About

Hey all! I’m Bobduh, founder of this here anime blog. I like anime, character writing, Big Ideas, and pretty much everything else wrapped up in the wonderful world of storytelling. I’ve been at this anime-writing thing for a good few years now, moving from rants on forums to formal essays, writing positions at Anime News Network and Crunchyroll, and eventually a Patreon where readers commission me to write about pretty much anything. It’s been quite a ride!

Storytelling has pretty much always been my passion – I started early, writing some fairly awful fantasy novels back in high school, moving on to some maybe-less-terrible short stories in college, and even now finding the time to occasionally publish a book or two. But anime criticism is what I always return to, and what I’ve now done more consistently than possibly anything else in my life. If that sounds cool to you, you can expect frequent and consistent updates here. I post reader-commissioned writeups and essays on Monday, Friday, and Saturday, along with an airing show-focused “Week in Review” post on Wednesdays, which breaks down my thoughts on the week’s newest episodes. I also have a weekly “Why It Works” craft column on Crunchyroll, and link to that here on Monday, along with my regular anime reviews and other work for Anime News Network throughout the week. I do this anime writing stuff full time at this point, and it all adds up!

Many of my essays are can be found at my reader-funded projects page or in the “Greatest Hits” list on the sidebar, but if you want a couple recommendations, maybe check out my pieces on Gen Urobuchi or Ping Pong the Animation. I’ve also got a favorite shows list, in case you want to see just what kind of stuff I tend to love. Everyone’s got their own preferences, after all – in fact, some of my most rage-inducing pieces have been all about that exact topic.

If you’d like to get in touch with me, I’m pretty easy to reach – you can follow me on twitter, or ask me something over on curiouscat. If you’d like to support my work, you can contribute through either Patreon or by direct donation, and help choose the next project I write about while you’re at it! I’m also available for other commissions, be they reviews or editorial work or whatnot, so if you’ve got a project in mind, feel free to contact me at nicreamer42 (at) gmail dot com.

I think that covers it for me! How are you doing, internet? Hope you’re enjoying the day, hope you’re enjoying the site, and hope to see you again soon!

54 thoughts on “About”

    • Yeah, I’m in an embarrassing hiatus at the moment, but I’m normally working on my own fiction all the time. I’ll hopefully have an awesome Secret Project to announce some time this fall.

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  4. Can I leave some constructive criticism for your blog?

    You’ve got an appealing writing style but the blog design is clunky and not very easily navigable. It’s also not very pretty to look at.

    One thing you can easily do is insert a “read more” button after the introduction of your posts, so that the front page isn’t so cluttered. The button is there on the toolbar when you click “Edit Post”.

    I see you’ve tagged and put your posts into categories, but the top menu doesn’t give me access to your Episode Reviews or your Essays. When you’re on your blog dashboard, there should be an option on the left menu called ‘Appearance’. In it, you’ll find ‘Menus’. Open up the ‘Categories’ tab, open up ‘View All’ and add all your categories to the menu. That all should make your blog easy for a first-time reader to navigate.

    I also suggest you put more pictures on your blog or at least change your header to an image that has something to do with anime. Another option under the ‘Appearance’ tab is ‘Header’. Click that, find an anime picture or a banner, upload it and crop it.

    If you do all of this, I can pretty much guarantee your number of recurring visitors will increase. As it is, I would never have known at first glance that this was a blog about anime if it hadn’t been on Anime Nano’s directory. Also, I would never have bothered typing all of this up to help you if I didn’t like your actual writing – which is the most important thing – so keep up the good work.

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  6. A writer who likes anime… I’ve stumbled across so many since I’ve started blogging. Didn’t think it was common. Thought I might be the only one but obviously I was very wrong. Nice to meet you Bobduh! And a great job with the blog.

    Love the title… xD

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  7. Oh, thank goodness. Someone on the internet who talks intelligibly and intelligently about anime. To be completely honest, your writing makes me feel like most of my reviews/posts are quite insubstantial. That being said, yours is the first blog

    I’m an aspiring writer myself, so it’s cool to see another one of those floating around the internet.

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    • Well, crap, I hit the reply button sooner than I had intended.

