Category: Anime

My Opinions That Diverge From The Mainstream

Published March 4, 2024

I was recently recording for Victory Achieved Gaming, specifically Ori and the Blind Forest, when, among many other topics, Kathlynn and I began talking about Avatar: The Last Airbender due to the upcoming Netflix show. While it proved to be an interesting discussion, it did end up highlighting a particular difference between myself and other fans and, upon watching it again in editing, I thought it might be interesting to do an article where I share some of my opinions that diverge from the mainstream and briefly discuss why.

1. The Legend Of Korra Is Better Than Avatar: The Last Airbender

A picture of Korra from The Legend of Korra

I might as well start with this opinion since I’ve already touched on it and is what ultimately inspired me to write this blog post. I personally believe Korra to be a superior show to The Last Airbender which is something that I’ve rarely heard, if at all, from other people. However, I do have reasons as to why I have this opinion. Firstly, I don’t think The Last Airbender is as great as everyone makes it out to be. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the show overall, but I have a few issues with it. I actually bounced off the show when I first tried to watch it, finding the humour too juvenile and overwhelming the drama of the first two episodes. I eventually came back to it and persevered which is when I ran into my second problem. The first season has quite a few episodes that seem standalone and not important to the overall story. This eventually turns out not to be the case but it takes almost the whole series to finally see their relevance. I was finally drawn into The Last Airbender in the second season but these blemishes as well as a few other issues mean that I’m not as enthusiastic about the show as some others are. In contrast, I was instantly enamoured with The Legend of Korra due to its tighter storytelling and, in my personal opinion, superior balancing of humour and drama. Additionally, The Legend of Korra took several concepts from the original series that I felt was underdeveloped and fleshed them out beautifully. I’m not saying that The Legend of Korra is without its flaws but they interfered far less with my enjoyment than they did with The Last Airbender. Thus, I personally love The Legend of Korra more, in some ways much more, than The Last Airbender. I may be merely one of very few who believe this but this is something that I believe in completely and unerringly.

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An Overview Of The Ace Attorney Franchise

Published February 19, 2024

Ace Attorney was a franchise that I had little experience with in the past. I, of course, knew of the character Phoenix Wright and his trademark yell of “Objection!” but, beyond seeing a brief bit of gameplay at a friend’s house, I had never had the opportunity to play an Ace Attorney game. It was about a year ago when I first began playing the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, a compilation of the first three games in the series, and my experience with it led to an intense admiration for Ace Attorney as a whole. Therefore, I thought it worth doing an overview of the Ace Attorney franchise and why I’m excited to play more of the games in the future.

The very first Ace Attorney game, “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney”, came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and was made with a small team of seven people over a period of ten months. Taking the role of Phoenix Wright, Ryuichi Naruhodo in the original Japanese, you must solve cases by collecting evidence before cross-examining witnesses in court and pointing out contradictions. Two sequels, “Justice for All” and “Trials and Tribulations”, were also released for the GBA in 2002 and 2004 respectively but it’s worth noting that these games were only released in Japan at the time. It wasn’t until 2005 when the first game saw an international release as a port to the Nintendo DS with added functionality and a brand new fifth case. The American release proved to be a surprising success, especially strange since visual novels were considered unpopular at the time, and eventually saw the other two games released internationally as well.

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Nippon Animation: One Of The Most Important Anime Studios

Published February 12, 2024

One thing that always surprises me is how numerous anime studios are significantly more discussed in Japan rather than the West and vice versa. This mainly comes down to the difference in taste with niche anime often proving to be more popular in the West than mainstream ones. Nonetheless, it’s always important to remember that fact, that a lot of the anime we consume is niche and that many mainstream titles are ignored, which is why I thought I might highlight Nippon Animation, a company that has proven to be one of the most important and impactful anime studios in the history of the medium, discussing some of their history as well as some particularly notable series from them.

Nippon Animation was founded in 1975 after Zuiyo Eizo, a studio founded in 1969, was split into Nippon Animation and Zuiyo. Zuiyo Eizo had been working on World Masterpiece Theater and Nippon Animation continued to work on these series. While this left arguably the most famous of all World Masterpiece Theater series, that being Heidi, Girl of the Alps in the hands of Zuiyo, Nippon Animation continued to work on World Masterpiece Theater from their founding to 1997 and then from 2007 to 2009, creating international hits such as A Dog of Flanders, Anne of Green Gables and Tales of Little Women to name only a few.

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Some Anime That Have Short Episode Runtimes

Published January 8, 2024

Whenever I sit down to watch an anime series, I generally assume that the episodes will be somewhere between 20-25 minutes long. I’ll occasionally come across a series whose episodes are longer than that, Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne and Hellsing Ultimate being two in particular that come to mind, but there are also a surprising number of anime whose runtime is actually below the average, sometimes drastically. Therefore, I thought I might take a look at some anime that have short episode runtimes and how they air on television.

