Lately, if you want fantasy stories and historical fantasy that isn’t an isekai of some sort, you have to look toward shojo and away from shonen and seinen categories. My Happy Marriage continues this trend. Set sometime between 1912 and 1926, My Happy Marriage explores a world where supernatural talents–in a word, magic–exists alongside demons…
Category: Understanding Anime
A Mecha Pilot’s Introduction Handbook
Welcome to Earth’s premier defense and industrial team! As a mecha pilot, you’ve proven to have the character, flexibility, and capabilities to serve your fellow citizens in this exciting and challenging career. This handbook offers an overview of what you, as a new mecha pilot, need to know about the history and policies of this…
Is AI Translation the Future for Anime and Manga?
Manga is increasingly being translated by large-language models (LLMs), or artificial intelligence as most people call LLMs. The Ancient Magus’ Bride manga, for example, used Mantra Engine for part of its English translation (Schley, 2023). LLMs are software programmed to teach itself patterns in inputs and then use those patterns to generate new patterns based…
The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom
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…
Lum [Urusei Yatsura] A Source for Moe and a First Tsundere
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 Animation Breakdown
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…