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We are all Dollars, we are all animals — Durarara!!, Odd Taxi, and “the big reveal”
The other day, one of my coworkers posited that one’s favorite moment or piece of media is almost always going to be one of your first big experience…
Lady Prospera and “the tempest” of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch of Mercury
My history with the Gundam anime franchise is surprisingly lengthy for someone who doesn’t consider themselves a Gundam fan. I was first recommended the original Mobile Suit Gundam…
Miorine’s Sunlit Garden: Flower Language and Shades of Utena in The Witch From Mercury
Take my revolution. There are a few specific things you can say to me that will make me check out an anime faster than “This draws from Kunihiko…
“Longing sometimes gets the better of instinct” — revisiting the desires of the Made in Abyss trio (and Mitty)
“Unlike us, you’re a hollow from the old ritual site, aren’t you? You have a real life. You must have been protected by a very powerful desire.” -Majikaja…
Made in Abyss, Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun, Maji
Reg’s mystery and more on animating the monstrous in Made in Abyss
Kou Yoshinari’s monster designs in Made in Abyss were visibly meant to be different than the humans of Orth and the Abyss from the first moment that a…
Visual bookending from Made in Abyss to The Golden City of the Scorching Sun
Made in Abyss’ second season begins with a sort of chronological bookending, placing Riko’s imminent arrival at The Capital of the Unreturned side-by-side with the journey of Vueko…
Dispatches from the Abyss
When Riko sends a mail balloon to the surface in Made in Abyss’ first season, the framing is that of a cave raider’s ascent. The balloon travels through…
Tanaka’s Camellia Flowers — Odd Taxi Episode 4
“I feel like I’ve always been searching for something. At the same time, my life has always been lacking something. And desperately acquiring that something yields only a…
Return to the Abyss — Made in Abyss: the Golden City of the Scorching Sun, Episode 1
“About 1,900 years ago, a huge pit was discovered on a remote island in the southern sea of Beoluska. With a diameter of around 1,000 meters and a…
Visual bookending, mirroring, and storyboarding in Arcane
Am I interrupting? Spoilers for all of Arcane and some League of Legends game lore/backstory below. Tw: suicidal ideation
The “Anicamera” in Arcane
Arcane immediately had my attention due to the way in which it used its own “camera” to frame its first act, in addition to other visual languages used…
Art Nouveau and Art Deco in Arcane
Two specific points struck me as I was watching the first three episodes of Arcane. The first was the series’ use of a “camera.” Animation, by nature, unchains…
Flower language in Heike Monogatari
“The color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.” -The Tale of the Heike During her time at Kyoto Animation it was a…
Hundreds of ways to say hell is other people and also love is other people: Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time
There are myriad reasons why I feel unqualified to talk about anything related to the Evangelion franchise, but the primary one is that it’s not my thing. It’s…
Costuming in Sailor Moon (Part 1: Le Smoking and Tuxedo Mask)
Was this post inspired solely by the fact that Tuxedo Mask has an attack in the manga called “la smoking bomber” and reading way too far into that?…
Welcome back to Love Live!, Takahiko Kyougoku (visual direction in Love Live! Superstar!!)
The opening sequence to the original Love Live! School Idol Project still charms me to this day. It was made back when Love Live! was a budding multimedia…
Idol Project, Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Superstar!!
What we leave behind: On returning to Maid Dragon
Yasuhiro Takemoto left behind a legacy.
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S
The flowers of Wonder Egg Priority’s opening (and series reflections, I suppose)
Following a three-month wait for a finale that was half-recap and half-nonsense, Wonder Egg Priority will go down in anime history as yet another promising passion project that…
Colors and Cinematography in SSSS.Dynazenon
The opening shot of SSSS.Dynazenon is purposefully reminiscent of its predecessor, SSSS.Gridman. Anyone who has watched Gridman immediately will recognize the sequence of shots. This time, these sn…
Flower language in Wonder Egg Priority Episode 11
Wonder Egg Priority has always paid specific attention to lighting when Rika Kawai is onscreen.
Daisies, Camellias, and how Wonder Egg Priority frames Shuuichirou Sawaki
The most contentious character in Wonder Egg Priority continues to be Ai Ohto’s teacher, Shuuichirou Sawaki. Outside of what exactly is going on with Aca and Ura-Aca’s seeming…
Flowers for Momoe Sawaki: Wonder Egg Priority Episode 10
Momoe Sawaki’s addition to the Wonder Egg Priority cast in the series’ fourth episode also introduces two major hiccups to the series’ narrative. The first — and seemingly…
Flowers for Rika Kawai and notes on flower language in Wonder Egg Priority Episode 6-7
While the garden of Aca and Ura-Aca places the four leads of Wonder Egg Priority against various floral backdrops to hint at their moods and personalities, Rika Kawai’s…
The Kunihiko Ikuhara school for teachers (why Wonder Egg Priority’s Sawaki is bad actually)
Is Shuuichirou Sawaki all that bad? I’ve seen this question asked fairly frequently as Wonder Egg Priority has continued to air. Sawaki, who is protagonist Ai Ohto’s teacher…
Ai Ohto’s room and safety in Wonder Egg Priority
Private rooms and home decor can be used in pointed ways to tell us more about the characters they belong to and Wonder Egg Priority once again seems…
Flowers for Neiru Aonuma (Wonder Egg Priority Episode 5)
Although Neiru Aonuma has been a constant of Wonder Egg Priority since the series’ second episode, she’s rarely been a series focal point. Rika Kawai and Momoe Sawaki…
Monsters in Wonder Egg Priority Episodes 1-4
“There’s nothing to be scared of. They only come after me.” Kurumi Saijo, Wonder Egg Priority, Episode 1
The system of Wonder Egg Priority
All Aca and Ura-aca do is play go and lie.
