Tag: drama
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Ghosts in their own ghost stories: Shokuzai
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Read More →: Ghosts in their own ghost stories: Shokuzai“If it cannot break out of its shell, the chick will die without ever being born. We are the chick-The world is our egg. If we don’t crack the world’s shell, we will die without ever truly being born. Smash the world’s shell. FOR THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORLD!” –Revolutionary Girl Utena Shokuzai (Penance) is…
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Don't give up: dying in pursuit of change and The Sky Crawlers
Read More →: Don't give up: dying in pursuit of change and The Sky CrawlersMamoru Oshii doesn’t make forgettable anime. Be it Ghost in the Shell or Patlabor 2, the man injects so much personality into his films that it’s impossible not to recognise his touch. There is, of course, his famous basset hound, but there’s also a poetic side that transports this viewer into the ether. I can’t…
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The flower bloomed
Read More →: The flower bloomedBefore you decide to watch Flowers of Evil (Aku no Hana,) please ask yourself these questions: do I purely want bishounen, or bishoujo, characters in my anime? Am I always looking for attractive characters? Should anime always look the same? If you’ve answered in the affirmative to any of these questions, forget about Flowers of…
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My name is Squealer
Read More →: My name is SquealerThe end of a season is a bittersweet time for anime fans, as the joy of seeing a series reach its climax is undercut by the knowledge that this is the last hurrah for a story we’ve grown attached to over time. Such is the case with Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World,) a…
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The Flowers of Evil
Read More →: The Flowers of EvilFirst, imagine an alternate version of FLCL, where Naoto hooks up with the loose-canon Mamimi and revels in her pyromania, falling ever deeper into her psychosis, burning away their boring world together. This is The Flowers of Evil (Aku no Hana,) a manga series (and soon to be anime) that begins like any of the…
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A distant light: Hyouka
Read More →: A distant light: HyoukaSomewhere between its Autumn lights and shifting leaves, there’s a warmth in Hyouka. Warm is a good way of describing the series, emotional is another. Not emotional in a melodramatic sense, but rather, one feels a liveliness coursing through every table leg and dusty bookshelf in the series. It has the sense of a story…
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Anime still has it: Space Brothers
Read More →: Anime still has it: Space BrothersFor a while there, I stopped believing that the anime industry was capable of crafting shows like Space Brothers (Uchū Kyōdai.) When I seriously started getting into anime, there were series like Planetes, Gankutsuou, Monster and Mushishi all being released in and around the same time. These were series not influenced by other anime and…
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Taiyo Matsumoto’s new manga, Sunny: melancholy and wonderful
Read More →: Taiyo Matsumoto’s new manga, Sunny: melancholy and wonderfulI’ve long been a fan of Taiyo Matsumoto, a guy who for years has ranked amongst my favourite mangaka. Hopefully you’ll know him as the author of Tekkonkinkreet (Black & White,) or GoGo Monster, or perhaps even Ping Pong? If not, you really should, because he’s a genius.
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The girl who became a zombie
Read More →: The girl who became a zombieI’m utterly torn by Sankarea. It has beautiful art direction and some fascinating ideas, but it’s also about as exploitative as anime gets. There’s just so much to like about it though, starting with the girl who became a zombie. Of course, to become a zombie, one must first die. Sanka commits suicide because her…
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Birdland
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Read More →: BirdlandAlthough I’ve been writing this anime blog for a long time now, over 6 years, in fact, I’m still not sure of the kind of blogger I am. I’m not disciplined enough to write every few days, nor do I enjoy deep analysis of anime. I don’t even really enjoy discussing it to any great…