Strike Witches: The Evil Without
In our roundtable discussion on whether or not anime is art, Ray brought up an excellent point about that infamous scifi-fantasy-loli-pantsu fanservice vehicle, Strike Witches. To wit, though the show...
View ArticleThe Zen of Eureka Seven
Take one gangly kid, one cooldere, and a bunch of heroic rebels who just want to live free. Put them in a dystopian future where an almost-magical element, trapar, generates lift forces and enables...
View ArticleThe Philosophy of Being Otaku
With a title like Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, how can you go wrong? Professor Hiroki Azuma’s almost decade-old book by that title has just received an English translation, and it’s supposed to...
View ArticleA Brave New Divergence
I have seen the future, and it is fantastic. Multicolored hair! Massive oppai¹! Quantum everything! Cool robots! Just ignore the bizarre displays of objectum sexual² behavior that accompany all...
View ArticleNew York Anime Festival 2009, Day 0: Cake
The Dave and Buster’s was crowded. Black-attired waitstaff in crisp uniforms nodded professionally at me as I entered, pointing me up to the third floor when I inquired about the event hosted there. It...
View ArticleAika Zero: Yielding to Victory
What defines Aika Zero? The fact that it deliberately imitates fetish porn? The fact that the overarching target for the first story arc is a giant phallus, which must be destroyed before it succeeds...
View ArticleLet’s Bible One-Shot: The Moe of Christ
Suffering is moe. Crucified on the cross, Jesus Christ knew profound suffering. Therefore, Jesus Christ is profoundly moe. This, along with a few other propositions of dubious logical merit, forms the...
View ArticleWant to cross-dress! Henjo-nyoshi!
Here’s a Japanese to English translation of the article: Warning: broken English as crappy as Arnold. This is Hideyoshi Kinoshita, an extremely popular character from “Baka To Test No Syokanju.” OMG,...
View ArticleStrike Witches 2 – The Pantsless Dream
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi We live, as the Chinese would have it, in interesting times. No, let us be more frank than that. We live in absurd times. As the...
View ArticlePanty and Stocking: Broken Heroes
It should be a series filled with horrible angst. Panty and Stocking – named for the artifacts they bear – are outcast angels, unable to ascend to heaven. Denied communion with their maker, they must...
View ArticleMadoka’s Magical Realism
If anything in the universe lends itself to broad, shamanic principles, it is surely entropy. Broken glass, spilled milk, and toppled stacks of books are all examples of that universal principle we are...
View ArticleWhat if I had never gotten into anime?
Ray gives a heartfelt confession of what anime, fandom, and God has meant to him over the years. Another entry in the "Diary of an Anime Lived" series.
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