Hey look an update!

Well, not exactly… Metablogging time!

Ok so not that my update schedule was ever great, but this has been a particularly long drought of content and believe me dear readers (yes, both of you), I am less happy about this than anyone. I don’t particularly enjoy feeling my guilt level rise proportionally to my total views, and the aniblogging scene is still very much something I want to be a part of.

My updating schedule

Life has been very busy recently, both personal and professional, and I just haven’t been keeping up with many shows recently. Yeah, sure, I watched and loved the shit out of Ping Pong, and I’m heartily enjoying Terror in Resonance, but I really haven’t much to say about either, especially not anything that hasn’t already been said better, usually by E Minor. That’s not saying I don’t get post ideas. I still get them fairly regularly, just rarely at a time I can actually act on them.

An apt representation of my ongoing poker game with Tertiary Education

Anyway, I don’t want to waste peoples’ time with petty excuses, so let’s get to the point. First of all, an apology to those who have encouraged my writing and supported this blog in the past, I hate to let you down. Y’know, it is a blog about cartoons though, so my guilt has limits. Secondly, I wanna confirm that this is still very much something I want to continue, writing isn’t exactly a natural impulse for me, but I do enjoy it, and this is one of the rare fields I feel I can talk about with some confidence.

Obviously I haven’t been posting though, so something is not working and how to fix that? Well, I’ll finally be out of Uni end of this year so things should stabilise quite a bit, but I’d be pretty naive to think my first year of teaching (oh yeah, I study Science/Math teaching, by the way) is gonna give me any more free time. Somehow I’ve gotta work out a way to fit this thing in around the rest of my life, and that’s something I’ve been musing over, and will certainly continue to. I’ve got a few ideas, but it’s too early to discuss any of them yet. Whatever the case, the desire is real so there’s a good chance this will actually happen and I’ll start updating again, though probably not before end of semester exams.

So yeah, probable updates sometime in the future maybe! Hooray!

Yet More Musings on the Monogatari Franchise

It’s probably fair to say that there is no piece of fiction for which I have had such turbulent emotions and fluid opinions than Nisio Isin and SHAFT’s eclectic Monogatari franchise. Ironically one of its main themes, if not the very core theme, is authenticity, and authenticity now forms the central facet of my thesis on this bizarre work.

Relating to an Anime Character Pt 1 – A Post Inspired by Frog-Kun

Pretty much what it says on the tin. Frog-Kun recently made a more personal post about the anime characters with which he has felt a “quasi-spiritual kinship”. Inspired, I’d like to do the same.

I’m not sure I feel as strong an association with any one character on this list as Frog-Kun seems to feel with the characters on his list. Accordingly, the list of characters is longer, but each explanation is shorter.

11 Questions – Liebster Award

So, Froggy-kun nominated me as a part of this Liebster Award thing, which is basically just a way to give some exposure to the smaller blogs around. Of course, this just makes me feel even worse about being so terrible with updates recently, but alas, posts are in the works, I swear!

The gist of it is that each person nominated answers 11 questions, nominates 11 other blogs, and presents their own 11 questions. As fun as this sounds, I don’t think I even follow 11 blogs, let alone 11 small blogs, so I’m gonna skimp on the nomination part and just answer the questions. If you wanna know what blogs I think are worth checking out, my blogroll should suffice.

Alright, let’s get to it.

Anime Christmas #2 – Learning Post-Modernism Through Chinese Cartoons

It’s not exactly that my love of anime has always been tied to a more academic examination of the medium, but it’s fair to say the development of my interest in the art of good critique and analysis of themes and cultural influences have developed concurrently with my exploration of the world of anime. Through reading Moe Sucks and some of The Patches articles I gained an appreciation of the subtler portrayal of gender roles and the implications that follow. From further readings of Altair and Vega I got a better understanding of the use of symbolism and more abstract techniques of storytelling.

