Category: Anime

I grew up reading high and dark fantasy, such as The Wheel of Time, Conan the Barbarian, Shannara, and so on. As a 1980s-1990s kid/teen, I consumed cheesy sword-and-sandal films like Ator: The Fighting Eagle, hair-metal music videos like Dio’s Holy Diver, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and other fantasy. I never got into Dungeons…

Osamu Tezuka is considered by consensus as the “father of manga” and the pioneer of the medium. However, he didn’t invent manga or its offshoot anime. Manga as a medium dates back into history, beyond the Edo period, with comedic scrolls of various sorts, including “fart scrolls“. Tezuka took all of these elements along with…

Robotech is a classic mashup anime, dating well before moe became the dominate style. The anime is actually a combination of several anime spliced into a single story. This was fairly common in American anime releases back in the day. Robotech comes from an era when television anime had a more limited budget and fewer…

Anime and manga’s harem subgenre doesn’t share many links with historical harems once you get under the surface. The genre features a group of love interests which surround the protagonist. More specifically, a harem story features a male who is surrounded by females, and a reverse harem features a female who is surrounded by males….

The strength of outward courage is like fire; the strength of inner courage is like water. Fire is forceful yet weak, while water is yielding yet so powerful nothing can oppose it. One with outward courage, like fire, has a weakness; one with inner courage, like water, is extremely powerful. –Adachi Masahiro The most common…

The eyes have it. And by it, I mean our interest, our attention, and even our love. Anime and manga uses eyes as the foundation for character expressions. Eyes dominate most character faces, especially moe characters. Because of the expressiveness of eyes, the dominance is logical. But enormous eyes can unsettle and put off people…