An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Kyuubey, I’ve Come to Bargain – Madoka Magica Spoiler Review

Last time when talking about Sailor Moon, I mentioned that there was another show that had to be addressed when it came to studying the growth and evolution of the Magical Girl genre. There are plenty of other big, famous landmarks in the genre, like Lyrical Nanoha or Pretty Cure, but the game-changing elephant in the room is Madoka Magica.

In some senses, it feels almost perfunctory to talk about Madoka, the same way it did to discuss Neon Genesis Evangelion. But as with Neon Genesis Evangelion, I need to establish a baseline to talk about other works, both the two remaining in the Magical Girl May series this year (yes, I’m actually going one week into June) and any other post-Madoka Magical Girl show I may choose to review in the future. So, let’s dig right in.

Read More…Read More…

Magical Girl Raising Project Audio Commentary, Part 2

A tip for budding writers: Unpredictability and investment are things that need to be carefully managed in death games. If you don’t care one whit about the characters, or if their deaths are forcefully telegraphed, you lose the drama that is supposed to run so high in the genre.

Read More…Read More…

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 7

This week was another case of “webcomic time” stretching the pacing of the show. Anak and Endorsi finish their fight (going into a more exaggerated comedic style for part of it as well) and, wiped out on the floor below, and seem to reach a sort of truce with one another as they converse down there.

Read More…Read More…

Magical Girl Goes Action – Sailor Moon Crystal Spoiler Review

It’s impossible to talk about the history of the Magical Girl genre without talking about two shows in particular. One of those two (we’ll get to the other later) is Sailor Moon. The original series is notorious for two things. One is, allegedly, having a truly awe-inspiring sum of filler, both in terms of filler episodes and repeated battle and of course Transformation animations. The other is for transforming the nature of the Magical Girl genre by taking it from a branch of Adventure or even Slice of Life to one of action, blending the preexisting magical girl themes with those of transforming heroes and fighting hero teams. While Cardcaptor Sakura doesn’t show those influences, at least too much, every other Magical Girl show I’ll be reviewing this month has clearly felt, however distantly, the impact that Sailor Moon had.

The astute reader may note, though, that the title of this review does not simply say “Sailor Moon”. There’s a reason for that. I didn’t watch Sailor Moon when it was first coming out in the states, and hadn’t sought it out as part of my early years as an invested anime viewer. Rather, I knew it by reputation and knew that I had to look into it to really understand the Magical Girl genre. The thing is, the classic Sailor Moon had a five-year run and a grand total of two hundred episodes. I could have tried to cover the first season or arc, I suppose, but instead my research into the genre directed me towards a remake called Sailor Moon Crystal.

Read More…Read More…

Magical Girl Raising Project Audio Commentary, Part 1

Magical Girl Raising Project is… a show. It’s a show that blends elements of the Death Game genre (most notably represented by Mirai Nikki) with elements of the Magical Girl genre (Most notably Madoka Magica). It’s… not entirely effective. Starting out, it doesn’t look too bad, but I promise some viewer pain as we go onward!

Read More…Read More…

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 6

I actually found this episode to be one of the more interesting lately, since it wasn’t focused primarily on the action, and featured (in addition to some mechanical exposition) some good growth and exploration of our characters. Not Bam, but I’m coming around to the idea that this is one of those stories where our lead is more or less supposed to be a window into the cool and creative things we’re going to see while personally staying on the more bland end in order to not throw the audience out of their element or upstage the actual feature.

Read More…Read More…

“Release!” – Cardcaptor Sakura Spoiler Review


Welcome to another theme month – it’s May, so it’s time to take a look at Magical Girl anime! Specifically, I’d like to examine a few shows with an eye towards the history or evolution of the genre, including game-changers and reactions to them. To start that, though, I was put into a fairly awkward place: It’s quite hard to find a way to view most of the Magical Girl anime that were legitimately big before the debut of the original Sailor Moon, limiting my knowledge of what the early days of the genre were like to secondary sources. However, those secondary sources led me to one anime that, while it was technically a later release, is very much emblematic of what an entry in the genre would have looked like before Sailor Moon. That show is Cardcaptor Sakura.

Read More…Read More…

Seasonal Selection – Tower of God Episode 5

So, this week we get the conclusion of the Crown game and… not all that much else. Tower of God is kind of progressing in webcomic time, where each individual episode is decently paced internally, but it’s going to be a long, long road to get much of anywhere.

Read More…Read More…

Awkward Inheritance – Aria the Scarlet Ammo Spoiler Review

The basic idea of Aria the Scarlet Ammo is simple: Our main character is Kinji Tooyama, who is enrolled in an academy for heavily-armed supercops called Butei. He’s not doing very well (not that he cares, he’s planning to drop out) but secretly possesses a special power: when he gets turned on, he enters a state called Hysteria Mode where he’s a chivalrous uber James Bond – Suave, hypercapable, and liable to say or do something that will embarrass Kinji later. He ends up paired up with the titular Aria, a Rie Kugimiya Tsundere who takes quick note of his moments of extreme ability but less so their trigger – typically her.

If this setup sounds like it’s going to provide a constant running awkward moment… it does. Depending on how you feel about that it could probably be the best thing since sliced bread or the 12th Circle of Hell. For me, it’s somewhere in between. I don’t enjoy awkward situations for their own sake, and typically think my tolerance is moderately low, but Aria mostly stayed within it, letting me have a good look at what’s going on underneath that.

Read More…Read More…