The Anime Guardians

January 2026 Anime Roundup

2026-01-30T16:03:00.002-05:00

Now that I'm a full-time professor, the holidays and New Years season comes with a lot of free time. I have to prep for spring semester of course, but it's important to recover from grading last-minute assignments and final reports and such. I made sure to catch up on a lot of otaku media this January.

Fate/Strange Fake is finally releasing episodes after the teaser film released last year. Fate/Grand Order did something like this years ago, but the release schedule for that FGO spinoff is decidedly all over the place because Aniplex resumed with Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia and the Final Singularity, then the Camelot films.

Strange Fake feels closer to the Apocrypha series with precisely how...strange it is. There's a grail war in what looks like Arizona or some other Southwestern region of the US, and the war is a front for an actual summoning that needed the first war as a catalyst? Vampires are also in this universe, a subject straight out of another Type-Moon vehicle, Tsukihime. Strange Fate is undoubtedly cool, so I'm along for the ride anyway. But is the plot easy to follow? Hell no.

There's also Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3. I'd love to stop watching this series, as it's terribly depressing, but I can't. The animation is too good to look away. Episode 3 of this season almost brought me to tears with unpalatable mounds of exposition. Episode 4, though? Sheesh, I had to watch it twice because it was so flashy. One of the coolest fighting episodes of anything I've ever watched. Apparently, JJK manga die-hards were upset about it in Japan because the content in Episode 4 wasn't treated with enough gravitas, but they're insane. Anime should tell stories in the best way anime can, full stop.

Now, I engaged with two dark fantasy shows recently, Clevatess and Sentenced to be a Hero. I watched the former in Spanish, so I relied a lot on visual cues for context and missed out on some plot nuances, but Clevatess wasn't as good as I'd hoped. When they introduced a protagonist who resembles Claire from Claymore, and the story took place on a darkened continent surrounded by monsters and divine beasts like Claymore... Even forgetting about Claymore for a second, Clevatess is a weird experience.

Hero Alicia is immediately defanged by Clevatess, one of four beast kings that humanity is trying to overcome so they can expand their territory. She is turned into a corpse-slave that lives thanks to Clevatess' blessing, and helps the beast king look after the infant heir to a kingdom he absolutely wrecks in the first episode. The earlier violence yields to some misunderstandings about breastfeeding, so Clevatess goes to find someone (other than the non-lactating Alicia) to feed this baby, and then the team actually finds a slave who happens to be lactating... Look, some stories just exist to satisfy a creative itch, I suppose. Not mine, to be clear.

Sentenced to be a Hero, on the other hand, successfully mixes dark fantasy with pathos in a non-creepy way. In this story, "heroes" are ironically named because they commit terrible crimes and are brought into an infinite-reanimation cycle to serve the state; in other words, more anime slaves. Xylo is one such slave, but instead of managing a royal child and searching for tiddy-milk, he accidentally bonds with an ultra powerful goddess who sees the good inside of him. Said goddess is naturally in the vessel of a child, but it's not weird, I swear! The story reminds me of other long-term revenge plots like Tales of Berseria and, dare I say it? Nah, you already know the anime I'm thinking of.

And then there's Frieren. Need I say more? If you liked the first season, you'll like the second season. I loved this story as it was released in manga (which is now in HIATUS, damnit), so the show manages to do it justice with more of that contemplative silence, serene countryside, sprawling fantasy music, and the occasional combat sequence. Just watch it, y'all.

Know what I don't recommend? Tune into the Midnight Heart anime, which looks stiff at times and wonky at others. The manga's hilarious, so read that instead.

Chivalry of a Failed Blogger, or How Fictional Fighting High Schoolers Make Me Feel Young Again

2025-12-26T14:17:00.003-05:00

I just learned that "gray" is the American English spelling of the color we all know, while "grey" is the spelling all those other former English colonies and territories use. Although I prefer the latter version, I'm obliged to use the former. Guess I'll stop drinking Earl Grey tea while I'm at it.

Anyway, for a blog titled The Anime Guardians, I write a lot about anime-adjacent hobbies. Let's at least start out with an anime as I write about what I've been up to this fall/winter.

Chivalry of a Failed Knight

Because I'm old, I remember seeing Chivalry of a Failed Knight floating on my Hulu home screen for ages and never watching it. Or did I watch it? The banner always reminds me of The Asterisk War, which I definitely tried to watch once but couldn't get into it. The premises seem kind of similar in any case; maybe pink-haired heroines and fighting schools were the craze in 2015.

I watched (rewatched?) Failed Knight earlier this year when I was still a new dad and between power naps. It's good stuff! Protagonist Ikki Kurogane is the titular "failed knight" who, despite his superhuman swordsmanship, is considered bottom-of-the-barrel because his mana use isn't flashy or scary or something stupid like that. His family hates him save for a way-too-clingy younger sister who cockblocks the lad as he bumbles into a relationship with Stella Vermillion, the cool transfer student.

Failed Knight keeps a lot of action at the forefront while making the romance genuinely worth the screen time. (I mean, there's some ecchi stuff cuz it's 2015.) Ikki is the over-analytical type, which works for his perpetual underdog characterization. Think Dr. Stone's Senku or Death Note's L with sigma-male swag. Like any good fighting school anime, our cast ultimately competes to enter the Seven Stars Battle Festival, a tournament which has global repercussions not fully explained in the show. These details made me read the light novels to continue where the anime leaves off. If you're interested in reading after watching, volume 4 is where to start. I'm really digging volume 5 right now.

Fate/Hollow Ataraxia Remastered

I recall ending the Switch version of Fate/Stay Night Remastered with a strong feeling of emptiness. Heaven's Feel route was a doozy! Do I think Shirou and Sakura belong together? I get the appeal, but if I were Shirou, loving the person who threatened to wipe out my entire town and to swallow her sister into eternal damnation wouldn't be my first choice. Anyway, I jumped into Hollow/Ataraxia because of a sunk-cost fallacy: why not continue feeling strangely empty and anxious if it means I find out what happens after the Holy Grail War?

The good news: There's a lot of wit and humor to the strange world our characters occupy. The servants are still around. Rider gets a lot of screen time for anyone who likes her; I've come around now that she's an enticing yet menacing recluse who reads all day. The other characters seem to grow jealous of this Shirou x Rider pairing. (This explains a lot of the, ahem, pornographic fan art I've seen.)

The bad news: not enough Tohsaka. She's at the Mage Association abroad, but our central cast talks about her with apprehension, as if she'll appear and crush them with her oppressive attitude.

