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Killer Ending: Your Lie in April
It’s fun to watch something like Your Lie in April that looks on the face of it like a piece of fluff, but when you peel back the…
The Power of Two: Kaguya-sama Love is War
Most of the time when you look at a narrative couple they fall into one of two types: They are symmetric, meaning they have similar strengths and weaknesses,…
Oh, So Trope-ical: Pinocchio
Yeah, yeah, you’re saying to yourself that Pinocchio wasn’t an anime. First of all, that’s not entirely true. In fact, there have been TWO Pinocchio anime series, one…
How (Not) to End a Story: Love, Chunibiyo, and Other Delusions
There’s something so cute about Love, Chunibiyo, and Other Delusions that make it close to irresistible, isn’t there? Yuta is basically such a nice young man, so earnest…
The Power of Three: Darling in the Franxx
Everyone loves a good mecha story. Well, at least the manga/anime target audience – slightly-nerdy teen-aged Japanese boys – loves a good mecha story. Consequently, there are lots…
Rotoscope and You: Onimusha
Onimusha is something I wouldn’t ordinarily watch. I don’t like stories that are based on demons, or based on fighting demons with magic artifacts, because once you get…
Oh, So Trop(e)ical: The Dirty Old Man
It seems like just about every anime comedy with a romantic plot or subplot has at least one dirty old man. Well, not ALL of them. Those that…
Animation: How Many Fingers?
Sometimes things come together in weird ways. Like, really weird. So in my Intro Communication class this week – Which was weeks ago as you read this but…
Character Analysis: Takeo Goda
If you look at My Love Story!!, the first temptation is to look at the main characters, Takeo Goda and Rinko Yamato, as a pair. For instance, she…
Character Analys(e)s: Loyd, Tor, and Anya Forger
In certain ways all three main characters from Spy X Family are really simply constructed. Watch me now: Loyd is a heartless spy but isn’t really heartlessAnya is…
Story Drop!
Man, it’s been a while! Damn COVID … ANYWAY, here’s the flash fiction anthology 99 Fleeting Fantasies. It includes my piece Nidus of Alms. It’s available starting today…
The Power of Three: Welcome Back, Alice
I’ve made my appreciation for the work of Shuzo Oshimi very plain at times. Oshimi is the magaka behind The Flowers of Evil, Inside Mari, and Blood on…
What’s in a Name? Seihu High School
I always let myself do something stupid for an anniversary post, and since my anniversary was Feb 2, here ya go: Last year at this time I didn’t…
What Did I Just Watch: If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budukon I Would Die
Look, first of all, I’m not writing out that whole title again. From now on this show will be called My Favorite Pop Idol, and if the author,…
The Power of Three: Steins;Gate
I was thinking about Steins;Gate for a different reason when I hit on why it works narratively. Because it shouldn’t, you know. Steins;Gate is really kind of a…
Character Analysis: Honey Kisaragi
Let’s start with this: Honey Kisaragi, the android star of Cutie Honey, is an artifact of her age. She was born back in ’73. That was a turbulent…
Same Stage, Different Story … Or Not: FLCL
The original FLCL was a blast, a swirl of smoke and mirrors, of red herrings and mixed animation styles, that hid a very simple story, the tragedy of…
The Power of Three: Nana
Like a lot of media, not just anime, love of various sorts plays a large role in Nana. Well, it could hardly not, after all. You can call…
Character Analysis: Yui Ikari
Happy holidays to everyone who is celebrating a holiday anywhere. May the season be kind to you. Certain storytelling techniques absolutely fascinate me. One is meta, the use…
Character (Re)Analysis: Tohru Honda
This may be the shortest time ever between me analyzing a character and then coming back to look at them again. I mean, it’s not like I got…
Killer Ending: Black Lagoon
The ending of a narrative is supposed to do two things, resolve the central conflict and wrap up the loose ends. A good ending gets those two jobs…
Too Tired to Write
So, like, November is National Novel Writers’ Month, right? Take 30 days, write 50,000 words, right? (If you’re not sure what I’m babbling about check out nanowrimo.org )…
Character Analysis: Tsukimi Kurashita
Princess Jellyfish is one of those things that’s just so cleverly constructed that you have to wonder whether it was planned or it just worked out that way,…
The Power of Two: Shinji and Misato
The cool thing about Neon Genesis Evangelion from a writer’s perspective, and from the perspective of a person like me who takes a writer’s perspective on looking at…
Key and In-between II: Animeta
