How Cowboy Bebop Does Horror Well

Cowboy Bebop - a perennial anime classic which manages to span many moods, including horror. I've said before anime doesn't do a lot of horror and one of those reasons is because other genres of anime do it better. Cowboy Bebop nails this, particularly with Toys in the Attic but also with Black Dog Serenade....

Asexuals and Aromantics in Anime and Manga

...it's still the 29th of October where I am as I write this. It's the end of Ace Week, but depending on your definition of "where your week ends", you may still have more than enough time to read this. You were probably thinking, "Hey, no Halloween post this year?" There is one, if you...

I Am a Cat Barista: Short But Sweet, with a Bit of Whiplash to Serve

The main gripe I have about the series I Am a Cat Barista, based on its first volume, isn't its setup. (It's basically Rokuhoudou's with a giant cat-man, so don't fix what ain't broke, amirite?) It's the fact the chapters are too short, so they leave you wanting! Once the treat of the day is...

Blogging is a Paradox

...I swear, aside from Manga March posts, all I've done lately is blogging about blogging... (This series of thoughts started in Scott's comment section.) Meta note: This post was mostly written during the Fate/Stay Night AniTwitWatches, which ran in January of 2022. How ironic that it comes out at a time where I'm barely blogging...

Crunchyroll Expo Con Report

For my first in-person con, I got some good stuff and some bad.

Aria’s Original Sin

...It's funny how karma comes to bite you in the butt sometimes, yeah? (Also, minor spoilers ahead for the Hypnosis Mic drama track Mixed Up.) Hear me out: one day, I was translating this Hypnosis Mic fan comic: https://twitter.com/mikan__888/status/1538493875102175232/photo/1 ...That should be the end of the line, really. An open-and-shut case. However, the punchline for...

What Makes Ya Boy Kongming Tick?

I didn't think I'd like Paripi Koumei for this long, to be honest... In some ways, Paripi Koumei is not a series I'd particularly like. Ancient Chinese history bores me, to be honest - all that stuff about war strategy and tradition is more my dad's domain. Despite that, I love it - which is...

What Platinum End Says About My Past and Present

(TW for discussion of death, suicide, suicide ideation and trauma.) At age 14 - 15, I wasn't what you'd call a "chuunibyou" in an outward sense. Aside from sinking far too much time into Tumblr and TV Tropes...as well as anime, manga and fanfiction...I was pretty ordinary. That said, one of my stories from that...

The Threshold of Relatability

Inspired by this post by Karandi. We fans of anime, manga and associated media tend to see ourselves in characters, but how much is too much? Seeing an aspect or two which we also recognise as influencing our own actions tends to garner comments of "#relatable" and "I love this character because they act/talk like...

Social Anxiety Through Comedy (A Tsuritama Rewatch Project Post)

Tsuritama doesn't feature social anxiety as front and centre as other anime do, but the strange faces Yuki makes are window dressing for a bigger issue. Meta context: This post originally was written in December 2020, around the Netflix "airing" of Komi Can't Communicate. Originally the intro text above the cut referred to a Komi...