So, we’ve arrived at the penultimate episode of the Kanya Festival arc and the answers to all the mysteries are starting to slowly unveil themselves (some courtesy of Oreki). The Classics Club is still functioning as four separate units, but their moments of togetherness are starting to outnumber their moments of separation. Of course, that doesn’t mean everything is smooth sailing…
Month: December 2015
Owarimonogatari: The Mathematics of Happiness and Misery
In the end, what we turned out to be studying was neither mathematics nor Euler. Life is not a zero sum game; even darkness and light, happiness and despair will never entirely cancel each other.
It is our fate, perhaps, to live with both.
Anime Weekly: Fall 2015, Week 10
I don’t know when the season turned into “Concrete Revolutio, Miss Monochrome and some other shows,” but that’s about where I am at this point. I’m still enjoying everything else I’m watching, but those two shows are just too consistently good for me to compare them to the rest of the season’s offerings.
This week, you’ll hear a lot about my issues with the other stuff airing. Hopefully it’s at least somewhat enjoyable…
Aniwords – Mean Girls, Anime Style
This topic’s been banging around in my head for a while since I started wondering what it was that attracted me to characters like Yuuko from AKB0048 and Miki from THE iDOLM@STER. As has been pointed out to me multiple times with both, neither are particularly nice people or the kind of person you would want as a coworker (or even as a friend, maybe!). Yet, some how I still found them enchanting. Likewise with Maka Albarn from Soul Eater, who I touch on in the article—why was it that my favorite episode of the show was the one where she’s at her very worst? Well, I think I at least somewhat cracked the code—and this piece is the result.
Hyouka, Episode 15
Ultimately, I think Hyouka is a show about what happens when people run into each other, meet each other, talk to each other, get in each others’ way, and—finally—change each other. It’s never a graceful process and sometimes it can be annoying and hard, but so much of the people we become comes from the people with whom we have contact.
This episode of Hyouka is about that.
Hyouka, Episode 14
A short list of extremely good things:
1. This episode of Hyouka.
2. Episode director Naoko Yamada.
3. Finally seeing payoff in Mayaka and Satoshi’s relationship.
Note: list not exhaustive.
Glasslip – DVD Review
My latest review for the Fandom Post is live, and it’s on Glasslip, the show I recently wrote 3000 other words on. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Bless, we already read your thoughts on Glasslip, why do we care to read more of them?” The answer: between writing my essay and writing this review, I somehow stumbled onto the Japanese aesthetic concept of “mono no aware.” I won’t bore you with definitions here, but suffice it to say that it’s an exceptionally good way of thinking about both Glasslip‘s content and its execution. So, if you want to read me wax even more philosophical on Glasslip, head on over to the Fandom Post!
That…probably wasn’t a very good sales pitch, huh.
Anime Weekly: Fall 2015, Week 9
Greetings to you, fair readers of this blog. This week I am happy to greet you along with my new friends who now inhabit the top shelf of my anime bookcase. The genki power in my apartment is strong…
Oh, right! Anime! Let’s get to it!
Aniwords – One Punch Man & the Nature of Heroism
I’ve kind of been waiting for One Punch Man to put some thematic muscle behind its animation chops, and this episode did it (albeit via the graceless inclusion of the random whiny dude). So, of course, I gave the show its due and spent a little bit of time breaking down how One Punch Man‘s commentary works at illuminating the nature of heroism. I suppose I should point out—and I didn’t really touch on this in the original article—that the Hero Associations brand of heroism isn’t wrong per se. It’s functional and practical. It emphasizes results, and directs heroes for the benefit of society the best it can (the point raised this episode that the Association is funded by donations from the public is extremely interesting). But this post is about heroes! Enjoy!
Mage in a Barrel 