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 »

You killed me didn’t you!!!

I’m nei­ther a Noit­a­m­ina fan nor typ­i­cally have any inter­est in mystery/horror (too creepy!), but I’m quite impressed by this first episode. Given that this is Fuyumi Ono, the writer of Twelve King­doms (and Ghost Hunt), the expo­si­tion is expected to take some time before we catch the main plot. But in the mean­time, they cer­tainly know how to set up the atmos­phere and back­ground well~! Read the rest of this entry »

Ookami-san comes as a mixed bag for me: there’s the col­lapse of the fourth wall from repeated glares, the fairy-tale nar­ra­tion of the obvi­ous which only bores its tar­get audi­ence age, the narrator-explained force­ful humor, the already repeat­ing jokes… but the scopopho­bic Ryoushi does ride on the suc­cess of the Work­ing!!‘s Inami, and under the mighty glares of Ryouko, his deter­mi­na­tion just might blos­som to great rela­tion­ship devel­op­ment~ add a refresh­ingly rare first-episode con­fes­sion from the guy in a seinen series and I’ve found a great Sum­mer ship­ping already~

But Ookami-san is a fairy tale par­ody, and Cin­derella shoe kick-fitting put aside, the cast’s list of names and its folk­lore con­nec­tion is what I thought was most inter­est­ing dur­ing the expo­si­tions. Read the rest of this entry »

A story of war between a poor girl and the upper class

The damsel in dis­tress is an overused lit­er­ary cliche. It annoys a lot of peo­ple, espe­cially in the shoujo genre, where a heroine’s need to be pro­tected by the ‘stronger male’ draws all kind of venom from read­ers. Stamp­ing it as gen­der stereo­typ­ing, read­ers look toward the other side of the fence, putting the spot­light on the inde­pen­dent and badass hero­ines of shounen/seinen as ‘true strength’. There is some valid­ity to that, but I’m far from agreement.

The ban­ner for my Strength Arcana card high­lights my beliefs quite well: “Per­fec­tion is a State of Mind.” Read the rest of this entry »

My time at the Aniblog Tour­ney was deci­sively ended (23/77 ouch); well, I had known I stood no chance against the mega­lo­cor­po­ra­tion led by the pointy-haired trap Impz over at THAT Anime Blog, but they deserve the win fully and even I was tempted to vote for them xD. Nev­er­the­less, I was pleas­antly sur­prised I made it all the way to round 4 given my noob sta­tus. A big thank you to every­one who voted for me \o/. But instead of giv­ing any lec­tures today, I need to ram­ble… Read the rest of this entry »

[ azumi ichiju＠tsuitta ]

Angel Beats! was a lot of things. It had an ambi­tious goal, striv­ing to present the many aspects of life within the short span of thir­teen episodes. It tried to be deep and philo­soph­i­cal, yet couldn’t put forth the time and focus. It attempted to be log­i­cally con­sis­tent, even though the set­ting had lit­tle of it to begin with. I could lit­er­ally pick it apart from its sto­ry­writ­ing flaws. But… Maeda Jun had set out to bring us life in under five hours of screen­time, and his work gave us joy, laugh­ter, and tears from so many per­spec­tives. It brought such an enjoy­able time while pre­sent­ing one beau­ti­fully touch­ing scene after another, all of them cumu­lat­ing towards a breath­tak­ing cli­matic con­clu­sion… what­ever its flaws are; I loved this show. Read the rest of this entry »

The shoujo com­edy genre is mostly known for its flow­ers, sparkles, and sug­ary bub­bles, so for the longest time I couldn’t under­stand the use of orga­nized crime as a premise within shoujo com­edy (shoujo smut is a dif­fer­ent story). Out­side the whole ‘bad boy’ image, what’s so great about get­ting deeply involved with a pack of uncouth and rough-looking thugs, espe­cially given the social stigma and the pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting involved in their gang wars?

Well, Ban­cho pol­i­ticks aside, Arakure (or Wild Ones as Viz Media calls it; no clue) sure taught me that I’ve never paid atten­tion to the Japan­ese Roman­ti­ciza­tion of Yakuza. While Arakure mostly avoids the ‘crime’ part, it really high­lights the beau­ti­ful ide­al­ism sur­round­ing them, from the broth­erly love to their ver­sion of chivalry; plus, the Yakuza humor is just hilar­i­ous. Read the rest of this entry »

[ 7D ]

Last time I posted how Angel Beats is about life: its spon­tane­ity, its incon­sis­tency, yet also its radi­ance and its pre­cious­ness. But as Myst­lord notes, the cast is stuck into a world that does not progress, where they can nei­ther die nor grow; where every­thing is kept inside an ideal school par­adise, shel­tered from the respon­si­bil­i­ties and pres­sure of real soci­ety. Isn’t it naive to por­tray life through a com­pletely sur­real imi­ta­tion of the real thing?

But the premises are con­trast­ing, and this per­fect exis­tence within Angel Beats is bal­anced against the dark­ness of its char­ac­ter back­grounds. Already bur­dened by the worst of life, the cast rests within this sanc­tu­ary to redis­cover the joy­ous beats of their souls. Yet just as the ward must even­tu­ally send its patients (back) into real­ity, the world of Angel Beats is also com­ing to per­suade its lin­ger­ing inhab­i­tants back out — rather force­fully so. Read the rest of this entry »