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Anime Reviews Reviews

Courting Controversy – A Look at “Interspecies Reviewers”

Oddly un-sexy at times and burdened by several other issues, but a fascinating example of ecchi anime with decent production values, a great sense of humor, and an unorthodox focus.

Streaming: N/A (Formerly on Funimation; AnimeLab in Australia and New Zealand continued to stream the remainder of the series. The show is now licensed in the US by Right Stuf with an upcoming disc release).

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Check out my first impressions here!

Note: some elements of this review may be considered NSFW. This review also contains many general and some specific spoilers for the series.

These past few months I’ve been on a quest to get my anime groove back. Typically I don’t have trouble watching several episodes of a series at a pop, but for reasons that I’ve explained probably too often by now these days are anything but typical. And now, after a couple of anime seasons, my anime queue is looking pretty daunting (luckily there are websites to help one keep track of these things…). For me, having too much to do is a paralyzing feeling that creates more problems than it addresses, so sometimes it pays to stop being analytical and just dive face-first into something ridiculous.

For me, “ridiculous” has always been the marker of something I probably wouldn’t want to watch under normal circumstances, but which might serve as a good palate-cleanser. Years ago I made a habit of watching anime that was distinctly outside of my wheelhouse or even actively irritating to me, just as a way of level-setting and reminding myself of the general competency level of the majority anime. At some point I came to the realization that I was spending a lot of my time watching anime I didn’t really like and getting angry about it, with the added negative side-effect being that my voicing my opinions about gross fanservice or whatever tended to garner a fair amount of abuse; an added burden that I wasn’t emotionally ready to deal with. I can’t say that I was the most eloquent writer back then (nor am I now), but getting told to kill myself just because I didn’t appreciate an overabundance of anime tiddy in my face never seemed like much of an equivalent exchange for the level and reach of my work. At some point it was no longer worthwhile to feel crappy on both the front and back end of an anime viewing, so I decided to focus more on anime that I enjoyed watching.

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Conventions Special Features

LightCon 2020 – Reflections

Hey folks. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think we can all agree on the strangeness of the past several months. I’ve given myself a lot of grace lately regarding my depression, accepting that unless I’m really, truly upset about something, it primarily manifests as lack of motivation. I’ve had a really frustrating underlying desire to watch a lot of anime that’s been buried beneath an inability to actually click on any streaming services or grab any discs off the shelf. If that sounds maddening to you, well, welcome to the fun that is mental illness – it’s the endless push-and-pull between what you want to do and your inability to do anything about it.

One thing that usually motivates me is the responsibility I have toward multiple anime conventions throughout the year. Having the looming date of an event on the horizon is usually what prompts me to finish up anime that I’ve been watching and to organize my thoughts into something coherent. 2020 has become the year without deadlines; a mass of unmarked time with no big events to serve as signposts in the fog.

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Personal

Giving it Another Try

Since I’ve been a blogger, my primary focus has been on newer or current anime. Watching newer series has helped me maintain my interest in anime fandom, which is a fandom that often seems to pride itself in bulk consumption – as much as possible and as quickly as one can manage. There are certainly a lot of anime series out there and it can be very easy to get caught up in the destructive mindset of watching as much as humanly possible (I have to say, I do pride myself on the number of anime I’ve completed even though I’m not necessarily proud of having finished everything on that list. I’ll leave that to my readers to guess at which anime fall into what group).

With a near constant onslaught of new anime, it becomes much more difficult to look backwards to the classics. I’ve admitted in the past that I have some large blind spots when it comes to certain famous franchises. I’ve watched very little Dragon Ball (or its offshoots). I don’t have a special connection with older sports anime like Slam Dunk. And, in probably one of the more surprising twists of my life, I’ve never really gotten into the Gundam franchise.

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Anime Reviews Reviews Short Takes

Short Takes – Room Camp

Japan’s most relaxing fetch-quest.

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga. Sequel to Laid-Back Camp

Read my first impressions here!
Read my review of Laid-Back Camp here!

Review: Nadeshiko Kagamihara has now transformed into something of a camping enthusiast after relocating to Yamanashi prefecture and learning the ins-and-outs of roughing-it. Despite her enthusiasm for the outdoors, however, she lacks much knowledge about the local culture. Aoi and Chiaki, the other members of the Outdoor Activity Club, encourage Nadeshiko travel the prefecture to complete a stamp rally, and through doing so help her to gain some familiarity with the locations and culture right at her fingertips.

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Anime Reviews Reviews Short Takes

Short Takes – Jingai-san no Yome

Tomari meets his new spouse.

Married to a monster – and loving it!

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Read my First Impressions Here!

Review: Tomari is a typical teenage boy who finds himself in a very unique situation; he’s selected from among his peers to become the spouse of a giant fluffy creature called Kanenogi-san. It isn’t long before he realizes that his situation actually isn’t all that unique and that he’s one of several classmates who get to play house with a decidedly non-human partner. They all attempt to navigate married life with partners who are anything but typical.

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Personal

A Few Meager Words for a Hero I Never Met

It might seem a little weird for me to have much to say about Zac Bertschy; I’ve never met him, and our online interactions were limited to a few isolated tweets back-and-forth some years ago. But when I learned of his untimely passing yesterday, after the initial shock had began to dull I began to ponder all the ways in which his words and writing had influenced me over the years.

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Personal

Looking to the Past

For a long time I meticulously maintained a MAL page where I’d keep track of the obnoxious number of anime series I was watching at a time. Every season I’d watch anime I liked, anime I didn’t like (I was big on watching things ironically at the time; I’m sure I was completely insufferable), and older anime I’d heard about that I thought might fill in some of the many gaps in my viewing history. The nice thing about using the tracker was that it helped me stay on top of what I’d seen and what episodes I still needed to download and watch. And I have to say, doing things this way exposed me to a lot of anime series that I enjoyed and barely anyone else remembers, which is both very cool yet somewhat lonely at the same time.

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Previews Reviews

Spring 2020 Anime – What I’m Looking Forward (or Backward) To

Oof, it’s times like these where I feel like it’s a good choice to anticipate the good in life, rather than spend too much time being dwelling on the frustrating and terrible aspects of the present. Granted, there are extremely serious things going on in the world right now and sometimes being able to make the choice to set that aside is more of a privilege than we might recognize, but I’d like to at least give it a try. And what better way to do so than to talk about brand new seasonal anime? Honestly, my awareness of this new season has been less than optimal, since I’ve been dealing with a lot of real-life stuff. But there are tons of resources out there that have helped me get up to speed and have reignited my interests to the extent that they’re able to be reignited.

Yes, I know the season has already started. Like, really really started. But I still haven’t begun watching any new anime (because life has just been… so much), so technically as far as this site is concerned, this is still timely. And technicalities are how we manage to keep our heads above water (or manage our sanity).

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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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Special Features

The Best Anime to Take Your Mind off Things

Well, so I guess the title might be a bit deceiving. For a lot of people, anime is an aspect of their escapism, a way to forget the problems of the real world in favor of plunging headfirst into something funny and entertaining. For me, fiction is a way to help myself navigate very real feelings in a way that’s relatively safe. Still, with what’s going on out in the real world lately, sometimes I’m just in the mood for some goofy bullsh**t or some material that doesn’t mean to chip away at my fragile emotional state, and anime definitely has that covered too. Here are a few of my suggestions for shows that are just entertaining and don’t necessarily require anything additional from the viewer.

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