New Game! has kind of sneakily become one of my favorite shows of the Summer 2016 season, but it’s not just because of the great character designs or the pretty colors. Instead, I think there are some elements to the show that really ground it in a semi-reality and make it feel much more substantial (even if it’s only softly so) than your normal cute girls doing cute things anime.
Guys, let me tell you, I’ve got absolutely no clue what makes me pop off for almost two thousand words like I did in this column. I was just planning for it to be regular length and by the time I’d finished chasing down all the threads I’d started out with I ended up with this monster of a post—although, to be fair, I think it’s a rather good one. I hope you guys like it! I think it explores some interested ideas.
The Lost Village wasn’t the best anime that aired this season, nor was it anywhere close to being my favorite, but darn it, it was sure a heckuva a lot of fun to write about. I’ve long since passed by my formalist fan days (I remember telling one of my college professors that I was a formalist LOL), but talking about The Lost Village‘s formal qualities is very nearly the only way I can think to approach the show—as should be clear since this is the third post I’ve written on its formal elements. In any case, I hope you guys enjoy this wild post!
I’m always sort of amazed how just watching one show can trigger a series of thoughts that tie a bunch of disjointed ideas together in my head. Thus it was with Hanayamata, and now here we are with a new Aniwords column on slotting in character archetypes into genre shows and why it all actually works.
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.
As a disclaimer, since all of the commentors on Crunchyroll felt obligated to point this out—yes, I’m fully aware the stuff I’m talking about in this post wasn’t “invented” by anime for this particular genre. Of course, I probably don’t need to tell you guys that. You know me well enough to actually listen to what I’m trying to say. Ah, well, such is the price for writing for an audience on a big site versus on my blog. That’ll teach me to sell out…
Due to the ending of the current fall anime season and the resulting influx of new anime into my Ongoing Anime Rankings, as well as a fascinating discussion about the 1-10 ranking scale over on the Crunchyroll forums, it came to my attention that my current ranking system, while good, needed some fine tuning. Below you will see the new system, but first, I want to share some of the philosophy and general standards that have been considered as I put together the new system. Continue reading
Mage in a Barrel 