You know, in a certain way Rea Sanka, the titular character of Sankarea, is one of the saddest characters in anime. Sure, there are characters who are supposed to be sad, or whose loss is shocking.…
Mar 21, 2022 • Subscribe
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Sankarea: Undying Love (Episode 3) – Sanka… Rea
Rea has been grounded, never to leave the house again, but then she hears what her father plans on doing to Chihiro and sneaks out to warn him.…
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Sankarea: Undying Love (Rea Sanka) – Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire!
Let’s be perfectly honest, Rea had it tough. Her father is a controlling creep and her mother a distant alcoholic. Yet, she’s supposed to be perfect. There has…
Haruhi Suzumiya Character Analysis
A character study for the infamous and eccentric Haruhi Suzumiya.
Character Analysis: Chise Hatori
I enjoyed The Ancient Magus’ Bride until Kore Yamazaki decided to change the direction of the story by sending Chise to college. Now I still like it: I…
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,…
Character Analysis: Marin Kitagawa
All right, you know who Marin Kitagawa is. She’s – depending on how you look at it – the Dress-up Darling of My Dress-up Darling. You can fight…
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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,…
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There’s a meme making the rounds these days that says – and this is an exact quote – “If a show was released today where a disabled girl…
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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…
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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…
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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…
Character Analysis: Ringo Oginome
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Character Analysis: Hayase Nagatoro
Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro is one of those things that I wouldn’t ordinarily bother to write about. I mean, it’s an older, smuttier version of Teasing-Master…
Character Analysis: Lili Hoshikawa
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Okay, I admit it: Fruits Basket is an anime I could easily have found to be annoying and Tohru Honda is a character I could easily have found…
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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…
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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,…
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…
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I have said it before and I will say it again: one of the things I like about Shinichiro Watanabe’s work is that he treats female characters with…
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…
Character Analysis: Akira Fudo
Devilman Crybaby is one of those things a lot of people like. I should like it, too, because it’s for grown-ups. I mean, it’s explicit in its explicitness,…
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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,…
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Konata is one of my favorite characters ever. I like Lucky Star, as silly and pointless as it is, and watch it over and over, possibly because it’s…
Character Analysis: Asako Yaeshima
Sweat and Soap is one of those things that when you describe it to someone sounds either sickly sweet or more than a little creepy. I mean, it’s…
Character Analysis: Momoka Oginome
As weird as it is, there is A LOT A LOT to like about Penguindrum. The main trio of characters, Shoma, Kanba, and Himari, are really well-constructed characters…
Character Analysis: Misaki Nakahara
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Character Analysis: Haruko Haruhara
Haruko from FLCL is another character who is really easy to analyze. She’s a Look at Me woman. Boop. That’s it. That doesn’t make her a bad character,…
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One of the cool things about Carole and Tuesday is that the three major characters are all tropes. So are a whole bunch of the others; it’s almost…
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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…
Character Analysis: Toshiko Tamura
Okay, yeah, I know you never heard of Toshiko Tamura. Let me lay down some backbeat here. If you ain’t heard of Osamu Tezuka, you’re probably reading the…
Character Analysis: Lisa Mishima
I’ve generally liked the way Shinichiro Watanabe handles female characters. He seems to find a way to avoid simple tropes. Cowboy Bebop: Faye Valentine is seriously hot but…
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And Yet the Town Moves is one of those silly little slice of lifers built around a slice of the life of Hotori Arashiyama, and her friends, family,…
Character Analysis: Yoshika Miyafuji
Strike Witches is like a guilty pleasure. It’s a dumb story about characters who are largely one-dimensional by design whose flaws are painted over with constant action and…
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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…
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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…
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Okay, let’s get it out of the way: Satoshi Kon was a dude with a very interesting mind and perspective on the world, and one of the things…
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It seems bizarre that one of the anime I write about a lot is Toradora. I mean, compared to Neon Genesis Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop or The Melancholy…
Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Toradora!
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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…
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It’s easy to dislike poor Shinji. He’s passive and males are supposed to be aggressive. He’s supposed to love Rei but he’s fascinated with Asuka. He’s supposed to…
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Sometimes you go back a look at a character you’ve looked at before because you’ve noticed something new about the character. And sometimes you have to go back…
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It’s been a while since I wrote about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but what astonishes me about it is that every time you think about it, you…