Well, one year on seems like as good a time as any. Basically I’ve fallen out with the format  - with the idea of a one-man blog and with how running one changes the process of actually, y’know, watching anime. Not sure if I’ll ever feel like taking up proper blogging again, but my inclination is [...]
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2008 has been my first year of watching anime as it airs. Really, it’s just me getting to grips with whether following the currently airing seasons is actually worth it by looking back and assessing what I went through. The rating system here is basically a ranking in order of preference - least to most favourite. [...]
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Apropo nothing… —————- Whoever the stranger is, they came into town on the long distance coach. I’m told it sat apart from any other passengers for the whole damn trip. Stepped onto the sandy main street and in a moment was down the nearest ally, getting out of the sun. It’s another average height man with curled [...]
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The second Utena ED strikes up with a quick rush of drumbeats starting just before the electric guitar squeals then hits. Because it leads so nicely into a driving song, it’s easy to miss the effect. But, right there after the ‘to be continued…’, it pulls you in. Stop, rewind a second, and hear those [...]
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This is not just an Ancient Aztec Vampire God. This is an Ancient Aztec Vampire God by the name of AC/DC. Vampires and rock’n roll references sighted side by side, it could only be one series… In my eternal pursuit of the battle manga kick it was but a matter of time until I turned to [...]
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For some time I’d been storing away a draft in which I somewhat indignantly detailed the flaws of Bounen no Xam’d. Having taken Ryan A’s excellent advice from back here, I’d started watching Xam’d in batches. After a somewhat disappointing few episodes, I wrote the critical draft. Then I more or less forgot about the [...]
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I’m fond of thinking of my anime watching habit in terms of the arty and the not-so-arty; the Miyazakis that got me involved and the Bleachalikes that got me addicted. But in the end, all anime has to be interesting. Doesn’t matter whether it’s my interest in who’s stronger or my interest in developing themes; [...]
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Oh! the Japanese high school, site of a thousand tropes piled upon a thousand myths. So what happens when you strip away much of the normal imagery, and have those uniformed girls and boys bustle around amidst colossal amounts of regal European architecture? The school in Revolutionary Girl Utena is based in a collection of buildings [...]
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I am fond of underlying assumptions; here, try a few of these. They’ll help you see where I’m coming from with this: 1. Bleach up to episode 70/chapter whateverthatis is more or less brilliant. 2. What came next proved less than brilliant (though the Turn Back the Pendulum arc [which is about to hit the anime] [...]
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Hmm. Writing these is stopping me from getting posts done on other shows, so this’ll be the end of my blow-by-blow approach to this series. I’d assumed that the main risk in episodic blogging was that I’d fall out of love with the show in question. In fact what’s happened is that the show has [...]
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