Mid-November 2018 Check-In

The San Jose Convention Center during Crunchyroll Expo 2018

Hi there. I’ve been busy with my first semester of law school and with work projects, so I haven’t had a lot of free time lately. I was able to watch some anime series and go to an anime convention, though.

In the three months since my last post, I finished watching Aquarion and Ouran High School Host Club (a re-watch for me) with an anime classics watchgroup. Aquarion was an interesting mecha action series with character-building episodes and goofy moments. Some parts of the Ouran anime series don’t hold up well 12 years later, such as when the club meets Haruhi’s cross-dressing father the first time, but I still enjoyed hearing Maaya Sakamoto play the snarky “commoner” Haruhi Fujioka and revisiting back stories about the host club members. I’m thinking about reading the manga sometime.

I also attended Crunchyroll Expo in San Jose during Labor Day weekend and had a good time re-connecting with friends and making a few new ones. I made a Twitter moment that you can scroll through with pictures from that weekend.

Staff searching through boxes in Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san

Following a couple of fall season anime

I’m currently watching two new fall anime series adapted from manga – Ms. vampire who lives in my neighborhood and Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san. Ms. vampire features Sophie, a three-centuries-old vampire, and her new friend Akari, a middle school girl who moves in with Sophie to spend more time with her. The series has a similar cute-girls-doing-stuff, slice-of-life pacing as Kiniro Mosaic and like that series, Akari has an attraction toward Sophie in almost the same way Shinobu has an attraction to Alice, Karen, and other people with blond hair. Its opening theme song is titled “†吸tie Ladies†”, which is a play on a Japanese word for vampire (吸血鬼, kyuuketsuki) and the word “cutie”.

Honda-san is a charming workplace comedy about the manga, comics & novels section of a bookstore and the stresses its non-standard-head workers sometimes face, including dealing with customer requests, making recommendations, and keeping copies of popular series in stock. Many actual publishers and series are referenced in slightly obscured ways. The opening theme (“ISBN ~Inner Sound & Book’s Narrative~”) is catchy and energetic to match the series’ manic moments and the ending theme (“Book-end, Happy-end.”) is a calming tune that’s accompanied by scenes of Honda-san leaving work and going to bed.

Promoting Anime Feminist’s upcoming fundraiser

Lastly, Anime Feminist will be launching an Indiegogo campaign on December 1st to fund many upgrades to their operations! Please read Amelia’s post for more details about what the funds will be raised to accomplish. I’ve supported AniFem through Patreon for more than a year and would like them to continue to grow their operation and to facilitate thoughtful discussions about Japanese pop culture and marginalized voices.

About Tom

I have been blogging about anime for more than a decade. My other interests include sports, business & legal affairs, and philosophy.
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