Search results
303 results, page 1 of 7
Trigger’s Triumph: The Hero’s Journey in Kill la Kill
Kill la Kill, released in 2013, follows the Hero’s Journey template, as Joseph Campbell outlined in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces with interesting tweaks to the…
The New Emerging Trend in Anime
For the past decade or so, moe has dominated. Moe designs seek to create a feeling of attachment with the audience, eliciting desires to protect a character. Moe…
Immortality Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be – A Free Light Novel
I wrote Immortality Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be for fun several years ago. It languished on my file server, destined to never see a reader along…
Death to Kanji! The Movement to Eliminate Kanji During the Meiji Restoration
Ask most English speakers about what makes Japanese so hard to learn and you will most likely hear kanji. The Japanese writing system consists of kana, or a…
The Importance of Journals
Journals help with mental health, self-development, and, for the purposes of this essay, understanding history. Few people start a journal with the belief that mundane, daily concerns will…
In All Things, Do Not Have Preferences.
“In all things, do not have preferences.” Miyamoto Musashi wrote this in his work Dokkodo: The Way to be Followed Alone. His work is a collection of practices…
Why are Anime Girls so Horny?
Anime girls are horny because they are written by men who want to fulfill male fantasies. /EndTopic. See references below. Nah, there’s a lot more to the true…
You’re Now My Darling, a Dive into the Darling in the Franxx
Darling in the Franxx was hyped when it released in 2018. Animated by Trigger and Cloverworks, the anime had a simplistic style the supported moments of intense action.…
Disappearing Anime and The Problem of Preservation
When Crunchyroll and Funimation merged, many anime didn’t make it back to their merged catalog. Among them was one of my favorites, Eureka Seven. This bummed me because…
The Boundary Between Lies and Truth | Oshi no Ko
Where do the lies end and the truth begins? This theme unifies the first season of Oshi no Ko. The story stares into the dark side of entertainment…
Call of the Night: FLCL with Vampires. The Rituals Boys Need to Become Men
Call of the Night, like most anime, explores the emotional tangle of growing up, only with vampires. Ko is a high school drop out who struggles with school…
Pachi-slot and Japan’s 20+Year Casino Fight
In 2019, pachinko made ¥21 trillion. That was 3.7% of Japan’s GDP for that year (Higuchi, 2020). Historically, pachinko, when combined with Japan’s lottery and legal sports betting,…
Find My Retail Memoir on Wattpad [If It Was a Snake It Would’ve Bit Me!]
I wrote a short memoir about my experiences working with the American public. If It Was a Snake It Would’ve Bit Me! breaks my experiences into sad and…
Bushido Explained by Alexander Bennett
Bushido Explained offers a good primer to how samurai thought across Japan’s different time periods. As the subtitle of the book states, it is a new interpretation for…
The Kyoto Animation Fire and Mental Health Pleas
In 2019, Shinji Aoba broke into Kyoto Animation studio (also known as KyoAni), sprayed gasoline, and ignited it. He escaped to the nearby train station before collapsing from…
How to Not Sound Like A Weeb
How does a weeb sound? That depends on vocal cord size, lung capacity, language, and–okay, the question deals with the words and references people use. First, what is…
Japanese Book Guide : 27 Books You Ought to Read about Japan
Here’s a collection of books to help expand your knowledge about Japan. I’ve referred to these books for my various writing projects. This list skews toward history because…
Why are Anime Obsessed with Big Boobs?
Anime is obsessed with breasts. Top-heavy female characters appear across anime stories, including stories aimed at girls. Female characters obsess over their bust size, fondling larger friends or…
Why are Anime Obsessed with Big Boobs?
Anime is obsessed with breasts. Top-heavy female characters appear across anime stories, including stories aimed at girls. Female characters obsess over their bust size, fondling larger friends or…
Crunchyroll’s Western Anime Monopoly
Sony Pictures Entertainment, the owner of Funimation, bought Crunchyroll from AT&T for $1.175 billion in 2021 (Simons, 2021). In the past, Funimation and Crunchyroll worked together, distributi…
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Facing Death and Memory
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End goes deep. You won’t find philosophical musings like in Ghost in the Shell, nor does Frieren goes into the darkness that some stories dive…
How Do You Know How to Know?
All knowledge is a matter of faith. You trust that I offer something worth your time and thought. I trust that you understand the words and my logic.…
How Do You Know How to Know?
