Writing focuses on word selection. English overflows with words. Choosing the perfect word is fun, and it is hard. Some words are tired like awesome, cool, and fuck. They appear so often that they lost their impact. Other words are obscure and snooty: ascertain, utilize, and hitherto. They make you appear arrogant. There are two…
Author: Chris
Anime Blogging 101: Your Voice and Commas
Voice is your unique way of speaking. You use words in ways that make a verbal fingerprint. Verbal ticks like like, um, because, so are as important as how your voice sounds. The trick is writing close to how you speak. Writing has certain rules that need to be followed for clarity. Writing exactly as…
ChatGPT and Blogging’s Future
This article begins a week of articles that examine blogging tips and other writing information. ChatGPT and other language processing models will shift how we interact with the Internet. Such models are already being folded into search and may well replace search as the main way people seek information online. The models can produce coherent…
More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers
More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers begins with a reality-TV premise. Shiori, Jiro, and Akari’s high school has implemented a couples-training practicum, which aims to have students develop their social skills by simulating heterosexual marriage. While on the surface this appears to be the usual manga-anime contrivance, as population levels decline, something similar…
The Declining Population of Japan
By 2060, Japan will have a population of 86.7 million, from today’s population of 125 million (Yamaguchi, 2022). The population will also grow older. This trend has been going on since the 1970s, when experts first began to write about the decline (Date, 2007). Why is this a problem? After all, fewer people means more…
Do It Yourself!
Do It Yourself! is another cute-girls-doing-cute-things anime. In this one, the girls join a Do It Yourself Club. The main character, Serufu Yua is a complete klutz and gets hurt just walking across the street. But her heart and willingness to try and improve no- matter-how-many-bandages-she-earns inspires the other girls. The other members of the…