Category: Special Features

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Anime Reviews Personal Reviews Special Features

2021 – An Anime Year in Review

Happy New Year! Or, at least, I hope that this new year has the potential to be happier than the last couple have been. As many… critiques as I may have about the world in general, at the very least I think I’m pretty safe in saying that the world of anime has been extremely bountiful throughout 2021.

While many writers and bloggers have been posting their ranked lists of the best (or least-best) anime from 2021, because I’m not and probably never will be particularly keen on trying to rank apples against oranges I thought I’d try to tackle this from a different angle. So instead of attempting to arbitrarily cram things into a numerical list I’d like to instead look back at some of my strongest anime memories from 2021 by general subject matter and/or category. Thus, I can continue to be wishy-washy while also managing to put together some kind of content. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

With that said, below the cut are some various memories I’ve put together from 2021, some related to seasonal anime in general, and others more closely related to my own experiences as an anime consumer within that time frame. If you’d like to share your own thoughts in the comments, I’d love to hear them!

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Favorites First Impressions Personal Reviews

S1E1’s 2021 Site-in-Review

Well, here we are; somehow I blinked and it’s now suddenly the end of December. As I continue to privately mull over the strange properties of the human perception of time’s passage, publicly I thought I’d take this opportunity to look back at the writing I completed over the past year. If you came here looking for a “best-of” anime post, fear not; I have one of those in the works as well. But for now, I thought I’d toot my own horn a little bit.

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Conventions Special Features

Anime Fusion 2021 – Convention Reactions

Although it would probably be the wiser choice to continue with my now-belated first episode impression, I thought I’d take a short breather and write about about my first convention experience back in person (as a panelist, at least), Anime Fusion. If I wait any longer I feel like I’ll start to forget the details, and as someone who feels like it’ll be important to know how things were during this Covid time I’d like to ensure I make my own contributions to that historical record.

Anime Fusion 2021 took place Friday through Sunday, October 22nd – 24th at the Crowne Plaza Minneapolis West (which is actually located in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis). Like most anime conventions, it puts on a mix of programming, including fan-run panels, guest-run panels and events, games, shows, and a dance. There are also a couple of video rooms playing both classic and contemporary anime (the con’s stated mission is to fuse together the old and the new parts of anime fandom into a mix that appeals to all sorts of folks), as well as a dealers room and an artist alley. My primary drive for participating in any anime convention is to run programming – primarily discussion panels focused on specific shows or aspects of anime fandom, as well as presentation-style panels where I pretend like I’m some kind of instructor sharing knowledge and opinions. This year my spouse and I put on 5 panels, the materials for which are available in posts that went up over the course of last weekend.

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Conventions Special Features

Madoka and Homura: The Trap of Selflessness

And here it is, our final panel from Anime Fusion 2021. This one was primarily J.C.’s work, so the format is slightly different. It’s also a re-versioning of a panel we presented several years ago directly after the release of Rebellion, so we’ve had some years to stew on that (spoiler: both of us liked it) and now with a new movie on the way it’s opened the door to further speculation.

I hope that these posts have been helpful and interesting to people reading. I also hope that they help to partly explain my delayed episode 1 impressions for the past week and some days; we work really hard to put this stuff together and it ends up taking priority over other things. I’ll definitely be back with more reviews and such now that our (very weird) convention season is effectively over for the year.

PowerPoint Presentation

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Conventions Special Features

The Odd World of “ODDTAXI” – Anime Fusion 2021

I’m back again with more panel materials! This time from our Sunday discussion of the wonderful ODDTAXI anime series. Like our Evangelion discussion, this is mostly a presentation to contain our discussion notes and to distract people from directly looking at our faces the entire time(lol), but it may serve some use to folks who are interested in the series. I’m writing this a day ahead of time so I’m not sure how many people are actually going to show up to this panel (I suspect probably the couple of people we know and that’s it, haha) but I hope it’s of use to some people.

I will note that there is a slide devoted to discussion of major end-of-series spoilers, but we don’t mention them directly, so if you’re worried about any final reveals this shouldn’t take that away from you.

