Category: Opinion

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Anime Reviews Opinion Personal Reviews

Revisiting Shirobako – You Can’t Go Home Again

This essay contains spoilers for the Shirobako film.

As crazy as things have been over the past several months, my husband and I are finally at the point where we’re willing to go out and see the occasional movie again. As it was prior to the original lockdown, the majority of our moviegoing energy has been spent seeing limited-run anime showings on odd nights of the week. This pretty much guarantees both a small crowd (which has been helpful to settle my fears of being out in public again) and that we’ll enjoy what we’re there to see. Recently we ventured out to see a film we’ve been waiting to arrive stateside for a long time, the Shirobako movie. We both loved the anime series and really wanted to the witness the continuing adventures of the characters that we’d grown to love. That said, to expect the same of a beloved franchise (and in some sense, to receive it), can lead to some issues.

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Opinion Personal

If You Can’t Say Something Nice…

Of course we all know how that adage ends – “…then don’t say anything at all.” But that’s difficult to do when you’ve started to make a habit of sharing your anime opinions online. As a hobbyist writer and reviewer, I think it’s important to have a good attitude toward what media you’re examining, but sometimes that can be a challenge and no one can be expected to enjoy everything that they watch. I think fandom spaces in general aren’t always the best spaces for nuanced discourse, because they’re filled with passionate feelings and not everyone is interested in taking a deep look at why they like or dislike certain material. It’s just kind of how it is.

Irina wrote recently about anime fandom’s bad habit of bringing down the level of its own discourse by confusing the act of having negative opinions about a particular anime with expressing negative feelings toward fans of said anime, which is a subject I’ve been forced to think about a lot over the years. Alongside her own thoughts, though, she also issued a challenge: for those of us out in the blogosphere to say something nice about our lowest-rated series on whatever anime tracker we use. I thought that sounded like a fun challenge. Even as a pessimist (don’t mind me, it’s just a coping mechanism), I feel like I’m generally pretty good at finding the silver lining in most of what I watch.

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Game Reviews Opinion Personal Reviews

Threads Reconnecting: A Discussion of Supergiant’s “Hades”

Note: This post contains thematic and story spoilers for Supergiant Games’ Hades. If you’re thinking about checking the game out, I highly suggest you do so! Then feel free to come back and let me know what you think.

It’s difficult to resist the urge to refer to 2020 as a lost year, because for so many of us it feels like the culmination of a lot of bad decisions and missed opportunities. For me personally, it was a time period defined by stress without a healthy outlet. I couldn’t attend conventions and see friends, I could really go on vacation, I suffered an undercurrent of fear that something might go awry with my or my husband’s employment situation… and that’s even aside from the relentless thumping of day after day of exhausting election news. It was bad enough for long enough that I couldn’t even get myself to watch anime. For some, their hobbies are an escape; something that lets them settle into a pleasant state of mind and forget about the outside world. For me, it’s kind of the opposite in that I have to be in a certain state of mind to be able to focus and enjoy something.

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Opinion Personal

Anime Fandom on Our Own Terms

I spend a lot of time on Twitter, mostly for the purposes of looking at cool art and memes and keeping up on anime news. It seems like every few weeks lately, some bozo has blasted onto the scene with some dismal hot take about who “deserves” to be a part of the anime fandom. The last time this happened the commentary had a specifically sexist bent, but for whatever reason I decided to keep my mouth shut. It honestly gets exhausting to have to defend my place in anime fandom all the time so I usually just don’t take the bait; I’m old enough now and have seen the fandom landscape change and grow so much for the better that some troll’s short-sighted vision of how their preferred fandom should operate isn’t worth the oxygen it takes to argue about it. And if they don’t believe that women and nonbinary folks have been around and even acted as formative members of most if not all genre fandoms, well… they’re allowed to be wrong, and loudly.

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Meta Opinion Personal

The Balancing Act of Being Critical: Part 1 – Passions are Personal

Over the past couple of months I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I approach my writing and reviewing, and the things that go into crafting a well-written critique that has value to others. I think media criticism and textual analysis is interesting no matter what your chosen medium of focus is, but anime in particular appeals to me because I feel like there’s a lot to unpack – both regarding the material itself, as well as the ways in which the Western fandom interacts with it. As an affect of the Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, I’ve also had a lot more time to interact online with folks within my anime club friendship circle; as a result I’ve gotten into some interesting discussions regarding anime likes and dislikes and had the opportunity to consider some alternative viewpoints to my own. Because I’ve been hoping to write more about the more “meta” parts of anime fandom, I wanted to use this opportunity to record and ponder some of those thoughts.

