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A personal journey through: D.C.II ~Da Capo II~
Every new game is a new beginning. Turquoise blue text reminds me of the path I once tread, but nevertheless lulls me into the warm embrace of monotony.…
Dawn of my eternal sunshine.
Embracing a life of obsession. Continue reading →
Evolution of my itabeya
A happenstance internet finding sparked a lifelong journey of building my own "itabeya" and continuously updating it to reflect my ever-changing interests- both serving as a timeline as…
VSImaginatorV ~ The Dark Inside Me ~
Fashion and I are at odds with one another. Much of my personal relationship with clothes could generously be described as strained. There have been a few times…
School Days and the burden of intimacy
Printed on the faded navy blue spine of an oversized game box, with white, bold, text reading the nondescript “School Days” - the box sits quietly on the…
The Legacy of「Tori no Uta」
Tori no Uta was originally composed for the opening of a popular bishoujo game by one of the most beloved developers in the industry- but its legacy extends…
“Magical Kanan vs. Magical Kanan (2005) vs. SeptemCharm Magical Kanan vs. Magical Canon vs Magical Kanon (100%)”
A shelf-perusing individual at a seedy DVD-rental shop might see a cute Watanabe Akio character design on the cover, and assume that the girl is a mahou shoujo…
An ode to Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
Underscores of innocence and melancholy intertwined perfectly with distinctive stylized visuals helped create a sense of identity for Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. I’m not sure if it was…
Mayonaka Heart Tune and un-doing of “tradition”
Harem anime and manga stories have been seeing their unwritten rules be fundamentally overwritten, challenged and iterated upon in the past few years, and not all the changes…
“I fell in love with you through the viewfinder.”
PhotoKano is expressly obsessed with the artistic pursuit of capturing high school life through the lens of someone who already made peace with their adolecence ending. The most…
What was DreamParty?
I thought that “DreamParty” was UNDER17 naming their single to thematically reflect the name of the title track “もっと、夢、見よう!!” However, the inclusion of “イメージソング” (image song)- almost always…
Reconciling with Kanon (2002)
Rewatching Kanon (2002) with seven additional years of context behind its creation and gaining a deeper level of appreciation for the remarkable feeling intrinsic to bishoujo games added…
The simple perfection of the ToHeart 2: OVA
It’s too easy for a writer to put a spin on an exhausted formula by playing with expectations instead of playing every trope straight. Doing so is a…
Reconciling with Seiren
My greatest enemy is my past. Anime that forces me to reckon with The Man I Used to Be are uniquely special in their own right, and often…
The irredeemable “Highschool of the Dead”
Somewhere between House of the Dead and Resident Evil were the seeds of inspirations for Highschool Dead likely sown, and this uniquely East-Asian lineage gives the tired genre…
A Perfect Memory//Still Dreaming
How I spent the summer of ‘24
An ode to clusterpunk
Clusterpunk was ahead of its time. Only a few years later and one could expressionlessly drop it alongside the handful of over micro-genres of internet fashion without so…
The curious case of anime on UMD
As early as the Spring of 2005, there were rumblings within the North American anime distribution scene that hinted at the potential of the new optical disc format.…
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…
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…