Spring 2024 Anime and an Experiment

A total of eleven anime caught my eye from this season. I would not be surprised if I dropped four or five of them before the end. Usually, three or four shows rise to the top of what I most look forward to, and then the others are quickly wrapped up in a few binge watches.

The experiment your humble blogger will make for this season is to swear off subtitles. This has been an avenue I’ve pursued for a while now. Subtitles are a crutch a language learner should attempt to do without. One cannot get off the crutch as long as one uses it. I’m often able to associate correct meanings to Japanese words if they are translated under the screen, but it becomes harder when no such translations are there. Not having the translations as the characters speak will force my brain to become better at attaching meaning to the sounds reaching my ears. At times, this can make me feel lost, but it is better to crawl and learn to walk than to go on crutches for one’s entire life. If what happens in an episode completely eludes me, I can always look up an episode summary.

The List

1) A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics

You might call this a reverse isekai: fantasy characters flee to Japan in order to escape certain death in their home world. The princess and her retainer are very amusing people. The former acclimating herself to life in Japan easily, while the latter spends her days as a homeless person. This is shaping up to be a very good anime for a laugh.

Women, Violence, and Anime

The thought came to my mind while watching Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Anyone else annoyed by the lack of the article “the” before “Journey’s”?) that moderns are too desensitized to violence. I can hear some of you thinking sarcastically to yourselves, “Wow, who would have thought of that, Medieval?” But, really, we are! I suppose that my sensitivity towards violence has increased as I have aged, which makes me remark on that fact. Frieren itself is a rather clean anime, so maybe the clash between how civilized everyone is most of the time highlighted the violence for me.

One scene gave me pause: Frieren wins a magical joust against the mazoku Aura over who had more magical power. Through the use of the Scales of Balance which mediated this contest, Frieren gained control over Aura and had her behead herself. The actual moment of decapitation is off-screen, but we see Aura’s face contort with tears as the blade begins to bite into her neck before the fatal moment.

Rating the Anime of Winter 2024

It has been far too long since I rated a season like this. The spring season of anime has only just begun, so I hope that I’m not too late to the party. I stalled in watching Doctor Elise and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. In the case of the latter, I have been trying to catch back up and have reached episode ten. Maybe by the end of the spring season, you’ll hear my thoughts on Frieren and the unique way I decided to watch it. Three anime below have not yet finished their runs, so I will eschew rating as of yet. Five of them will received a rating on a scale of one to five stars. Five stars indicates a masterpiece. Unfortunately, this season included no masterpieces. The most recent anime I gave such high marks to were Dororo, Promare, and Karakuri Circus–all from 2019. So, that means it’s been five years since an anime has risen to that level of perfection for me. Feel free to tell me if you think that there’s something deserving which I have not seen between then and now!

The anime from this season were enjoyable but average. I can only see myself going back to watch four of them again. Other than one slice of life and one science fiction anime, the anime below all fall in the fantasy genre.

1) Bottom Tier Character Tomosaki

Stories where a character has checked out of really living always grab my attention. Tomosaki finds joy in playing a certain video game called Attack Families, in which he ranks #1 in Japan. But, he drifts through school and does not make many friends. However, he learns that the class president, Aoi Hinami, is the #2 player in Japan, and she resolves to teach him how to enjoy living and to put him on the road to being satisfied with life. To this end, she arranges several goals for Tomosaki, which leads to him becoming more active in his school and developing various relationships with his classmates.

This scenario reminds me of the movie, My Fair Lady, which itself is based on a play of George Bernard Shaw titled Pygmalion. However, with Bottom Tier Character Tomosaki, the sexes of the protagonists are reversed such that we have a woman tutoring a man on social etiquette. The characters are all quite likable, despite Aoi Hinami reminding me strongly of Hillary Clinton. Not in regard to espousing political positions, but in her personality type–the type willing to use all available means for success in this world. For me, this serves as a reminder that everyone has some good in them no matter how much this good becomes effaced over time.

