Some Manga, The Mugen Train and Other Musings

It’s been a hot minute since I was blogging here, huh? What’s happened since you were last here? Now basically everyone is at the point of the year where they’re all going to school and whatnot, I finally have some time back to myself. This is a good thing, I think, because I set a...

Winter 2020 Wrap-Up (ft. Boku no Hero Academia’s Movie, Futari no Hero)

As the COVID-19 crisis crawls ever onwards, there's never been a better time to be a homebody, so why not wrap up some anime? As I sink ever deeper into HypMic hell and jump back into gacha games I abandoned a year or so ago, it has occurred to me that it's time to wrap...

The Disparity Between What I Read, What I Watch and What I Play

This title of this post might seem familiar, but that's because it's inspired by Alexander Prange's (Alexie the Great's) post. I realised a while back there's quite the discrepancy between the anime and manga I have listed as AniList favourites - aside from the rare crossover, the manga has more of an emotional edge to it,...

Must-read Monthly Monday (Mar. 2019 ed.)

There's only so much I can say in these intros so, uh...I still think the intro for my Konobi ep. 11 post is great! You can check that, and more, out below. If it's not specified, the time period covered in this post is from the 18th of February 2019 to the 25th of March...

Shinkai Doesn’t Get Me and That’s Fine

It's unpopular opinion time. Around when I first started the Spellbook I watched Children who Chase Lost Voices and a few weeks ago I watched 5 Centimetres Per Second. I can tell you two things about them: They had really pretty visuals and I respect a man - heck, anyone - who can make their...

Is Anime Ready for the Mainstream?

This post has links to previous posts I've done - notably this one - and is a response to Dewbond's question. Obviously, we can start with the idea - what is "mainstream"? I've personally found I've never fully reconciled with the concept of "mainstream" so this may be a poor definition, but "mainstream" in my...

Looking Forward to Winter 2019 (1st Day of Anime 2018)

So let's get this ball rolling! So, with the removal of the 2018 resolutions, I'm now free to pursue only what I'm interested in. Therefore, these shows are split into 3 categories - "Likely to Appear and Hyped For", "Not Likely to Appear but Hyped For" and "Those I Left Behind/Movies/OVAs". Note: If a show...

Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation in Koe no Katachi

The Koe no Katachi movie starts out with the song My Generation by The Who…but what’s that got to do with anything? “…life is a war against boredom.” – Shoya Ishida The opening song to the Koe no Katachi movie superimposes the song over the initial scenes of Shoya and friends jumping into the river,...

Award Controversy

The Crunchyroll Awards voting is underway, and considering the waves it made last year, of course that's the hot-button topic for the aniblogging sphere… One particularly contentious point about the awards is the inevitable complaint that “this is going to become a popularity contest”. My particular view on this issue is that there’s so much...