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Still thinking about Kakyuusei’s Bittersweet Summer Romance
Remembering summer’s gone might as well be a Japanese pastime that’s especially prevalent in media catering towards an older demographic; this group is made up of those who…
A rent-able girl with an empty heart
A blackened heart emerges from the core of Kanojo, Okarishimasu. The story thus reveals itself as less of a harmless dumb romcom and more so a social critique…
How we almost forgot about Rozen Maiden
Rozen Maiden’s North America release was fraught with uncertainty as the future surrounding its licensing company grew more grim during its release period. It came out during the…
Racing the Ghost of Initial D
MF Ghost is not Initial D despite their thematic and narrative similarities. No series will ever be as transcendent as Initial D was, but that doesn’t mean no…
Maniac Road, Souta-kun no Akihabara Funtouki & the grand otaku drama
Both manga read like a victory lap around otaku culture’s greatest hits circa-2000 in their coverage. Though despite the intentional approach both manga took to read like a…
帰り道 ~The long road home~
Myself;Yourself concerns a city boy and the country girl. Both are people who grew up in the same place but went separate ways just before the edge of…
What I can still learn from Otaku no Video
I cried the first time I watched the Daicon opening animations. In earnest, my emotions took over and filled me with an overwhelming sensation all at once. Far…
Cyberpunk Edgerunners made me stop being trans(humanist)
There is little else more tragic than being the victim of your own failures. Perhaps even more so when you’re made to suffer by your own undoing. There’s…
School Girl Distortional Addict
On paper, Bocchi the Rock! is an anime I shouldn’t like. It’s a show that, perhaps airing a few seasons back, would’ve been one that I’d roll my…
“Love Letter”
I find myself frequently looking back over my shoulder; a phantom of a memory that exists just out of mind and out of sight lingers somewhere back there.…
I was always going to like Kingdom Hearts II
I was always going to like Kingdom Hearts 2. I already liked the game before I started playing it.
Bitter doomer is disgusted with a vanilla romcom anime
I remembered the itch in the back of my mind that bothered me enough to put my beloved Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai- a manga I was otherwise…
Tokimeki Memorial, Genshiken, The World God Only Knows, Haruka Nogizaka's Secret
Final Evangelion: Sincerity & Simulacrum
More than a year after release, aided in part due to my 2022 learned-nonchalance towards media consumption, I finally got around to watching Shin Evangelion Gekijōban 𝄇. I…
5142-word review of a review of a game that “literally nobody cares about”
I wrote an essay. I wrote it the last week of November. It is about a video essays. It is also about a Japanese love simulation game and,…
“Just Because” and the language of youth
Scattered thoughts regarding the prominence of SMS communication chat bubbles in the 2017 anime “Just Because”
VSImaginator the Fourth: Fabrics on my body
Meditations on: the ones lost to time, the world that might never be, the feelings I lost and those that were gained. Viewed justly so from from the…
Another bishoujo game anime adaptation
I would wager most people knew bishoujo games instead as “those H-games”; games with high school settings, cherry blossoms and the same five archetypes in a harem. Shows…
The most important anime of the 2010’s might have been Saekano
Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata might very well be the most important anime of the decade. The fact that such a funny idea blossomed within my mind throughout the…
VSImaginator the Third
Spells still recasted by nameless wizards under the fading stars
Sunset Overdrive
Memories clashed with fantasies and the distinction between either grew frighteningly small. Where my heart resided is the question of the evening; the capability of my lovelessness is…
Yofukashi no Uta’s insomnia analysis
Yofukashi no Uta is a story that seems to pride itself on the murky pseudo-philosophy of its adolescent edge. Or at the very least, one that seems to…
Like Fine Wine
Adolescence unfolded before me and the memories I could have had passed me by; I, the observer. The looming spectre of adulthood crept up just beyond the horizon…
Basing my entire personality on this one Genshiken manga page
By this point, I was already too far gone; my eyes were glazed over and the only thing left on my mind was the fantastic content within. I…
Catching cicadas in the summertime
osuga no Sora is a series I unequivocally love. It captures a memory from a time I have longed for since I was a teenager and perhaps dates…
A Case study of the Reitaisai 19 Fumo incident
I wasn’t around for the previous sales on AmiAmi EN but I heard the horror stories; site crashing constantly, cart not saving items, pages not loading, everything sold…
Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu is brilliant you fools!
