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…
Anime Central (better known as ACen) is little over a week away, so I decided to gauge people’s excitement. I talked with some AnimeChicago members at a recent mixer about their favorite things to do at Chicago’s premier anime convention. One member, Sean, was looking forward to all the merch lining the many tables of…
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…
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…
With convention season getting into top gear, we at AnimeChicago would like to offer some advice on one of the biggest hangups that many con-goers overlook – food. As such, we’ve provided a handy strategy guide to ease your worries and streamline your choices. The Baller Strategy: Enjoy all the fine dining and expensive food…
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…
When you first join the AnimeChicago Meetup page, one of the questions you answer is, quite simply, “What is your favorite anime?” That’s a topic everyone loves to talk about at our mixers and various other social events. However, we never took a look at your responses in earnest, until now. What did you all…
We’ll continue the exploration of the monsters (in my prior article on Daikaiju Eiga), heroes, and robots that make up the cult classics referenced in many anime and tokusatsu series by diving into the kyodai hero genre. Kyodai (giant) Hero genre is the natural evolution of the idea: Who fights the giant monsters? In other…