I’ll be at Sakuracon in Seattle on Friday and Saturday. Who’s going? I don’t particularly give a crap about the convention, but I would like to meet up with people, so let me know if you’ll be there! I haven’t researched anything that’s happening, but I’ll probably follow Marina and her husband around most of the time. Or maybe her husband and I will ditch Marina and try to see a panel about some quality anime like Twintails, which she doesn’t have the good taste to appreciate. Anyway, the best way to contact me is on twitter!
Category Archives: Discussion
Thoughts on Re: Zero
I’ve been loving the latest arc of Re: Zero. No, not that Rem episode (too much crying) or the epic battles of lolis, butlers and wolves vs. flying whales. What I’ve loved the most is seeing Subaru’s descent into despair and madness.
Hatred and Revenge
The best anime are able to elicit strong emotions in the viewer. And boy has Re: Zero. To see Subaru broken over and over again, tortured and forced to watch his friends die. Or to be killed by his friends. Or both. It’s made me more pissed than I’ve felt watching anime for a long time.
And the people who made me the most angry weren’t the ones who actually killed him. I can’t really get mad at the whale— it’s a whale— or at the witch’s cult— they’re fucking nuts. It’s the people who washed their hands of the whole matter, who should have helped Subaru when he asked them for help but chose not to. Especially Green, Purple and friends. Episode 16, where he went and visited all of them, was my favorite.
Subaru may have forgiven them now and made friends, but I sure as hell haven’t. He knows who his real friends are now.
And let me be honest: I want to see them all suffer. I know that Subaru felt the same way.
This arc reminds me of one of my favorite psalms, number 137: Continue reading Thoughts on Re: Zero
Reliving my Childhood with Kuma Miko
No, I was not a cute loli shrine maiden. Yes, I did spend most of my time talking to a bear. His name was Teddy. We even went to the bathroom together. (So sorry about that time I dropped you in the toilet, Teddy…)
Community
Kuma Miko has made me realize something that’s missing from most anime. A community. Here is the entire social circle of your typical school anime main character:
- A couple of classmates.
- One or two teachers.
- Four or five clubmates.
- The immediate family (often limited to a single imouto, the parents are mysteriously absent).
- The immediate next-door neighbors (but not the family two doors down).
And that’s it. Do anime characters never get out? For comparison, here’s a subset of the people I interacted with regularly in high school: Continue reading Reliving my Childhood with Kuma Miko
I am Trash Part II
As you may recall, six months ago I read Mushoku Tensei and greatly enjoyed the experience. So I decided to read another well-regarded web novel, Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari, or The Rising of the Shield Hero. From the title, you can probably guess precisely what is doing the rising.
It starts out similarly to Mushoku Tensei— a loser otaku comes to another world. This time instead of starting as a baby and “working hard” to earn his triple loli harem, he’s born as a hero except everyone hates him and everything is oh so unfair. He buys a loli tanuki slave and she’s the only one who truly loves him. Then it’s the same idea as Mushoku Tensei, he builds up a loli army in a loli village and saves the world.
If that were all I would have enjoyed it even though it’s trash. But… that’s not it. Know how I mentioned that everyone hates the main character at first? The lead in all this is the daughter of the king (named “Trash” throughout the book), who is literally named “Bitch” throughout the entire 300+ chapter book. Oh, actually, occasionally the author changes her name to “Whore”. This girl is the epitome of evil. She keeps trying to kill the Shield hero, tries to murder her sister, her father, her mother, sells the country out to the enemy, etc., etc., all by seducing men other than the hero. Then the hero executes her. There is an entire chapter dedicated to this brutal execution, with everyone cheering for her death. Then she comes back to life and she gets executed again, this time by graphically described and in fact videotaped multiple days of rape. As as if that’s not enough, she comes back to life and goes through a similar treatment again. Continue reading I am Trash Part II
GATE is Terrible Imperialist Propaganda
We’re about at the point of GATE where I stopped reading the manga— the stupid elf girl arc. God I hate her. This show has the most pathetic understanding of human psychology imaginable— her dad is eaten by a dragon, she decides her dad is still alive and he’s actually a foreigner of a different race who speaks a different language, and the only way to convince her her father is dead is to make her kill the dragon herself with a rocket launcher. Ok. For sure, most anime have all this stupid shit about memory loss but none take it to this level. Continue reading GATE is Terrible Imperialist Propaganda