I initially was interested in Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu simply due to its surface-level similarities with the previously enumerated list of “meta” anime. Though I mostly wanted…
Tokyodrift
My childhood appreciation for cool shiny cars and my teenage love for fast music had finally come together in a fated meeting. I sought out the anime Initial…
Meditation on aesthetics in Witch Hunter Robin
I watched the anime Witch Hunter Robin with the intention of serving myself a nice helping of 2000’s mall goth grunge, and was reassured of my decision once…
Hells, Hellsing, A Certain Magical Index, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge, Vampire Hunter D
Unfinished Requiem (103,000 Grimoires)
To get a better understanding of what exactly is “chuuni-kei” let’s examine music for a moment. Chuuni-kei within music is more so an inspiration and a visual element…
Knights of the Old Republic
My nightmares saw a terrifying horned creature surrounded by pulsating red flames and I would awake in cold sweat. My fingers interlocked and I knelt by my bedside,…
Some hard thinking after 5 years of anime blogging: 1000 anime later
It was the heart of winter at the opening of 2017; my high school days had just started to fade bitterly but were not yet “sweet.” I was…
“Monster”: and the beauty still left to behold
I’ll go on record to say that the manga for Urusawa Naoki’s Monster has possibly the best written story in the medium of manga. I still stand by…
All my idols have been she/her’ed
“My ideals were tested and ultimately came out victorious, but not without a few scars. To recreate myself I had to kill something. She was beautiful, but now…
My beautifully dark escapist fantasy
This 2.5D dream has finally been realized in the way not many might have been expecting, but offers an interesting proposition to the onlooker: Vtubers present casual escapism.…
永遠の約束 ~Die by the Sword~
I ultimately was dissatisfied with myself and struggled to find an answer for why. I ignored staring into the eyes of the man in the mirror and instead…
Like sakura petals crushed underfoot: Or, overthinking Da Capo II’s anime
On the surface, and perhaps even with a bit of context, Da Capo appears to be a fairly “vanilla” galge series with a heavy emphasis on slice-of-life and…
An ode to caramelldansen
Old MemoRies Before the days of apartment raves, hearing the muffled nightcore-inspired mix through your walls, or even the Doomer remixes, the internet was a different place. Some…
twinkling★hypermaximalism
tained pieces across the mausoleum floor. Flashing lights illuminate our fears reflected back in broken pieces. Masking a repressed fear of going too far and instead opting to…
“World Famous Moe Artist” ~ An UNDER17 Retrospective
UNDER17 is undoubtedly my favorite band. Prior to this, I didn’t really have a particular attachment towards a specific music group beyond a passing interest in the albums…
Overthinking why Ai-chan’s breasts shrunk in Video Girl Ai
Let’s be honest, it was pretty obvious that Youta rented the tape because he was expecting something a bit more… naughty, let’s say. The concept of these “Video…
Ludonarrative dissonance in eroge
More so than their traditionally book-bound counterparts, visual novels rely more heavily on a narrator to convey a story. The majority of visual novels are told from a…
“Where is my Misaki”
She was the only beautiful thing. The evanescent image of her standing under a parasol, in that otherwise uneventful summer afternoon, burned itself into my retinas. Sunlight was…
Denpa-kei influences in Boogiepop Phantom ~NightSky Remix~
Radio-Transmitted Delusions
Denpa-kei influences in Boogiepop Phantom ~NightSky Remix~
Radio-Transmitted Delusions
Overthinking Sister Princess & Da Capo
Sister Princess has some of the most atypical opening minutes that a suspiciously incestuous bishoujo game adaptation might otherwise be undeserving of. It hits the ground running with…
The standardization of morals (in anime)
Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai is a story about rejecting reality. NHK ni Youkoso is a story about indulging in being a hikikomori otaku. Oregairu is a story…
A systematic breakdown of Ready Player Two
Alright gamers, the time I had feared is now upon us. In late November of last year I stumbled across an Amazon listing for something titled “Ready Player…
Eternal Sunshine of the JAV-less Mind ~Last Ray of Sun☆Shine~
I swore to break free from the chains of the eternal cycle I’ve bound myself to, for one last final…
An ode to the otaku room
The otaku room is a nothing more than a microcosm of the otaku identity. A private stand-alone simulation created solely to nurture one’s indulgent hobbies. This is an…