Spice and Wolf along with Eureka Seven and Inuyasha helped me through some difficult times in my mid-20s, so they retain a place in my best anime lists. I, like many others, was excited when I heard Spice and Wolf was going to get a reprise. Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf follows…
Category: Anime Reviews
Zom 100: Work Sucks and is Bad For You
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead continues the zombie genre’s tradition of critiquing capitalism and groupthink. Whereas George Romero’s zombie films centered on satirizing consumerism with zombies’ insatiable appetite and single-mindedness, Zom 100 takes on work culture. Throughout the anime, the soul-crushing grind of work takes the fore. Zombies represent the masses who are…
Call of the Night: FLCL with Vampires. The Rituals Boys Need to Become Men
Call of the Night, like most anime, explores the emotional tangle of growing up, only with vampires. Ko is a high school drop out who struggles with school and fitting into society. He drops out of both, even to the point of avoiding the daylight hours. During his nocturnal roaming, he stumbles across the vampire…
Anime I Keep Revisiting
Some stories continue to resonate years after you first watch them. I revisit few anime. Fewer still do I watch again and again. Every so many years, I feel an urge to revisit certain video games: Final Fantasy VI, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, and various classic Mario games. The…
Revisiting Horimiya
When Horimiya: Pieces released, I decided to revisit the original season. My original observations still hold. The series offers a heartfelt, nostalgic feeling toward growing up. For those of us who, like me, worked all the time and didn’t have the social interactions of high school or college for that matter, there’s a pleasant vicariousness…
Revisiting Shuffle!
I had watched Shuffle! back at the beginning of my anime-watching career, and it was my first exposure to harem anime. For perspective, the anime released back in 2005. The story is based on a visual novel. I will include spoilers. Enter Rin, a typical droll harem protagonist defined by his “niceness” and his, ahem,…