12th Anniversary Post

Here we are! Twelve years writing about anime and religion. How much things have changed since 2012! The one constant is that I still watch anime. (Fun fact: half of all anime which has ever been made has been aired since 2011.) If I’m good, I should wrap up the anime I’m watching from the current season shortly in order to give you my opinions of them. I’ll just mention here that the show I most looked forward to watching each week was not the much hyped Solo Leveling but Villainess Level 99: I May be the Hidden Boss, but I’m not the Demon Lord. I found the heroine of that anime very charming and comical. May none of you have missed it!

Below is a list of new shows I want to try out from the Spring 2024 season. N.B. I mean try out: this means that each show will be given at least three minutes of my time. So much anime is made these days that it’s not worthwhile to watch an anime which doesn’t grab you from around the start. The only exception is when a friend (or one of my dear readers) tells one that the series is worth at least the standard three episode try. Here’s the list, but feel free to encourage me to give something else a try too:

At Last! Reached #700!

Here I was hoping to have reached this point a couple of months ago, but I just finished Spriggan moments ago. It is amazing how little delays add up to becoming one great delay. Tomorrow is the twelfth anniversary of this blog, and there will be something to show for it–I guarantee! Meanwhile, permit me to offer some quick takes on six movies plus a bonus TV anime.

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Darkside Blues counts as a decent anime from the pen of Hideyuki Kikuchi, who is more famous for Vampire Hunter D. Vampire Hunter D is the better anime movie for sure–even Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is better. Darkside Blues conveys similar vibes to the other series, but it has a futuristic political conflict between the monopolistic Persona Century Corporation and freedom fighters who wish to live without its control. The main part of the story begins when a gang leader in Kabuki-cho, one of the last areas free of this corporation’s control, saves a freedom fighter from assassination and agrees to become his bodyguard.

The Dagger of Kamui (1985)

Ever want to watch a ninja anime which includes an epic journey to the United States of America where the hero meets Mark Twain before returning to Japan to avenge his murdered family? If that desire has ever filled your heart, studio MADHOUSE has you covered in their epic ninja adventure movie The Dagger of Kamui. The animation is quite dated, and yours truly had the misfortune of sitting through an English dub which could have been produced by him and his friends. (N.B. None of us are actors.) The first half an hour was torture to sit through. And, I asked myself just what I had gotten into, and whether I could really watch the anime until the end.

7 Movies to 700 Anime

The last time I did a series of posts like this was back in 2018 when I hit 500 anime. That time I put up a poll to have my dear readers select the anime, but time constraints don’t permit me to accomplish this now. That is to say, I’ll fly over 700 anime when sufficient time has passed to take a proper vote. This will be a series of seven posts on seven movies. The choices below contain movies I wanted to watch when I first became a fan of anime way back in 2003. How time flies! You know that I am a lover of old anime and these films are all pretty old:

The Eminence in Pride

The beauty within The Eminence in the Shadow struck me: elegant backgrounds, stylish fights, and gorgeous women are found throughout the anime. I took great pleasure in just looking at the backgrounds and cityscapes, which corresponds to turn of the 20th century Europe. Maybe The Eminence in the Shadow did not require any plot to be enjoyed: just images of photogenic persons traipsing across old cities such as one might find in the parts of Europe not decimated by the Second World War.

The hero, Cid Kagenou, never appealed to me. We human beings are weak, and an overpowered character defies identification. There are other isekai heroes who act as a deus ex machina, but most of them lack the same off-putting personality Cid has. His manner of manipulating events on the sly and dressing like a villain made him seem more like that kind of character. His overweening pride, which never failed to surface while in his true form as the Eminence, counted as another point against him.

Looking Back at My Manga of 2023

The idea came to me to look back on the manga I read last year. My Goodreads reading challenge reveals a rather sporadic manga reading year: I never read more than three volumes in a row of any series. But, let me give a little blurb and a rating on what I did manage to cover. I hope some of the titles below catch your interest.