I'm also haunted every time Ilya shows up onscreen. I liked her Heaven's Feel incarnation, but Hollow/Ataraxia keeps reminding me that she also wants to shackle Shirou's soul to a stuffed animal toy. I don't understand the brother-sister complex that shows up in otaku fiction. These people need to stop.

Alright, that's what I've got for the end of 2025. I get a month off from school to prepare for next semester, so maybe I'll rot on my couch and catch up on some anime instead. I should probably do some fiction writing as well. Happy holidays, everybody!

The TCG You've Never Heard Of

2025-08-10T22:42:00.001-04:00

Weiss Schwarz!!! It means "black and white" in German, but it's also the name of an esoteric trading card game from Japan. Featuring an assortment of anime, gaming, film, and other pop culture franchises, Weiss is the perfect game for otaku. After eight months of playing, I'm still learning new things and making a fool of myself at the local game shop.

The end-game for Weiss is simple: do enough damage to your opponent to win. Unlike most TCG, Weiss doesn't have its own stable of characters, and there are no obvious deck-types or elemental advantages to consider. To balance this game, you really have to understand your own deck's character-based gimmicks to create an effective winning strategy. The Seven Deadly Sins anime has one of the lowest-priced trial decks, so that was my first Weiss purchase. I didn't do a good job of learning that deck's tricks; needless to say, I was thoroughly beaten for many weeks.

Is Weiss Schwarz fun? At first, hell no. I didn't win a game until I put together an entirely different deck: a Fate/Stay Night one based on character Rin Tohsaka. The deck is a little underpowered compared to others, but Rin's low attack damage is remedied by conditional buffs to beat tougher opponents. I won my first game with that Fate deck...before losing many more matches.

Rin Tohsaka: best girl in Fate franchise.

Weiss isn't nearly as popular as Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Magic the Gathering, so we're a small group at the back of the card shop on Sundays. When the Pokemon or Magic tournaments get too large, Weiss is cancelled for the day so there are more tables available. Because of the game's obscurity, it's difficult to obtain Weiss cards unless you preorder them early. On the other hand, there are no scalpers lurking around supermarkets and vending machines to buy all the stock at once, which has become a serious problem for Pokemon players.

Why do I play? It's nice to be part of a community, no matter how small. It's nice to have new experiences. It's nice to get out of the house, play cards, and return home in time to eat dinner with my wife and kid. I think my record is 3-25 or something terrible like that; I picked up two of those wins during my last playthrough, so I've made progress! If I win another game before the end of the year, I'll be happy.

X-Men: The Manga and its No Good, Very Weird Government

2025-07-08T20:09:00.004-04:00

I bought X-Men: The Manga Remastered the other day at Barnes & Noble. Narratively, it starts where the 90s animated series begins, on Jubilee as she runs from Sentinels that hunt an emergent mutant population. In order to end these discriminatory attacks, the X-Men make their way to a quasi-governmental facility that stores dossiers on mutants around the country. At first I thought, "Why would you have to go to a facility to do that? Can’t you just hack into their systems remotely?" Then it occurred to me: this story is set in the 90s. I’d almost forgotten what that world was like back then.

Paper documentation, especially at the government level, is a challenge I saw firsthand while working at a municipal court. My days were spent entering information, scanning, and filing it away for hours at a time. Need to issue a search warrant? Fax the judge. Need to collect payments? Send a certified letter. On the federal level, the government has tried to reduce paper processes: the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Paperwork Elimination Act, and several memoranda in recent decades (which points to the truism everyone knows by now: government is extremely slow to change). In the essay "The Filing Cabinet," Craig Robertson describes the archaic — and analog — filing process required for American federal workers to get paid, which can involve sifting through some 28,000 filing cabinets. Should everything be digitized nowadays? Can that be done? Who knows.

Here’s another weird example of inefficiency: SENTINELS. I didn’t think about how goofy these giant robot killing machines were growing up, but now I read X-Men and wonder, “How many are there? How much did the government pay these subcontractors to build them? What are the repair costs?”Considering there are no giant robots (we’re aware of) for commercial or military use, the only comparable product I’ve found is this $3,000,000 Tsubame Industries mech that resembles a really slow Armored Core. In a world where ICE raids are regularly conducted against illegal and migrant populations in the US, it’s obvious that a real government would spend big bucks to find perceived threats. Is this a good investment of our money? All I’ll say is the cost-benefit analysis of hunting mutants is clearly based in something other than a balanced budget.

X-Men: The Animated Series. 1992. Marvel Entertainment Group.

Finally, the X-Jet is clearly an SR-71 Blackbird, an older stealth plane contracted by the government from Lockheed Martin. How this wound up in Charles Xavier’s hands depends on what version of the story we’re reading: he “obtained “ it from SHIELD, or Hank McCoy (aka Beast) built it, or it’s a modification of Xavier’s private jet. All scenarios imply massive security leaks pertaining to the design of a military stealth craft. As a telepath, Xavier could have easily wound up with the information needed to steal the plane or its schematics, but it also seems like a government fully aware enough to build giant robots for mutant hunting could also put more efforts into its security apparatus.

Which brings us full circle to the X-Men raiding that facility for mutant records. The universe our heroes occupy may be full of hateful xenophobia, but luckily, the government gestapo is incredibly good at wasting time and money.

An Audience of One

2025-06-08T23:23:00.005-04:00

Both of the manga I’m reading at the moment, Tune in to the Midnight Heart and Insomniacs After School, feature characters with personal broadcast radio stations via Internet streaming. I’m an avid streamer of podcasts, but that’s a slightly different flavor of online audio content that’s more curated and episodic than spontaneous. So, is this a thing Japanese high schoolers do? The short answer is, “I have no idea.”

Tune in to the Midnight Heart. Masakuni Igarashi. Kodansha.

What’s interesting is that the protagonists in the aforementioned manga both maintain their closest relationships using streaming broadcasts to an audience of one person. If characters are confessing their feelings, it’s quite indirect when done through the radio. In my day, texting was the thing kids did; I guess radio is the new thing. I feel there’s a material difference in pretending you have an impersonal audience instead of just directly speaking to your friend. The question becomes, “Why do it this way?”

