8 Manga Recs to Resist the Romantic Anime Drought

Inspired by Karandi's lamentation of pure romance series in anime. My recommendation to Karandi in the comments section of the linked post was to read some manga. Not all of these are pure romance, but I'm currently in a bit of a writing slump due to being stuck somewhere between my KyoAni anime for OWLS...

[OWLS May 2019 “Happiness” Tour] Pushing the Boundaries of the Mystery Genre (and My Life) Through Fanfiction

Happy, happy! Hello again friendos. If you’re new around here, this is the Spellbook and this is Aria, the blogger who maintains it. This OWLS prompt for May is kinda meta: “Happiness is subjective. We all have different definitions of what happiness means to us and we also feel happiness in varying degrees. This month...

The Importance of the Sequential Nature of Media (6th Day of Anime 2018)

How important is it to have a set chronological order in which to consume media? I’d obtained a copy of Usagi Drop from my local library and was about to watch it, only to get interrupted by something outside. When I returned and started up the disc, I only realised after 3 episodes and 2...

Merchandise Team-ups I’d Like to See for Summer 2018 Anime

Anime and buying merchandise go hand in hand, including all that themed merch, so thinking about what collaboration comes next from that duality is always entertaining. Some of these team-ups make a lot of sense, some are ironic and some…are just weird, to capture the spirit of things… Note: All of these are hypothetical, as...

Ode to Anime Studios – TMS Entertainment

I remember some comments on Anime News Network saying TMS was “on fire” this spring season with Lupin III Part V and Megalobox. Y’know what? I think they’re right. TMS isn’t a name that’s thrown around a lot, come to think of it – despite them being the studio behind Detective Conan and a bunch...

The Cover Art’s Half the Fun!

After Cactus Matt brought out a favourite manga cover art list, I ended up thinking over all the fun things you can do with cover art and ended up with this list. It’s interesting to see what manga artists can do with their cover art to keep readers coming back…A lot of these are just...

That Backlog’s Just Getting Bigger…(TBR/W Tag)

The painful truth is right there in the title! Since Irina offered the TBR/W tag to anyone who wanted it, I took it. Unfortunately, that left me with the conundrum of which name to pick - choose "Aria" and make it too short, or hack the number off "MagicConan14" and make it too long? For the...