All knowledge is a matter of faith. You trust that I offer something worth your time and thought. I trust that you understand the words and my logic.…
Anime I Keep Revisiting
Some stories continue to resonate years after you first watch them. I revisit few anime. Fewer still do I watch again and again. Every so many years, I…
Anime I Keep Revisiting
Some stories continue to resonate years after you first watch them. I revisit few anime. Fewer still do I watch again and again. Every so many years, I…
In the Future, Human Skill Will [Increase | Decrease] in Value
The typed version of this hand-written article follows below the notebook scans. In the future, the value a skillful human hand has will increase. As machine learning…
Revisiting Horimiya
When Horimiya: Pieces released, I decided to revisit the original season. My original observations still hold. The series offers a heartfelt, nostalgic feeling toward growing up. For those…
Revisiting Horimiya
When Horimiya: Pieces released, I decided to revisit the original season. My original observations still hold. The series offers a heartfelt, nostalgic feeling toward growing up. For those…
Sweatshop Content and our Content Consumption Habits
After I resigned from my library position (I had moral and ethical problems with how I was expected to police policy), I started hunting for remote work.…
Revisiting Shuffle!
I had watched Shuffle! back at the beginning of my anime-watching career, and it was my first exposure to harem anime. For perspective, the anime released back in…
Revisiting Shuffle!
I had watched Shuffle! back at the beginning of my anime-watching career, and it was my first exposure to harem anime. For perspective, the anime released back in…
Men Live in Despair. What Can Be Done?
It’s no secret that many men struggle with depression and despair. This desperation has many factors, such as lacking a sense of purpose. The problem also isn’t new.…
Men Live in Despair. What Can Be Done?
It’s no secret that many men struggle with depression and despair. This desperation has many factors, such as lacking a sense of purpose. The problem also isn’t new.…
Revisiting Omamori Himari
Omamori Himari was my first exposure to ecchi harem anime. It’s been over a decade since I last watched it, so I thought I’d give it a revisit.…
Revisiting Omamori Himari
Omamori Himari was my first exposure to ecchi harem anime. It’s been over a decade since I last watched it, so I thought I’d give it a revisit.…
Revisiting Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions
Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions explores the psychology of avoidance, coping with change, and seeing magic in everyday things. And it is a love story. The story…
JP Heads to YouTube…Kinda
Actually, JP isn’t going to be on YouTube, but my new channel, which starts today, is called “Tales from Old Japan”. The idea is to release video-book readings…
JP Heads to YouTube…Kinda
Actually, JP isn’t going to be on YouTube, but my new channel, which starts today, is called “Tales from Old Japan”. The idea is to release video-book readings…
Lessons to Take from Akira Toriyama’s Death
Akira Toriyama died from acute subdural hematoma. He was 68 years old. Toriyama’s started in manga by entering a Weekly Shonen Jump contest, which he lost. But his…
Lessons to Take from Akira Toriyama’s Death
Akira Toriyama died from acute subdural hematoma. He was 68 years old. Toriyama’s started in manga by entering a Weekly Shonen Jump contest, which he lost. But his…
The Peony Lantern
In Yedo there dwelt a samurai called Hagiwara. He was a samurai of the hatamoto, which is of all the ranks of samurai the most honourable. He…
The Peony Lantern
In Yedo there dwelt a samurai called Hagiwara. He was a samurai of the hatamoto, which is of all the ranks of samurai the most honourable. He…
Revisiting Bleach
When I revisited Bleach, I decided to give it what I call the “kai” treatment. Named after Dragon Ball Z Kai, the kai treatment is how I approach…
Dragon Ball Z Kai, Naruto, Bleach, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z
Revisiting Bleach
When I revisited Bleach, I decided to give it what I call the “kai” treatment. Named after Dragon Ball Z Kai, the kai treatment is how I approach…
Bleach, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Z Kai, Naruto
West Virginia, Librarians, and Obscenity
A bill passed from West Virginia’s House of Delegates and to the state’s Senate. The bill removes protections from public libraries, schools, and museums, holding librarians and curator…
Revisiting Spice and Wolf
Spice and Wolf first released as an anime in 2008. The series has a soft spot in my heart; I watched it when I was going through a…
Revisiting Neon Genesis Evangelion
As I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion again, I wondered what more I could say about it. After all, it is perhaps the most analyzed anime. I’ve written about…
Another Revisit in the Eye-Patch Girl Era
Another is a horror-mystery anime from 2012. I first saw it and reviewed it at the beginning of my blog writing. For Halloween, I added it to my…
Revisiting Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
I’ve given Brotherhood flak in the past for Edward and Al not acting as intelligently as in the original series. But that doesn’t mean I dislike the story.…
Revisiting Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion
As I watched Code Geass when it came out around 2007 on Adult Swim. I was still relatively new to anime at the time. I remembered the show…