Category: Personal

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Personal

Don’t Harsh the Squee

I wrote a lot about my experience at Anime Central this year, and with good reason; I had a good time and felt like I’d finally settled on reasonable expectations for a big convention. I previously attended the con five years ago, and my experience then was somewhat less positive. Part of it was due to the convention location – at that time the hotel and convention center were located pretty far away from any inexpensive food options and the weather wasn’t cooperating (obviously not the con’s fault, but it did color the experience). Also, the amount of travelling back-and-forth between convention buildings felt excessive.

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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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Personal

Fan Art Fun – June 9th, 2019

While I’ve long since given up on making a career of it, I sometimes enjoy creating art. I especially like to make fan art of anime series and video games that I enjoy. I recently invested money in some Copic markers; for those who aren’t familiar, they’re alcohol-based markers that are considered to be very high-quality. A lot of Japanese artists use them. I’ve wanted a set for years and they were recently on sale for Memorial Day, so I grabbed a set.

Sometimes I have trouble coming up with things to draw, though. Inspiration comes in fits and starts with me, and it’s difficult to predict when it will strike next. Because I wanted to get some use out of my new art tools, I sought my inspiration from friends on Twitter. Below are the requests and my responses, as well as a “bonus item” that I came up with on my own. All the drawings are created using Copic markers, Copic multi-liner pens (in several different colors), and Sakura Pigma Micron pens (black), along with the occasional highlight using a Sakura Gelly Roll white pen, on Bienfang Bristol drawing paper. I messed around with some of the levels in a photo editing program to attempt to best capture how the colors appear in real life. The first four drawings are about the size of an index card, while the final one is on a full 9″ x 12″ (23 x 30.5cm) sheet.

Note: The final image may be NSFW, because it contains very mild non-detailed nudity.

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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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Opinion Personal

What I’m Watching – Dororo (Episodes 1-6)

This post discusses plot spoilers through episode 6 of the anime.

Check out my first impression here!

While I hate to keep mentioning my recent out-of-town trip since it’s not relevant to this site otherwise, it continues to be on my mind because these types of mini-vacations (work trips to other cities where my evenings are basically free to do as I please) are great opportunities for me to keep up on my anime-watching. Aside from The Promised Neverland, the other series that kept my company that week was Dororo. For whatever reason I was getting seriously intermittent access to Crunchyroll where I was staying (I blame it more on the Android app itself, which has always worked spotty for me even with great internet and a brand new cell phone), so I stuck to Amazon Video this time around.

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Opinion Personal

What I’m Watching – The Promised Neverland (Episodes 1-5)

This post discusses plot spoilers through episode 5 of the anime, and links to offsite content with manga spoilers later in the story.

I’m usually not great at keeping up with anime series as they’re being simulcast. A lot of that is due to my personal workflow and my resistance to watching anime where there are still other anime remaining for me to review. I realize how ridiculous that sounds but I’m someone who easily wanders off-track and procrastinates, so I have to set some weird rules in place to keep myself from becoming distracted. There are rare times, though, where watching weekly broadcasts becomes a necessity rather than a luxury, and as soon as I started watching The Promised Neverland I suspected that it might be one of those anime.

I generally try to look past hype and not let internet chatter influence my own opinions, but the discourse around this series was difficult to ignore. I read an essay about the restrictive gender roles as they exist in the story’s universe (caution for both big-time plot spoilers and some disturbing imagery), and from that point I was intrigued. Since the anime adaptation of the manga series had already been announced, I tried to put the spoilers out of my mind (I was at least partly successful due to the length of time in between the post and the first episode, which was helpful!)

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Opinion Personal

What Use are Critics, Anyway?

I’ve been very lucky in life to have been surrounded by acquaintances and friends whose intelligence and wisdom has served as an inspiration for me. Being an ani-blogger has turned out to be no different, as I’ve had the chance to read some interesting and insightful commentary from other bloggers on a fairly regular basis. Because of that I’ve been given the opportunity on many occasions to examine my own opinions in various ways.

Lita Kino at Lita Kino’s Anime Corner posed an interesting question in a recent post in regards to the responsibility that more experienced fans have towards welcoming new fans into the fold. To paraphrase her question, she asks whether certain types of anime criticism, which can occasionally be laser-focused in on very minute or one-off issues in a series or on trying to extrapolate author viewpoint or intent from limited evidence, deny newer fans the experience of enjoying and engaging with anime on their own terms. As someone whose goal has always been to make anime and anime fandom approachable for many different people, the question definitely struck a chord.

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Personal

Fandom in Recovery

I haven’t been very productive this week at S1E1, despite still being in the thick of first episode reviews. While I always leave room for myself to take a break when I need one and don’t really feel beholden to any sort of timetable, this break has been a little bit unanticipated and, to be honest, unwanted. After a few things went down online the past couple of days, my head’s just been swimming with emotions that I don’t really know how to manage, and it’s kept me from focusing on reviews. I thought it might be a good idea to talk through it all just to get a handle on those feelings and what they mean.

The last couple of days have been somewhat emotionally-taxing for many individuals who participate in or at least pay some attention to the anime twitter community. To put it briefly, an individual with social connections to many other visible members of the community was revealed to have exhibited inappropriate behavior to underage members of the anime fandom, and also to have allegedly committed sexual assault. This revelation pulled the lid off of several other situations that had been whispered about but never really shared outside of very restricted or small communities. I’d rather not get into all the details here, because they’re personally upsetting to me; people’s accounts are relatively easy to search out, though, if you’d like to find out more information. There’s also a Kotaku article about some of the fallout (note that I don’t really agree with this process of “collecting names” on a public spreadsheet, which is what the article spends a lot of time on).

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