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

Monday Check-In: July 17, 2017 (Teekyu is back!)

Tomarin is angry after losing money at a pachinko parlor in Teekyu season 9

I watched a few more new anime series last week but not as many as I wanted. Teekyu returned for its ninth season with a Tomarin-focused episode and an ending credits sequence depicting the girls as more realistic-looking teenagers with a portion where the camera pans across their towel-draped bodies. I guess the ending credits are a parody of other anime ending credits that have similar shots of their female characters but Teekyu’s credits unnerved me just like those other ones do…

I saw the first episodes of Anime Strike series Made in Abyss and Princess Principal with some online friends and enjoyed both of them for different reasons. Made in Abyss had beautiful landscapes and a fun adventure story setup with its characters. I liked Princess Principal for its dark, steam-powered London setting and background music directed by Yuki Kajiura; its soundtrack reminded me of Kajiura’s previous action series scores including Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Noir. Continue reading

Monday Check-In: July 10, 2017 (July Anime Premieres)

Mari Fukami during a quiz club demonstration in Fastest Finger First

The quarterly rush of new anime premieres has come around again. I’ve watched the first episodes from a handful of new series: Fastest Finger First, A Centaur’s Life, Welcome to the Ballroom through a Twitch stream sponsored by Amazon’s Anime Strike channel, and Aho Girl.

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Trying To Stay Motivated As A Thirty-Something

Mitsune’s shirt: “Don’t trust anyone over 30” (front cover of Love Hina manga volume 4)

Today is my 31st birthday and I’m in a contemplative mood.

Right now, I feel both connected to contemporary goings-on and disconnected from them: interacting with friends and other enthusiasts through Twitter and blogs but still not very familiar with video bloggers popular with younger groups of fans. In the past two years, I have lost interest in attending many convention eventsgiven up on keeping pace with new anime simulcasts, and reminisced about bygone and still active anime bloggers. There are hundreds of things I want to watch and read but I often succumb to indecision about which things to start watching or reading next. I experience moments of self-doubt where I ask myself “why am I still doing this?” and “what do I have to offer?” Continue reading

“Jump Start” Manga Update – Three Series Have Joined Magazine’s Regular Lineup

Magazine covers for the second batch of “Jump Start” debuts in 2017

I wrote a post in February about the first three manga series in Weekly Shonen Jump‘s 2017 “Jump Start” program, which were We Never Learn, U19, and Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries. Since then, three more series have had their own three-chapter trial runs – Hungry Marie, Dr. Stone and Robot x Laserbeam. After Viz weighed the reader survey results for all six series, they added Dr. Stone, Robot x Laserbeam, and We Never Learn to the magazine’s regular lineup. The first three chapters from all the Jump Start series are available as free chapters on Viz’s website.

In this post, I discuss the following chapters: Hungry Marie chapters 1-3, Dr. Stone chapters 1-9, Robot x Laserbeam chapters 1-7, U19 chapter 3, Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries chapters 2 & 3, and We Never Learn chapters 4-9. I have enjoyed reading all six of those series up to now, some more than others, and would like to see them get digital volume releases in the future.

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“Jump Start” Manga Opening Chapters: We Never Learn, U19, Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries

The English-language Weekly Shonen Jump digital magazine is in the middle of a six-series “Jump Start” event. Three series have already debuted – high-school comedy We Never Learn, shonen action/drama U19, and monster comedy Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries – while the other three new series coming soon are Hungry Marie (February 27th), Dr. Stone (March 6th), and Robot x Laserbeam (March 20th).

I recently bought a one-year subscription to Shonen Jump during a promotional sale, partly so I could easily check out the new manga debuts. Here are my short thoughts on the first three that have come out.

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