"Body swap" stories have made the rounds dozens times. Its ilk of well-worn and seemingly-predictable contrivances are what can make subversions so very very fun.

Monogatari is fairly hard to recommend out-of-hand. It’s also not-so-secretly a personal favorite of mine. It has a broad and well-balanced cast, every single episode is a visual treat, and in retrospect the anime is possibly the most one-to-one adaptation of a source material I’ve ever seen that still manages to take advantage of its new medium. How those three things in particular reinforce one another is what makes Monogatari grab you and never let go.

There is, to understate it, a mile-long list of various problems with the way that anime and manga tend to portray relationships.

I find it strange how little I remember about Hamtaro. So, being a millennial, I went to see if I could stream a few episodes somewhere to jog my memory. I had no such luck.

It’s quite rare that I proceed into a game, movie, series, or any other work of fiction not knowing much. I lucked out in that, all I really knew about Kokoro Connect at the time was that people tended to like it.

Just like what seems like everyone who even remotely keeps up with modern anime releases, I’ve had an eye on the runaway success that is [Boku no | My Hero] Academia. You come for the flashy action and cool character designs, you stick around because the cast is so gosh-darn endearing.

FLCL is available to stream on Funimation/VRV and Hulu. I get really excited whenever I see a show with only eleven episodes in its season. Not because that makes it faster to get through my long backlog of the many great and wonderful things being made these days. (Granted, that's definitely a mark in favor …

Continue reading FLCL and Breaking Format

There have been an awful lot of anime films getting limited runs in theaters just this summer. Fireworks got a bit lost in the shuffle, and that's a shame, because while it's a bit of a mixed bag taken as a whole, there are a few aspects of this movie that really sparkle.

And with a jump of platform, shows can now get away with runtimes that don't fit the standard TV broadcast format. In fact, sometimes that's exactly what I want as a little breather.

Anime is in a bit of a production boom at the moment, so as you might imagine, concepts can get really creative in an effort to stand out from the crowd. Like extracurricular choir.

I love Claymore so very very much. But probably I won't ever own it.