Modern dating is bad because men and women are doing a poor job of communicating or have nothing good to say. Many people blame the internet for creating information silos that breed stupid opinions and false facts, and this means men and women’s interior worlds are more easily exposed (and increasingly appalling to one another). Because much of our human interactions are mediated through text, I'd say that from a communications theory standpoint, the issue is this: sending texts is information-deficient when compared to radio — even an indirect broadcast conversation — because our voices carry messages through tone and volume, clarifying the intention of our speech. Text, as anyone who’s ever sent one can share, is notoriously hard to interpret even when intentions are good. It’s also easier to be an asshole when hiding behind your keyboard or firing off a quick message without thinking twice. I feel like using our voices is an extra level of personal investment and confidence that helps us be judicious with our words. (Unless you're Alex Jones, of course.)

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. VIZ Media.

Radio broadcasts to my wife sound like a cute idea, but would quickly grow old because we already live with each other. For high schoolers who want to treat radio as a form of public journaling and indirect confessional, however, the practice seems harmless. If you don’t want your parents to see your call history, it’s certainly one way to avoid getting into trouble for talking late into the night. Ah, the beauty of being young…

Happy Blogiversary!

2025-05-14T21:41:00.005-04:00

It’s been a year since the relaunch of this blog! Most of my anime consumption was a blur of late-night delirium while caring for my newborn. I haven’t been blogging as much as I hoped to, so I’ll share my current otaku consumption habits. Get ready for a super post!

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Witch Watch

Basically, each episode boils down to Nico the witch causing mayhem wherever she goes by casting magic spells to impress Moi, her childhood friend. I’m always looking for reasons to justify my OtakuUSA magazine subscription, so when I read about Witch Watch earlier this year, I had to tune in. The feature article promised a slapstick comedy, and the show doesn’t disappoint. My wife certainly likes the show (and she hates anime), so I know it’s good. Some of the jokes don’t land if you’re not super into Japanese media references; it’s just an excuse for me to do research in the future. Recommend.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Anne Shirley

Remember that post I did on cozy anime? Anne Shirley is that kind of show. I remember my wife watching Anne with an E on Netflix, so she was excited to see this anime adaptation (which itself is a reboot of an older anime, which is ultimately based on a book I haven’t read). I think Anne is adorably melodramatic as a character, and I identify with her need to see wonder wherever she looks in the world. Life isn’t perfect but it is worth celebrating. Recommend.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Ranma 1/2

Being familiar with Usurei Yatsura, I know that Rumiko Takashi’s style of rom-com is fun and cute. Ranma is enchanted by an ancient pool haunted by a drowned girl, and now he turns into a girl when touched by cold water. The hijinks, however, begin once his fiancee, Akane Tendo, learns about this alter-ego. I wondered about the sensitivity this story would bring to what is literally a transgender tale, but as with many good comedies, the ensuing absurdity and refrain from "punching-down" disarms a lot of potential discourse. Recommend.

CURRENTLY READING: Tune In To the Midnight Heart

I liked Quintessential Quintuplets; my wife was upset by the ending, and I understand why. If you were disappointed by Quints, I think Midnight Heart is for you. Taking the same playbook and adding ten times the humor, Yamabuki joins the Broadcast Club seeking a girl who he confessed to years ago; this girl is among the club's four female members. I can't overstate how much I like this manga. Every girl seems like she could be "the one," and although my favorite pairing is with Nene Himekawa, I don't feel there's a bad choice among them. Did I mention how funny this is? Recommend

CURRENTLY PLAYING: Tsukihime

After playing Fate/Stay Night and all its routes, I thought another Type-Moon production would round out my understanding of this elaborate magical universe. Unfortunately, Tsukihime isn't my jam so far. The charm of Fate was an elaborately designed tournament with central characters who play well off each other and are also interesting themselves. Now, I wouldn't say Tsukihime has boring characters and a dull story...but it does. Fate's Shirou Emiya is compelling and complex in ways I've never seen, a character filled with a pathos that makes him frustrating and fascinating to follow. Maybe I'm impatient, but I'm not seeing that same appeal in this game yet. Can't recommend.

Alright, that's enough post for now. May's a super busy month so far, but I'd like to write more. Stay tuned!

What's Up with Anime Slavery? or The Rising of a Savior Complex

2025-01-21T08:47:00.002-05:00

The Rising of the Shield Hero was the first time I recall encountering slavery as a topic in anime. The relationship between Naofumi, a reluctant and rejected hero without a party, and Raphtalia, a young tanuki-girl he buys to aid him in combat, blossoms into a beautiful bond. The fact that Raphtalia is a slave is somewhat corrected after Naofumi releases her from servitude, but then she volunteers to be enslaved anyway as a sign of her loyalty. It's sort of cute...but still slavery? As a result of encountering this institution in modern medieval, fantasy, and isekai genre shows, I thought to look up why people are writing this stuff nowadays.

The Rising of the Shield Hero. Kinema Citrus. 2019.

My first instinct was to understand Japanese slavery precedents. Chris Kincaid offers a well-researched account in their 2021 article, "Slavery and Japan": A class system allowed for the legal selling of Japanese until the 12th century, when it was no longer a state-sponsored institution. Legitimized slavery briefly made a comeback after the Portuguese and Jesuits wanted women to take abroad in the 1500s, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi squashed that nonsense. The major issue, of course, is that slavery is intimately linked to sex trafficking and prostitution, which are illegal in most places and times, anyway. Kincaid emphasizes that the sexual aspects of Japanese slavery are what persist today, often in the form of "comfort women." Depending on what kind of anime you're watching, this sexual aspect to slavery may get glossed over entirely (e.g. Shield Hero) or becomes part of the plot (e.g. Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World, which is a truly heinous show.)

As to why slavery themes are prevalent in today's otaku culture, Danny Guan points out in "The Problem with Isekai 2: The Slavery Issue" that stories like Shield Hero come from one particular Japanese website, 小説家になろう ("Let's Become a Novelist, or Shōsetsuka ni Narō) and get chosen for novel deals and adaptations. Naturally, stories that are the most popular will get chosen because publishers want to guarantee return on investment; this creates a positive feedback loop of stories featuring slavery and incentivizes more writers to do the same. Danny, as well as people in this kind of useful Reddit thread, attribute this slavery interest to wish-fulfillment for writers and readers, savior complexes for protagonists, and ease of adding new characters to stories.

The Rising of the Shield Hero. Kinema Citrus. 2019.

Yet, this still doesn't explain why anyone is obsessed with fictional slavery systems in the year 2025. If, as Kincaid illustrates, legitimized sex slavery existed as recently as World War II--using women from Japanese territories--this is still beyond the memory of most contemporary Japanese writers. (I'll caveat that some of these victims still exist, and that collective memories in society are more persistent.) I assume most otaku writers aren't frequenting brothels or engaging in sex trade. It sounds like an expensive hobby, and the pricier sexual transactions are initiated by old and tired salarymen.