Annus Domini 2024 looks like it will be a good year for light novels, since I want to increase my Japanese fluency. Testing my fluency through the Japanese Language Proficiency website’s sample tests reveals that I’m solid at the N4 level and hit or miss at the N3 level. So, I made it my new year’s resolution to reach N2, and this will require broadening my vocabulary and exposing myself to higher forms of literature than manga. (I write that, but manga can also get pretty abstruse–particularly if you’re reading a medical drama.) Another of my resolutions will be fulfilled by me writing here and other places. Wish me luck!

1) Manga Dogs #1-2

Here is a humorous manga which reminds one that achieving one’s dreams requires actually putting in the work. Our heroine, Kanna Tezuka, has already debutted with her manga Teach Me, Buddha! As someone in a middle school which offers manga as a course of study, she hopes that she can use this as a venue to work on her own story–only to be vexed by the other members of the class. The drawing style is pretty basic, and the comedy is mildly funny. I picked up these two volumes in order to complete my reading challenge on Goodreads. It proved useful for that reason and as a reminder to keep writing.

★★★1/2

The Virtue of Vengeance: Clare’s Vendetta Against Priscilla

I just finished watching Claymore again–this time in the English dub. The voice actors and actresses did a great job. The way they translated “Yowasa ga tsumi” (Weakness is a sin) to “Helplessness is a sin” struck me as an interesting interpretation. Neither one counts as a sin, save to the extent that the yowasa comes about through one’s deliberate neglect. In context, the King of the North, Isley, uses this line to encourage Raki to become a better swordsman.

Weakness in itself is not culpable: our weaknesses and insufficiency ought to bring out others to supply what we lack. Society in the MIddle Ages was divided into those who work, those who fight, and those who pray. The knight’s boast is “I protect all.” The peasant says, “I feed all.” Clerics claim, “I pray for all.” The kind of strength referred to by Isley refers to the warrior class, but human society cannot flourish without work and prayer. Without the farmer, there’s precious little to eat. Without priests and religious, one fears lest the just punishment due to our sins should come upon society all to soon. As Padre Pio said, “The Earth can more easily exist without the sun than the Holy Mass.” Materially speaking, this line is hyperbolic; however, the world is much better for the grace shed upon it by the sacrifice of the Mass.

*Spoilers incoming*

Claymore & Fighting Dragons

Watching familiar, old anime is a delight in which far too few fans indulge. These days, everyone talks about a season’s best two or three anime, which will be forgotten three weeks into the next season. We used to have a canon of anime including things like Cowboy Bebop, Berserk, Slayers, Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and other works which everyone who wanted to call himself an enthusiast needed to watch. This list offered the crème de la crème of anime for new fans to enjoy before moving onto less spectacular works which often owed some inspiration to them. We have more anime than we know what to do with these days, but often spend so much time watching average or trashy shows. Quel dommage! One wishes anime fans could unite over a canon of enduring works these days.

An anime sure to make such a list is Claymore (2007), which I rate 9/10. The battles keep you on the edge of your seat, and you feel like no one except the protagonist is safe. The likability of most of the characters makes that last fact even more awful. The animation compares favorably with anime made these days–especially if you’re watching it in high definition, as I am. Having now seen some of the dub, I can confirm that the English voice actors almost perform as well the ones in the Japanese original. (Luci Christian as the psychopathic Ophelia rather impressed me.) The story follows a Claymore (the name for a human genetically modified in order to fight yōma, the monsters in this fantasy world) named Clare in her quest for revenge. This journey brings her in contact with a young man named Raki, who becomes her companion after he loses his brother to a yōma. The very first episode makes the vileness and power of these monsters plain to see!

Magical Destroyers’ Spirit of Revolution

Watching the first two episodes of Magical Destroyers stood as a unique experience for me because of the clarity with which I saw the wares they tried to sell. The anime displays the Spirit of Revolution as presented by the American Catholic scholar E. Michael Jones in neon lights for all to see. Jones had a front row seat to the eruption of the cultural revolution in the ’60s and has written many books on the topic of moral subversion, such as Libido Dominandi (2nd edition coming soon), Monsters from the Id, and the Degenerate Moderns series. His best book is Logos Rising, which covers humanity’s consciousness of the divine order of the universe from the earliest civilizations up through the rise of philosophy and Christianity. Every educated man worth his salt should read Logos Rising–that’s how excellent a work it is.

