Blog Archives
Some Concrete Revolutio-related Stuff + I’m Hiring!
First off, I recently collaborated on a post with my friend iblessall about the official English translations of the Concrete Revolutio anime. Please check it out on Mage in a Barrel!
Speaking of Concrete Revolutio, lately I’ve been translating some of the interviews and commentary posted on the official website. I’ve been doing it on and off in my spare time, so it’s gonna take a while before I finish translating everything, but I’m super stoked about this anime and I hope it lives on as a cult classic. A few weeks ago, I translated some commentary by the director and scriptwriter, which I hope you find interesting!
I’m also hoping to write some articles in the future about the cultural history of kaiju movies, tokusatsu, magical girls and some of the other motifs used in Concrete Revolutio. I hope this will be of interest even to people who haven’t watched or didn’t enjoy the anime. That said, this will require lots of independent research and some rewatching of Concrete Revolutio, so I plan to take my time with this little project.
In other news, I’m hiring a social media coordinator! I’m also giving away a free 20% discount voucher for Madman’s online shop. Details below the cut!
Applications are now closed. Thanks very much to everyone who applied!
Froggy’s Top 5 Anime of 2013
To entice you to read this post, here is a picture of two guys kissing from one of my favourite shows.
The Best Anime of 2013?
For the final day of anime blogging before Christmas, I thought it would be a great idea to be one of the cool kids and do a podcast. And because my bestest friends in this world are 2D, what better company to do a podcast with than anime characters?
Today’s podcast brings together the cast of Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai and Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru, where they’ll be discussing the best and worst anime of 2013.
Note: There’s no audio. It’s just a transcript. Sorry.
What’s With All the Sisconning in Kyoukai no Kanata?
And now for something completely different.
It really says something about how inundated anime viewers these days are with “siscon” jokes that no one bats an eyelid at how overtly Hiromi fetishises his own little sister in Kyoukai no Kanata. It’s just an anime thing, not something to be taken too seriously. And Hiromi’s little sister complex is probably one of the funnier recurring gags in the series.
But when you step outside of looking at Kyoukai no Kanata through the perspective of an anime viewer and just look at the narrative as it stands, what is Kyoukai no Kanata actually trying to say about Hiromi by characterising him as a siscon?
The answer is quite interesting.
Kuriyama Mirai Complains On My Blog
Because Froggy is away in the Philippines, twelve guest writers will be blogging about anime and/or Christmas. Today’s guest writer is Kuriyama Mirai from Kyoukai no Kanata, a Spirit World Warrior and an avid blogger.
A Study of Japanese Anibloggers: #1 Uozanankyoku [NSFW]
One of the things that’s always escaped me is what Japanese people think of Japanese anime. Looking at the sales figures provides you with some measure of an average Japanese anime fan’s taste, but what about their first-hand reactions? People generally know about 2ch, but what about the Japanese aniblogsphere? Do they have a comparable blogging culture to ours, with there being a general (though somewhat skewed) perception of “blogger = elitist/critic/hipster/etc.”?
As of now, I’ve only just skimmed the surface of the Japanese aniblogsphere, but the early returns suggest to me that their blogsphere has evolved in an entirely different way from ours. English aniblogging is a niche over here, with a small number of bloggers holding a large amount of sway over a relatively closed community. The Japanese blogsphere, meanwhile, is huge. Compare the scale of their aniblog directory to Anime Nano and you’ll see that blogging for them is a rather established thing. The blogs are even being ranked in terms of some kind of arbitrary scale that I have not quite worked out yet.
Naturally, this suggests that the Japanese blogsphere is more likely to represent the mainstream Japanese fan’s opinion than that of a “snob”.
In this sporadic series of posts, I’ll introduce you to a Japanese aniblogger’s website, tell you about their tastes from what they’ve written about themselves and then translate one post which I feel is representative of their writing style.
First up: Uozanankyoku from To Love Ru Love. As you might be able to guess, he likes To Love-Ru.