If there’s one arche­type peo­ple fall back far too eas­ily into, it’s the tsun­dere. But really, this per­son­al­ity attribute is nei­ther that sim­ple nor cheap…

[Sora]

Since my post on explain­ing the real life psy­chol­ogy of yan­deres, I’ve been on the hunt for a rec­og­nized psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der that would clas­sify the tsun­dere. Unfor­tu­nately, no such con­ve­nience seems to exist, and while the tsun­dere may be the most overused anime char­ac­ter arche­type of recent years, it is also com­plex enough that few series have truly done it jus­tice. Read the rest of this entry »

Wayyyy too many series to watch >.< [mosu]

Fall anime is usu­ally the best dur­ing the year, and fall 2010 is just spetac­u­lar; def­i­nitely the best since the leg­endary fall 2008 sea­son. In prepa­ra­tion for the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia anime club pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cus­sion, we (Aorii [Major Arcana] and Honya [Lyri­cal Spark]) have decided to join up for a pre­view post~ (if you have an anime club you should totally do this). Charts here and here. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to become an ally of justice…

In any other local­iza­tion, Emiya Shirou’s wishes would prob­a­bly have been trans­lated to ‘hero of jus­tice’. But Nasu­verse has made it remark­ably appro­pri­ate not to do so. Fate/stay night has already approached the ques­tion of ‘what makes a hero’ from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, from the ide­al­ized (Unlim­ited Blade Works) to the per­sonal (Heaven’s Feel). Yet as Fate/stay night mixes the Black & White of mod­ern hero­ism, the tragic and cyn­i­cal nature of Fate/zero takes it up even another notch:

True jus­tice may be heroic, but it was far too inhu­mane for heroes. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a thin yet sub­stan­tial line between the roman­ti­za­tion of a war­rior and the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of war.

Death and car­nage, atroc­i­ties and destruc­tion, wars are never desir­able, and fic­tional heroes are always seek­ing to end wars and bring peace. Yet at the same time, the tra­di­tional roman­ti­za­tion of a war­rior, from Sen­goku to Three King­doms, from Val­halla to Camelot, will always paint them as eager for com­bat. As Rein­hardt and Ruen­thal real­izes in Leg­end of the Galac­tic Heroes, true sol­diers by nature are drawn to the call of bat­tle, that they would never feel sat­is­fac­tion within an era of peace. But there is a huge dif­fer­ence between that and war­mon­ger­ing. It may seem like a minor dis­tinc­tion, but eager­ness to fight and will­ing­ness to kill are com­pletely dif­fer­ent things, and our Sen­goku heroes are any­thing but blood-seeking war-addicts. Read the rest of this entry »

Mecha has been an insep­a­ra­ble part of anime cul­ture ever since Mobile Suit Gun­dam inspired the first gen­er­a­tion of Otaku. But while I’ve met a lot of mecha fans over the years, most of them are under the impres­sion that there is no prac­ti­cal rea­son to have mecha — that it’s purely a mat­ter of look­ing cool, and mecha chang­ing the future of war­fare was merely a fan­dom dream. I blame this as amongst the rea­sons why mecha design in many recent series has been stray­ing more and more from main­tain­ing a degree of semi-realism (just com­pare Gundam00’s against the original’s). The Rule of Cool goes a long way, but it’s always nice when you don’t have to shut off half the brain to love the cool factor.

But is there a rea­son to have mecha? Even the fin­gered hands and human pro­por­tions of Japan­ese mecha? It might still be a sci­ence fic­tion fan­tasy due to the cur­rent imper­fec­tion of gyrosta­bi­liz­ers, but mechas do make actual sense. And with the right tech­nolo­gies, they really could change the future of war. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite events dur­ing any con­ven­tion; even for Otakon where I had to wait an hour in line, but it was still well worth it~. So, in the spirit of shar­ing, I did my best in hunt­ing down the videos in ques­tion but there are still some miss­ing from this list >.< The bal­lot (here) won’t mat­ter any­more though except as a reference.

And now a word from our spon­sors by Scin­tilla (Con­test 1st Place) [Down­load]
Anime: Var­i­ous, but heav­ily Code Geass
Song: “Burger Dance (Inter­na­tional Remix)” by DJ Otzi

Not sur­pris­ingly, this took first place in the AMV con­test ~ the com­edy sec­tion always did have the best stuff. I was lit­er­ally laugh­ing my tears our for min­utes on this one, not to men­tion the inclu­sion of one scene that will never be unseen (~2:20, it’ll be thought of every time you see Hare Hare Yukai from now on xD). Read the rest of this entry »

With its alter­na­tive his­tory plot­line drawn out of a 3D beat ‘em up video game, Sen­goku Basara was never meant to be either seri­ous or deep. Most peo­ple just watch it for the amuse­ment from the out­right ridicu­lous yet awe­some acts its char­ac­ters get involved in, whether it be stand­ing on horses as they run up walls or sum­mon beams of light to shine down from the sky. But while Sen­goku Basara focuses on sheer enter­tain­ment from its impos­si­ble actions, from exag­ger­ated mar­tial destruc­tion to all the tools and cus­toms that sim­ply didn’t exist back in the day, a lot of it is… well, sur­pris­ingly ‘rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ to his­tory fact. Read the rest of this entry »

It doesn’t take long for most vis­i­tors to my blog to notice the tarot theme; although it should be noted that while ‘tarot’ is com­monly mis­con­strued as syn­ony­mous to Major Arcana, the 22 card Major Arcana is merely part of the tarot, fol­lowed by the 56 card Minor Arcana that is roughly the equiv­a­lent of today’s nor­mal play­ing cards (just swap the Page & Knight for Jack). But there’s no doubt that the Major Arcana is the far more pow­er­ful suit within the tarot, and while most peo­ple rec­og­nize the Major Arcana as only a medium of for­tune telling, its use as a div­ina­tion tool is merely a lim­ited pre­sen­ta­tion of the arcana’s true potential:

The Major Arcana is the card suit of life. Read the rest of this entry »