      [Cont’d]: That being said, yours is the first blog on WordPress that I’ve felt compelled to follow, as I’m interested in seeing what you continue to post. We do seem to have somewhat different styles of evaluation (I think I am somewhat less craft-oriented than you), but I like that you have opinions supported by reasoning and evidence.

      In any case, I expect I’ll be drifting around here as you continue to post. Looking forward to seeing what else you have to say!

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  8. Hey Bobduh, I mostly lurk haha, but I just wanted to pop in and say that I find your writing really insightful and well-reasoned. To be honest, I don’t find themes and philosophies and feminism and whatnot that you discuss on your blog and on ask.fm particularly intuitive. That’s why I’m glad that you clearly and thoughtfully lay out your arguments, and I think you’ve helped develop my knowledge and views on stuff like that. Keep up the good work.

    P.S. I bought a copy of your book. Haven’t starting reading it yet though 🙂

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    • Thank you! I appreciate your comments (you’re not lurking very well, because I totally recognize you), and I’m really happy to hear you’ve found something worthwhile in my writing. And I hope you enjoy the book!

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  9. I just subscribed after reading your Ping Pong piece. You’re really good and I truly appreciate discovering strong new voices writing about anime. May you have a really great run.

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  11. Hi! I’ve been enjoying your write-ups so far and started to wonder, have you ever considered doing youtube videos? Your essays could easily be adapted to video form, including using the scenes you cut up from the shows.

    I know that right now youtube itself is somewhat hostile to it’s content creators, but there’s very few channels that offer good deep analysis of anime (or videogames,or movies, or literature). It’s a way to reach a much wider audience and get a second income if things pan out (there’s stuff like patron that a lot of youtuber’s use)

    I think, at youtube, there’s a lack of reviewers who look at the context of the anime, who don’t just see it as a self contained piece. More people who bring more information from outside the constrains of the show to help better understand it, like in your reviews of the Monogatari series or, on a smaller scale, how you bring Catcher in the Rye to talk about Oregairu. There’s a lot of reviewers in youtube, but few give a deeper thougth to it’s themes, meaning or how it relates to other art forms.

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  12. I have just recently become entranced by the world of anime. When I say recently, I mean super recently! The only shows I’ve watched are ones available on Netflix. I’ve watched all of Attack on Titan, and I’m currently halfway through Full Metal Alchemist. So, I am incredibly new to this world. However, I have quickly discovered that anime has the most incredible storytelling and character development of any show I have ever watched. I foresee your website being incredibly helpful and useful in the near future!

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  13. You put a lot of imgur links in your writeups so I made this Greasemonkey script to expand them.
    Click the button to get the image inserted after each link for the whole page. Click an individual link to insert its image. Only works for imgur links.
    You will need the Greasemonkey extension to install it.
    https://gist.github.com/SkySkimmer/f2ca9906a2cf8c6edbb6/raw/5af6c3dfa2e18b0452676fc3959a8eb47578fdc7/script.user.js
    Tested with firefox 31 on linux. Feature requests and bug reports will be treated if I remember to.

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    • Apparently the link didn’t go through. How entertaining.
      gist DOT github DOT com SLASH SkySkimmer SLASH f2ca9906a2cf8c6edbb6

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  15. Warning: This comment maybe premature!! I really enjoy and appreciate the voice in which you critique your anime top 30, you have such control over the words you use and the end message you give is almost philosophical in itself. What are some of your favorite books, movies, manga, or anime?

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  16. I’ve just stumbled upon your blog and it probably one of the best most detailed anime blogs seen.
    I’m a huge film lover in general but i have recently started to get into Japanese anime, obviously seen most of the Studio Ghibli films and they are pretty amazing, but now i’m stuck as to where to look next. if you could recommend any really good anime films (hopefully ones in english) that would be really helpful.
    And in the meantime you can check out my blog if you want filmtruthsblog.wordpress.com
    Look forward to hearing from you … if you have the time. 🙂

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  17. I found your blog whilst looking for reviews/criticism of Shin Sekai Yori, and read your post on True Heroism. I then decided to look around the site a bit more and see what else was there. Having read a bit more of your site (your top 30, the Eva Rebuild article, the Gen Philosophy article), I can safely say that your ability to critically analyze anime far outstrips my own. I will make a confession- I want to blog about “smart anime”. That’s what got me into it in the first place. (At least that’s what I tell myself.) But seeing your analysis of great works and reading them, I can see I have some work to do before I could hope to do it properly. I hope to keep reading and learning from you in the future.

