An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Film Club

Anime Film Club – Spoiler Review

What can I say to introduce <harmony/> that I haven’t said about a show in the past? I waxed long about dystopian fiction and the reactionary fear of the science fiction genre introducing Love and Lies, and while I could reword my lengthy digression, that would seem a little cheap.

For those who don’t want to follow the link and read the whole long thing, I’ll give the super-basic summary: dystopian fiction is pretty common, and arguably for good reason because conflict makes good stories and thus utopias aren’t much fun. But it’s still, philosophically, a frustration with lots of entries in the Science Fiction genre. <harmony/> is arguably another.

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Anime Film Club: Living with Undeath – Summer Ghost Spoiler Review

Summer Ghost was a treat. Honestly, I’m shocked I didn’t talk about it before: I was fortunate enough to screen it at AX a few years back, and I knew from that I had to get the home video release. But I guess I wasn’t doing daily reports that year, because I’ve yet to mention it on the blog, meaning it stands as one of the big incentives for me doing this film club.

And I know, cat’s out of the bag, I thought it was good. At not even 40 minutes long, this is going to be a pretty quick review, so I might as well spoil what’s at the end of the spoilers, at least a little.

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Anime Film Club: Field Trip to the Digital Land of OZ – Summer Wars Spoiler Review

Well, the weather is hot, the days are long, and most folks just want to do one thing about now: stay inside and play video games! Well, watching movies also tends to come up, so I guess it’s fitting that I’d tackle Summer Wars, a movie about the digital world.

Historically, I’ve been pretty sparse about reviewing movies (rather than series) on the blog, but this summer I’m going to set that aside for a little “film club”, working through a few specific titles with more typical fare between, and there didn’t seem a better place to start than this. True, of director Mamoru Hosoda’s filmography, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time would probably be the first on many folks’ lists, but Summer Wars fits the season and is nearly as well regarded.

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