The animation style of The Ancient Magus Bride caught my attention, but its themes grabbed my thoughts. The show has a sense of wonder to it. Magic is a wonderful–sometimes dangerous–but always awe-inspiring part of the world. Through magic, the lonely Chise comes to know the strange magician Elias. At its heart, The Ancient Magus…
The Problems with SEO, Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, concerns many anime bloggers just as it does businesses. SEO is a package of techniques that are supposed to attract search engines like Google to your content. The best SEO is supposed to get an article onto the coveted first page of a search. Few Internet users go beyond the…
Reveling in the Ridiculous: Anime is Tame
Despite how odd anime and manga appears, with their fan service and visual language and odd stories, they’re tame compared to Japan’s literature. I spend a fair bit of time beating up on fan-service, but fan-service doesn’t compare to shunga and the woodblock print books from the Edo period. Manga has roots in ukiyo-e, or…
Income Inequality Lessons from the Edo Period
Income inequality has been a world-wide concern in recent years. But it isn’t anything new. Unequal distribution of wealth has appeared across history, and we can look toward these periods for lessons. For example, the Italian Renaissance was funded by what we would today call the 1%. Families like the Medici lavished their wealth on…
The Dangers Behind MyAnimeList and Goodreads
We’ve been trained by the so-called free Internet to disregard the value of our information. Although this begins to change, we still don’t think anything about leaving a comment on a YouTube video or keeping our MyAnimeList pages and Goodreads lists updated. Of course, these services are useful. YouTube suggests videos I would miss otherwise….
My Sumo Foray — A Sport I Can Actually Enjoy Watching
I’m not one for sports. American football puts me to sleep. Football–soccer–does the same. I’ve never really found a sport I could get into. Too many commercial breaks. Too many rules. I’m a bit soured to sports because of the focus my hometown placed on basketball and American football. The arts were always cut before…