The isekai genre usually occurs in kingdoms with feudalism and class stratification. In these worlds, slaves exist as part of economic systems, diplomatic tools, and war spoils. Danny Guan's mention of the "good master" allows stories to treat slavery institutions as pillars of society, a system heroes navigate in a self-serving yet beneficent manner rather than toppling it altogether. Without psychoanalyzing isekai writers too deeply, perhaps slavery systems are a way to rationalize real-world evils and fight against them in personal ways while being rewarded. I won't speculate what those real-world evils might be for Japanese writers.

Or maybe I'm giving people too much credit. That first season of Shield Hero is really good, though.

The Rising of the Shield Hero. Kinema Citrus. 2019.

Fate Stay Night, or I Hope Saber Arc Isn't Anyone's Favorite Because it Stinks

2025-01-15T17:42:00.001-05:00

I was browsing an anime store many years ago when someone suggested I watch Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works, which sat on one of the shelves in a video boxset. I told them I watched a Fate series once (Fate/Zero) and found it dreadfully boring. Fast forward twelve years later, and I live in an apartment with a dozen Fate figurines, mobile game Fate/Grand Order on my phone, and eagerly tune in for the latest series, Fate/Strange Fake. I am a thorough convert (but I still hate Fate/Zero). When the original game that started this franchise was announced for Nintendo Switch, Fate/Stay Night Remastered, I immediately preordered. I play it during long nights when my baby struggles to sleep, or whenever she's taking a nap. It's good for Fate nerds like me, but the first playthrough is...odd.

Being a visual novel, there are three decision trees that most fans know about: the main Fate route starring Saber; Unlimited Blade Works starring Rin Tohsaka; and Heaven's Feel with Sakura Matou. I didn't know that the first time you play must be on the Saber route. Because I didn't understand this mechanic, the choices made were chosen based on my interest in Rin, a tsundere who (I feel) best compliments the naive idiosyncracies of Shiro Emiya, the game's protagonist. As a result, I butt heads with Saber on multiple occassions, some of which led to several BAD END and DEAD END scenarios.

Enjoying the Fate franchise at all demands a few concessions, and this game in particular has a major one. (SPOILERS AHEAD?) Shirou Emiya is infatuated with Saber--who turns out to be a time-traveling, genderbent King Arthur--and the two eventually fall in love. I don't mind the absurdity of the scenario, because I watch too much anime to be bothered. But the interactions between Shirou and Saber overwhelmingly reinforce the most realistic scenario for these two: there's no realm in which they'd be compatible.

The game tries to establish a parallel between these characters. Shirou is a survivor from the last Holy Grail War, a conflict between mages and their Heroic Spirit servants for an omnipotent vessel. That devastation has wracked him with guilt, which he channels into the idea of saving other people at expense of his own safety. Saber, who was a servant-participant in that war, needs the grail to undo becoming King Arthur in the first place. She sees her reign over medieval Britain as having ended in bloody disaster and defeat. The similarity here? Both Shirou and Saber are driven by an altruism that masks a deeper self-loathing.

The problem with this pairing exists for a few reasons the game makes clear:

Shirou is obsessed with Saber as a girl. Perhaps owning to Fate/Stay Night's origins as an eroge or pornographic PC game, Shirou has the emotional stability of a teenage boy when it comes to being with Saber. (In all fairness, he is one.) As a result, Shirou leans on the teachings of his late father, Kiritsugu, to always protect girls when he can. This is all fine, except Saber is very dismissive of this technicality of her birth, and takes every opportunity to downplay her sex in favor of elevating her status as a king. She does not need protecting because it is, in fact, her job to protect Shirou. This flies over Shirou's head because Saber is, in his eyes, beautiful beyond compare and more fragile than she's willing to admit. Because of genre conventions, this fierce denial of Saber's personhood is meant to show Shirou sees her as a deeply traumatized victim of fate, someone who would otherwise embrace the wiles of an ordinary girl if she could only escape her circumstances. And who should this poor king come to rely on if given a chance? None other than Shirou Emiya. It's hard for me to see this as anything other than disrespectful, a fact Saber agrees with for almost the entire story.

Shirou is a hypocrite. After a so-so date between him and Saber, Shirou makes his argument for Saber to abandon her dream of rescuing Britain from her own ineptitude by persuading her to live for herself. He is emboldened by visions he has of Saber's past, of her life as a girl who picks the Sword of Selection from the stone and is guided by Merlin towards her destiny. Saber is offended by this outburst on two fronts: As a king, Saber cannot accept Shirou's words because she is duty-bound to keep her kingdom's interests before her own. She is also offended that Shirou would claim to know her at all, since he has such a poor understanding of his own motivations. As mentioned earlier, both of these characters are tormented survivors of utter ruin, but Shirou can't see that his suicidal need to rescue people is not dissimilar from her own need to sacrifice her personal interests. Yet, their similarities are insignificant when compared to the categorical differences: Shirou is adapting the mantle of a "hero of justice" out of personal conviction, while Saber had already lived as a hero to her people and had no say in the matter. She was, in essence, a servant of Britain.

Saber doesn't love him; this is a more contentious point, so hear me out. Saber does confesses her love just before vanishing from reality at the end of the story, but I think this is a matter of infatuation at best. There are two reasons why I think so:

This shift in Saber's perspective initially occurs after Tohsaka implants Shirou's magic circuits into Saber. (This scene is highly erotic and definitely cleaned-up for Nintendo Switch release.) After this, Saber grows bashful when interacting with Shirou. While it's clear Shirou has always been infatuated with Saber, she cannot rely him as a mage, refuses to share her ambitions, and doubts his decision-making for much of their time together. Giving her magical circuits is somehow a way of mitigating these factors.

The other pivot takes place when she realizes Shirou contains Avalon within him, the sheath which preserves her sword, Excalibur. This revelation occurs during a low-point for both characters as they are assaulted by Gilgamesh, a wayward Heroic Spirit who has his eyes set on Saber. As this love triangle manifests and Shirou continues to literally die for Saber, Avalon is a convenient metaphor for the fact Shirou has always tried to protect Saber. We'll never know if she would love Shirou without the presence of Avalon.
By the end of the story, none of the differences in opinion or belief is reconciled between Shirou and Saber. The physical bonds between the characters is how fate ties them together. It's fitting for a sexually-charged story but sloppy for any cathartic resolution.

