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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 8: Hakaba Kitaro

We’ve gotten more than a week into this Halloween list without talking much about Yokai, so I figure it’s about time to remedy that. Yokai are a category of spiritual entity within Japanese folklore. It’s a broad term that encompasses both malevolent and benign spiritual beings, with forms that run the gamut from inanimate objects to animals to humanoids. While the concept of Yokai has existed in Japanese culture for centuries, it was the late manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, who as a child was taught about them by an older female relative, who re-popularized them within a pop-culture context.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 7: The Girl From the Other Side

We human beings consider ourselves to be intellectually and culturally advanced. We’ve conquered the world and wield technology and innovation the likes of which would be unimaginable to our cave-dwelling ancestors. But in reality I believe we’re not really as divorced from our ancient selves as we like to think we are. Many of us have visceral reactions to strange noises, or being alone in the dark when it’s a little too quiet. There are reasons why elements of body horror in a piece of media are so effective.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 6: Night World

I’ve heard it said that the dreams we have during the night are part of our brain’s way of processing the events of the day. It’s one of the reasons why sleep deprivation is such terrible torture – being forced to forego that kind of mental processing is enough to instigate psychosis. That time sleeping isn’t just for assembling the logic puzzle of human interactions, but also to process the complexity of our own emotions.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 5: Vampire in the Garden

I feel like I’m starting to get into the groove with parenting my baby (now that I’ve said that, he’s going to start crawling and none of this will be accurate anymore, of course). This week, while I was holding him during his nap, I managed to actually watch some anime! And, of course, because it’s October, I wanted to watch something from my list that I could include on this list. Enter yet another poorly-advertised Netflix exclusive, titled Vampire in the Garden.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 4: Adam by Eve: A Live in Animation

When I think of Halloween, I don’t always immediately think of music. While Christmas has its share of iconic carols, Halloween’s contributions to the musical canon are somewhat fewer and farther between. Once you get past “Monster Mash” or the soundtrack of A Nightmare Before Christmas, it gets much more difficult to name specifically Halloween-appropriate tunes. If you’re in the mood for a few of my own suggestions, might I recommend “Ghosts n Stuff” by deadmau5, the soundtrack to Over the Garden Wall, and today’s spooky selection, Adam by Eve: A Live in Animation

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 3: Spriggan Episode 3 “The Forest of No Return”

So apparently there was a new “Indiana Jones” film released this Summer. My life’s been a bit hectic the last couple of months, so though I had some mild awareness of it, I didn’t get a chance to go see it. Earlier in the year, however, I did watch an anime series that reminded me a bit of Indy and his archaeological adventures, and I suspect that my time may have been better spent doing so (did anyone see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny? Was it good? Let me know if I should try to check it out).

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 2 – Wasurenagumo (Li’l Spider Girl)

A few days ago I was doing some chores, and as I was unloading some laundry from the dryer I happened to notice a bit of movement out of the corner of my eye. I was startled to see one of the largest spiders I’ve seen in quite a while making its way slowly up our cinder block basement wall. As an adult I logically know that most spiders (especially in my area of the country) are helpers; they prey upon pest insects and generally just want to be left to their own devices to do so. But it’s difficult to fully ignore that visceral jump-scare feeling that just seems to be part of human nature when we encounter creepy-crawlies in unexpected circumstances. I’m sure it speaks to something ancient in our DNA, some deep fear that our ancient ancestors dealt with.

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Halloween Seasonal Special Features

It’s Spooky Season! – Day 1: Healer Girl Episode 10

While it may be the case that, for some of us, our anticipation of Halloween never really wanes, once the calendar flips to the month of October it finally feels reasonable to get hyped up over pumpkins and skeletons. And though Halloween isn’t a holiday native to Japan, judging by its presence as a background motif in media ranging from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie to Odd Taxi, it’s certainly cemented its unique place in the country’s culture. There are several anime that deal directly with the holiday, and many more that make for good watching for those of us who enjoy getting into the mood while indulging in our favorite hobby.

I’ll be spending the month (or at least as many days as I can manage) giving out some of my personal recommendations for spooky anime (and perhaps some manga if I happen to be so motivated). Most of these are just fun and mildly seasonally-appropriate, but there are some genuine spooks sprinkled throughout. While there might be some familiar entries in the list, I’m trying my best to dig a little bit for some surprises, so hopefully folks will find a few new things they weren’t aware of previously. Note: most of these should be fairly easy to find on streaming or disc, and I’ll make note of where to watch them if that’s the case. If they’re not legally available in the US, however, I’ll leave it to you to find them on your own.

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Favorites Special Features

Five Anime to Watch if You’re Short on Time – Round 1

I used to think that I was too busy, and then I went and had a kid. Now I truly know the meaning of not having the time I want to indulge in my various extracurriculars (right now my spouse is out with the baby so I can have some time to myself, and I still spent the first hour of this precious time taking care of house chores instead of settling down to write – I have problems). Along those same lines, the thought of trying to keep up with several seasonal anime series like I’ve done in the past is truly laughable, and I haven’t been current with very many anime series over the last several seasons at least. I’m sure some of you out there reading can share in my frustration.

Luckily, there’s good anime out there for people in our situation. While I definitely won’t be digging into anything of the magnitude of One Piece any time soon (or ever), I know of plenty of bite-sized anime treats to enjoy while carving out some precious free time in between other obligations. I’ll be sharing some of my favorites over several upcoming posts, to hopefully provide something of a lifeline for others just looking for a quick fix rather than something that would take half a lifetime to watch.

Please note: while I encourage folks to seek out official sources for these titles (I’ll be listing availability as appropriate) not everything may have an official US release. Unfortunately, this is simply the nature of being a long-time anime fan who’s watched various series become more and less available over time.

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Personal

There and Back Again – A Harrowing Year and a Break From Anime

Content Warning: Discussion of pregnancy complications and other medical situations.

Well, it’s sure been a year, hasn’t it? Calling it a full year isn’t entirely accurate in that I think my last actual post here aside from some convention information was back in October 2022, but it’s close enough I suppose. Like most of the “breaks” I end up taking from this blog, this one was as unintentional as any other, but as I mentioned back then a large part of my inability to focus this time around was due to undergoing fertility treatment – the medication regimen itself and the fact that caffeine (my way of self-medicating my ADHD) became a big no-no put a real damper on things.

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