If you haven’t seen Takopi’s Original Sin, stop reading this and go watch this anime–unless you struggle with mental health and suicidal thoughts. Takopi’s Original Sin is a rough watch with beautifully ugly, deceptively difficult animation. It has 6 episodes on Crunchyroll. I will have to spoil the story to discuss the many layers…
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…
Aim for a Calm Mind
Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by passion of any kind. –Nitobe Inazo A calm mind appears to be impossible. Everywhere we turn something is trying to disturb us in some way. News tries to make us feel unsafe. Advertisements and social media try to make us feel FOMO. Work and…
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…
What is a Harem?
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….