Because this is a visual novel meant for multiple replays, I'm willing to play it again to attempt to woo Saber properly. The frustrations I felt towards her and Shirou, pleasantly enough, don't exist as strongly while I run through Unlimited Blade Works. Shirou is a better character when he understands who Saber is and respects her wishes. That's a relationship I'm happy to see unfold.

I've Become a Parent and Get Little Sleep, but at Least Light Novels are Saving my Sanity!

2025-01-01T21:44:00.001-05:00

As a new dad, I don't get a lot of sleep. I've spent many nights watching Crunchyroll anime while chugging Redbull and rocking the baby. Because many of these anime serve as twelve-episode snippets of lengthier manga and books, seasons can end abruptly without tying loose ends in any satisfying way. For that reason, I've started to seek the light novels these anime are adapted from, which wasn't always easy to do when I started watching anime in 2009.

The 2010s saw an increase in Japanese light novel translations from Seven Seas Entertainment, Kodansha, and Yen Press. Now, such novels can easily be found in my local Barnes and Noble or ordered from Amazon. My first experience reading them was in 2013 with Haruhi Suzumiya. Back then, that anime was universally praised in the blogosphere and Twitter, but I've never watched it. I thought reading it would be a great experience... and I was surprisingly bored. I quit three books in.

Recent anime like Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets Wise Wolf and How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom helped me rediscover light novels. In the case of Spice and Wolf, I read the first volume so that I could understand the business and finance talk being thrown around so casually. (I actually wrote a post about it here.) For Realist Hero, I liked the anime so much that after season two, I decided to continue the story. It's good! I'm a serious nerd for strategic and tactical decision-making, if that's a thing one can nerd out to.

When it comes to finding these books, I prefer commercial venues over underground or fan translations; I like to think my money is supporting authors and publishers. That said, although Amazon is easily the biggest game in town for this, J-Novel Club is now my go-to business. They're slightly cheaper than Amazon and seem to work with publishers to translate and release chapters/books on a regular schedule. I like the fact they have community forums; bringing people together in spaces other than the major social networks is probably better for humanity.

As far as the next book I'll read, Chivalry of a Failed Knight Volume 4 should pick up where the anime left off, so I look forward to that. Lord knows I'll have more than enough to read it. Our baby is going through a sleep regression, so all the training we've done has gone to shit.

How an Android in Yokohama Taught Me to Be Human

2024-08-20T21:07:00.036-04:00

For the past couple of years, I've been captivated by a genre of literary fiction I find hard to describe. It's some gestalt of cottage core, peaceful fantasy, and slice-of-life with low-stakes drama. There's been a lot of work produced in these genres lately: Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes series and the sleeper hit Frieren: Beyond Journey's End are among these. I'm going to insert Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou here as well, even though it's a far-future science fiction manga, and even though the manga was originally published in 1994, because of how well it fits our cultural milieu.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

As far as I gather from the first 30 chapters, the world of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (YKK) suffered from catastrophes that left humanity quite scarce. The land is a mess of abandoned asphalt and overgrown grasslands. Here is where we find Alpha, an android who runs a cafe which sees very little foot traffic. She has close relationships with a handful of townsfolk, and makes conversation with the random customers who happen by. Alpha's creator makes the occasional appearance, but the larger story behind the existence of robots in general isn't important.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

YKK is a manga where things just...happen. While this sounds like any slice-of-life story, there's a lack of urgency here that I find notable. Alpha doesn't have an overarching dream or mandate I can think of save for running the cafe. When she goes out to buy coffee beans, there's no indication that the cafe will lose business or Alpha will go hungry if things slow down. No one is ever in danger. People receive mail. Everything is great. Out of context, YKK sounds dreadfully boring---and lovely.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

Legends and Lattes, Frieren, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou are romantic visions of a world where employment isn't as important as adventuring. Meeting new faces and doing the most good for the most people is what matters. Time is precious, but instead of monetizing every second we have, it makes more sense to slow down and appreciate what's in front of us. (These sound like platitudes from the mind of whoever invented "Live, Laugh, Love.") In modern parlance, "Go touch grass."

We live in a post-industrial age where increased wealth and technology do not always bring us joy. Late stage capitalism seems the law of the land. Climate change is real (even if people debate its causes). Obnoxious AI-powered technologies are advertised everywhere I look. We suffer the pains of minimum wage work with shrinking hopes for health insurance, salary, or retirement funds. People are dating less, marrying less often, and aren't reproducing at population replacement rates. Do our cozy stories have a cure for these woes? Can we live, laugh, and love as if nothing were wrong in the world?

In a week's time, I'm going to become a father. My job will be to show my daughter that despite the economic, political, and social upheavals that plague this era, life is very much worth living. She can be an adventurer if she wants to. She can turn off her phone (or subdermal implant or neural chip) if she wants to. She can solve people's problems for magic spells, run a bookshop, or open a cafe if she wants to. Orcs, elves, and androids do it all the time.

Stargazing with Insomniacs After School

2024-08-02T21:20:00.008-04:00

My father once purchased a telescope through a mail-order catalogue. I assume he bought it because I loved astronomy as a child. We only used it once to stare at a full moon from the roof of the three-story brownstone we were renting from. After that, the next time I went stargazing was 2018, when I visited a planetarium on NYC's Long Island and saw some of the Jovian worlds. I never did become an astronomer like I dreamed, but I still get excited about going to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. 2019.

Insomniacs After School is a fun story for my inner child. As the title suggests, Nakami and Magari don't get a lot of sleep, so they sneak off to the school's abandoned observatory for peace and quiet. When they get caught, their only option is to revive the Astronomy Club despite not knowing what such a club does. While stargazing is a good start, the kids aren't using the school's professional telescope until they master the basics. To that end, Namaki learns how to use the Canon he has for long-exposure night photography.

As of the first two volumes, Insomniacs suggests that in a small city like Nakao, Ishikawa Prefecture, light pollution isn't a huge problem. The countryside seems to be a train ride away. In major cities like NYC, ambient light creates a general halo around the city; light pollution means photographers invest more time in light filters and post-production. The Long Island observatory I mentioned was at the far end of New York, practically in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, veiled in near perfect darkness.

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. 2019.

I live in Ohio nowadays. While it lacks comparable entertainment, ocean views, and robust transportation options when compared to New York, it makes up for with open sky. License plates boast the "Birthplace of Aviation" because Orville Wright was born here. Neil Armstrong, the first human on the moon, was from Ohio. NASA's Glenn Research Center has a whole webpage dedicated to showing how vital the Ohio-based facility is to the Artemis program. I don't own a camera or a telescope now, but I'm in a pretty good place to start thinking about space once again.

