All posts by draggle

Narutaru Ch. 3 — Refusing to Play the Game

Narutaru,

Ch. 3 Summary: Shiina makes breakfast for her father, and discusses what happened on the plane. Shiina hides everything about Hoshimaru and the fact that she saw Otohime. After breakfast, Shiina attends a sword-fighting class where she meets Akira, a shy and awkward girl. Akira doesn’t want to hit people, doesn’t want to win, and doesn’t want to lose. Shiina befriends Akira, but Akira runs away when she sees Hoshimaru after practice. At home, she puts a blade to her wrist but doesn’t cut herself. She opens a box that holds a creature similar to Hoshimaru.

Trust

While Shiina and her father are having their family pow-wow over breakfast, Shiina asks her dad if he believes her about the monster. He says that he does. Then he asks her if she saw the princess, and Shiina denies it. This denial is all the more pronounced because of what we see in the next frame:

narutaru_02_03_7 Continue reading Narutaru Ch. 3 — Refusing to Play the Game →

The Dreamer’s Journey: A ‘The Wind Rises’ Review

Reviews,

Hey guys— joshspeagle here from Chromatic Aberration Everywhere. Like Myna, I’m a guest blogger here, who decided to answer the call a while back. This is my first attempt at doing this sort of thing, so hopefully it turned out well!

Introduction

I’m currently spending my summer in Japan, which means that I managed to go see Miyazaki’s new movie – Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) – in theaters last week, along with Otomo Katsuhiro’s (the Akira guy) new film Short Peace. As Kylaran from Behind the Nihon Review has already done a pretty good review of Short Peace (although I think it’s a bit too harsh), I’ll be focusing on reviewing Miyazaki’s film here. Let me say right up front that both movies are good and worth your time. I really enjoyed both of them, and regardless of whether you’re looking for something “deep” both movies are well-done and fun to watch. I also want to point out that I’ve only taken a year of Japanese, and therefore spent most of both movies piecing together the dialogue and events from context, so my impressions might be totally off. Even given this, I still really enjoyed both movies.

thewindrises1

Anyways, onto The Wind Rises. Continue reading The Dreamer’s Journey: A ‘The Wind Rises’ Review →

Narutaru Ch. 2 — The Princess and the Dragon

Narutaru,

Ch. 2 Summary: Shiina flies home from her vacation on the island, with two mysterious passengers on board. The plane is attacked by a creature similar to Hoshimaru. Shiina attempts to fight off the attacker, but fails and falls towards the ocean. She is caught by Otohime and her dragon, and returned to the plane. The two passengers have disappeared.

narutaru_02_03_12

Narutaru has this bizarre thing going on with princesses, dragons and shadow dragons. I wasn’t sure what to make of it the first time I read the series. Hopefully in this series of posts we’ll be able to explore some ideas surrounding the dragons. A brief disclaimer: it’s been a while since I read this series, and my memory is pretty fuzzy. So please forgive me if some of my speculation is wildly off. Continue reading Narutaru Ch. 2 — The Princess and the Dragon →