An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Asimov Coffee Shop – Time of Eve Spoiler Review

Robots certainly are a hot topic. And when talking about near-future robots, the kind of thing you might believe we could actually see, there are some interesting takes. Take the “maid robot” idea for instance. On the surface, this is pretty appealing since it would amount to taking modern robot vacuum cleaners and making them way more capable and aesthetically pleasing. I would love a robot to do actually dusting and tidying up and if it looks nice, that’s a perk.

But when you start to question what a robot, especially an advanced robot, is, things get a little fuzzier. Sure your robot vacuum is a pretty simple unintelligent automaton, but something that’s made in the image of a human and intended to interact like a human? At what point does a being like that have an existence that deserves respect as an equal, rather than continuing on as a machine? As AI models get ever better scores on their Turing tests, we have to wonder.

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In The End – Girls’ Last Tour Spoiler Review

The world is dead, but two girls are still living, making their way through the ruins of a civilization they don’t understand out of an almost childish will to keep going.  It’s the slow, introspective, and yet somehow cute Girls’ Last Tour.

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DESTINY! – Mawaru Penguindrum Spoiler Review

IMAGINE!

Imagine a setting where nothing makes sense. Something that blends the irreverent bombast of an early Trigger production like Kill la Kill with the philosophizing fakery of an “important talks” heavy show like RahXephon or Aquarion and the extreme visual coding and glaring technique of a Shaft production like Bakemonogatari. And there are penguins.

You don’t have to imagine it. Mawaru Penguindrum exists, in all its stunningly pretentious glory. Well, for a definition of glory, at least.

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Let’s Ghost! – Dark Gathering Spoiler Review

Let’s finish the spooky season strong with some ghosts and ghouls ripped from the rumor mills and brought to horrible, horrible life upon the screen. Let’s talk about Dark Gathering.

At its heart, Dark Gathering is a show about a little girl, Yayoi, who is determined to make a ghost buster of herself in order to hunt down the spook that took her mother’s soul. Her methodology is pretty unique, though, as she captures lesser ghosts, stuffs them in mystic substitute dolls so that anything spooky that tries to hurt her will damage the dolls instead, and ultimately trains them up to fight for her, making Yayoi basically the ultimate Ghost-type Pokemon Master.

However, Yayoi is not the main character.

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Respect for the Classics – Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror Spoiler Review

Ayakashi is an anthology of, as the title would suggest, classic Japanese horror tales. So strap yourselves in and get ready for a slice of period spookiness.

Specifically, across its 11 episode run, Ayakashi covers three stories: “Tenshu Monogatari”, “Yotsuya Kaidan”, and “Bakeneko”. The last of these is notable because it gives Ayakashi its dubious claim to fame: technically being the predecessor to the show Mononoke, which is often regarded as one of the all-time greats, but is beyond the scope of this review.

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