Some­how, I tend go miss­ing for a while and then fin­ish edit­ing posts in batches xD

[Deisel-turbo]

In many ways, Moshi­dora could be seen as a fic­tion­al­ized, dra­ma­tized man­age­ment text­book that started off with pure tech­ni­cal­ity and even­tu­ally brought audi­ence sym­pa­thy to the screen. Many of its char­ac­ters were never given proper depth, and for much of the series it felt more like an aca­d­e­mic case study than a story. It’s hardly sur­pris­ing (in fact I expected it), as the name dic­tates that the entire theme was cen­tered around a sin­gle book. But just as its own Mar­ket­ing went, it accom­plished this goal won­der­fully. My only regret is that I didn’t have the chance to watch it years ago— because man­age­ment skills often come into play way before you expect it.

Ducker’s Man­age­ment is def­i­nitely not just for ‘busi­ness­men in suits’… Read the rest of this entry »

Cul­tural shock always inter­ests me— assum­ing I’m not the one expe­ri­enc­ing it xD

Expe­ri­enc­ing the dif­fer­ent man­ner­isms of far­away cul­tures can be bewil­der­ing, espe­cially when one has no clue how to inter­pret or respond to what is obvi­ously an extremely seri­ous ges­ture. Ikoku Meiro comes as one of the only anime I’ve seen which shows this in full impact, as Yune’s per­fectly pos­tured Dogeza left Claude com­pletely off bal­ance and, in his case, utterly out­raged. It’s not really sur­pris­ing either— the Dogeza, or any form of pros­tra­tions that’s so deeply set into tra­di­tional Asian man­ner­isms, had always been mis­un­der­stood by west­ern­ers not accom­mo­dated to the cul­ture. Read the rest of this entry »

When I told my friend I was going to buy a com­mer­cial OELVN to check it out, the response was “Why would you do that!?”

Even west­ern fans of Japan­ese visual nov­els often frown upon the OELVN (Orig­i­nal Eng­lish Lan­guage Visual Novel) com­mu­nity. Pro­duc­tion qual­i­ties are always a con­cern, as the ama­teur teams formed by west­ern enthu­si­asts sim­ply have no chance of com­pet­ing against fan-translated famous Japan­ese visual novel titles. But there’s always a start— the Key staffers’ first big title, ONE, cer­tainly had nei­ther good art­work nor detailed sto­ry­writ­ing, even com­pared to ani­ma­tion from back then. But just as the early visual nov­els offered some­thing dif­fer­ent from the ani­manga medium, OELVNs have their own appeal. Yet as far as I can tell, OELVN groups haven’t made much progress at all in expand­ing over the recent years, espe­cially in com­par­i­son to vis­nov local­iza­tion com­pa­nies like Man­gagamers. Read the rest of this entry »

Menma, always there yet out of sight… [Ayazaka]

Ever won­dered what AnoHana would be like if we, the audi­ence, couldn’t see Menma either? Would we believe Jinta from the start? Would we, like the rest of the gang, feel that he was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing, stuck in the past, and slightly out of his mind? It cer­tainly would be a very dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence, watch­ing the reunion of friends unfold from the other (and major­ity) per­spec­tive. But would it still be as inter­est­ing and grip­ping? Read the rest of this entry »

Because the anime comes out this fall~ ^o^

Fate/zero is the pre­quel to the pop­u­lar visual-novel and anime Fate/stay night, tak­ing place ten years prior with Emiya Kir­it­sugu, Shirou’s adop­tive father, as the lead­ing role in yet another holy grail war, a seven-way bat­tle royale between mages and their sum­moned heroic spir­its. It is a action-packed, thrilling adven­ture, pro­pelled for­ward by the tremen­dous ide­o­log­i­cal con­flicts between its carefully-sculpted cast of char­ac­ters. Writ­ten by Urobuchi Gen (main writer for Madoka and Nitro+ works), Fate/zero not only makes a fan­tas­tic addi­tion to the exist­ing FSN saga by enhanc­ing many of its key yet once glanced-over details, but also breathes life into its own set of char­ac­ters and con­flicts, unique enough to stand out as more than just a ‘deriv­a­tive work’. Read the rest of this entry »

We all know the gen­er­al­iza­tion: that the shoujo genre is filled with sparkles, bub­bles, and chap­ters of cute and fluffy romance. Being a big fan of shoujo with strong leads, I first picked up Crim­son Empire, an Otome Game adap­ta­tion by Quin­rose (pro­duc­ers of the famous Heart no Kuni no Alice) because of an sur­pris­ing aspect: its hero­ine is an ex-assassin secu­rity guard in ser­vice to the crown prince— sure don’t see that one every day =o. Nev­er­the­less, five chap­ters of the manga did not pre­pare me for the actual game itself. Read the rest of this entry »

[I’ve real­ized this post took the nei­ther the right approach nor was writ­ten in suf­fi­cient detail to address the issue … so cur­rently in process of being re-written]

Offi­cial, there­fore clearly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing this from all those times I went on hia­tus with­out warning…

Any­how, goes until June. Read the rest of this entry »