So, while I would have felt that Magical Destroyers was morally subversive from the first episode, reading Jones’s works allows me to explain why it is so. The last time an anime to bring about a similar reaction was Concrete Revolutio. The opening song of Concrete Revolutio seemed to project a morally relativistic framework, and I get more than enough of that from reading the news.

Babylon and the Suicide of Moral Argumentation

An anime came out in 2019 called Babylon. I don’t remember Babylon receiving too much discussion at the time. I attempted to watch the first episode, and it did not grab me them for some reason. Am I glad that I decided to give it another shot recently! The plot offers a really philosophical discussion of good and evil but in terms people who lack B.A.’s in philosophy can grasp. I myself felt frustrated for a while that the characters were not able to form good arguments against suicide for most of the anime. That, I’ve come to realize, is actually part of the anime’s charm. It would not be so well done if our hero, the prosecutor Zen, were a Japanese St. Thomas Aquinas.

The root of the problems with the debate on suicide in Babylon lie in no one understanding what man is. They don’t understand what man is, because they do not know what man is for. In order to understand anything, one needs to know the purpose of that thing. No character in the anime appears to realize that man is for God. As the Baltimore Catechism explains it: “God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next.” The fact that God is the Lord of Creation and that Man was created for His Glory means that human beings cannot destroy themselves at will. The time of their demise rests in God’s hands–not theirs. The exceptions to this rule only come in the forms of self-sacrifice: sacrificing oneself to save another person or to avoid sin, e.g. accepting martyrdom rather than renounce God.

A Noticeable Absence in Suzume

Suzume is a good anime movie to watch. Fans of animation are sure to be pleased with it, and even the English voice actors performed well. Suzume fits nicely alongside Makoto Shinkai’s other blockbusters, Your Name and Weathering with You. Some bloggers have said that the movie is lacking in comparison to the other two, but I didn’t think so. The film is quite beautiful and the characters compelling, so I can only reiterate that fans of animation will enjoy it.

Yet, the movie itself did not impress me as much as something which struck me by its absence: fathers. We do get to meet the hero’s, Souta’s, grandfather and the father of Chika, a young girl whom Suzume befriends on her heroine’s journey; but, these have very little screen time and centrality in the plot. Souta’s grandfather gives some vital information to the heroine, entrusts her to the care of a guardian deity, and leaves the story for good. At the same time as fathers make very little impression in the story, family connections form a big part of the story–whether it’s Suzume and her aunt, the various families Suzume encounters, or even the familial duty handed down to Souta.

So, that leaves me the question of why this father shaped hole is here? And, I’d love to hear comments from my dear readers, since I can only speculate. One option lies in Makoto Shinkai in particular lacking a father figure while he grew up. However, my research into the state of fatherhood in Japan leads me to the conclusion that this might be a more general problem. Japanese fathers appear to often play a minor role in the actual upbringing of their children, spending forty-one minutes a day doing housework or childcare on average.

While providing material necessities for their families is one of the primary roles of a father, which might even necessitate long absences from home in particular circumstances, Japanese culture seems to have made it the father’s only role. Japanese companies expect their male employees to be devoted to them both during working hours and even socializing after the end of office hours. This likely leads to many Japanese having a rather distant relationship to their fathers or maybe only getting to know them later in life.

The Japanese government appears to want to change this way of living and allows for both parents to have up to 52 weeks of parental leave, retaining at least 60% of their salaries. However, many men fear their company taking a poor view of them taking advantage of this leave and will often not even be present even at the birth of their children! So, the government is trying to change minds by an ikumen propaganda campaign. Ikumen is formed by combining the words for childcare (ikuji) and hunk (ikemen) and conveys the image of a strong, sexy dad who loves spending time with his young children. You see, they think that the birth rate can be increased if women believe that becoming mothers won’t be the end of their careers because their husbands will take part of the load in childcare. (Many Japanese women quit their jobs after becoming mothers in order to care for their children full time.)

