Tag: psychological
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The swirling nothingness: Shuzo Oshimi’s vampire manga Happiness
Read More →: The swirling nothingness: Shuzo Oshimi’s vampire manga HappinessShuzo Oshimi’s Happiness is a beautiful clusterfuck that I can’t get enough of, but let’s get one thing clear: there’s absolutely nothing happy about Happiness. It all begins when high-schooler Okazaki is bitten by the vampire Nora. She grants him two choices: either live like her, or die. Really, he has no choice.
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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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The end of Psycho-Pass
Read More →: The end of Psycho-PassOne wouldn’t think it to look at them, but Shin Sekai Yori and Psycho-Pass were like two peas in a pod. Both deal in dystopian futures, social commentary and rebellion, both attempt to obfuscate their commentary by presenting it through morally-questionable speakers, and both refuse to end with everything neatly resolved. Suffice to say, I…
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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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Broken Apple: Shin Sekai Yori
Read More →: Broken Apple: Shin Sekai YoriMany of us are optimists and like to think there’s an innate sense of goodness within us all, but given a God’s power, how would we react? Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World) answers that question within its first 3 minutes: upon the discovery of psychokinesis, civilisation regresses into a thousand year-long dark age,…
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Farewell Satoshi Kon
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Read More →: Farewell Satoshi KonIt’s difficult to express the disappointment I felt when I learnt of Satoshi Kon‘s passing last week. Since then, many heart-felt tributes have been published and half-way through writing this, I started wondering whether it was worth posting at all. Alas, what is blogging if not personal? I liked his films and, at the risk…
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The end of Death Note: a poison, creating wicked hearts
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/ ReviewsRead More →: The end of Death Note: a poison, creating wicked heartsDeath Note is a “… poison, creating wicked hearts”, said the concerned prudes at Chinese schools after some ‘corrupted’ kids were discovered to be using their home-made murder pages to curse fellow students. This was back in 2005; the first time I’d heard of the now famous Death Note. Since then, I’ve always been interested…
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Death Note – 15 – It's been all sorts of fun, L
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Death Note – 15 – It's been all sorts of fun, LIt’s around about now that we realise Death Note is becoming more than a very good anime series. It’s becoming one of those “OMFG-WTF-CLIFFHANGER!?!” types. I can feel the hysteria surging within me. 15 episodes in and the twists and turns of the story are still as unpredictable as ever. Watching it makes me a…
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Death Note – 2 – Hiding behind a notebook
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Death Note – 2 – Hiding behind a notebookI’m surprised by just how fast Light is losing grip on reality. In only this second episode he coldly considers killing his family if they were ever to piece together his part in the (now world famous) mass-murdering case, while later he shows no signs of regret upon murdering (using the Death Note, obviously) a…
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Death Note – 1 – Wicked, manipulative and morally deranged
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Death Note – 1 – Wicked, manipulative and morally derangedDeath Note is a Shounen Jump anime, but forget the generic conventions those two words invoke. Just like Bleach, this is a story that depicts the soul reaping world of “Shinigami” but where Bleach’s version of the afterlife is jammed with pouting pretty boys and nothing else, Death Note’s vision is dark, cold and lifeless.…
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Ergo Proxy – 9 & 10 – Behemoth of confusion
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Ergo Proxy – 9 & 10 – Behemoth of confusionScience fiction and confusion often go hand in hand, but Ergo Proxy is close to reaching the kinds of befuddling heights scaled only by behemoths like Mamoru Oshii. The dialogue, the action and even the damn visuals are so frustratingly cryptic and symbolic that only vaguely am I able to follow what is going on…
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Ergo Proxy – 8 – Larger than life
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Ergo Proxy – 8 – Larger than lifeI read a few weeks ago that somewhere along the line, Ergo Proxy gets a bit like X-Men; mutants against mutants and all that. I guess episode 8 is where it started. This episode was just weird. The people Vincent meets, the way the monstrous finale plays out- it was just utterly inexplicable in places.…
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Ergo Proxy – 7 – All is full of love
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Ergo Proxy – 7 – All is full of loveFinally friends, this is the episode where we get some answers. Real’s life is saved by Daedalus. Once recovered they chat about everything, and to my absolute glee, light is shed on the mysteries of Romdeau, Proxy and even the outside world. About a quarter of this episode is also devoted to Vincent’s flight to…
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Ergo Proxy – 6 – Learning about death
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Ergo Proxy – 6 – Learning about deathI’ll warn you now this entry contains (literally) life-and-death spoilers, so if you haven’t seen episode 6 of Ergo Proxy yet you may want to look away. Hude and Queen get it in the neck this time, though it didn’t leave me with much of an emotional impact. Perhaps it’s because I expect everyone in…
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Ergo Proxy – 5 – Revolution is in the air
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Ergo Proxy – 5 – Revolution is in the airWe’ve had to sit through five episodes, but it’s only now starting to feel like Ergo Proxy is settling down into a proper flow of story-telling and I’m enjoying it a lot more; on a level beyond what previously amounted to a purely superficial attraction. I suspect I preferred this episode to it’s predecessors because…
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Early impressions of Ergo Proxy
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/ ReviewsRead More →: Early impressions of Ergo ProxyAs a means of grasping the story of Ergo Proxy, I decided to hold off on watching the first four episodes and marathoned my way through them earlier today; in terms of understanding the plot, I can’t say this approach ended up benefiting me. Ergo Proxy has a very fractured narrative flow, there are no…