So you’ve recently found my blog, or you’ve been here for a while and want to look at some of my past work. I understand that it can be hard to navigate through all of my posts, and plenty of my past stuff is pretty garbage, so I don’t really want anyone to read it anyway. For that reason I decided to make this post, cataloging my favorite posts and providing short descriptions of them, an idea I stole from Thoughts That Move.
Here’s how this will go. I’ll link to a post or a series of posts that I think are worth reading, and below I’ll give a short description of what the post is about and why I think it has value. The ones which I think are particularly valuable will have their titles in bold and a star next to the title. The order will be roughly chronological. Let’s get to it.
Looking at Pacing in Utawarerumono
The first blog post I ever made, this is utter trash. It’s the only one of my really old posts I’m going to highlight, and it’s only worth reading if you want to see how much better my writing is now. I can’t stand reading it myself and I don’t even agree with the opinions expressed in it anymore. Still, I figure it should be here just so it’s easy to find my first post.
Gundam Thunderbolt and a Belief in Humanity
The first post I’m even moderately proud of, which is funny since I wrote it in the middle of an English class. This post is basically a criticism of Gundam Thunderbolt, talking about how I found it too dark and lacking in hope, despite enjoying it overall. This was one of my first posts about Gundam, a series I constantly write about despite not liking that much.
Humanity and the Moonlight Butterfly in Turn A Gundam
An essay focused on the thematic implications of the Moonlight Butterfly within Turn A Gundam. I can’t say that this post is particularly well-written, but I come to what I believe is an interesting conclusion regarding Newtypes and their implication towards humanity, despite Turn A Gundam not having any Newtypes in it. Worth a read if you’ve watched the series.
★ Gundam 0080 and the Immaturity of War
This was the last Gundam post I made for almost a year, and it’s the one I’m happiest with. In this piece, I look at how war is portrayed as childish in Gundam 0080, and how the series flips the portrayal of Mobile Suits on its head. I tried to do something clever with the paragraphs that didn’t work that well, but the core content is pretty good, and it’s my first post that I still enjoy reading.
★ Departures and Separation in K-On!!
This is the first post that I think is truly great. It focuses on the conclusion to K-On!!, centering on the idea that the entire ending can be summed up by the famous quote from Romeo and Juliet, “parting is such sweet sorrow”. This is one of my best “analytical” posts, and I still think it’s great nine months later, especially since it’s about a show I really love.
Utena and Tutu: Roles and Expectations
This post compares the way social roles and fairy tales are seen in Revolutionary Girl Utena and Princess Tutu, two shows made by linked directors. It’s only readable if you’ve seen both, but I think this post is worth reading if you’ve done so because the two shows certainly share some motifs and themes while differing in their conclusions. I may revisit this at some point.
Why I Love It – Haibane Renmei’s Quiet Atmosphere
Part of my still-ongoing Why I Love It series, this piece focuses on the way Haibane Renmei’s atmosphere is cultivated and maintained. It also focuses on how the themes are connected to the atmosphere, and how it changes through the series. This is probably the first of these posts you’ll want to read unless you’re interested in my thoroughly mediocre piece on the Monogatari series.
★ Why I Love It – Shirobako’s Embrace of Anime
My favorite piece in this series so far. This post is focused on how Shirobako validates any and all forms of love for anime, and why that matters to me personally. Particularly, it looks at how the show makes it clear that old and new fans are equally valid, while also making it clear that people work on anime because they love anime, much as I write because I love writing. Watching the show to write this inspired me to put more effort into this blog, alongside my writing in general.
Nier: Automata’s Beautiful and Broken World Without Humans
Probably the best of the three Nier: Automata posts I’ve released, this one focuses on what it means to live in a world without humans. The focus is on the way in which the game refuses to give primacy to humans over our artificial counterparts, and how it often does the opposite. It’s not perfect, but it’s good if you want my thoughts on some of the game’s themes, and don’t want to wait until I write a better piece.
★ Why Spoilers Don’t Matter and Hurt the Anime Community
A polemic against those who worry about spoilers, this post was a bit of a response to another piece by Thoughts That Move. I come across as a bit more aggressively pro-spoilers than I really am in this essay, but it does a great job at getting to the heart of why I don’t mind spoilers and why I think it would help if the same were true for everyone.
