Must-read Monthly Monday (April 2018 ed.)

April Fool’s, lots of news and a crazy load of new anime just came our way. Let’s see what’s featured this month.

If it’s not specified, the time period covered in this post is from the 27th of March 2018 to today (23rd April 2018).

Navigation: Other People’s Reads | Spellbook Offerings | The Past Month and Confirmed Shows | Coming up next…

Other People’s Reads

It wouldn’t be a round-up post without them. However, since I scour people’s archives on a regular basis, these may not even be from the right time period…

• Forget “Cool”, Let’s Just Enjoy Anime Together by Elisabeth O’Neill at the Little Anime Blog – Quite a few people took on the Kim Kardashian issue in March, but I think this post serves to remind all the anime fans that there’s no problem with being “cool” or “not cool” – it’s just a matter of loving what you love.
• New Anime Sucks, Why Are You Watching That? by Seasonal Prattle – By being inundated with new anime every season (including this fresh one), I think people are losing sight of what it means to treat shows on a case-by-case basis, to be open and to look at the positives of a show’s execution. Prattle works that word magic against arguments that constantly pop up in the fandom.
• Mob Psycho 100 S2 Announced – Wednesday Thoughts (and Hopes) by Achernar at Just the Howling of the Wind – With the Reigen OVA becoming available through Crunchyroll in late March, it seemed like a good time to remember what was so good about Mob Psycho 100, so here’s a post that does that “absence of Mob Psycho” feeling justice. (It also makes me wonder why I skipped over it for that season’s Fukigen na Mononokean…)
• The Hero That Stole My Heart: Six Reasons Why Bakugou Katsuki is My Favourite Character by Beck Naja (PokeNinja90) at Nice Job Breaking It, Hero – I was almost completely fooled by this April Fool’s post if not for the last paragraph, but the arguments given are still very compelling! For someone that claims to despise Bakugou, it sure seems like there’s some pent-up King Explosion Murder love in that heart of PokeNinja’s, eh?
• The Problem with Anime Live Action Portrayals by James Harrington – One side of this may be the “is it really an anime?” Avatar, but it still gets its point across. James discusses what casting choices make or break a live-action adaption of an anime, past, present or future.
• My Thoughts on Dropping Anime by zboudrie of Let’s Talk Anime – Zoe goes through some of the reasons why she keeps or drops anime. I think it’s important to reiterate that watching shows (or doing other hobbies, for that matter) should always be for fun and not be done out of a strict obligation to anyone else, unless of course you’re making a job out of it.
• Why Pay When You Can Have It For Free? by Lina of Tiny Ugly Animal – I’m a big proponent for free methods of things so long as they’re the legal versions, which is why I shamelessly go around plugging different legal manga sites like Comico or Viz Media (you can even see it happening in the comments section of the post). That said, this question about paying for the content you love is one of those that pops up all the time in the manga community, so hopefully Lina spells it out properly.
• [Insert Title Here] – A Discussion on Creative Bankruptcy by Jon Spencer – You know when you want to write something because you haven’t updated your blog in ages, but you don’t know what to write? Jon’s been there. Heck, we’ve all been there, unless we’re new enough not to be. By thinking about the issue, people come up with ways to get rid of it, and that’s what’s happening here. (My tip is to partially write any half-baked ideas you’ve got and set them aside if you can’t write about them, then come back later once you need something.)
• Magical Record: What is a Magical Girl? by AndreaRitsu – A thorough discussion about what it is that defines a magical girl and what a magical girl series is meant to focus on to be just that. It sounds simple, but it’s…actually kinda complex.
• Friday’s Feature: Strong Female Character? by Karandi of 100 Word Anime – What people would count as a “strong female character” is pretty hard to come by in anime. Even though I’m not familiar with most of the series involved in this post (I’m only vaguely familiar with Buffy, which doesn’t help), Karandi argues that a gal shouldn’t have to be physically strong to qualify for the descriptor “strong”.
• The Purposes and Drawbacks of Montages, Time Skips and Flashbacks in Anime by Remy – The title really explains itself for this one and it is a piece from last year, so you’ve probably seen it already. Even still, Remy’s careful attention to even small details on his posts and the shows they discuss is as meticulous as always here, and always creates food for thought.
• The Not Quite Recovery of an MMO Junkie by Irina at I drink and watch anime – Since this show sat in the top 10 for my 2017 rankings, I can’t say I feel the same as she does on this show, but if there’s one thing I prioritise in the reading of WordPress content, it’s the passion of the author seeping through the content. I admit I giggled all through reading this review, so there’s a win.
• Fifty Shades of a Weeaboo – 3rd Class by Nesha and Rodrovich at #moe404 – I’ve only mildly enjoyed the previous two “classes”, but this the class I’d recommend you take out of their series. (I think you’ll understand why I chose it when you see the entry for B…)
• Inuyashiki First Impressions (1): The hero arrives by MarthAurion – One of the highlights of my past month was checking out Inuyashiki’s first episode, and after reading a few first episode impressions from a few WordPress members, I settled on picking Marth’s post for a promo since he was so even-handed in his evaluation. I’m already familiar with Marth through an editing group on Twitter and know he churns out high quality writing, but I hadn’t properly experienced his writing in action until I read this post.
• Anime Workouts: What’s the Best Show to Publicly Sweat To? by Jenn of Welcome to Hell Zone! – Here’s something I never knew I needed to think about – what anime creates the best workout? From the enlightening factoid of what cartoon droplets are called (LOL), to examining a bunch of anime for their potential motivational qualities, this post both makes you laugh and ponder.

