Anime

A Four Year Late Review of Attack on Titan, Season One

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With Attack on Titan’s second season now completed, it is the perfect time to look back on the first season and give it a formal review before giving its sequel the same treatment later this week. Attack on Titan holds a special place in my heart as it was the Anime that made me fall in love with Anime back in January of 2014, thus kickstarting a three and a half year obsession that has introduced me to entirely new facets of entertainment I never knew I wanted. I’m surprised I haven’t given this show a formal review before, so without further ado, here is my review of Attack on Titan.

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A Review of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, Season One

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A period piece drama about an obscure Japanese performing art, aimed at adults, is not what people have come to expect from anime. It certainly was a change of pace from what I’m used to. Even Anime I consider to be aimed at older audiences are usually action shows, science fiction, or character based deconstructions, but there is a certain class about Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju that I don’t see from a lot of Anime.

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Why All the Hate? – Funimation and Crunchyroll

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I have been overjoyed recently, seeing Anime become even more popular here in the west and I believe the main reason for this is the involvement of two companies. Firstly, Funimation, the Houston-based Distributer that licenses, dubs and distributes Anime while also providing a streaming service. Secondly, Crunchyroll, a primarily streaming platform giving people access to hundreds of Anime, Manga and Japanese drama. The unification of these two companies has made the power of these two companies even stronger. Just recently Crunchyroll got all 64 episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood onto their site as one of the benefits of this deal and there has been a promise that this partnership will help get more Blu-ray releases for even more anime.

But for some reason when I talk to a lot of friends about Crunchyroll and Funimation, there seems to be a lot of hate surrounding the two that I simply do not understand. So I figured I’d give my two cents on why I think the hate is a bit ridiculous and suggest what we SHOULD be complaining about instead.

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Sequels to Watch Out For

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This season alone we have received the long awaited sequel to Attack on Titan and the sequel to one of the best shows of 2016, My Hero Academia. This has gotten me thinking about what other sequels are coming soon. After all, there are so many new and great shows each season, but every once in awhile, we get a sequel to an acclaimed series, an old classic or even an obscure gem. In the spirit of sequels, here are a few sequels I am interested in or would like to see in the future. I highly encourage you to check out each of the shows I will be addressing and to share them with others. Enjoy!

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A Matter of Presentation; How I’ve Come to Love Attack on Titan Again

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After finishing season one of Attack on Titan in January of 2014, I began my descent into the rabbit hole that is Japanese culture and animation. It’s been a long journey and now that I’m well into my fourth year of being an anime fan, Studio WIT just so happens to have released the long awaited sequel to Attack on Titan. It has been four long years though, in which my taste in anime have changed and while I still remember season one fondly as the Anime that got me into Anime, I won’t pretend my excitement didn’t decline as the wait grew longer. Eight episodes into season 2 however, and I can see that it was worth the wait.

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A Review of Blood Blockade Battlefront (Originally Posted January 17th, 2017)

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Kekkai Sensen 3Kekkai Sensen hooked me right from the very beginning with our main character narrating a letter to his sister, as we are treated to a stunning montage of what is clear to be the climax of this 12 episode series. A wide array of colorful and sleek characters are seen dismembering ghoul after ghoul across a vast and expansive metropolis under the night sky, all the while our hero scales a tall staircase approaching what he hopes to be direction needed to stop the chaos and save the day. The main title flashes on the screen with dazzling effect and we are brought back to the beginning of the story.

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Screw it, Here’s My Five Hottest Anime Dudes

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If the consumption of Anime related blog content on the internet has taught me anything, it is that there is never an opportunity where you can’t blog about what characters you think are the absolute hottest. Anime has given us so many female characters to idolize, and hell, even long-running Anime blogger/YouTuber Digibro posted his list of the 10 hottest females in Anime just earlier this week after 10 years of blogging about Anime. Now, while I have not been blogging nearly long enough to make this age of tradition seem original in the way intended by Digi, I am an anime blogger and a gay one at that… So screw it, here is my list of the five hottest dudes in anime.

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What the Hell Happened to Under the Dog?

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[Update (May 13th, 2017): The official Under the Dog website is working again and the creators have posted the “final update” on the Under the Dog project. The blog post can be found here.]

In early 2016 I got really excited about a Kickstarter project that I had already known about for a while but never quite grasped the importance of. Under the Dog is an Anime project that was a Kickstarter success back in 2014, only to be on hiatus until the OVA was finally released on August 1st, 2016. It promised to be a gritty science fiction epic inspired by Akira and Ghost in the Shell. It was a project helmed by industry veterans but now… nothing. More than half a year after the release of the OVA and nothing. So what happened? How did a project with such promise fall so far into the depths of obscurity?

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Animegraphy: A Yearly Musical Delight

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Every November from 2012 to 2015, an editor who goes by the name of Qyll would produce music videos showcasing anime from each year. The series was called Animegraphy, and it was a truly spectacular tradition that gave anime fan a reason to be excited for November. They usually contained about four or five songs and could easily switch between upbeat and fun, romantic, sad, or action-packed. And they only got better and more polished as the years went on.

Sadly, 2015 was the last year for Qyll’s amazing series, and many newcomers have stepped up to continue the tradition. Today, I want to share all of Qyll’s Animegraphy music videos and even one that I believe to be a worthy successor. Continue reading →

A Review of ユーリ on ICE!!! (Originally posted December 27th, 2016)

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Yuri on Ice, Directed by Sayo Yamamoto and created by Mitsurou Kubo, is the latest project from Studio MAPPA, who’s previous projects include Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe’s Kids on the Slope, the beautiful Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, and the very bizarre Punchline. Yuri on Ice has also the been the subject of much debate over the implied relationship between the two main characters, with some heralding the show as a masterpiece for that element in it of itself. But can this thoughtful experiment in characterization stand on its own, or does it fall flat as a paradigm of pandering?

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