The title of the story says it all. Isekai stories have long focused on power fantasies, of one-upping everyone who had ever slighted you. The story encourages catharsis and vicariousness with a hero who is a “nice guy”. Despite his niceness, he’s a geek, fat, ugly, or otherwise socially inept, especially with women. Of course,…
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Can You be too Old for Anime?
Some time ago, I went to the theater to watch Dragon Ball Super: Superheroes, which is an entertaining film. I was the oldest in the showing. Can you be too old for anime? “Of course not!” I’m sure you are saying. I reacted the same way to the thought, but take a moment to consider…
Okakura Kakuro’s “The Book of Tea”
Okakura wrote The Book of Tea in 1906. The books seeks to bridge and explain the Eastern perspective to the West. At the time, most people weren’t familiar with Japan, China, or Korea. Japan had opened to the West in 1853. Fifty-three years isn’t a lot of time for people to understand another culture. As…
Ryōnen Gensō, The Poet Who Disfigured Herself
Japan has a long history of literary and artistic women. If you look at the education of women, Japan’s history would resemble a sine curve. Some periods have widespread female education among the nobility and even among some peasant groups. Other periods neglected or limited female education. The most literary women cluster around the Heian…
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 Fox’s Loneliness
This Christmas I will leave you with this short story I wrote. Merry Christmas! I shouldn’t have shown myself, Kitsune thought. Below her perch in the tree, two human kits walked toward the edge of the forest. They didn’t pay attention to her now. They had dismissed her soon after they held their strange glowing…