More than almost any anime, Hoozuki no Reitetsu reminds me how much I still don’t understand about Japanese culture. A funny thing happened on the way to this series being hopelessly obscure – “so far under the radar it might end up on a milk carton”, as I put it […] Read more
Gin no Saji, now 100% cow rectum free. Volume 10 of Gin no Saji the manga is at 610K sales and counting, and the anime continues to hum along quietly, minding its own business and doing what it does so well without calling much attention to itself. I’ve come to […] Read more
“My Brother” Baseball must have drama, Radishes gotta be from Nerima, And Saury’s gotta be from Meguro. Thank you kindly for your attention. It seems to me as if Adachi-sensei’s fourth-wall breaking – always a staple – is on the upswing of late. That passage was how he justified Touma […] Read more
Nagi no Asukara continues to dance on quicksand, but so far it’s incredibly light on its feet. The alchemy of this series is still working for me, and the reason I know that is because I’m conscious of the fact that Okada is being herself and making me like it. […] Read more
Never a dull moment in the world of the Gods. I’m sure it’s because of my Western upbringing, but I find something very appealing in the idea that the beings at the center of a belief system can be depicted as being so human. It seems very healthy to me […] Read more
It’s not that often I can say this with anime, but I’ve truly never seen anything like what Hunter X Hunter is doing right now. By my calculations something in the neighborhood of 20-25 seconds passed during the course of this episode. That means, in the last three, we’ve seen […] Read more
Game on. If you’ve been paying attention there have been a number of hints that the two second-years, Teshima and Kitaro Aoyagi, were going to be entering the drama soon in a big way. Besides their presence in the OP and ED, within the episodes themselves they’ve sort of been […] Read more
The plot thickens, in a big way. You can pretty much scratch Toaru Hikuushi off the “maybe” list for me, based on this week’s episode. It’s been a slow build, but the series is genuinely getting more interesting every week. I have some concerns that TMS is trying to shoehorn […] Read more
Whatever they’re putting in the water over at BONES these days, I wish they’d sell it at the local kusuri-ya. I think it’s in the very nature of what Space Dandy is trying to do that it’s going to be somewhat hit-and-miss. The series has pretty much dispensed with traditional […] Read more
Change is in the air, at long last. When all is said and done this battle with the State if Wei has lasted most of the season – something in the neighborhood of 23 episodes. It’s been one of the better battle arcs (notwithstanding the bad CGI, which has subsided […] Read more