The Flowers of Evil is one of those anime that creates powerful responses in people, and not all of them are good. For one thing, in tone and…
Irrelevant Post: RIP Sylvain Sylvain
It’s pretty common knowledge that my favorite rock and roll bands in the glorious history of rock and roll are the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls.…
The Power of Two: Tatsuhiro and Misaki
Welcome to the NHK is one of those things I like a lot in part because it’s about grownups with real problems instead of kids with robot suits…
Oh, So Tropical: The Nose Bleed
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: tropes exist because they work. If you’re a writer like I am, tropes is your friend. Here’s a question…
How Not to End a Series: School-Live!
I’m relatively new to anime/manga fandom, and School-Live! is the first series I’ve managed to follow “traditionally.” You know: waiting for weeks or months for the next issue,…
The Power of Two: Rei and Shinji
Okay, Neon Genesis Evangelion is too cool for words and everyone knows it. This is not news. One of the ways it’s cool is that it has multiple…
The Power of Three: Millennium Actress
Satoshi Kon was the original flim-flam man. Well, probably not. The original flim-flam man probably dates back to about five minutes after the invention of portable currency. If…
How to Build a Story: The Flowers of Evil (Part II)
Okay, last week we left the Flowers of Evil kids in the pits, as Acts I and II of the five that comprise the story resolve the first…
How to Build a Story: The Flowers of Evil (Part I)
Sawa Nakamura her own self I waited until the complete The Flowers of Evil manga set went on sale before picking it up. I won’t say that was…
Story Drop!
It’s been a long time between story drops for this boy, and this will be the last for a while. Yeah, yeah, COVID blah blah. Those of you…
Oh, So Tropical: Avatar: The Last Airbender
I had a date with a nice lady whose only experience of anime was Avatar: The Last Airbender. “I wonder what you think of it?” she said. Well,…
Character Analysis: Gene Starwind
You know, there are characters that are hard to figure out, and you can stare at the screen for hour and hours saying, “Wow. This is working and…
What’s In a Name: Chibiusa
Okay, same thing as “What’s in a name?” last time. What in Heaven’s name does that name mean? It’s routine now for anime presented in the west to…
The Power of Two: Taiga and Ryuji
There was something so overpoweringly attractive going on in Toradora! that I watched it straight through twice. I mean, who knows? Might have been COVID coma at work.…
Character Analysis: Edward
Sometimes when you’re just walking around thinking about nothing you think of something. Like, I mean, think about Ed from Cowboy Bebop, right? What a great character! Why…
Medium Matters: School-Live! II
Okay, so last time we looked at how manga and anime differ. Anime is an action medium while manga has more depth; the anime business is higher financial…
Medium Matters (Part 1): School-Live!
I really like School-Live!, the manga. Although as the story winds to its end – the final English language volume went on sale in late August – the…
How To Cook a Series: Nana
Nana is one of those things that’s actually easier to think about than a lot of anime, because it transcends the genre(s) in a specific way. Yeah, it’s…
Character Analysis: Sawa Nakamura
Flower of Evil is one of those things that when I read a summary of the manga I said, “I got to get me some of that.” Now,…
The Eternal Parallelogram: FLCL
So I subscribe to an anime goodie box services. Sometimes they send me real crap, as in someone there thought it would be cute to send The World’s…
Character Analysis: Rikka Takanashi
There was something powerfully cute about Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions. It’s about kids with delusions of having super powers (yeah, chunibyo), which puts them on the extreme…
How to Write a Sailor Moon Episode
Sailor Moon is the longest series I’ve ever watched, and the source I was using, for whatever reason, stopped supplying dubbed or subbed episodes after around #160, so…
The Power of Two: Mei and Yuzu
Citrus is the story of two teen-aged girls falling in love. I’d like to be profounder than that, but that’s what it boils down to. It has some…
Irrelevant Post: New Suzumiya
Those of you who know the story know the Haruhi Suzumiya saga know it all started way back when with a light novel called The Melancholy of Haruhi…
The Spin-Off Movie: Violet Evergarden
There are a lot of stories out there where you engage with the characters, especially the main character, and so you want to see more about them. That’s…
Plots de Deux: Your Lie in April
Yeah, okay, maybe I got a little heavily into the wordplay there in that title, but you know, what can a poor boy do? And it does sort…
Oh, So Meta: Lucky Star
There’s just something so addictive about Lucky Star. I don’t know about you, but I can watch it over and over. And I have. And it cracks me…
What’s In a Name: Rei Ayanami
Some of you long-term followers have figured out by now my posts tend to follow certain themes. Character analysis. How to build a series. The power of N.…
The Power of Three: Flowers of Evil
While I was waiting for the Flowers of Evil manga to go on sale I picked up the anime to tide me over, and BOY, was I glad…
Character Analysis: Usagi Tsukino
Yeah, it’s taken me a long time to get to Sailor Moon. There are a couple reasons for that. I’m overage … I don’t have time enough left…
Look at This Ending: El Cazadore de la Bruja
The end of a narrative is supposed to do two things, resolve the conflict and wrap up the loose ends. Some anime try to spread those two functions…
The Performance of Power: The Saga of Tanya the Evil
Power is one of those topics that pops up over and over in writing and in life. For instance, power underlies a lot of the relationship stuff I’ve…
Let’s Cook a Series: Princess Jellyfish II
Princess Jellyfish was neat to see in that a lot of the characters were upside down in their construction; instead of having one key weakness, many of them…
Let’s Cook a Series: Princess Jellyfish
CONTENT WARNING: I haven’t seen the anime yet. On the flip side, I was able to pick up the Princess Jellyfish manga for a song (Mystery Girls by…