Our Aimless, Priceless Days: Tamako Love Story

“Here’s a song about nothing and everything at once / all the minutes and the months / nothing and everything at once.”
Superchunk

Today is probably not going to be an exciting day. I have a couple of articles I should finish, starting with this longer essay on Tamako Love Story. I’ll work through a few emails as well, and then probably go out for lunch. In the afternoon, I’ll get more work done and then maybe spend some time with my housemates. I might end the day by going to see a movie, or possibly just lounge around and play some videogames.

A day like that can fade into the blur of days, as they pile up and turn into moments and memories and years. When we look back, such days can often disappear entirely. Humans have a tendency to try and make narratives out of the discordant world we live in; things outside of our control happen according to a tangible pattern, while our own lives contort themselves to present villains and victories, turning points and moral conclusions. Lives lived fade into peaks and valleys, where a simple day of doing what you must and living until the next becomes a lost fragment of the whole.

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Tamako Market – Review

Having finished my K-On! run just a couple months ago, it was pretty convenient to have Yamada’s next series arrive just this January. Tamako Market is unfortunately not as strong as K-On!!, but that’s honestly a pretty high bar; as a general slice of life/drama, Tamako Market is a perfectly reasonable production. It’s annoying to have a show whose problems could be solved by taking out stuff, but that’s certainly the issue here – remove Dera and Dera’s whole “finding a bride” plot, and Tamako Market is actually a much better show. But I’ve heard that’s pretty much what the movie actually does, so hopefully that one gets a release over here soon as well.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below!

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