Eyes Peeled As diverse as the genres are that embody the anime landscape, so too are the viewing patterns of anime fans as they engage with the medium. Although technology and availability has shaped and ultimately eased the pathways to viewing anime works, the overall habits of those fans remain roughly the same. While some…
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been going through the ever-changing tastes of an anime fan. Part 2, released last week, covered the majority of anime fans. In that article, I talked about how the majority of anime fans are Level 1s and 2s – those who build their tastes around genres, subgenres, and ultimately…
Finding your anime tastes is quite the journey for any fan. Last week, I discussed the very beginnings of an anime fan. I looked at how their tastes are shaped mostly by outside influences and only know one thing: that anime is different than other mediums, which they prefer over those mediums. I gave this…
Finding your tastes in anime is an evolutionary process that develops over the course of many years and is the culmination of everything you’ve watched, the opinions of the people around you, and the general cultural zeitgeist. As an anime fan for almost 20 years, I’ve gone through this process and I’ve seen others make…
If there is a greater window into the Japanese psyche than anime, I have yet to find it. Anime has always been about people and worlds. It includes vastly different kinds of people, all of them distinctly Japanese. Throughout my journey of watching anime, I’ve seen different kinds of characters emerge, and their patterns of…
While going through a back catalog of shows I overlooked in 2017, I still feel like kicking myself for ever passing up on Houseki no Kuni, otherwise known as The Land of the Lustrous. The first official animated series by Studio Orange, The Land of the Lustrous is not only an impressive step towards three-dimensional computer…
How we used to watch anime There’s never been a better time to watch anime than right now. Fans of the 70s and 80s had to “know a guy” with VHS copies and fan scripts to get their fix. Imagine if you had to glance offscreen for your subtitle. Yes, it’s that bad. DVD volumes…
Hi, I’m Marvin. I work as a developer for an online media company. I was about 5 years old when I started watching anime (Ranma 1/2 is my earliest memory). Nothing gives me any authority to write about Japanese animation. Actively watching shows for all these years is not a qualifier – it just labels…
Because Mari Ijima made a concert appearance at the Japan Festival in Arlington Heights this year, it seems like a good time to look at the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series. Although slightly less popular in Japan than other mainstays such as Mobile Suit Gundam, Macross attained a cult following in the U.S. due…
As caveat, we will be exploring anime and manga from a Western perspective and this small summary is by no means a complete history of either medium. Early History: Woodblock Prints and The Japan Punch As a traditionally pictorial-centric country, as evidenced by the use of images in early Edo period (1600-1868) scrolls and Zen cartoons…