Anime

On Self-Love: Sanrio Boys and Yuru Camp Bucking Societal Norms

generaltofu 1 Comment

The Winter 2018 season was, in many ways, a genuine surprise, primarily so because of the sheer volume of genuinely solid shows that were offered in this first bit of the year. What has surprised me beyond this, however, is that not only did we have a number of shows that I am already seeing as possible contenders for anime of the year, but a number of shows, to my surprise, made some concerted pushes in terms of working to buck some norms (or at least attempting to do so) that are fairly present within the general sphere of seasonal anime. For this season in particular, one theme that stood out to me has been that of self-love/self-acceptance, and this came to me most notably while watching Yuru Camp and Sanrio Boys.

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Log Time Podcast #30 | Mawaru Penguindrum Discussion — Initiate the Survival Strategy

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This week, we talk about some of the craziness of Mawaru Penguindrum.

Join us as we talk about child broilers, the symbolic representation of penguins, how moray eels can represent our inner feelings of fear, and what those subway trains and “95” may actually mean within the show.

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

UPDATE: We do apologize that the future podcasts will not be in the same detailed video formats as the previous ones. The picture in picture version of the podcast just takes too much time for the time being, and we’ve decided to take a hiatus from doing it this way. We hope you still continue to listen to us and encourage others to do so as well!

This podcast was recorded December 9th, 2017.

Fanservice and Differing Opinions

Selie 10 Comments

I will go ahead and state that this is a rant piece so I apologize in advance.  While everything I write for this blog is from my own perspective, this is going to be a very opinionated article about my personal feelings on this subject.  However, I wanted to share this as I thought it might be an interesting read and it was also incredibly cathartic to me to get this out of my head and onto metaphorical paper.

Recently I noticed someone say on Twitter something that caught my interest.

GrossAndIncorrect

This thread went on for some time, everyone in agreement, and eventually led to:GrossAndIncorrect1

The first thing that struck me about this is that fanservice is not a genre of anime, or a genre at all for the matter.  It’s a method of direction and writing to entice people. It’s using tried and true methods to appeal to what the audience likes in order to keep them invested or liking the show.  Usually, this is adding sexualization into the show but this isn’t the only way to use fanservice, as just as easily, the creators could suddenly bring a fan favorite character seemingly back to life for a shocking twist.

However, these ideas can be done in any show, fantasy, sci-fi, slice-of-life, etc. Regardless of genre, anything can have fanservice in it. A Certain Scientific Railgun has multiple bathing/bathing suit scenes but they’re far and few between and I certainly wouldn’t classify it as a “fanservice show”.  It’s way more focused on cute girls doing awesome psychic action things. Kobayashi-san has several bits involving sexual humor and Quetzalcoatl is almost a literal running boob joke.  However, I’d never call Kobayashi-san just a “fanservice” show.  It has fanservice, sure, but it’s a slice-of-life comedy about a gay couple and dragons, blending comedy and sincere moments to hit on deeper ideas about love, relationships, and family.  The fanservice is just an element of the show.

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[Season Sampler] Umamusume: Pretty Derby 1+2 — Just Another Day at the Races

Owningmatt93 4 Comments

While we as a community are still wrapping up from the absolute craziness of the Winter season and its amount of just amazing shows, the spring season just comes in like a lion right after in another feeble attempt to create after-season/pre-season chaos amidst all the shows that are being talked about at once. One of these new spring shows, which I’m sure you’ve seen countless pictures of at this point, is Umamusume: Pretty Derby, an anime about girls that are also horses, but also idols.

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March 2018 Monthly Content Round-up

thebackloggers 3 Comments

Here in the continental United States (at least on the east coast), March has been a pretty frigid, unpredictable season for us. However, it seems that the Aniblogger community has been heating things up to balance that out this month! We’ve got some hot posts about topics from all across the board, it seems, ranging from this season’s big picks like Violet Evergarden and Yuru Camp, to a postmortem for musical group Kalafina, to some important, current discussions about our larger anime community as a whole, and how we can look to shape ourselves and our perspectives going forward. There’s a little something for everyone here, so stay a while, check out our picks for the month, and hopefully find something that speaks to you!

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Violet Evergarden 9+10 – Loss and Learning to Heal

Selie 1 Comment

Episode nine was what this whole series up to this point has been building to and honestly, had they wanted to make a shorter series, they could have cut it right here and have had in my opinion one of the best endings of the season, possibly of the past few years.  For all of those who may have dropped the show because of the pacing, I ask to please reconsider as episodes 7-9 were exactly what you were waiting for, but they wouldn’t have worked nearly as well without the rest of it. The slow burn up to this point and the character and world-building are what enabled this midseason segment to work so well.  To those that were on the fence or those that had written this show off earlier I personally will vouch that this is the proof that it all does pay off and does so beautifully. Because of this, I’ll be interested in seeing what they do in order to continue this onward and what they plan to do for the actual ending, given how final and amazing episode nine was.

Screenshot 2018-03-25 at 11.55.32 PM.png

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Violet Evergarden 7+8 – In the Grasp of Loss

generaltofu 1 Comment

It is fairly easy to say that, up until this point, Violet Evergarden has been fairly single-minded in its approach to the conveyance of its narrative, plot direction, and character development. Though episodes three through six have very much contained their own interesting, well-detailed vignettes that feel quite distinct from one another, they have invariably followed, to some degree, a formula of sorts for each episode. Through the course of each story, we follow a side character who initially misunderstands Violet, learns more about her, and feels they understand her a bit better by the end of the episode, and during this period of time, Violet comes to understand an emotion that had previously been inaccessible or unknown to her. Beyond that, while there have been a small number of deviations from the standard course of the show thus far, Violet Evergarden has stayed the course in keeping with its low-key, slow-burn delivery of its tale to us. Episodes seven and eight change that.

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Violet Evergarden 5+6 — In the Eye of the Beholder

Owningmatt93 1 Comment

Violet Evergarden is one of these shows that I feel at odds with when trying to discuss, as I feel while there’s so many good things to say about the series and how much I enjoy it and what it does, there’s an equal amount of criticisms I have for the show, yet it never detracts from my enjoyment of the show as I’m watching. It’s a complicated feeling for me, as I do deeply enjoy the show, but at the same time, cannot bring myself to call the show anything more than “good” as I’m watching it. I feel there’s plenty more the series could do with itself than the story is showing me at this moment. “Why is that?” is always what I ask myself in these scenarios, and I think episodes 5 and 6 are perfect to discuss why I both love this series and also feel like it could improve upon itself.

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February 2018 Monthly Content Round-up

thebackloggers 3 Comments

The season of love has come and gone but if you need a little more or just a distraction from the constant Valentine’s memes, here’s some sweet articles to keep ya.  They’re not exactly hand-made, but they were hand-picked in order to give a taste of some high quality content of the month!  This is our gift to you guys and I hope to see some awesome White Day gifts of awesome content in return this coming month!  Here’s to another great month of anime and a very good community for it.  Now, how ‘bout we open this gift up?

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Log Time General Podcast #12 | Beginning of Winter 2018 — Winter’s Laid-Back Anime

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We bust out of the beginning of the Winter 2018 season with some ridiculously solid shows to help us start the year out right. We all pretty much melt over the sheer level of comfy coming from shows like Yuru Camp and Hakumei to Mikochi, we get into the fascinating but puzzling A-1/Trigger collaboration Darling in the Franxx, discuss our hopes and fears about Violet Evergarden, and almost pass out because we had so many dang good shows to talk about this season.

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

This podcast was recorded on January 26th, 2018.