Here's a fun fact: the first manga I ever bought was Planetes back in 2003. Maybe I'll pick it up again when I catch up with Insomniacs After School.

I've had this book for twenty-one years? Damn.

Video Games as an Artistic Medium, or Why the Celeste Soundtrack Slaps

2024-07-22T00:34:00.012-04:00

As a genre of video games, 2D platformers rarely catch my interest because I die too easily. I bought Celeste recently and learned that I still suck at platformers... but the Celeste soundtrack is amazing. It was nominated for Best Score at the 2018 Game Awards and won ASCAP's Video Game Score of the Year in 2019. I'd consider it a work of art.

Celeste. Maddy Makes Games. 2018.

On a related note, Polygon.com has a fun series on media hot takes, and their recent post on the writings of late film critic Roger Ebert have revived the debate of whether video games are art. I didn't know this was a question people ask themselves, but as an Art History degree holder, I'll shove my foot into this debate.

A quote from Marcel Duchamp succinctly states my understanding of art production. Whether or not anyone else agrees about the quote's veracity is secondary to our the need to establish common ground:

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Duchamp explicitly shares at least two facts:

Creative acts are performed by an artist.
Through interpretation, spectators connect creations to the outside world and become contributors.

The Fountain. Marcel Duchamp as R. Mutt. 1917.

I'll tackle the first point: who is considered an artist? Merriam-Webster defines an artist as:

A person who creates art (such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing) using conscious skill and creative imagination
A skilled performer
A person who is very good at something

Assuming people who design games are at least "very good at something" and use "conscious skill" to create objects from "imagination" in a virtual space, they should qualify as artists. But maybe the fact video games are commercial productions with dozens (if not hundreds) of developers and financiers corrupts this idea of artists and creations? Let's consider two viewpoints:

A conservative person might say, "Commercial gaming generates revenue by using software engines to capture audience interest. Artistic merit is secondary to how we get people to pay for the experience. Money is the creative force here."

A liberal person might say, "Gaming, regardless of finance models, is rooted in audience interest, and that interest is guaranteed through realizing the vision of creators who have mastered the craft of writing, directing, compositing, graphics, music, etc. People pay for good stories."

I feel both opinions would be right. Roger Ebert might yield that this portrait of the gaming industry as composed of corporate greed and countless craftsmen is eerily similar to the realm of film production. His own thoughts can be found in the article "Video Games Can Never Be Art," where he points out cathedrals need many people to construct them, yet they are arguably artistic creations. (He actually leaves this an open-question, perhaps not wanting to cause more trouble than he already has.)

Celeste. Maddy Makes Games. 2018.

Now let's tackle Duchamp's second assertion that spectators impact art creation. While this implies art is to be seen by others, video games produced privately on one's hard drive and kept from prying eyes are still a kind of creative practice, I think. Not all art is made to be seen: maybe the creator is embarrassed by it or changed their minds about selling it.

My Celeste stats, which are not impressive by any means.

Let's concede that many video game developers aim for distribution on commercial platforms. This means the spectators are the consumers who buy and play the games. These people, as I would extrapolate from Duchamp’s quote, add criticism and popular opinion to the creative act as they interpret the "inner qualifications" of any given work. This can be uncomfortable for creators because it removes agency from them, but it can also be liberating if we consider creation to be a communal process. This was exemplified in Roger Ebert, who was an interpreter of film because of his belief in its artistic qualifications, and therefore contributed to the form's legitimacy.

To make a long story short, I think video games can be works of art. Celeste's soundtrack was recognized as a masterpiece upon release, and the game itself was nominated for and won more awards than I can articulate here. Yet, Duchamp would have agreed with Roger Ebert in stating video games are not art, if only because Duchamp's definition concedes to the subjectivity of art interpretation in general. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

I'm Too Dumb for Spice and Wolf

2024-07-03T22:08:00.006-04:00

The first arc of Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf sees Lawrence investing in a rumor that silver trenni, the most valuable currency in the kindgom of Trenni, will increase in purity. As a 21st century person watching a series set within a pseudo-European world still governed by kingdoms and the church, I was confused. What does purity have to do with coins? Why are there competing currencies? I really enjoy the dynamic between Lawrence and Holo, the titular wolf, so I'm eager to understand the economics that drive the plot along. The rest of this post covers my investigation into how economies work overall and how these principles apply to Spice and Wolf.

Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf. Passione. 2024.

Let's start with our current economy as a baseline. We use fiat money, or money that doesn't rely on a commodity to determine its value; printed money is intrinsically worthless. The United States Dollar, for example, is valuable because the U.S. is a nation with political stability and high Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our government assigns the denominations, prints the money, and allows citizens to use it. The money can be traded on international exchanges between nations that have their own currencies. This is a web of relationships that's necessary for the current global economic system.

Now, commodities are goods that can be exchanged at particular rates. In a fiat system like the U.S. economy, I could offer X amount of grain for a particular rate and receive Y amount of dollars in exchange; money would serve as the medium of exchange, or the thing that allows people to participate in the buying and selling of goods. Without dollars serving as the intermediary, I'd resort to bartering, or offering my grain for another commodity of equal value as determined by the traders or a third party. Value varies based on the intrinsic worth of these commodities (whether they are useful in and of themselves or parts of a larger product) and what value people arbitrarily assign to them. Grain, a product people rely on for survival, is literally consumed. Metals, on the other hand, are often constituent parts in a larger production processes like making armor and such.

Image by DevangshuNandi1540630. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

The intrinsic value, or melt value, of a coin is determined by the ratio of silver to base metals in its composition; this is the definition of purity. In Spice and Wolf, the silver trenni's face value, or its denomination, should not change due to a new minting. If the purity of silver in newly minted coins increases, this might translate to increased desirability because a currency with more silver is a mark of a powerful nation with rare assets. The face value of a U.S. penny, for example, is always one cent, but there are prohibitions on the exportation, melting, or alteration of pennies because of the need to keep them in circulation, as well as consideration of the melt value of its copper and zinc. Such prohibitions are also the case for currency like the trenni in Spice and Wolf.

The reason for increasing the silver content in a trenni coin, according to Spice and Wolf, is to manipulate this desirability and increase the coin's circulation compared with coinage from other nations. As Lawrence explains in the light novel I bought to supplement my viewing of the anime:

"Nations do not always fight through strength of arms. If your country's currency is overwhelmed by a foreign coin, you've been just as thoroughly conquered. All the foreign king needs to do is cut off your supply of money, and your marketplace will die. Without money, you can neither buy nor sell. They control your economy."

