An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Everything Zero – Yurei Deco Spoiler Review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: in the nebulous future, all known civilization is ruled in a very skewed and dystopian way that seems to make the masses happy, but a small group of plucky teens and outcasts… Yeah, I’m just going to assume you’ve stopped me by that point, since it’s the pitch for basically every big name young adult novel, an obligatory episode or five of every “scenario of the week” scifi show, and the occasional piece of well-respected Sci-fi as well. Some of those pieces do it better, some do it worse. I won’t even claim to be immune to the allure of the archetype myself, it’s a damn good backbone.

But when you tell an archetypical story, you need to both bring something of your own to the table that’s new and interesting, and know what makes that archetype powerful and resonant. If you do, joke aside, you can create some good stuff – maybe fun, maybe meaningful, and certainly at least worth a look. If you don’t… well, let’s take a look at Yurei Deco.

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Seeing is Believing – Mieruko-chan Spoiler Review

Well, we’re at the end of October, and as much as I’d love to lead the armies of Halloween to reclaim calendar territory from the Christmas occupation forces no doubt already sighted all over the place, such an effort is quite beyond me. Thus, it’s best to wrap up the spooky season with a few more choice ghouls and ghosts. The ones seen in Mieruko-chan will do just fine.

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Werewolves versus Cirtus Fruit – Okamikakushi: Masque of the Wolf Spoiler Review

It’s still October and the relative low quantity of horror anime be damned, I’m doing all spooky shows for it this year! Well, we’ve seen ghosts, vampires, and… weird Victorian soot faeries, guess we might as well give werewolves a shot as well.

Okamikakushi is a show that kind of looks like a game of Werewolf: you’re in a town, there are wolves, and it seems like somebody gets murdered every night under the perpetually-full and always blood-red moon while by day we try to solve the mystery.

In some ways, though, the traditional pattern is placed in reverse.

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Soot, Shadows, and Secrets – Shadows House Spoiler Review

It’s still spooky time, but this week we’re taking a look at something a little less conventional: a gothic tale not about any familiar ghosts or ghouls yet still, on at least one side, still familiar to its genre.

Shadows House takes place within the confines and grounds of an ambiguously Victorian mansion. The lords and ladies of the House are the Shadows family, who are notable for being absolutely black, such that no features can be discerned upon their surface. Because of this, the Shadows have “living dolls”, attendants with what the viewer would regard as normal human features who, among other things, act as the faces of the Shadows, giving expressions to the otherwise unreadable entities.

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At Least it’s not Collect – Call of the Night Spoiler Review

Well, while we’re in the month of maximum spookiness, what better subject could there be than Vampires? I’ve talked about the notorious nosferatu before, notably in the lamentable A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives and the somewhat less awful Lunar Legend Tsukihime. In fact, I even referenced the vampires here in the opening of the former review. So it only seems fitting that now that we’ve come around to everyone’s favorite season for vampires (your mileage may vary), I ought to take a look at Call of the Night.

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Comfort Harem Buffet – Date a Live (Seasons 1-4) Spoiler Review

Oh, Date a Live, how have I gone this far without reviewing you? This is a show with a majestic four seasons, an iconic design in the form of one of its leading ladies (Kurumi Tokisaki) getting mountains of attention and her own spinoff, and a legendarily goofy premise: a seemingly normal high school boy must date apocalypticly powerful supernatural girls, because the only way to seal their powers rather than killing them or letting them wreak further destruction is with a kiss.

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