    PS: I saw your MAL, and that you hadn’t seen Gunslinger Girl. BUT! I see that you gave the manga a 10/10. I suddenly feel refined- we agree. 🙂 I think you should watch the first season- it’s very good. The second season…

    PSS: As tremendous black marks to my anime pedigree, I have yet to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion, Stand Alone Complex, OR Now and Then, Here and There. I have made a conscious decision to not “find them” online unless available for legal streaming, and buying those at this point is even more cost prohibitive than your average Aniplex release. -_- Do you believe that I can even begin to call myself a proper anime reviewer/critic without having seen those? 🙁

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  18. Hey Bobduh,

    First, I just want to say that I really enjoy reading your writing, even though I haven’t read very much of it yet (just your general “Monogatari and the Monster Inside” piece, the one about the fanservice in Nise, your Yurikuma write-ups, and one a long time ago about criticism)! You do a really good job of meshing the more “formal” thoughtful and analytical things with the obvious passion you have for what you write about, which really shines through. While I can write well (I think?), I tend to think it comes off somewhat coldly, so I really admire how you infuse your words with so much warmth.

    Second, I want to thank you for introducing me to FilmCritHulk through that piece on criticism I mentioned above (which I was actually linked to by froggykun on a comment on one of his pieces).

    Third (and maybe most importantly), I tried to look at your Amazon and RightStuf stores to see if there was anything I’d be interested in by following the links at the top of the page, but they aren’t working. I also searched your name (well, the one you use for blogging) and this blog’s name on RightStuf, but it didn’t turn up anything. Do you still have things for sale on those sites?

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  20. Hello. First I would like to say that I really respect your writing style.I envy your ability to express your thoughts so elegantly. Now I just need to ask a quick question. Above you link your MAL and note that you have short or long reviews of each of your watched shows under a “more” tab, however I am unable to locate said tab. I clicked on your anime list and don’t see such a tab. Am I in the wrong place? Keep up the stellar work!

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    • For each anime in the “Completed” section, if you look right from the name, there should be an “Add” button followed by a “More” button right before the score column. If you click the “More” button, the show’s info should expand downwards, complete with a “Comments” section at the bottom – that’s where I put those thoughts.

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      • Thank you for your reply. I see the “add” button but not the “more” button, and I believe the issue lies in that I’m using a tablet. Mildly disappointing… MAL should fix that. Thanks anyways though, guess I’ll have to read them on a computer.

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  21. Hey, there, Bobduh! I wanted to drop a line to sayyour work is incredible – the “Your Taste is Bad and So Are You” is particularly enlightening, as it makes me realize how I approach film, myself. I’m not a perfect critic or commentator on film – I’ve been critical of films such as Garbage Pail Kids in the past, which I’m avoiding now because it’s unnecessarily divisive to criticize people for enjoying a particular work I don’t like – so I try my best to be respectful. ^.^;; Would it be alright to exchange blog links?

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  22. Greetings from India, I stumbled upon your blog and cannot express how great your posts are be it episodics, reviews or just thoughts. I made a bolg long back and am still struggling to get it back working. I will appreciate it if you’d help me by giving some suggestions so that I can get back into writing, first and foremost, from where do I start?

    I wrote a post about Chihayafuru and then I didn’t write a single article. That was back in 2013.

    You can check out mine if you want: https://violentlucius.wordpress.com/

    And I am looking forward to more posts in the future, keep them coming. Cheers! 🙂

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  23. Hello! I stumbled upon your site from a post you made on a recent ANN thread, and I really like your review style and want to follow you for future reviews.
    I do have some questions though. Do you have a masterlist somewhere of all the full-series reviews you’ve done? I could not seem to find one and was hoping to browse a list of all the series you’ve reviewed as a whole and pick some to read of anime I’d watched myself. I tried looking at your tag cloud, but it didn’t seem to include every series you’ve reviewed.
    My second question is, do you by any chance have a tumblr to go with this blog? Another reviewer I follow uses a tumblr account to post links to his wordpress posts, and since I spend most of my time on tumblr that’s how I am alerted to new reviews. It would be great if you could do something like that as well, I don’t know how much trouble that would be though.