I hate you — Flower language in Wonder Egg Priority (continued)
Wonder Egg Priority is a show that knows its flower language. The series has used specific flowers to introduce it’s second and third episodes in previews as a…
How to take a life — The Promised Neverland Season 2, Episode 2
Emma crosses a line in the second episode of The Promised Neverland’s second season. It’s something that, thinking back on the trajectory of the series, seems inevitable, but…
You’re the sunflower — Wonder Egg Priority Episode 2
If you were wondering why a shut-in haunted by her past trauma like Ai Ohto was represented by the natural positivity of a sunflower, the second episode of…
Their (Our) Private Life: Horimiya
The opening sequence of Horimiya, a combined effort from series director Masashi Ishihama and Haruka Iizuka, is stylish and purposeful. It has a similar stylishness that the opening…
A (relatively) short Ikuhara primer, Naoko Yamada, and the “egg” in Wonder Egg Priority
This season’s latest critical darling, Shin Wakabayashi’s Wonder Egg Priority, has been described as, if Kunihiko Ikuhara (Revolutionary Girl Utena, Mawaru Penguindrum) and Naoko Yamada…
A Silent Voice, Liz and the Blue Bird, Penguindrum, Revolutionary Girl Utena, WONDER EGG PRIORITY
Flower Language in Wonder Egg Priority
Naoko Yamada’s influence throughout the anime industry, particularly with various directors’ use of flower language, continues to impress me. In Shin Wakabayashi’s Wonder Egg Prio…
Transitioning from a closed stage to open terrain: The Promised Neverland Season 2, Episode 1
The first season of The Promised Neverland ends like this.
Is Lucky Star rewatchable? (some thoughts about how anime viewing and curation has changed)
A few weeks ago I pitched a podcast idea to a few friends. We would revisit an old anime to see if it was rewatchable or not and…
[One] “My most hated self” — A return to xxxHolic
“You don’t belong only to yourself, you know?” -Yuuko Ichihara, xxxHolic Kei, Episode 3 I don’t believe in much. This is because I find it difficult to trust…
[Two] How storyboarding real life inspires the “greatest world” of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken
The greatest technical and storyboarding triumphs of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken’s first episode are not the flights of fancy that take Midori Asakusa, Tsubame Mizusaki, and Sayaka…
[Three] When the Safflowers Bloom (Only Yesterday)
A list of things I enjoyed over this past year includes Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Isao Takahata’s critically-acclaimed film Only Yesterday. This is not a…
[Four] She and her dinosaur
I’ve always understood why people loved Pop Team Epic, but I never really “got it.” It was too loud and too frenetic. I don’t like things that seem…
[Five] The Sailor Moon S movie is pretty bad but it still means a lot to me
At least we’ll always have Mamoru’s comical, “Merry christmas! And a…happy new year!” line. The Sailor Moon S movie really is a holiday classic.
Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon SuperS, Sailor Moon
[Six] Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll (Kyoto Animation and me)
Returning to Violet Evergarden was more difficult and emotionally-affecting than I thought it would be. On July 18, 2019, a man set fire to Kyoto Animation’s main studio,…
Violet Evergarden, Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll
[Eight] Animating Reg and the monstrous in Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul
One of the few, yet common, criticisms levied at the 2017 Made in Abyss television series was at animator Kou Yoshinari’s creature designs and animation. When Yoshinari was…
[Nine] The Flower Language of Children of the Sea
It’s impossible to describe the plot of Children of the Sea beyond this: a girl named Ruka Azumi goes through puberty. That’s not to say that the movie…
[Ten] “Have you heard?” — patterns and history in Magia Record
Have you heard? I’m a sucker for a good Greek chorus element in anime.
[Eleven] “(You’re) so cool!” — Tsuritama
Many anime series have ruined an excellent start with a mediocre or bad ending. Tsuritama is not one of those series. Instead it’s one of the most well-plotted…
[Twelve] The Melancholy of Reeve Tuesti
Director, I regret to inform you that no one in that boardroom is going to listen to you.
The Queen’s Gambit and what we talk about when we talk about “anime”
Prior to watching the latest Netflix thing that everyone is talking about, The Queen’s Gambit, it was pitched to me by several people as “basically an anime.” Half…
Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul and Riko’s Last Dive
“My mother is waiting for me, after all!” -Riko, Made In Abyss, Episode 13 Outside of an affirmative yell and calling Nanachi’s name, this is Riko’s last statement…