Tag Archives: Anime

Wrong Every Time: Gen Urobuchi and the Human Spirit

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Management: Spoilers ahead for Madoka, Gargantia, Psycho-Pass, and Fate/Zero.

It’s not a complicated question. You hold the gun, target in the sights, finger on the trigger. An innocent, no question. But the stakes could not be more clear: one or one hundred. Either you kill this one person, ending their life and putting their blood on your hands, or you do nothing, and one hundred die through your inaction. Is it morally permissible to fire? Is it morally permissible not to? You could ask them first, I suppose – are they willing to die for the sake of one hundred strangers? That would certainly be noble of them, and possibly clear your conscious. But what if they say no? What if the stakes are one thousand strangers? One hundred thousand? One hundred billion?

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Winter 2014 Season Preview

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Wow! This season looks awful!

…yep, that’s pretty much all there is to it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been spoiled the last few seasons, or maybe Winter seasons just really are always that bad, but dear lord this season looks weak. Let’s run down the bright spots!

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What Makes Fandom So Great/Terrible?

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Question:

How do you feel about labeling/defining yourself as a dedicated “fan” of a show or creator? How about the preaching of shows, or the nature of hype/anti-hype?

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Fall 2013 – First Half in Review

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Welp, halfway through the season. I’ve loved, I’ve lost, I’ve found new favorites and forfeit significant respect for old ones. Overall, this season easily eclipses the last three in terms of purely watchable shows, though its top tier is fairly similar in size to last season’s. But then again, that “watchability” level might just be a sign of my entertainment standards dipping, so I guess I have nothing valuable to tell you! On that note, let’s run down the list.

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Fall 2013 – Week 5 in Review

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I almost feel like this entire season has had an overall theme for me – entertainment. Normally, I only watch 3-4 shows in a season, but I actually find all of those shows stimulating in some way – involving some degree of give and take. Last season, Eccentric Family, Gatchaman Crowds, and Monogatari all actually engaged me, providing interesting ideas and conversations along with their great aesthetics. I wouldn’t finish an episode and think, “well, that was fun” – I’d actually be doing fist pumps about how great this medium is, and how well those shows were handling their ideas. This season? There’s an awful lot of sound and fury. Which is fine, for what it is, and I’m not saying every show is that way – intelligence is more than just thematic density, after all, and I think most of these shows are smartly written. In fact, maybe the difference here is that this season has a lot of strict entertainment in the styles that actually appeal to me, considering the glut of self-aware comedies and smartly constructed action/adventure shows and whatnot.

Maybe I’m just developing shit taste.

Who knows.

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Why Do Critics Hate Popular Shows?

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Management: This one should obviously go without saying, but it comes up so often in response to criticism that I figured I might as well give a more full response. A couple thoughts that I’d rather just link than constantly paraphrase.

Question:

Why are critics so against shows that are popular? Just because perfectly good shows likes SAO or Titan become popular, they have to pull at the seams and attack them? It seems mean-spirited and pointlessly non-conformist to put down shows just to look “critical.”

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Gunbuster and Finality

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Loss is a constant of living. As long as you live, as long as you continue to make connections and entrust others with your feelings, you will always be saying goodbye, always be letting go. And this can be a crushing reality – people can spend their whole lives seeking connections long past rekindling, and the grieving process is different for all of us. This letting go is perhaps not the cheeriest subject for a cartoon, but it is a powerful and deeply human one, and the ways we overcome the continuous goodbye of living can be inspiring in their own right. As is so with Gunbuster.

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Podcast: Anime News, Fall Romance, and the Year to Date

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So yep, I was on this week’s FAPcast with Kevo and Aeroblip of Desu ex Machina and Kelloggs of Pedantic Perspective. Lots of rambling on recent news (including thoughts about some encouraging western outreach stuff), the year in anime, and this season’s big romance standoff of Golden Time and White Album 2. Here’s the link again – check it out if you want to hear some more off-the-cuff stuff, or just listen to my uplifting, sonorous voice.

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Formative Experiences and Character Writing

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Management: Been a while since I’ve done a general criticism post, eh?

Question:

Are shows starring adults meaningfully different from shows starring teenagers? How about college students versus high school students? I ask because in many shows (Working! versus Servant x Service, etc), the differences seem largely superficial – the humor and character interactions all carry over.

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Fall 2013 – Week 3 in Review

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Unless three or four shows spontaneously turn terrible, this season’s ridiculous set of shows is going to kill me. I don’t even

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