Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is, as the absurd title implies, generally a fairly lighthearted show. So I was quite surprised when it abruptly featured an arc dealing with sex trafficking. I appreciated the unambiguously evil portrayal ofthe goddess Ishtar and her chief pimp Phryne. The show clearly… Read More Bell’s Heroic Love (in a Dungeon?)
Stories of love and grace are timeless. From real stories of extraordinary forgiveness to fictional examples, these tales intrigue and inspire us. They serve as great reminders that as we falter and fail, there is someone greater who grants us grace. Boys Over Flowers and Boys Over Flowers Season 2 both introduce us to poor… Read More Newman’s Nook: Grace over Flowers
When Soma Kisa is introduced in Fruits Basket, she has been facing bullying and, traumatized by the situation, stopped speaking. She also quit going to school, and so eventually she receives a letter from her teacher asking her to come back. Fortunately for the audience, we have Soma Hatsuharu and Soma Yuki around to read… Read More Finding Love in the Face of Self-Loathing
*Warning: presumptive spoilers for a future season of Sword Art Online Alicization* Lingering the background of Sword Art Online Alicization has been the question of the nature of the soul. Early in the anime, the story established that scientists had narrowed down the soul’s nature to a light-based phenomenon they call a fluctlight. These fluctlights… Read More Love Versus Materialism in Sword Art Online Alicization
What makes Fruits Basket such a special series? There are a lot of reasons, actually, but one is how it so clearly gets to the very center of love—what it is, what it is not, and what it should be. Episode eight presents a very good picture of that as it defines love this way:… Read More Fruits Basket Episode 8 and a Simple Definition of Love
TWWK: You’ve surely seen many of of the wonderful guest contributions by Jeskai Angel here in recent months—so many that he seems to be part of our regular staff! Well, we’ve remedied that inconsistently by bringing Jeskai Angel on as a member of our staff! He’ll be joining our light novel club and contributing other… Read More On Love
Most relationships we’ll have in life are temporary—impermanent and fleeting. We’re separated from friends, acquaintances, and colleagues by life changes, job offers, tragedy, and barriers that we sometimes raise ourselves. Makoto Shinkai, the famed animator, explores the ideas of distance and separation in all of his films, usually with a trace of sadness if not… Read More A Garden of Words in the Journey of Your Life
Fireworks, the anime film from Shaft and the studio’s acclaimed director, Akiyuki Shinbo, is beautiful and, like its namesake, sparkly, but has also been much derided. The characters come off as flat, the animation is uneven, and the writing is disjointed. The ending, too, has come under criticism, though I think that may be unfair.… Read More Fireworks Shows Us That Love Conquers Fear
While Amazon Prime doesn’t often have new anime that interest me, a couple have come along lately. The only one that blew my mind was Made in Abyss, which I regrettably have yet to write about. The other one that I enjoyed was Wotakoi: Love Is Hard For Otaku, which is about the intricacies of two people at work who… Read More Wotakoi: Love Is Hard For Christian Otaku
Well, it happened. Like the original series, Steins;gate 0 has been on a steady rise, getting a little more heartbreaking each episode, a little more uncomfortable, a little more edge-of-your-seat, but never really slamming me with the feels—not until now that is. Episode eight does it. Boy does it do it. Warning: spoilers ahead for… Read More Kurisu and the Credit I’m Due