It seems several nations in the real world use multiple currencies. In the case of Ecuador and Zimbabwe, this is because their native currencies suffered from inflation, or the devaluing of a currency because of its abundance, which then causes an increase in the price of goods as businesses struggle to make more profit using the weaker currency. As a result, Ecuador and Zimbabwe rely on USD to stabilize their economies but cannot print USD on their own. To pay for USD they're using, these countries enter trade agreements with the United States for items like bananas or other commodities.

In Spice and Wolf, Trenni would be able to command the local money supply if more people use its native currency; this is possible if its currency is more desirable in the local market due to a purity increase. Internationally, desirability is judged by frequency of trades on the exchanges, but I won't dare venture into those geopolitics. In both instances, anyone's interest in silver trenni is heavily based in how much the citizens trust Trenni's economy and political stability.

I'm gonna stop here, as this plot unravels into something far more complicated than I care to dive into. There are many, many Spice and Wolf Reddit posts and forums dedicated to explaining this first arc. The barrier to entry on this franchise is unusually high--and that's coming from someone who loves Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I hope you've learned a little about economics, though!

Frieren Would've Done the Same

2024-06-07T22:30:00.006-04:00

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is the best anime ever made according to many corners of the internet. It surpassed Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on MAL, has a 100% average on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.9 on IMDb, and has become a social media darling thanks to its eponymous, small-statured elf. After ending last season, the memes of Frieren, Fern, and Stark in modern day swag have kept the series alive until next season. Then, Ruixian Xu stopped a knife attack in Taiwan because Himmel "would've done the same," thrusting the franchise that never quite went away into the spotlight again.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz.

Although our Taiwanese vigilante was obviously using a refrain Frieren makes throughout the series, it's notable that Himmel is dead by the time the story starts. For those who also read the manga, Himmel was both savior and folk hero during his time, making sure to do what little he could for everyone he met during the ten-year journey to fight the demon king. I just think it's odd for fandom to attribute acts of present-day heroism to someone who isn't canonically alive but lives on in the memories (and many, many monuments) scattered throughout the land. There's someone who is far more deserving of this hero-worship: Frieren herself.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz.

The quirk and charm of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is that the story is rooted in saudade, the wistful memories that Himmel left Frieren with upon his passing. We almost never see Himmel as he lived but through Frieren's recollections. If we use Serie's statement about remembering each one of her disciples throughout her centuries, then I'd also assume Frieren, as an elf, has perfect memory recall. The flashbacks we see of Himmel are valuable as meeting him in real-time. But that's cheating for us as an audience, isn't it?

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz.

Imagine Frieren: Beyond Journey's End without the Himmel flashbacks. The characters would be the same, but the presentation would be more somber, focused on a widow who cares for the children of her best friends as they guide her to heaven. She would recall stories of her lover (a word she doesn't use because elves seem incapable of doing so) and how she became a better person because of him. Instead of flashbacks, we'd watch Frieren's attention shift to a past that was, in elf time, only moments earlier. Her emotionless features may twinge with warm joy and piercing sorrow--until remembering the purpose of her journey. I think that Frieren, the same Frieren who gives herself to anyone in need because of a man we never had the privilege to know, would be someone worthy of our praise.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz.

Next time you do a good deed, tell people that "Frieren would've done the same." Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story

2024-06-03T21:13:00.007-04:00

I'm a sucker for a good boy-meets-world kind of story. These tales feature teenagers who often bump into girls with entirely different backgrounds and far more experience navigating society. FLCL, Eureka Seven, and Gurren Lagann are ones that stand out in my mind; the otaku universe has a billion more tales just like them. Call of the Night is in the same vein, but with some contemporary twists I really dig.

Here's the short version: Ko Yamori loves playing hooky and travels around the city from dusk til dawn. Before long, he bumps into Nazuna Nanakusa, who claims to be a vampire. (I'm ninety-nine percent sure Nazuna Nanakusa is based on Haruhara Haruko from FLCL). Ko, the weird and misanthropic kid he is, wants to become a vampire, too. Turns out the only way to make more vamps in this world is for the human victim to fall in love with their vampire. Naturally, Ko and Nazuna spend their time getting into antics while figuring out what love looks like for them.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

Nazuna loves to drink and play video games. She makes a living by relieving people of their loneliness--giving massages, cuddling, and overall being a kind host. (Although it's tempting to consider this non-sexual business a uniquely Japanese idea, I feel this is more a symptom of isolation stemming within first-world, heavily capitalist and networked societies.) The glancing media critic might identify Nazuna as a manifestation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but Call of the Night front loads almost half the series with an exploration of Nazuna's past and how she fits in (and doesn't fit in) with the rest of the vampire underworld.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This uniqueness of character obviously brings her to Ko's attention in the first place. It also shows us the very-real phenomenon of worshipping people we just met before spending any real time together. Does learning more about Nazuna make her more or less appealing to Ko? The problem with IRL romance is that we often fail to appreciate people as relationships grow. Combined with the miserable contemporary dating scene and declining birth rates in the largest economies, any story about successful romance seems like a bold, defiant leap towards hopeful futures. Ko's desire to turn vampire comes from a naive but very human impulse to spend an exciting night with a good person.

The thing about Ko is that he doesn't actually know what it's like to love. He's only a middle schooler, so that's totally valid, but Call of the Night lingers on this for long enough that I wonder if this is a teenage affect or a literal, chemical deficiency of oxytocin. It's clear that Ko isn't asexual and that he wants to understand the positive relationships some vampires share with humans. But this libido question is tied into the way vampires reproduce: sucking blood is inherently sexual, and converting someone into a vampire requires a love connection. To extrapolate again into real-world context, it's significant to note that teenagers report having less sexual intercourse, but this complicated by evolving definitions of what sexual intimacy and identity look like. In Call of the Night, the vampiric relationship is entirely dependent on consummation via bloodsucking and conversion, which causes trouble for Ko and Nazuna among the old guard when they fail to do so.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This post is titled Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story, but discusses a manga centered around a heterosexual relationship. The manga does explore a few LGBT+ relationships, and these turn out to be significant in Nazuna’s life. Considering the value of sexual reproduction is nearly nonexistent for vampires, this gender indifference makes perfect sense for author Kotoyama to explore. Call of the Night is not a BL or yaoi manga; nevertheless, this attitude towards fluidity is refreshing. It's notable that this manga is part of the Viz Manga app and not the Shonen Jump one, so its target demographic feels broader than just action-loving boys.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

At the risk of making a longer post with more ramblings about the contemporary state of love--a matter in which I am not an expert but can only speak from the perspective of someone married for six years--you should read Call of the Night. I plan on watching the anime as soon as I finish the manga.

