Category: Anime

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Heading toward spring with a hope that things are getting better

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A behind-the-back shot of Rin Shima looking toward a lake and a mountain in Laid-Back Camp season 2.

The last twelve months have been difficult for everyone – social disorder; worldwide illness, and deaths from COVID-19 and its variants; remote interactions failing to be complete substitutes for in-person interactions; and a contentious U.S. election cycle.

I’m hopeful that current coronavirus vaccine distributions and more competently managed public health initiatives will lead to a modified return to regular life. I’m not eager to go back into a movie theater anytime soon but I would consider attending a convention this summer/fall if the risk of attending has been significantly reduced by then. Large anime conventions are being rightfully cautious: FanimeCon recently announced it will be all virtual this year after last year’s cancellation, Anime Expo will not hold a physical show this year, and Crunchyroll Expo will go virtual for the second straight year. So it might be a stretch to think there will be a quick resurgence of in-person conventions.

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Resurfacing for the blog’s 14th anniversary & getting into virtual YouTubers

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Erika Kurumi being smug in Heartcatch Pretty Cure!

Hey there. I realized a couple days ago that it’s been 14 years since I published my first anime blog post on May 14, 2006. The time feels longer than that to me while I’ve been looking through many of my older posts that I may eventually re-publish/salvage here from web archives. (Some posts are more embarrassing than others…) I still get small ideas of things to possibly write about but almost none have been strong enough to motivate me to compose actual blog posts.

I continue to telling myself that I’ll revive Sport in Fiction in the near future, even though I encounter the same sort of inertia that has long hampered my standard blogging. I would also like to chronicle any forthcoming attempts to slowly read Japanese manga – those might become blog posts or maybe just Twitter threads.

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Mid-November update: Cromartie & Code Geass; Extra Life stream next weekend

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Takashi, Freddie, Shinjirou, and Takeshi in Cromartie High School

Hi there! It’s been a number of months since my last update. Too busy with law school courses.

I watched Cromartie High School and the first season of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion with my regular classics anime watchgroup. Cromartie was hilarious and silly as a delinquent slice-of-life comedy, though I would’ve liked its episodes to be longer than 12 minutes.

While we were watching Code Geass, I started to make sense of some things I recall online communities and bloggers talked about when the show was first airing more than a decade ago. Things like the agony of Orange (aka Jeremiah), Cheese-kun and the frequent appearances of pizza, Nina’s obsession with Princess Euphemia, and “JIBUN WO” from the anime’s first opening theme.

Beachcomber from a Duracell commercial.

I plan to participate in this year’s Extra Life charity fundraiser by streaming myself playing video games in a marathon during the weekend of November 23 & 24. (Here’s my Twitch channel.) I’ll be raising money to support UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals as part of the Giant Bomb team. I’m thinking of going through my backlog of PC/Steam games and also play some older-generation sports games. I don’t think I’ll be able to do a full 24-hour marathon, but I’ll try to go for at least 12 hours.

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Fear of “Flying”

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Another popular genre is the witch show. Sometimes, they come off as ‘magical girl’, but they still are putting out some degree of wizardry and prestidigitation. And we have to keep it on the QT, as we don’t want to spill the beans too soon. “Flying Witch” (“Furaingu Uitchi”) is about Makoto (that dark-haired beauty near the broom), a young witch from Yokohama, that moves to Aomori to live with some relatives as part of her training. What follows is Makoto’s daily life as she gets used to her new environment, her new relatives, and the new friends she makes there, as well as being introduced to the customs and peculiarities of witchcraft. Continue reading

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Should I Kiss Your “Bubu”?

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I have never been able to fathom the Japanese obsession with robots and all things mecha. I am sure that if you did a run-down of anime themes, that genre would be at the top of the listings. I can’t go a week anywhere without seeing (or hearing) of another mecha show. The problem is that we have honestly seen this before. “BBK/BRNK” (also known as “Bubuki/Buranki”) is our latest venture. Let us go back ten years, but only to visit, OK. And no souvenirs, either!

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“Blood” Brothers

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Have you ever been to New York City, so great, they had to name it twice? I was there recently and it is everything they say it is and more. As “The Town That Never Sleeps”, it is a magnet for all kinds of movies and shows based there. Although never officially named in this anime, it takes place in The Big Apple, or, as they call it, Hellsalem’s Lot. You see, Hellsalem’s Lot was created when a portal to the “Beyond” opened, becoming, in the process, a paranormal melting pot of monsters, magic and the everyday mundane life. Three Card Monte was never like this!

“Blood Blockade Battlefront” (“Kekkai Sensen” or “Bloodline Battlefront”) tells the tale of Leonardo Watch (to the left, grasping a beer mug), a photographer who has come here to help his ailing sister. But for some strange reason, a mysterious entity gave him the “All-Seeing Eyes of God”, granting him a variety of ocular powers (he normally wear a special set of goggles). He ends up being recruited by the organization “Libra”, who is tasked to clear the streets of trouble and prevent the horrors of this city from spreading to the outside world. Now, it does help that NYC….I mean, HSL, is blanketed in a perpetual fog, so you can’t really see what’s going on or going down or going away, but it makes for overall dreary days. Continue reading