ACCA, Youjo Senki, and Politics in Anime
I think this piece was criminally underviewed, though it came before I started growing exponentially. As the title claims, I use ACCA and Youjo Senki to compare how politics are treated in anime. Unless you’re heavily against spoilers, this is readable even if you haven’t seen the shows, and I think my points are valid if underdeveloped.
★ My Shifting Perception of Serial Experiments Lain
My most personal post at the point when it was written, this detailed my history with the internet and how changing circumstances in my life changed the way I saw Lain. The show itself gets covered but I am the subject here, so if you’re looking for analysis look elsewhere. Still, I think this is one of my most well-written pieces and it’s worth reading.
The Trouble with Focusing on Media in the Digital Age
The immediate follow-up to the Lain post, this covers the ways in which constant access to technology has eroded my attention span, making it clear how that has hurt me. With help from Thoughts That Move this post got fairly popular, helping me to expand a ton over the last month, though the feelings in this piece are already a bit dated.
Why There Isn’t Enough Yuri Anime
The start of my currently popular Yearning for Yuri series. This is worth reading as a very brief explanation of why yuri anime isn’t prevalent, before launching into a series that focuses primarily on recommending yuri and yuri-adjacent manga. I think everything in this series is worth reading so far, but this is the starting point.
★ Iyashikei, the Genre of Healing: An Attempt at a Definition
My most ambitious post, here I attempt to describe the iyashikei genre, using numerous examples to demonstrate what makes shows count as iyashikei. Inspired by research on iyashikei novels, this piece looks at the aesthetics of the genre, talking heavily about the Japanese aesthetic known as mono no aware. Near the end, I go into questions about the nature of genres, but this piece primarily serves as an educational tool.
Path of the Red Comet – A Look at the Son of Zeon, Char Aznable
A return at long last to my Gundam posts, this one is exactly what the title says, spending a lengthy amount of time looking at what I believe to be one of anime’s best characters. This piece serves as a place to end off my Early UC writings if I decided to stop here, though I think it’s likely I’ll write more about that time period in the future.
August 9th Update
Why I Love It – Kyousougiga and the Power of Love
My final analytical post for almost two months, this one focused on looking at the various ways Kyousougiga uses love to tell its story, specifically its use of familial love as opposed to romantic love. It rambles a little and I repeat the point a bit too much, but overall I think it’s a good look at why the show is powerful to me.
How Much Should I Care About Views?
Written about a month after I started growing and making a bit of a name for myself, this post detailed my compulsion to constantly check my viewcount, and the anxiety that doing so caused. This was written at a time where I was doing nothing in life other than managing the blog, so it’s a bit alarmist but most of its points still stand.
★What Value does Yuri Subtext have in Anime?
A look at that ever-present feature of anime and manga: yuri subtext. Here I look at the various types of subtext with examples while also questioning why subtext is so prevalent compared to text. I finish the post by detailing my own feelings on our need for subtext in spite of its inadequacy.
YouTubers and Bloggers Should Interact More
A plea for more interaction within the anime community, especially between YouTubers and bloggers. More specifically, I call for this interaction to take place outside of twitter, where it won’t be seen by the majority of the community. This is part of a broader idea I have of fostering a community dedicated to expanding everyone’s understanding of anime.
★The Lack of Info on Anime is Infuriating
Following in the same vein as my post on interaction, this piece complains about how hard it is to find reliable info on anime. In it I plea for more centralized databases of anime knowledge, as well as more people who are willing to search out the info we need. Again, this is part of a broader desire I have for a knowledge-focused anime community, though it’s also a post that came about when I was frustrated over the difficulty in researching Ikuhara.
Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is about Fake Heroes, but it Shows Real Heroism
My first analytical post in two months, this piece tackled the Summer 2017 anime Action Heroine Cheer Fruits, an under-watched favorite of mine. In it, I describe the ways in which it uses its tokusatsu premise in order to demonstrate real heroism. At the same time, this post exists in order to spur people into watching a show which I really like.
That’s the end for now, but this post will be updated as I write more stuff that I think is worth putting on here. This post is primarily for new readers so it’ll be stickied and/or linked at the top. Hope you enjoyed anything you found from here.
Floating into Bliss 