Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest runs as a common power-trip isekai. Hajime Nagumo and his classmates transport to a fantasy world modeled after the usual RPG tropes. Hajime doesn’t stand out. He’s not strong, fast, or proficient at anything except material transmutation. When they go into a labyrinth, Hajime is separated from the rest and plunged…
Seneca, Anime, and Time
In recent months, I’ve been thinking about time and reading Seneca and other Roman thinkers. We treat time as something of little value. If someone broke into our home and stole a television or anime collection, we’d feel violated and angry. Yet, we often allow advertisements, bad anime, and other people to steal our time….
You Must Watch…
Recently, I attempted to read The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner because I’ve heard that I must read Faulkner as a writer. People herald him as a great American writer. Frankly, I couldn’t stand the book. It’s nonsensical and drove me crazy with its purposefully bad grammar. Faulkner attempted to write the American…
My Favorite Teas
I debated what to write for my 600th article. Teas play a critical role in Japanese culture and in my personal life, which captures what JP is about–the intersection of anime, Japanese culture, international culture, and our lives. I’ve become a bit of a tea snob. Lipton tea doesn’t cut it anymore. I fell into…
African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke
Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard’s book African Samurai tries to mesh nonfiction with historical fiction. The result is a patchwork that felt more fiction than historical. The seams quickly appear when they switch from the narrative of Yasuke’s life to a more objective historical tone. Their sources are solid, but their experiment made the book feel…
Anime Visual Language Guide
Anime has a visual language that shorthands character emotions and states of mind. The visual language comes from manga and its efforts to clarify the inner world of characters without resorting to words. Visual language can be thought of as a vocabulary of adverbs and adjectives. They add more detail to a character’s behavior. To…