For reference, you can check out my episode reviews of ODDTAXI at the link below:

ODDTAXI episode reviews

PowerPoint Presentation

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Conventions Special Features

Anime About Anime 2.0 – Anime Fusion 2021

Good evening (or morning, depending on your time zone). Continuing with the onslaught of panel materials is our presentation from “Anime About Anime 2.0,” which talks about the anime production process as it can be gleaned from watching anime that takes place within that industry. We presented this panel a few years ago but included a few updates and switched things around a bit.

I’d like to note that neither of us is an expert on this topic; we’re both just interested enthusiasts. There are links in the source pages to places where you can learn more in-depth information about anime, its production, and the state of the industry and the staff members. But much like trying to get a sense for the Japanese language through watching anime, if you don’t make it your primary or only source, it can still be helpful for getting a feel for things.

Have you seen any of the series we reference in the panel materials? Let me know!

PowerPoint Presentation

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Conventions Special Features

Neon Genesis Evangelion: A Retrospective

Hello again, friends. Below is the PowerPoint presentation from our Saturday 2:00-3:00 panel “Neon Genesis Evangelion: A Retrospective.” This is mostly just for some visuals to go along with the discussion, so unfortunately there isn’t a ton that’s useful about this outside of the panel itself, but you’re welcome to take it and read our notes (you can tell who wrote which notes because mine tend to be very brief and J.C.’s are much more coherent, heh).

What’s your experience with Evangelion? Have you watched all the movies yet? Are you excited about GKids’s release of the TV series on Blu-ray? Feel free to discuss in the comments 🙂

PowerPoint Slides

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Conventions Special Features

Shiny New Anime – Anime Fusion 2021

Hi All, I’m scheduling these posts to go up throughout the weekend as J.C. and I present our panels at Anime Fusion 2021. Our first is the ever-enjoyable “Shiny New Anime,” which includes a panel presentation and a hand-out. This should appear on the blog just as our panel is starting (there is an online component this year, so I wanted friends watching at home to at least have access to the handout right away).

Because the video clips will likely only play in a full version of Microsoft PowerPoint (as opposed to the online or Google equivalent), I’ve uploaded the clips into a separate folder if you really want to watch them and aren’t able to within the actual slide show. We chose our featured shows this time around based on both variety and wanting to bring some more focus to series that weren’t as talked-about or got lost in the shuffle (there was a lot of good anime this past year). Download Links are below:

PowerPoint Presentation

Clips Folder

Hand-out

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Personal Special Features

Anime Club no Densetsu: A Tale of Enduring Respect

Note: This story involves mention of an Islamophobic comment in a group setting.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another long-overdue edition of my anime club storytelling series. Since it’s been quite a while, I’ll reiterate that I wanted to start a blog series about interesting and positive experiences I’ve had as a long-time member of a certain university anime club, because most of the material I see online that’s related to anime clubs is dismissive or derisive. Obviously in environments where many people come together over a shared hobby, there will always be some conflicts; having one thing in common doesn’t automatically mean people will end up being best friends with one-another. But I think there are good reasons to join an anime club or an anime-related group (whatever label you want), and I want to use my voice to speak for that side of the argument.

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Fashion Personal Special Features

A Fashion By Any Other Name

Content Warning: Discussion of various beauty standards.

When I meet people for the first time and they ask me about my hobbies, I’m pretty free with information related to my anime fannishness. It’s never been something that I’ve actively hid away from anyone, but there were definitely moments in the past where I thought twice about being open about it. At the rate I watch anime (and manage to hold down a full-time job), I probably shouldn’t have a lot of time or money left-over to pursue anything else. But I do happen to have other interests (surprising, I know), and one of them I tend to hold above the others even if it’s a little difficult to talk about.

Since my early college days I’ve been a fan of lolita fashion, and for the last several years I’ve been a collector and wearer of it. Anime Feminist, a site I hold in fairly high regard, recently had a feature on lolita fashion that did a good job of clearing up some of the misconceptions people tend to have about it. It got me thinking about the reasons why it initially appealed to me, and why I still enjoy it even as I creep onward toward middle age.

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