Navigation: Other People’s Reads | Spellbook Offerings | The Past Month and Confirmed Shows | Coming up next…

Spellbook Offerings

• Gotta Collect ‘Em All! – Normally I’m the prankster on April 1st (although WordPress isn’t aware of that, as evidenced by how dead the reception was for this post), so I went with some extreme honesty for once…by showcasing my tiny collection of official merch, anime and manga.
• Happiness is Just a Narrative Away – “Coming clean” seems to be a thing this month with this post detailing why I love two particular genres.
• Space Battleship Tiramisu: Sakamoto in Space with Extra Food Jokes – There was no rhyme or reason to what went free on Crunchyroll at the start of the spring season, so I took a look at the jokes of Tiramisu and mused about the potential niche the show could fill.
• 25 Days Anime Male Challenge – This’ll be on for the next two months on Saturday afternoons (my time) so other people can get their posts out before me. These posts definitely drop a lot of the uptight, almost-academic air I’ve got in my other posts, so if you’d like to fangirl over anime guys with me, feel free to.
• Spellbooks and Horoscopes – Talking about magical girls would’ve been fine and dandy if they weren’t behind paywalls for me, so here’s me teaming up with AstralGemini to discuss magical boys for the rest of the season, with posts set for Sunday afternoons (my time). (By the way, the header on the intro post is my fault. I was going to make something fancier, but Astral accepted the barebones version instead.)
• Bozebeats – the Weird, the Wild and the Wonderful – The life of a Jump Start series is brutal yet fleeting when cancellation is potentially after 3 chapters, and when you’ve written a post on a Jump Start that’s been cancelled, the best thing to do is hit publish before it loses relevance. Unfortunately, this just means I have terrible guessing skills in regards to which Jump Starts will continue…
• Spring 2018 First Episode Impressions – It’s the usual not-so-hot takes on the fresh season. Spring’s already looking great, so I don’t know how we’re going to top this…
• Do you dare take the clickbait? – A collab post I signed on to and subsequently forgot about until it was close to posting, because it was such a low time commitment…If I remember right, I signed on to do Spellbooks and Horoscopes after writing my main bit for this one, so this one should’ve been my history maker. It’s just Ply’s horrendous timing that didn’t make it so.

Navigation: Other People’s Reads | Spellbook Offerings | The Past Month and Confirmed Shows | Coming up next…

The Past Month and Confirmed Shows

• I normally don’t specify too much about my personal life or what happened in the past month through these posts, but I ended up burning out and crashing in the past month and nothing’s ever really felt the same way since (which has never happened to me before now, but April was a month of new things both on and off WordPress). I know my burning out affected quite a few things, including the fact my posts were more clearly backlogged at the affected point in time. It was also one reason why I was so merciful with the spring debuts, but at least that’s sorted out with time…
• In more relevant business, Mahou Shoujo Ore and Boueibu Happy Kiss have already been confirmed for the lineup due to the Spellbooks and Horoscopes collab, while Nobunaga no Shinobi’s new season took out the short slot. The rest of the lineup as it stands for this post (due to a really cut-throat session of sorting over the past weekend) is Boku no Hero Academia‘s new season, Golden Kamuy, Hinamatsuri, Lupin III Part V and Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori. 

Navigation: Other People’s Reads | Spellbook Offerings | The Past Month and Confirmed Shows | Coming up next…

Coming up next…

• May 21st (the Spellbook’s half-year milestone) is coming up…I’ve tried to arrange something special for it, but considering my request seems to have fallen through and May 21st’s the next Must-read Monthly Monday’s date, I may have to improvise something else to celebrate.
• I’ve already mentioned what’ll be keeping me busy on the blog front above for the most part, so look above for the relevant details.

Navigation: Other People’s Reads | Spellbook Offerings | The Past Month and Confirmed Shows | Coming up next…

Top of page