Japan’s novelist Natsume Soseki remains relevant for us today. Soseki grew up during the upheaval after the fall of the Shogun and the rise of the Meiji period. He numbered among the first Japanese to live in a Westernized Japan. His experiences of modernization mirror what we experience today with our own transition into attentionization,…
Anime and Manga’s Buff Men and Male Body Image
Much has been said about the impact of commercial images of women with rare or impossible body shapes. Despite all the analysis, little has been done to change this problem. Frankly, it’s because dissatisfied people consume more. If you like who you are, you don’t buy as much makeup, diet plans, gadgets, gizmos, cars, and…
The Ancient Magus Bride and Being Alone
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…