I fully support this idea of a dad able to have a work/family balance, and its success might very well lead to Japanese families having more children. However, it’s not for the reason they state: women developing their own careers instead of being devoted to care of the home always leads to smaller families! The reproductive cost of women has always been higher than that of men, and often means that women must choose between a career or children. The real benefit to having men take more involvement in the care of their children is twofold: 1) the children gain in their education by receiving more formation from their fathers and 2) the fathers themselves will love and value their families more through spending more direct time with them. The latter will likely encourage fathers to have more children, and the former benefit will probably create young men who will want to replicate that kind of family life. At any rate, any change which makes fathers less like cogs in the machine of the Japanese economy will be a good thing. Who wants to be just a cog? If one must be a cog, it should at least serve a good purpose for one’s own life.

But, I have a sense that some of my readers have a better understanding of how Japanese culture works, especially as it relates to fathers working white-collar jobs. Please let me know what you think about this issue in the comments. Also, what did you think of the movie Suzume?

Going to the Theater: Suzume

Having watched Your Name and Weathering with You, I am eager to see and support Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume by paying a visit to the theater tomorrow. I have already read that its quality does not match the other two films, but that it still makes for a good movie. The main plot revolves around a young girl trying to stop a series of earthquakes which have resulted from her helping a stranger find a peculiar door. Well, one can’t write much about what one does not know, so I’ll stop while I’m ahead.

Has anyone seen Suzume or have plans to see it in the near future?

Rating the Anime of Spring 2022

You know, there were too many anime worth watching during the spring season. Only one ranked as high as four stars in my opinion, but the ten anime I watched were quite enjoyable. Conversely, only three anime struck me as worth watching the Summer 2022 season: When Will Ayumu Make his Move, Call of the Night and Lycoris Recoil. Maybe I’ll add Cyberpunk: Edgerunner and Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth to that short list. I love most of what Trigger has done. The first Utawarerumono is still one of my all time favorites. Even though Utawarerumono: The False Faces was a complete disaster, I still feel compelled to try out their most recent attempt to craft a tale within this world. Feel free to recommend some new titles to me below.

At any rate, Vivaldi’s La Stravaganza plays in the background. Let me get on with rating last season!

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1. The Executioner and Her Way of Life ★★★1/2

Fantasy anime are a dime a dozen, and only rarely does the setting really stand out for me. The Executioner and Her Way of Life sets itself apart by containing a setting where…well…I don’t want to say it, even though it’s not actually a spoiler. You just won’t be shocked and appalled the way I was during episode one. The unique conceit with this isekai is that Japanese people are immediately slaughtered as soon as this world’s church discovers them. Otherworlders all carry special powers, which have gotten out of control in the past and have caused mass destruction, e.g. one entire continent being turned to salt. At the same time, the people of this world have adopted some Japanese technology (enough to give the world an early 19th century feel) and the Japanese language for its common tongue.

Our heroine, the priestess and assassin Menou, a.k.a. Flarette, discovers that some royals have summoned a Japanese high school girl named Akari inside one of their castles. Having infiltrated the castle, Menou claims to Akari that she wants to rescue her–only to assassinate her in the middle of the “rescue.” However, Akari has the power to turn back time, which leads to her reviving moments later. Menou realizes that she needs special help to liquidate Akari. So, she continues their pretend friendship as she takes Akari on a journey to her death.

There’s a dark setting for you! However, the characters tend to be very amusing to watch. There are some great fight scenes. I can promise you a unique fantasy anime experience with this show.

HiDive

On Survival Anime

Recently, I finished High-Rise Invasion on Netflix. Netflix has some great anime, though certain other programs with blasphemous depictions of Christ make it hard to recommend the service. If it were not for the kindness of a family member obtaining it for me, High Rise Invasion might have remained permanently off my watch list. At the same time, there are plenty of arguments that the pros of having a Netflix account outweigh the cons. One can note that they might just not be in the business of discriminating against content on religious grounds. (Plenty of Christian films play on Netflix also.) Others say that boycotting Netflix in a monolithic fashion does not effect them, so enjoy your movies. At any rate, follow your conscience.

