Anime

Typically, the verb ‘watch’ implies a passive experience. ‘Watching’ fictionalized television can be a relaxing recreational pursuit, as viewers discern unambiguous character development or follow the trajectory of an oft-linear plot. It’s an ephemeral process ...

Save for Casper, Harvey Comics’ altruistic apparition, Western depictions of the supernatural are almost always rooted in menace. That isn’t always the case in Japan- where folklore is filled with tales of yōkai- spirit creatures ...

NIS America aficionados may have noticed a schism between the publisher’s interactive output and their growing library of anime. While their games habitually incorporate capricious scenarios peppered with lascivious situations and a reliable sprinkle of ...

After years of enjoying anime fixated on mecha, magic, mystery and moe sirens, I had convinced myself that the ‘slice of life’ genre had little to offer. Certainly, after witnessing Kemonozume’s naked protagonist sinuously thrash ...

As a universal human experience, the exploration of death isn’t an uncommon theme in anime. While mortality has been depicted in a wide range of methods- from Shinigami no Ballad’s lead character escorting people through ...

Transitional periods often elicit unforeseen, and sporadically- serendipitous events. That’s the premise behind Zakuro (based on Lili Hoshino’s 2006 manga, Otome Yōkai Zakuro), which set during Japan’s Meiji era, reveals the country adjusting to the ...

Playful titillation has become a traditional quality in NISA publishing efforts- from the penetration of a Reyvateil’s ‘installation port’ by an enlarged crystal in Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia to an impish onsen cutscene in ...

A good sitcom is one of the hardest things to write. Viewers tend to range from devoted regulars to mid-season drop-ins, so each episode has to be a self-contained story in and of itself, while ...

I typically loathe the star-studded, Hollywood romantic movie. Originally, I thought contempt for the genre stemmed from being socialized to appreciate their assumed antithesis: big, dumb, action flicks. Upon closer analysis, it was the medium ...

Unexpected quality can ruin a perfectly good plan. Case in point: upon receiving the second volume of Katanagatari from NIS America and having missed the storyline from the first boxed set, I intended to skim ...