You need to read this book

Anime Christmas #1 – White Album 2 and The Story You Don’t Know

A brief preamble. This is part of an inter blog project known generally as the 12 Days of Anime. Here’s the basic idea. I’d originally planned to do the full 12 posts, and had started drafting posts accordingly, but alas, real life stuff happened, priorities were re-ordered etc etc. I still wanna participate though, so I’ll post one up every few days, there’ll probably be 4 in total but we’ll see.

Stories Worth Telling: We Are More Than The Parts We Play

Anime and its consumer-base is a funny thing, isn’t it? I mean, look at us Western fans who relentlessly pursue a narrow range of culture-specific fiction, often obtainable only through fansubbing groups, an eclectic combination of piracy and thankless public service. What is perhaps most striking about this genre and the people surrounding it is the depth of obsession associated with them.

Drama CDs, Seiyuu stalking, fanfiction. Sure there are fans with equivalent dedication in any medium, but for anime fans it seems to be closer to the rule than the exception. While this is obviously great in many ways – the power of passion is not to be underestimated – I would contend that is we trace the cause for this we hit some problematic roots.

Tales of Possibilities – Musings on the Current Direction of the Tales Franchise Part 1

Let’s get something straight before I get into this post. I goddamn love the Tales games. Symphonia was the first one I played, and I still hold great regard for it. Heck, Tales of the Abyss may just be my favourite game of all time for it’s incredible mix of fast-paced, cooperative action RPG combat, complex characters with dynamic, game-long arcs, philosophical musings and surprisingly sharp, cynical political intrigue. I’m not gonna go over my whole history with the franchise here, but suffice to say the quality of the Tales of games seems to have been on a downhill slope since Abyss.

Vesperia was very polished, but it lacked thematic depth, and almost none of the character got any development at all. Symphonia 2 was, in terms of story and characters, a pretty reasonable successor to Symphonia, but everything else, especially the combat, seriously suffered. Graces was just a big ol’ bag of clichés, and the combat system took one step back for every two steps it took forward, and so here we are now with Xillia.

The Bird of Hermes is My Name – Musings on Hellsing Ultimate

I saw the original Hellsing series when it came out and kind of dug its style, especially that catchy OP, but that’s about all I could really say about it. When Hellsing Ultimate began all the usual hype went around about how it would be following the plot of the manga all the way through, unlike the series, and thus would be much better. I began to watch it and figured it was basically more of the same, albeit more fleshed out and better animated, and with some slightly jarring humour thrown in with its increased tendency to briefly turn all the characters super-deformed.

However, as I watched, I increasingly got the unnerving sensation that for all the ultra-violence, ridiculous accents and hammy characters, Hellsing Ultimate may just be a lot more intelligent than I had given it credit for. This inkling began early on, but it didn’t really take hold until the end of the third OVA, wherein Alucard makes a rousing, and incredibly self-aware monologue. I had been watching the show dubbed, since a) these people are meant to be British, so it only makes sense b) in Japanese various characters break into horrible Engrish on a regular basis, and c) the English dub is very very very good anyway. There has been incredible confusion with licensing, leading to massive delays in the show being dubbed , so I recently, despite patiently waiting years to see episodes 1-8 dubbed, caved in and watched the last two episodes subbed.

Persona 4: The Animation – Series Review

So I was gonna do a weekly round-up, but unfortunately this season hasn’t miraculously stopped sucking, so I though I’d write instead about a series I just finished watching and actually kinda liked. I know it’s nearly two years old now, but screw it, it’s more stimulating to write about than anything this season.

In case the inclusion of “The Animation” in the title didn’t tip you off, the Persona 4 anime is an adaptation of a popular JRPG from the Megami Tensei franchise. It is well known for blending the traditional JRPG with elements of visual novel gameplay, and while I am not a fan of visual novels, I’m all for experimentation. I have played the game, albeit not all the way through, but this review will focus primarily on the anime itself.