My first exposure to High-Rise Invasion came in the form of the original manga by Tsuina Miura, who is also known for Ajin. I think of Ajin as a masterpiece, so there is little surprise that I enjoy High-Rise Invasion. Having written that, the two stories could not be more different. Ajin has characters who can’t die. Death stalks the characters of High-Rise Invasion at every turn. Most of the characters in Ajin are male, while females take the most important roles in the other one. Ajin eschews fanservice. High-Rise Invasion embraces it. On a final note of difference, Ajin‘s greatest character is the villain, Sato, while the heroine of High-Rise Invasion, Yuri Honjo, stands above the rest of the cast. It is almost as if the mangaka decided to reverse everything except the use of gore in order to make this more recent story.

Some April Quick Takes

Hisashiburi da, ne? Yours truly is going to try to make up for the long gap between now and my last post with some quick takes. I rely on this format too much. One day, you may see some more posts like “Contra Divitias: Kill la Kill’s Opprobrium of Wealth” or, everyone’s favorite, “Shogo Makishima: the Villain who Should be Hero.” Today is not that day, but I hope that you enjoy what I’ve written below.

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Yesterday marked the 9th anniversary of Medieval Otaku. Most blogs don’t last that long, and it’s obvious to me why they don’t: one seldom has the same level of passion for a subject or time to write about it as when one began. The sad thing about that is how often someone finds this blog and tells me how much they enjoy reading these scribblings. This indicates how much certain people still like to read about old anime, which I’m more inclined to write about these days–when I write at all. You also make me guilty, and guilt is the font of productivity–as a psychologist might tell you about conscientious people.

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I have turned more towards reading manga of late than watching anime. Here’s an exhaustive list of the stuff in my collection. (Assume that I own the complete set unless otherwise noted.) Tell me whether you notice some of your favorites below:

• Full Metal Panic
• Gunsmith Cats
• Inuyasha
• Rurouni Kenshin
• Gun Blaze West
• Busou Renkin (vols. 1-7)
• Geobreeders (vols. 1-9)
• Full Metal Alchemist (vols. 3-7)
• Silencer (vol. 1)
• Samurai Deeper Kyo (vols. 1-26)
• Claymore (vols. 1-16)
• Gunslinger Girl
• Azumanga Daioh
• Black Cat
• Chrono Crusade
• Maison Ikkoku (collector’s edition vols. 1-3)
• Urusei Yatsura (collector’s edition vols. 1-9)

Most of those are in English, but Inuyasha, Geobreeders, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Nobuhiro Watsuki’s works are in Japanese. My manga collection used to be larger, but I have since pared it down to only include those works which I will read more than once.

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I hope that you have all enjoyed a fruitful Holy Week and a happy Easter Sunday. There is still more of the Easter season to celebrate. This next Sunday is called Divine Mercy Sunday. Catholics who receive the sacrament of penance within eight days (before or after) of receiving Holy Communion on that Sunday and say a short prayer invoking Divine Mercy (e.g. “Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner” or “Jesus, I trust in you”) may receive a plenary indulgence. A plenary indulgence refers to a full pardon from God of all temporal punishments, either on earth or in purgatory, for sin. The qualification “may receive” is added above because a plenary indulgence requires the recipient not to even have an attachment to venial sin. If one is still attached to certain venial sins, the indulgence is partial.

Be that as it may, Christ promised St. Faustina, to whom he delivered the revelation that the Sunday after Easter be dedicated to His Divine Mercy, that the treasuries of His Mercy will be open that day. He intended this feast to prepare the world for His Second Coming. So, be sure that one will receive a significant indulgence on that day even if not a full one!

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The mangaka who most catches my attention now is Rumiko Takahashi. Her work Inuyasha ignited my passion for both manga and the Japanese language. The slow translation of Inuyasha into English inspired me to learn the original language, and VIZ Media finished translating it years after I had read the entire series. Takahashi’s Japanese is pretty easy to read and sure to inspire any neophyte learner of the language that he’s making great progress.

