Posted 30 January 2010
I’ll actually make a conscious effort to avoid major and specific plot spoilers here, both because you probably haven’t read IO (literally イオ) and because I want you to. I won’t say I guarantee you’ll like it if you have an interest in harem, or can get past the harem veneer, but it’s worth a look, not least because its harem lead isn’t quite what one would expect.
(P.S. I have been posting here frequently. If for whatever reason this excites you, I’ll warn you not to get your hopes up. Semester two of grad school is just beginning…)
(P.P.S. Though I guess it would be nice if I could pull out 500 words or so at least once a week. We’ll see.)
(Read the rest of this post.)
Posted in IO | 4 Comments
Posted 22 January 2010
Here’s something that occurred to me the other day when I was stumbling as usual through the fiction-writing process: speculative slice of life anime and manga, even those with some emphasis on festivals, rarely include an event analogous to Christmas as manifest in the United States. This is not to say that gifts aren’t given and received in fantastical and science-fictional slice of life franchises — they are, and pretty commonly — but few such franchises seem to present a holiday whose focus or impetus is the giving and receiving of gifts.
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Posted in Aria (Anime), Haibane Renmei, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou | 4 Comments
Posted 28 December 2009
Here I stand some three days after the conclusion of Project Twelve Moments 2009, my fingers bent and bloodied, my mind weeping ichorous tears after twelve days of wracking. And yet my work is unfinished. A mere twelve posts aren’t enough to cover every specimen of drawn and/or animated media I consumed in 2009 that hit me where it counts. I’d like to mention, briefly, a few other examples of note, and though even this list will surely leave things out, I’ll at least feel a little better for recommending a few extra things that seem to deserve it.
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Posted in Bakuman, Fate/stay night (VN), Solanin | 4 Comments
Posted 20 December 2009
[Read the previous moment here or start at the beginning]
Yotsuba&!: does it need any introduction? Or, would any paltry introduction I wrote for it be enough?
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Posted in Yotsuba&! | 2 Comments
Posted 18 December 2009
[Read the previous moment here or start at the beginning]
If the previous moment was an emotional high point, this one’s a definite low.
The manga in question here is Onani Master Kurosawa, that indie production that did more for me than many (perhaps most) of the professional works I consumed this year. That it takes a dark turn isn’t so surprising; it’s easy to guess that the guy who ejaculates on people’s belongings for great justice and the girl who blackmails him into doing so don’t have wholly bright futures in store. But it’s hard to imagine just how dark said dark turn will be until it happens. And, sure enough, it’s dark.
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Posted in Onani Master Kurosawa | 6 Comments
Posted 8 September 2009
Good literature, I think, makes us feel our membership in the human race. It engenders within us an empathy and a love for living things that can be hard to come by during the natural course of our everyday lives. That’s no small feat, and it’s one of the reasons I’m so averse to selling short the pursuit of entertainment, a very potent and available kind of self-reflection.
By that definition, Bokurano is good literature.
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Posted in Blogs, Bokurano (Manga) | 12 Comments
Posted 2 September 2009
I have not forgotten about pontif.us again. In fact, I redesigned it; see? Marvel at the simplicity!
Anyway, I’ve been reading Bakuman — I’ve read all that’s currently available, actually. It is, in a word, good, and it stands out in its self-referentiality in terms of art itself more than fandom. I could talk about that, but I won’t, as it’s plain enough to any reader, and you really should read it. I will, however, talk about the following segment.
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Posted in Bakuman, Fandom, Methodology | 4 Comments
Posted 22 August 2009
Let’s pretend for a while that “moe” isn’t a blanket term for any quality a fan likes to see in an illustrated member of the sex in which they’re interested. Functionally it might be, but we’re pretending here.
The “essence” of moe is protectiveness; a moe character is one for whom you might take a bullet. And it isn’t about sexual attraction, I’d say, even if others might say otherwise. Have you noticed how characters in ero doujins are often stripped of their canonical personalities almost entirely? I’m guessing that’s a necessity. I’ve talked about this, about how I subscribe to a gradient model of moe and gar, before.
At any rate, when Otouto-kun, who I’ve conscripted into reading Love Hina, mentioned that Keitaro might be moe, I couldn’t help but wonder.
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Posted in Love Hina (Manga) | 4 Comments
Posted 20 August 2009
Love Hina — it’s harem, yes. It’s by no means the first harem manga, clearly, but it was my first exposure to harem, and damn near my first exposure to manga, and so it played a formative role in my personal fandom. Even now, during my second re-reading (to which I will subject you, noble reader, be warned rest assured) I maintain that it’s quite good if you don’t mind the conventions it deals with. Beyond (and sometimes because of) the general over-the-top craziness I’ve come to expect from Akamatsu, it has a surprising wealth of clever, lucid moments.
For one thing, it puts the idea of college to work in a curious way, and if you’ve been listening to me at all since June of last year, you’ll know I have a bit of a thing for academia.
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Posted in Love Hina (Manga) | No Comments
Posted 13 August 2009
I really should stick to Fate/stay night, I guess, but this quick-and-often blogging, once resurrected from hiatus, has its own momentum. Also, I read Onani Master Kurosawa in one go last night, so it probably deserves some attention beyond the usual Twitter gibberish. But what can I say that you, my tight compadres of the sphere, haven’t said better already? Truly I am always last to the sausage fest party.
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Posted in Blogs, Onani Master Kurosawa | 12 Comments
