When I first heard about Yugioh in the 90s, I thought it was a ridiculous concept. It seemed like the worst kind of commercialism. It pandered to children. It was an anime and manga series designed to promote a real…
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),…
Ico is an adventure game for the PS2 (and available for the PS3 in the amazing Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection) from Japan. You play as Ico, a young boy left to die in an elaborate temple because…
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…
The theme for Foreign Chops #12 at The LAMB is Mexico. I wanted to choose another theme with a lot of titles available to stream online. I exceeded my expectations with this one. Between Netflix Instant and Hulu Plus, there…
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 think it’s pretty safe to say that a trio of drag queens are now some of the sharpest musicians around, YouTube or not. Willam, Detox, and Vicky Vox broke out last year with their scathing parody of Chick-Fil-A’s anti-LGBT policies in “Chow Down (At Chick-Fil-A).” Then they went for pure laughs with the considerably more NSFW “Boy Is a Bottom,” a parody of “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keyes.
Their third single is their best yet. It’s a darkly humorous tribute to black market silicone injections set to Robyn’s amazing song “Dancing On My Own.” “Silicone” is also a succinct and effective take down of critics who spoke out against Detox for discussing all of her plastic surgery on RuPaul’s Drag Race this season. The arrangement really shows off Detox’s style and the group’s strong harmonies. I, for one, can’t wait for the Willam, Detox, and Vicky Vox album.
Check out the NSFW track.
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…