Why It Works: Dragon Maid’s Yamada Touch, Part One

Today I’ve got the first of a two-parter all about Naoko Yamada’s recent episode of Dragon Maid. This one offered me the chance to do something I love doing, but only infrequently get a chance to – breaking down a massive number of visual choices made for one specific scene, exploring how all of them facilitate the sequence’s dramatic intent. Not all shows or episodes reward that kind of close look, but Yamada’s stuff and Kyoto Animation’s work in general do it all the time. Good anime are fun to talk about!

Why It Works: Dragon Maid’s Yamada Touch, Part One

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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