Hello, hello! I’m back on the writing grind, this time messing around with talking about anime titles I like and other related topics. Honestly, I really just wanted to tell that story about Heavy Object (which I still maintain is going to be a show about rocks), and everything else kind of just spun out of that. Anyways, hope you guys enjoy my first proper post in about two weeks! Hopefully you don’t find my writing muscles too stiff.
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 7
As per the request of a few commentors on last week’s post, here’s a threadstarter post for Summer 2015’s seventh week of the anime season! I’m still in the midst of my business trip (aka not even halfway through this 80-hour work week) so I’m actually writing this from the past and have no idea how much anime I’ll have actually watched. But respond in the comments with what you’ve been watching—and let me know what I should be prioritizing when I have time.
Also, I’m planning on watching Heartcatch Precure!, so keep your eyes peeled in the comments for a potential blurb from me on what I think about it so far.
My Hero Academia Volume 1 – Manga Review
Of course, right after I go on hiatus, I start having a bunch of things to post…ah, such is life. Except I wrote this review quite a while ago, so maybe it doesn’t count…? In any case, My Hero Academia (although I prefer the Japanese title, Boku no Hero Academia for no real reason) is a really fun series and I’m hoping I get the opportunity to review future volumes of the manga. It moves really well, the characters are cute, and there’s a great sense of energy. Definitely recommended if you’re looking for a shounen battler that feels fresh and fun (instead of like generic Shounen Jump stuff).
Check out the full review here!
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 6
I can’t really figure out how to say this well, so I’ll just go for blunt: this is probably going to be my last post on here for a while. The lead-off is that I’m leaving tomorrow on a 10-day business trip. I’ll be staffing a big conference put on by my workplace, and I’m not anticipating much free time to watch anime—let alone write about it. The second part is that I’m feeling kind of burned out these days. As seriously as I take this blog as something I’ve made a commitment to (primarily because of my readers), continuing on like I have been for the past month or so seems like a surefire way to entirely sap the joy out of writing. To a large extent, the pressure I’ve been putting on myself to continue churning out content is probably mostly to blame—and the only way I can see to purge myself of that mentality is to put myself in a blogging time-out of sorts; that is, a hiatus.
I don’t expect it’ll last forever (and maybe even that long). If I continue to watch anime, I’m going to have things to say. And if I have things to say, you can be darn sure I’ll start writing again! But, for now, forcing myself to write stuff I’m not excited to write is making me feel like I’m not putting out stuff that’ll make people excited to read it. When I can do that again, I’ll be back!
Aniwords – How Will This Season’s Shows End?
Yeah, yeah, I know—this post was maybe a bit lazy. However, people seem to be having a good time with them AND I started a Monmusu best girl war in the comments, so I’m considering it a success.
Animator Expo Impressions (Part 4)
For those of you who don’t know, Evangelion director Hideaki Anno’s Studio Khara, in conjunction with media company Dwango, has been running a cool little project called Animator Expo (there is an English language version of the site) for a while now. 30 short anime productions are planned for the Expo, with a new one coming out every week starting on November 7, 2014. So far, 26 (I’m behind) of the 30 shorts have aired, so here are my thoughts on numbers 15-20. Rather than giving them a standard numbered rating, I’m just going to go with a [bad/decent/good/great] scale.
Previous Posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
On these five shorts as a whole: Definitely not my favorite batch of shorts so far, but with one new favorite and a couple of conceptually interesting videos, it’s definitely wasn’t a wasted group (at least for the most part).
Turn A Gundam – DVD Review (Part 1)
Yet another physical media review completed—this time, it’s the critical and fandom darling of the Gundam franchise, Turn A Gundam (or ∀ Gundam if you want to stylize it properly). I quite enjoyed it, to be honest! It’s not my first Gundam, technically (if you count Build Fighters), but it is my first of the old-school, classic Gundam offerings. Overall, it’s definitely got a quirky charm to it that kept me interested despite its deficiencies.
Here’s the link to the full review!
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 5
It’s week five, and things are just trucking along now. Pretty much all of my shows are away from the potential drop bubble at this point, leaving me with a bunch of stuff I’m really enjoying watching each week. Some shows are getting better by the week, others hitting some rough patches, but overall there’s nary a one among them that I’m not excited to watch each week. And that’s the way a weekly schedule should be.
Aniwords – Let’s Play an Anime Game!
After last week’s column on the “trapped in an MMO” genre, I was feeling pretty frisky about genre analysis, so I went back to sweep up the shows people mentioned that I didn’t address. This time, however, I’m playing around with the idea of genre and “gamified world” settings—it gets a bit more theoretical and less pointed than last weeks, but I think the post is more fun because the ideas are more adventurous.
Anime Weekly: Summer 2015, Week 4
This was the week the charms of newness started to wear off for a lot of shows. I always feel like early on in seasons, I’m kind of breezing through shows and liking them just because they’re new, but by the time they’re started to kick into their real stories in the fourth episode (note, the fourth, not the stupid third) is when they start to show their cracks or I start to tire of them. How much those two things are related…I’m not sure and I’m not enthused enough to think it through. Anyways!
Mage in a Barrel 