I like Animeta manga, at least through the first five volumes, for what it reveals about the animation business. One thing it reveals is the process, the various…
Key and In-between: Animeta
Key and In-between: Animeta Every time I find a reason to write about animation in anime – it’s been so long I feel obliged to remind everyone that…
Character Analysis: Haruko Haruhara
Warning: This post contains spoilers for FLCL: Grunge and FLCL: Shoegaze. If you haven’t seen them, read on at your own peril. The advent of two more seasons…
How to Build a Series: My Happy Marriage
Look, there are times when you can look at creating a story/series as being like cooking from a recipe. That doesn’t mean it’s going to work. You can…
Character Analysis: Yasu Takagi
Nana’s one of those things that just about everyone knows about and has an opinion about. Since it’s supposed to be the best-selling shojo title in history (yeah,…
Oh, So Trope-ical: The Hair Bra
The point of manga and anime is to get eyeballs onto content, whether it’s paid for directly (by buying manga) or indirectly (by ad sales during anime). In…
The Power of Four Plus One: Toradora
I haven’t done one of these in a while. This could be fun if I can keep track of the mess. But then again, that’s the point. Toradora…
Character Analysis: Isaki Magari
Let’s be frank here: Insomniacs After School is so sweet it could be named High-Fructose Corn Syrup. That’s not necessary a bad thing. When you’re making an anime…
How to Cook a Story: Komi Can’t Communicate
Somehow I keep saying that Komi Can’t Communicate was something whose premise didn’t appeal to me. I’m going to say it again: Shoko Komi doesn’t need a hundred…
Killer Ending: Your Lie in April
Your Lie in April is one of those stories that could have gone either way, Comedy (happy ending) or Tragedy (sad ending) and – watch my lips –…
Oh, So Trope-ical: The Gamer God
There are certain tropes that are so obvious it’s almost a waste of time to look at them. Oh, man, what’s the point of the Princess in Peril…
Off The Tracks: The Promised Neverland
I wasn’t planning to post this piece this week. I had something else, about Insomniacs at Night, I think. BUUUT, we ended up having an actual discussion last…
The Antagonist: Isabella
I’m going to start out with this: Isabella, the orphanage “Mom” from The Promised Neverland, is not the best example of this type of antagonist for REASONS. I’ll…
Jumping the Tracks IV: Change the plot
This is it for Jumping the Tracks, okay? You won’t have to hear me (in your mind’s ear) blather about it again for quite a while! But for…
Jumping the Tracks III: Throw in more characters
I’ve had a bug in a delicate place about stories that Jump the Tracks, that is, lose track of progress in the main meta-plot of a series, for…
How To Cook a Series: Beastars
I’m taking a week off from shows going off the track, since even I don’t think it’s THAT interesting. I mean, you know, really. Problem: This is the…
Jumping the Tracks II: Streeeeetching the ploooootttttt
There’s a longer explanation of all this if you go back to Jumping the Tracks I: Just Keep Going, but just to run through it quickly this is…
Off the Tracks I: Just Keep Going
Going off the tracks happens when the writers lose track of the story’s meta-plot, the storyline that defines the end of the story. Was that technical, or what?…
The Antagonist: Desty Nova
Okay, Dr. Nova from Battle Angel Alita may not be the best example here, since the manga is like a zillion years old and no one went to…
Gender Bender: Najimi Osana
The writers of Komi Can’t Communicate make it very clear we’re supposed to expect some pretty weird kids. They come right out and say it: Admission to their…
A Strange Aside
I’ve been looking at transgendered characters this month, since in the US it’s LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, and sure, why not? It’s not like we don’t have a ways…
Gender Bender: Hana
Okay, let’s start with this: If you haven’t seen Tokyo Godfathers, you should, okay? And if you haven’t, you don’t know who Hana is, so let me spell…
Gender Bender: Sapphire
Now that we live in a day that permits it, there are a lot of representations of LGBTQIA+ characters in manga and anime. Some of them are good,…
The Eternal Triangle: Waltz
I keep telling people that Shuzo Oshimi is my favorite magaka. That’s not a lie. You might know him from The Flowers of Evil if you’re more into…
Character Analysis: Zero Two
Darling in the Franxx is one of those things that popped onto the radar because it tried to do something we’d seen a million times – a mecha…
The Power of Three: Komi Can’t Communicate
Komi Can’t Communicate is one of those stories that chaps my ass when you get right down to it. You see Communication is my racket. I is a…