I’ve been writing about anime for a long time (since early 2007 at least). While plenty of anime series have crossed my path over the years, some blazing onto the scene with a lot of fanfare before being largely forgotten and some remaining favorites of mine despite all the things I’ve experienced in the interim, one thing that’s been a constant is that anime as a medium has always had its share of controversial material. This isn’t something unique to anime; there are plenty of Western TV shows and films that push the boundaries of our collective social taboos (or just trample all over what I’d define as good taste). But I suspect that there are traits of anime that make these kinds of transgressions stand out to a greater degree than they might otherwise.

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Opinion Personal

Charting a Course

How deep into the anime fandom would you say you’ve delved? If I really push it, I can trace my fandom back to somewhere in the mid 1990’s, when Sailor Moon and Akira were first popular in the US, and perhaps even earlier to when a friend of mine commented that my character doodles looked like “Japanese cartoons” – it turned out it was mimicking some of the designs from one of several anime that had been wiped of Japanese culture for the consumption of American kids on Nickelodeon. While I know that anime had a minor presence in the West even prior to that, the era of anime alongside Saturday morning cartoons really marked a big jump in its fandom cache. I don’t say all this to imply that I’m somehow “more” of an anime fan than any particular person, I just want to point out that I have the benefit of time and exposure to a lot of series that have since become much less available to newer fans.

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Opinion Personal

When “Logic” Isn’t Enough

Critical textual analysis can be a tough gig. By design, there will always be folks who disagree with your conclusions, and a subset of those readers will be genuinely angry with you because of them. One of the pieces of advice I try to give out whenever I participate in an “Anime 101” or similar panel is for people new to the fandom to seek out a critic whose values and opinions reflect their own. This could be myself, another blogger, or a professional reviewer; it doesn’t really matter in the end as long as they speak to the subjects and concerns that person has as a consumer.

As a reviewer, I have certain things specific to myself, my life, and my experiences, that make their way into my writing. Those things can mostly be gathered under the umbrella of “representation of marginalized groups,” though I tend to specifically focus on women and how they’re characterized and treated within narratives. I’m not a big fan of violence, especially sexual violence. I don’t really enjoy fanservice, either, although that’s not always a deal-breaker. All of these are specific opinions of mine, and they’re much broader than any one anime, manga, or film.

How’s the quality of representation in your favorite anime? From “Michiko and Hatchin.”
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Opinion Personal

What I’m Watching – Mob Psycho 100 II (Episodes 1-5)

This post discusses plot spoilers through episode 5 of the series.

Read my First Impression here!

I watch anime for all sorts of reasons, but beyond just enjoying it for its aesthetic properties I also appreciate the many different stories that are told within the medium. I think one of the better ways to achieve some sort of empathy is to read or watch stories about people who are different than yourself, and while anime characters tend to be homogeneous in their own way, I’m still amazed at the variety of characters and stories there are to experience. It is always nice, though, when what I’m able to decipher of an anime’s worldview feels very much in line with my own.

It’s taken me until the second season of this anime series to hone in on the fact that its biggest strength has always been Shigeo’s (Mob’s) decision to choose kindness over all else. Typical for most heroes, he tries to avoid hurting others outright; it’s both a testament to his personal ethics, as well as a reaction to having been bullied himself. While others might take these experiences and twist them into an excuse to lash-out (we see many such characters throughout the series), Shigeo chooses not to perpetuate unkindness or fall into the trappings of his power, and it’s the active and deliberate nature of this choice that drives home the story’s message.

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Opinion Personal

What I’m Watching – Kemurikusa (Episodes 1-7)

This post contains spoilers through episode 7 of the series.

Check out my first impression HERE!

I wonder a lot about the human race’s ability to survive its seemingly innate urge to destroy itself. Right now climate change is at the forefront of many people’s minds, but there are also a lot of military conflicts going on and concerns about nuclear weapons hordes, among other things. It’s the intrusive background noise of my life, static that makes sure my anxiety level never drops to zero.

Sometimes anime that addresses humanity’s natural (or decidedly unnatural) endpoint can provide some comfort, though. It’s helpful to think that, even if we destroy our society and bungle our management of the planet’s limited resources, there may still be remnants of our existence in this place that speak to our collective better qualities. I’d still rather that we get our act together and stop killing one-another, but theories about our eventual twilight years as a species as they manifest in anime and other media can be a comfort even in their melancholy conclusions.

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Opinion Personal

What I’m Watching – Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka (Episodes 1-5)

This post discusses plot spoilers through episode 5 of the anime series.

Check out my first impression HERE!

When I have time I usually like to try to watch anime that’s not at the top of my watch-list. I like to distinguish this from “hate-watching” a show, which is something I try not to do – it’s a practice that makes me angry, makes fans of the series in question angry, and doesn’t really serve a constructive purpose. Instead, I look at this as an opportunity to expand my horizons or even push my boundaries in some cases. Establishing personal boundaries is a good practice, but I’ve found that every once-in-a-while a re-examination and re-centering can be helpful.

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