An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Inner Scars, Outer Junk – Mayoiga/The Lost Village Spoiler Review

Take a cast of colorful and engaging characters, and then put them somewhere you can have a creepy atmosphere of suspicion and fear. This is a pretty basic recipe that often turns out a fairly good story.

A cup of sugar, half a cup of butter, one egg, scant two cups of flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, a couple teaspoons of cinnamon, and bake at 350 F for about ten minutes. This is a pretty basic recipe that usually turns out a fairly good cinnamon cookie.

But if you double the flour, turn the butter into sesame oil, skip the baking powder, and season the mix with crab innards rather than cinnamon I don’t think you’re going to get a good result. The analogy: Mayoiga, aka The Lost Village

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Cry Me a River – True Tears Spoiler Review

We’ve had a lot of craziness in this Back to School month, haven’t we? Insane clubs, ninjas, time travel, and giant warships aside, it’s time for something relatable in the school experience, curses! I’m sure everyone either cast or endured a curse or two back in… um… just me then?

Anyway, True Tears. Technically, this is another School Love Polygon Visual Novel based anime, except if literally any source on the matter is correct, True Tears the anime has absolutely nothing to do with True Tears the VN beyond licensing the name, so there are no excuses. Does it manage to soar with the freedom of being an original property masquerading as a tie-in, or does it fall into one of those two pits you’re supposed to dig when messing with black magic? Let’s find out!

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Hello, Sailor – High School Fleet Spoiler Review

The Sailor Uniform is easily one of the most recognizable variants of Japanese schoolgirl uniform. Though it has many variants and of course only superficially resembles actual naval dress, it certainly is iconic. There are entire anime shows dedicated to the relative prop, and its appearance easily marks a character as what she is supposed to be. I guess it was only a matter of time until somebody decided the schoolgirls should earn their outfits.

Enter High School Fleet, a show that takes cute girls in sailor uniforms and has them… actually sail.

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Back to School, and Back Again – Sakurada Reset Spoiler Review

Time Travel anime. Much like Video Game Anime (aside from the Visual Novel set) have a bad habit of coming out mediocre at best, Time Travel shows have an odd habit of turning out really well. That isn’t to say there aren’t exceptions: RErideD was a notable flop, and not everything else is uniformly great, so despite the topic garnering at least a little interest on its own, the piece does still have to deliver.

This is especially true when you start to get into the genre soup category. Time travel show? Sounds fun, let’s see if that’s right. Schoolkids, mysteries, superpowers for everyone and time regression is involved? It sounds like Sakurada Reset.

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