Search results
346 results, page 1 of 7
Texas Senate Bill 20, Obscenity, and Banning Anime and Manga
Texas’s state senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 20 which aims at AI-generated child pornography but can also end up banning many anime and manga titles in the…
New Book: Kappa The Deadly Finger Puller and Bonesetter
I’ve been behind with my book projects; I didn’t release anything last year. But publishing can take more time than you’d expect. I have several books awaiting release…
Japan’s Once Exotic Culture is Now Humdrum
More than a century ago, the West had little contact with Japan. The fabled Asia, distant and strange to Westerners, was a land of mystical stories, of elixirs…
Learning Without a Goal: The Joy of Learning
In the United States, learning is seen as a means to an end, not as an end of itself. You go to college to get a degree that…
An Outage and a Good Problem
You may have noticed JP was down for a good part of the weekend. I didn’t notice the problem until Sunday morning. So what happened? JP outgrew its…
5 Steps to Handle Your Anime Backlog
I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. –C. S. Lewis While C.S. Lewis was talking about books, the sentiment also applies…
Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, 3D Animation’s Not That Great
Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is a pure 3D computer-generated short series which takes the perspective of the “villains” of Gundam. The story follows Iria Solari, of the Zeon…
The Tenant of Silence
Generally, it is despicable for a warrior to use many words. -Daidoji Yuzan Bushido holds silence in high esteem. Quietude seeks to measure words, speaking only what is…
Factors Behind Population Decline and the Ancient World’s Solutions
Birthrates in the developed world, especially in South Korea and Japan, have fallen below the replacement rate. Japan’s total fertility rate dropped below replacement back in 1974 with…
Gushing Over Magical Girls and The Stretch of Art
I cannot recommend Gushing Over Magical Girls, but the story has its merits and has more going for it than it appears on the surface. The story plays…
Too Many Losing Heroines! Makeine
Too Many Losing Heroines!, also known as Makeine takes a different perspective on the usual romantic-comedy story. In a normal shonen romantic-comedy (Notice that young men, the main…
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Misses its Potential
Trigger is an animation studio known for its frenetic action scenes with the likes of Kill la Kill and Darling in the Franxx. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners doesn’t disappoint…when it…
Osamu Tezuka’s Ayako
Osamu Tezuka is considered the godfather of manga. He popularized the format with his storytelling, using film techniques as a part of his approach. His art style mixes…
2024: Another Spin Around Our Star
This next year, 2025, will mark my 14th year of blogging about anime, the anime community, Japanese history, and all the other meanders I make here. JP began…
Public Writing and Self Censorship
As JP has increased in views and approaches the 7 million total-views milestone, I’ve become even more aware of how what I write can influence people. Of course,…
Hara-Kiri: Japanese Ritual Suicide by Jack Seward
When I worked as a librarian, I had the chance to come across many interesting old books. Hara-Kiri: Japanese Ritual Suicide is one such book. Dating to 1968,…
The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho
The Unfettered Mind contains essays and letters written by the Zen monk Takuan Soho, who was a friend and a teacher of Miyamoto Musashi. As Takuan neared death,…
Anime and Body Boundaries
Anime has a problem with body boundaries, and the problem extends to both men and women. Fan-service centers on seeing breasts, abs, pecs, panties, and other parts, often…
Manga in Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki
Manga in Theory and Practice seeks to provide a framework for manga writers. Hirohiko Araki is the author of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Much of what he discusses applies…
The 82 Winning Moves of Sumo, the Kimarite List
When a sumo wrestler wins a match, how he wins is recorded with the victory. This move is called a kimarite. Think of kimarite as fatalities from Mortal…
You Are Where You Are Meant to Be, As You Are Right Now
To insist on arbitrary action because you’re not reconciled to your fate is something that men should be most wary of. If people let their minds go off…
Who are Anime Fans? A Summary of the International Anime Research Project’s Findings
The International Anime Research Project aims at studying anime, manga, and other fandoms. This team of scientists use techniques from psychology, anthropology, and sociology to understand the trai…
Golden Time: How Insecurity Splits Oneself
Golden Time is an anime adaptation of a light novel series. The anime released back in 2013. I will spoil the story in this discussion. Golden Time is…
Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf
Spice and Wolf along with Eureka Seven and Inuyasha helped me through some difficult times in my mid-20s, so they retain a place in my best anime lists.…
If It Was a Snake, It Would’ve Bit Me! Download My Retail Memoir PDF for Free.
Without wage-slaves, people would go hungry, go naked (not that health regulations stop them from doing that now), and go home (finally!). But retail workers remain under-appreciated, under-paid,…
Book Ban Banality
Tony Yao discusses another book ban on his website Drop-In to Manga. This time, Florida has banned Sasaki and Miyano by Sho Harusono because of its LGBTQAI material.…
Today is Victory Over Yourself of Yesterday
Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. –Miyamoto Musashi…
Is Anime Woke?
Woke has become a buzzword throughout US media. People use the word to label all sorts of people and ideas: woke companies, woke video games, woke chicken nuggets.…
Zom 100: Work Sucks and is Bad For You
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead continues the zombie genre’s tradition of critiquing capitalism and groupthink. Whereas George Romero’s zombie films centered on satirizing consumerism …
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Explains the Crisis of Middle-Aged Men
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, also known as My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected and Oregairu seems to be far away from lending any fictional…
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…
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,…
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…
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, distributing pieces…
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…