Stravaganza and the Strange Case of Monkey Negroes

2024-05-30T01:05:00.006-04:00

(NSFW; racism and rape discussion ahead)

In Stravaganza: The Queen in the Iron Mask, Claria must defend her kingdom from a horde of Umber, these mindless gorilla-like beasts who look like Alf with white fur. We eventually learn there’s a poison that infects animals and drives them mad, so the queen sets out to find the source. It’s a dark fantasy tale in the seinen demographic, mixing violence with fanservice. It's not until Volume 2 of the omnibus, however, where this manga hits you with a double whammy of awful content.

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015.

The racism starts as soon as Claria ventures into a vertically-oriented city of Reydin built by the Klord, a BLACK RACE OF MONKEY-TAILED PEOPLE. Having read halfway through the series already, I wanted to believe this was some misplaced form of flattery. “Having a prehensile tail can be cool, right?” Combining that factor with the big lips, and names like Tom Tom and Kum Kum, made such a dream impossible. Dignifying this weird shit would lead to a well-deserved loss of my Black card.

And yet, it was hard to look away from the proverbial train wreck.

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015.

I read on as our blonde heroine is forced to kill one of her Klord hosts in self-defense. (He tries licking her and tearing her clothes off, too, as a perversion of the attraction he had while still sane.) The village constable doesn’t care for Claria's explanation, and doesn't believe she's been traveling around for a poison cure. Claria is swiftly thrown in jail, where she is stripped, assaulted, and whipped for supposed spy secrets. It turns out these Klord really love whipping people?

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015.

It would not have taken Akihito Tomi much effort to see how this content might offend. Yes, I understand Stravaganza is fiction. And no, Tomi isn’t obliged to create content anyone agrees with. Most Klord in the comic are nonviolent (until the city is poisoned, that is). In real life, Black people sometimes have big lips and can be quite athletic. But do you see what’s happening here? We can excuse any sort of creative decisions by appealing to tangential facts. What are the relevant facts, then, when it comes to Stravaganza and comic book racism?

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015.

While there are other kinds of humanoids in this comic—ogres and giants come to mind—the Klord are the only ones that rely on and reinforce tropes that were used to cause social harms to real people. Now, it’s commonly argued that racism as we know it in America has no cultural context in Japan, so their Jim Crow depictions are abstractions without meaning. I doubt that level of ignorance is possible in 2024, but let’s make that concession: a broader view of racism would at least criticize Tomi’s lazy design choices behind Reydin, the Klord, and their afro-sporting king who looks like he was pulled from a disco party. There’s plenty of contemporary anime and manga that doesn’t raise these flags with its Black characters.

If I finish this series, I’ll use scanlations or something. The idea of paying to read the rest makes me feel icky.

Currently Watching - May 2024

2024-05-27T07:19:00.000-04:00

Life’s changed a lot since my posts from TEN YEARS AGO. (I’m bald now, for starters). The shows I watch are often chosen with consideration of my wife’s interests. She’s not an anime maniac like I am, but really enjoyed Frieren last season.

Here’s what I’m into this month:

Konosuba 3

Konosuba 3 starts off by mocking Kazuma’s trauma from the feature film, Legend of Crimson. It really shouldn’t be funny, but it is, which reminds me a lot of the irreverent comedy you would see in a show like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. From there, Kazuma gets sucked into babysitting a princess, swapping bodies, dying, and some other shit I can’t even get into here. There’s an overarching plot to find lost relics from other reincarnated Japanese like Kazuna, but who cares?

Konosuba’s the kind of series I can’t really explain to people; you just have to watch it. Every character is both stupid and depraved. Every conflict devolves into screaming. It’s pathetic, but so fucking funny.

Date a Live V

I marathoned this show’s previous four seasons last year, which may explains why I can’t follow anything happening this season. The copious amount of spirits Shido has in his harem is also dizzying, so why not add another? The strangest thing is that the opening and closing themes show me exactly what’s going to happen in this season. Like, why? I’m still gonna watch, but damn, leave some things to my imagination.

Like most of the Internet, however, I’m drawn to Kurumi Tokisaki. If there’s a true pairing here, she seems to be The One. I doubt Shido’s the type to choose, though. He’s just gonna go the Tenchi Muyo Ryo-Ohki route and marry all of them, isn’t he.

Spice and Wolf (2024)

Someone recommended the original series to me over a decade ago. From what I can tell, this seems to be a retelling of that story. Being only one episode in, I really like the atmosphere so far. Feels like I’m in store for a Kino’s Journey vibe, filled with repugnant and strange people living lives they’re too self-involved with to rationalize. The early 2000s energy is strong with this one.

All you need to know is that Holo is a cute wolf-humanoid god, and she’s tired of helping out a host of ungrateful villagers who have abandoned their faith. A traveling merchant is gonna bring her back home so she can… retire, maybe? We’ll see.

Bridgerton Season 3

Not an anime at all but my wife’s fervor for this is as hardcore as any otaku’s. The Polin ship is honestly weird to me; nevertheless, this show gets its claws into you and doesn’t let go. I would love to take a shot every time someone exits a conversation with an awkward “Excuse me.”

Nelson the Ever Living

2024-05-25T04:44:00.002-04:00

It's like, 4:22AM on a Saturday?

Anyway, last time I posted to The Anime Guardians was ten years ago? That's craaaaazy. A lot's changed, but those details will seep into the blog over time.

It's no secret I like to write, and a colleague of mine recommended I develop my online presence in preparation for future publishing opportunities, so I figured reanimating this blog would be the best choice. Do people know what Blogger is anymore? I doubt it. But I'm too apathetic to switch to Medium, and too Twitter/X averse to write 52-thread posts about why people should read Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. This is all I know. I need a regular writing practice as I gear up for bigger projects, so why not revive a passion project?

Anyway, if you've made it this far, thanks. I've unpublished the old posts because they were straight-up cringe. Will someone ungrave them with the Wayback Engine and laugh at my depressive Katawa Shoujo posts? Maybe. But I was 21 years old back then, so shut up.

In case you've forgotten who I am, I'm Nelson aka @oldmannelson on X. By the time I go back to sleep, hopefully this enthusiasm remains and you won't wait another ten years to hear from me again. Until then, keep watching anime and reading manga and gaming like the otaku you are.