Dragon Quest III is a simple game. You spend much of it grinding for experience and gold so that you’ll be strong enough to pass over whatever wall you’re currently stuck at (or, alternatively, you spend much of it throwing yourself against said wall until it breaks). Although you can create your own party members,… Read More The Discreet Charm of Dragon Quest III
Arcadia of My Youth is an extravagant movie. Even in a medium not particularly known for its subtlety, the thing hits all-time highs of being overwrought. It seems like it can’t go five minutes without someone making a tearful speech about not losing hope, someone making a heroic sacrifice, or a giant, aeronautically improbable space… Read More Arcadia of My Youth and the Limits of Being Cool
Urata is one of those fabled “high school transfer students” and wants to make a big impression on his first day at his new school. But he winds up getting upstaged by not one, nor two, but three other transfer students: the laid back Sakata, the flamboyant Shima and the cool and collected Senra. And… Read More First Impressions: Days of Urashimasakatasen
Sora is a newly minted highschooler whose diminutive size makes him easy pickings for bullies. But he doesn’t let this get him down, or get in the way of his passion for basketball (which, of course, turns out to be something of a family legacy). At his new high school he finds that the boy’s… Read More First Impressions: Ahiru no Sora
I decided to watch a Studio Ghibli film I hadn’t seen yet and give my first impressions of it. So I watched Howl’s Moving Castle, which had the misfortune of being released at a time when my interest in anime (and movies and television in general) were at a low ebb. It also had the… Read More A New Perspective on Howl’s Moving Castle
I’m in the middle of watching Mawaru Penguindrum, which is shaping up to be my kind of show—fantastically weird, formalist and borderline nonsensical. It centers on three orphaned siblings: Kanba, Shoma and Himari. Himari is, unfortunately, suffering from some some sort of unspecified terminal illness, which takes her life during an outing to an aquarium.… Read More Penguindrum: Destiny, or…?
These days I don’t have much time for video games, and I wonder at times if I’ll hold on to the hobby in the years to come. So I thought that now would be a good time to throw together a top ten list reminding myself of why I loved this medium in the first… Read More Josh’s Top Ten Video Games OF ALL TIME