When I’m not writing here or at my regular gigs (or ghostwriting/editing all over the place), I teach educational theater. One of my favorite subjects to study and explore with students is Shakespeare. There’s a beauty and magic to his…
I find myself revisiting the Death Note anime a lot more than I thought I would. The visual style is fascinating. The slow pace makes for some strong suspense. Even with some of the blatantly bad choices (cough potato chip),…
I’ve spent more time covering male-targeted anime than female targeted anime at Sketchy Details. The plain truth is that more shonen titles get released in America and impact the way anime and manga are talked about stateside. The beauty of…
One thing that fascinates me about anime culture is the heavy emphasis on music. Shows have so much music to pull from that Japanese theater companies are able to license titles for stage adaptations and use a lot of the…
A special school exists for strong and talented students. It is the Death Weapon Meister Academy. Students are paired up into field-ready combat teams to hunt and capture evil souls. One student acts as a meister, the weapon master, and…
Click the pictures full size images in this post. It’s a lot of black and white manga art and the details are too fine to make out at the smaller size. Manga is read right to left. Imagine you’re back…
I originally published this piece in October and I still like it a lot. Elfen Lied is a very rich anime to write about. There are so many ways to approach the sci-fi/horror about the abuse and enslavement of an alternate strain of human evolution. It’s a great, mature anime that I enjoy revisiting every few months.
Remember when that short animation test of a swim team anime became so popular the animators actually got the series picked up? There’s another animation team attempting the same trick with social media. The difference is that they created an OVA (original video animation) pilot for a series that doesn’t exist yet.
It’s called Little Witch Academia and it’s cute. It’s like the Harry Potter series with a female lead and all the quirks of super cute anime. The style is quite lovely with really expressive characters and a strong world.
You can watch the full episode below.
It’s very telling that the first panel I knew I absolutely had to see at Quinni-Con 2013 was called The Philosophy of Pokemon. If you’ve read my work for any period of time, you’ve realized by now that I like…
Gantz is a hyper-violent anime, adapted from an even more outrageous manga, that posits a very unusual interpretation of the afterlife. Imagine if you didn’t actually die at the exact moment your body dies. Instead of being done with the…
At Quinni-Con 2013, voice actor/director Chris Cason ran a lot of panel about how anime is dubbed and released in the US. He works full time for Funimation, one of my favorite distributors. The panel I was able to catch…
At Quinni-Con 2013, there was a variety of panels about the process of creating anime. From drawing the art to casting voice actors for the US dub, the traditional aspects of the popular medium were well-covered. Quinni-Con also hosted a…
There are a lot of Pokemon webcomics out there. Rare Candy Treatment examines the odd quirks of the Pokemon universe. Super Effective is a slapstick reimagining of the manga, complete with black and white tones. Nuzlocke’s Hard Mode brings an…
At Quinni-Con 2013, 11 costumed contestants took to the stage to compete in a send-up of the US electoral system called Cosplay Candidate. The host, A Count Named Slick-Brass, was serious from the start, eliminating one candidate before she even…