    Reply ↓

    • I don’t have a masterlist of reviews, but I do have a tumblr that reposts all the pieces here. You can find that right here:

      http://bobduh.tumblr.com/

      I should probably work on setting up a more central resource for reviews/essays/etc, and will hopefully have that up shortly. Either way, I’m glad you enjoy my work!

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  24. i don´t know what to think about u´r site

    well, in the internet you can find any shit nowadays.

    the “best anime of all time” is the worst list i have ever encountered.
    i definitely do not like your style and wouldn´t want to read anything from you, i think.

    however, i wish good luck and success.

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  26. Been following this blog for a while, and wanted to let you know that I appreciate your work. It’s nice to see anime reviews written by someone whose knowledge of media criticism isn’t based entirely on tvtropes. The fact that we seem to have broadly similar tastes helps, too, but even when those tastes diverge, your essays are articulate enough that I still find them interesting and useful.

    Also pretty interesting to watch your perspective evolve over time. Keep up the good work, onii-chan.

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  27. Hello, I created blog about a certain light novel analysis “yahari ore no seishun love come wa machigatteiru” and blogroll for exchanging link. I want to exchange link if you don’t mind. I see your blog is clean and interesting, that’s why I love your blog.

    This is my blog.
    https://yaharibento.wordpress.com/

    Hope to receive your answer soon. :3

    Ps. If you ever read oregairu light novel, maybe my blog is useful to you more or less.

    Reply ↓

  28. Hello there,

    I wanted to find out if you have any design needs at wrongeverytime.com (Responsive web design, re-designing, landing pages, logo designing, UX, eCommerce development, payment gateway integration, Bug fixing/Issue tracking, etc.)?

    We can increase sales, engagement, conversions and more through our design and UX strategies.

    Interested? Email me back, I’d love to chat.

    Regards,
    James Miller
    Business Development

    Reply ↓

  29. I just saw Anime New’s Network is hiring reviewers, and I just applied! Keyboard is still hot from typing more feverishly then I had in a long time. I know you write for them too, and even remember following your blog before you wrote for them. So as a man who understands both sides of the fence, what has it been like working for them, and how was your application process? Did you apply more than once? Did you start by submitting individual articles or anything like that?

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  31. Hey. Any chances to get an RSS feed on yr website? Wd love to read the first paragraph/s from my newsfeed and go to yr page from there. Keep up the good work sir!

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  32. Hey ther bobduh,
    I’m a fellow anime blogger and just wanted to get in touch with you. Can you email me regarding my blog. I’d love to get any tips from you since you are so great in what you do..

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  34. When will you continue your Big O review. I want to see your opinion on episode 3 and episode 4 (i imagine you to be QUITE intrigue by Schwartzwald.

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  35. Hi Bob,

    I’m Jeff and I represent the Atsuko Affiliate Program (atsuko.com). Atsuko is an e-commerce site created for fans of anime. We carry 100% officially licensed and exclusive apparel, accessories, and more.

    We’d love for you to become a partner of ours.

    Why join the Atsuko Affiliate Program?

    We carry merchandise from the biggest names in anime, such as Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop, My Hero Academia, Naruto, Tokyo Ghoul and many more.
    Our average order value is over $100.
    We offer higher commissions and exclusive deals for high performing affiliates.
    We can offer you an 8% commission rate on every sale to start off.
    I’ve reviewed your blog (URL HERE) to learn more about your audience and content and have come up with the following ideas on how you can make money by promoting Atsuko:

    Shopping Section
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    Interested? Please reply to this email
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    Thanks in advance for your quick reply,
    Jeff

    Reply ↓

  36. I just wanted to say that your reviews are incredible! I read a lot of them for Hyouka while I was watching it. Your insights are honestly impressive. I got to where I’d read your review of an episode right after watching it. There were always so many things that you picked up on that I never thought of. Anyway, your reviews are awesome and keep it up! Thanks for the enjoyable reads!

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  38. Hello,

    I hope you’re well. I’m interested in guest posting on your site. Could you please provide details on your guidelines and pricing for both general and casino-related posts?

    Looking forward to your response.

    Best regards, John Smith

    Reply ↓

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