Having said that, I am reading Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku in English now. Part of me wishes that I did not take the lazy way: Takahashi loves puns, and the translator sometimes really stretches to come up with English equivalents. The complete tankobun edition of Ranma 1/2 only goes for around $50, so that might end up on my shelves in the original. Maybe I’ll pick up Mermaid Forest in the near future.

At this point in my manga reading hobby, I’ve determined that it really is better to read manga as a physical book or in an e-book. Reading manga online often comes with too many ads and slow loading times.

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Kindles are too convenient. A Kindle Paperwhite sits by my bedside as a dedicated e-reader, and it houses a library in a device small enough to fit into a large jacket pocket. Of the twenty-five books I’ve read so far this year, only seven were not on one of my Kindles. I find the Kindle Fire 8 is better for reading manga while the Paperwhite excels it for standard books. Looking at all the books I have lying unread around the house makes me feel guilty about using Kindle almost exclusively. Does anyone else experience a similar feeling?

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Since the CCP Virus has spread around the world, China has made a ton of money selling masks and other medical supplies to afflicted nations. For my part, I’ve decided to boycott Chinese tea until that government pays some kind of reparations for their part in spreading COVID-19 across the world. It’s impossible to cut out Chinese products completely from one’s life, but tea is a different story. I confess that Chinese tea is the best in the world (though the Indians likely produce better black tea), but one can still get excellent tea from Japan, Taiwan, India, Ceylon, Nepal, Kenya, and even South Carolina. I feel as much need to buy Chinese tea as I do to buy Samuel Adams’ Boston Lager.

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I hope that all of my dear readers have watched The Wind Rises. Hayao Miyazaki provides us with an animated biography of Jiro Hirokoshi, the designer of Japan’s famed Zero fighter plane. The movie was very well done. Recently, I came across a book titled Zero, which was written by Jiro Hirokoshi and Masatake Okumiya, a Japanese army officer. It chronicles the introduction of the Zero in the Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937 and lasted until the end of WWII, and continues until Japan’s defeat. I have not come across another book dealing with WWII from the Japanese perspective and find this one fascinating.

May you hear from me again soon!

Watch List for Summer Anime of 2020

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard can be more difficult than one might think.  Last time–April 29th, I remember promising to write more frequently.  I think that jinxed me.  So, as much as I want to tell you to expect more posts, I shall say instead that you’ll be lucky to read another post from me this side of 2021.

At any rate, one of those posts which I ought to have written was on Spring 2020’s anime.  If you remember, I only watched Sing “Yesterday” for Me, Wave! Listen to Me, and My Next Life as a Villainess.  This season turned out somewhat better in me finding five anime to watch.  (Seven to nine anime used to catch my attention every season, but I must have come to the conclusion at some point that life is too short to watch bad anime.  Or, maybe not: I did watch Sing “Yesterday” for Me.)  Take a look at the following five anime, and tell me whether I’m missing out on anything good.

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1) Gibiate

Here is a true masterpiece of the time-traveling, samurai, monster-slaying genre.  Everyone should be watching Gibiate, ready to rate it five stars, and sending Crunchyroll e-mails, postcards, and handwritten letters of thanks for producing this anime.  This counts as a welcome break from your standard fare of magic academies, high school rom-coms, harems, and isekai.

8th Anniversary Quick Takes

This blog’s eighth anniversary came and went on April 5^th without comment. Oops! Hopefully, I blog a little more regularly next month. May these quick takes in some way make up for my lack of posting!

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Finally, Joe says what’s all been on our minds.

I have finally made progress in Ashita no Joe II. Joe Yabuki is almost in position to fight his greatest rival to date: Bantamweight World Champion Jose Mendoza. (It’s funny to consider that most of the strong and tough boxers in this anime weigh 118 pounds or less!) The buildup to this fight has been even more intense than the one between Rikiishi Touru and our hero.