Analytics and Commentaries

Critical Thinking, Anime, and You

iblessall 4 Comments

We all watch anime for different reasons. Some of us want a time sink, some of us want entertainment, some of us want an artistic experience, some of us want a combination of things from our anime, even differing our expectations by show. And when we’ve seen a show we love, for whatever reason, we usually want to tell people about that show. It is one of the great pleasures of encountering any form of media: finding something you like and sharing it with others.

Yet, many of us (myself included) struggle to articulate what it is about a show that drew us in, and struggle to defend our favorite shows from the negative criticism of others. And on the other side, many of us fail to effectively communicate our problems with a particular show.

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Essay: World Conquest, Imaginative Powers and Systematic Rejection

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What is the nature of conquest? How does one become a conquerer? From where does the power to conquer come?

Following the conclusion of World Conquest: Zvezda Plot, these are questions that seem to follow from another: from where does Kate Hoshimiya get her powers of conquest? It’s not an answer explicitly given in the show itself; there’s no stated higher power that has blessed Kate with the ability to conquer using her shiny CGI fist. And there shouldn’t be, because Kate’s power isn’t a power that is granted from the outside. It’s a power that is inherent to her nature as a conquerer and a child.

Screen Shot 2014-04-03 at 9.14.49 PM Continue reading →

The “Normal Protagonist”

iblessall 4 Comments

Sometimes, we see tropes over and over again and gloss right over them, barely even noticing that we’ve seen the same archetype a hundred times before. Other times, something is just enough the same or just enough different that we sit up and take notice.

The particular trope I want to take a look at today is that of the “normal protagonist.”

While the normal protagonist archetype takes various forms, such as the much decried blandly nice guy, the “ordinary high school student” monologue, the clueless harem lead or the personality-less main character (or the “generic brown-haired/blue-haired MC), this particular pattern appears in numerous anime, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not. Examples follow:

Kajimo Touma

Kajimo Touma, A Certain Magical Index

Shu Ouma

Shu Ouma, Guilty Crown

Screen Shot 2014-01-15 at 7.56.50 PM

Honoka Takamiya, Witchcraft Works

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Likable Characters Save Bad Anime

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I recently picked up (and finished within two days), the first season of Seitokai Yakuindomo, a highly crude, irreverent and sex-obsessed anime about the student council of the recently turned co-ed high school, Ousai High.

First off, why did I pick up the show? I honestly couldn’t tell you. The second season is currently simulcasting on Crunchyroll and I had wandered into the show thread, just to see what people were saying and, although I didn’t really think the show would be to my tastes, thought I would at least give it a look. The first episode was just about as bad as I thought it would be (excepting the stellar animation from GoHands), and I didn’t really think about going back to the show until the other day, when I for, as I said, inexplicable reasons went and watched the whole show.

I gave Seitokai Yakuindomo a 4/10 (ranking here), and my opinion of the show didn’t really change from the first episode of the first season to the last. So why did I continue watching it?

Because of these guys.

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