Anime has a problem with body boundaries, and the problem extends to both men and women. Fan-service centers on seeing breasts, abs, pecs, panties, and other parts, often without a character’s consent. It involves women pressing up against flustered men (and the reverse and every other combination) as they struggle to get away while expressing…
Category: Understanding Anime
Golden Time: How Insecurity Splits Oneself
Golden Time is an anime adaptation of a light novel series. The anime released back in 2013. I will spoil the story in this discussion. Golden Time is one of the rare anime that doesn’t take place in high-school. The characters are all college age, but, for the most part, this acts as window dressing…
Is Anime Woke?
Woke has become a buzzword throughout US media. People use the word to label all sorts of people and ideas: woke companies, woke video games, woke chicken nuggets. Beyond being bad English grammar, “I am woke” (grammatically it should be “I woke up” or “I have awakened” or even “I’m awake.” Woke is the past…
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…
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Explains the Crisis of Middle-Aged Men
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, also known as My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected and Oregairu seems to be far away from lending any fictional insight into the plight of middle-aged men. After all, the anime has its focus in the title: teen. SNAFU explores the difficulties of first love, one of…
Trigger’s Triumph: The Hero’s Journey in Kill la Kill
Kill la Kill, released in 2013, follows the Hero’s Journey template, as Joseph Campbell outlined in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces with interesting tweaks to the timeless formula. I’ve already written about how Kill la Kill satirized and leverages fan service quite a while ago. I decided to revisit this work after a…