I should start out by saying that I have seen relatively few of these series. My focus on physical media as well as value has always limited the amount of anime with short episode runtimes that I end up seeing. I also get the feeling that they are a harder sell for licensors as I don’t recall seeing many of these series released here in the first place. Off the top of my head, the only anime that I can recall seeing that would fit this criteria is Hetalia: Axis Powers, a series which personifies nations and runs for about five minutes per episode. While the show can be a little uneven in quality at points, it’s one that, particularly as a fan of history, I ended up greatly enjoying.

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Why I Look For Distinct Art Styles In Anime

Published December 18, 2023

I think it’s fair to say that among those who do not watch anime and even those who dabble from time to time, there is a stereotypical art style that is associated with the medium, that being of doe-eyed characters with proportionally correct bodies and highly exaggerated emotional expressions. I wouldn’t say that this concept is unfounded and I often see anime resort to what I would consider to be a bland, default art style. While the more mature stories were the primary appeal of anime for me back when I first discovered it, I’ve increasingly been more enthused by anime that stand out in their art direction and so I thought I’d discuss why I look for more distinct art styles in the anime that I watch as well as a few examples.

I don’t think many people will disagree that a major component of the experience of watching anime, and animation as a whole, are the visuals. I won’t name any names, whether with regard to the anime series themselves or people, but I remember being at the anime society of my college and noting people’s distaste for anime that looked too different to what they expected anime to be. In turn, there were a few anime that they watched which I found to be too bland, both from a story perspective and an art perspective, to keep my interest. Since then, I’ve found that I’m more likely to be interested in a show whose art style stands out as being distinct.

I remember Redline being one of the first anime that I saw that made me realise that the anime art style was not as restrictive as I thought.

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An Overview Of The Higurashi Franchise

Published November 30, 2023

As a fan of horror media, it would only make sense that I’d search for something similar when it comes to anime, manga and video games. While the survival horror genre is well established within video games, I find horror surprisingly difficult to find when it comes to the other two, anime more so than manga. Regardless, there is a franchise that spans anime, manga and video games that is heavily associated with horror. Having only just watched the first three seasons of the anime recently, I thought it might be interesting to provide an overview of the Higurashi franchise and see how this series ended up becoming surprisingly expansive.

The Higurashi franchise began in 2002 as a series of independent visual novels that were created by Ryukishi07 and the doujin circle 07th Expansion that were distributed at Comiket. These are set in the village of Hinamizawa where mysterious events occur and a looming sense of threat hang over the cast of characters. Despite the original artwork proving to be quite crude and the lack of interactivity, the games proved to be popular due to the numerous theories that people developed about what was happening and there ended up being eight main entries alongside several fan discs.

A picture of Higurashi running on the Steam Deck. — A picture of the first game on my Steam Deck.

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Anime Series With The Most Number Of Episodes

Published November 9, 2023

I remember, many years ago at this point, being at a convention and a friend of mine joined me in a queue. In that queue, she told me that she’d just been at a quiz and that one of the questions had been which anime series had the most number of episodes. I knew the answer and replied with it but she said “No, it’s One Piece.” I remember being stunned by this and I guess it’s possible that there may’ve been some context I was missing such as ‘released in English’ or something like that but I was genuinely shocked that some anime fans mistakenly thought that One Piece had more episodes than any other anime. I don’t know if common knowledge has changed since then but I thought it might still be interesting to take a look at some anime series that have had the most number of episodes produced.

Let’s start with the correct answer to that question. The anime series that has actually had the most number of episodes is Sazae-san. One of the most popular anime series ever, Sazae-san is based on the Michiko Hasegawa manga of the same name and the series has been running near continuously since 1969! When you look at the episode count of the series, you’ll see that two figures are often presented, usually one being over 8000 while the other is over 2500. This may seem confusing but this is explained by the fact that each episode of Sazae-san is broken up into segments, typically three. Regardless, the accomplishment of this feat should not be underestimated and should certainly not be ignored by Western fans who are likely to overlook this series.

An image of the show Sazae-san. — Sazae-san.

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What Is The Magic Realism Genre?

Published November 6, 2023

You may look at the title of this article and scratch your head in confusion. Magic Realism? Surely that’s a contradiction in and of itself, right? An oxymoron of genre. If you’re not already familiar with the genre then you may be surprised at how much of it you’ve already experienced. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting if we took a look at the genre of Magic Realism, what it consists of and a few examples.

So what exactly is Magic Realism? Basically, it refers to a story which takes place in a realistic setting but which has a magical or supernatural component(s) that set it apart from a work entirely grounded in reality. Usually, but not always, these elements are left unexplained with the characters trying to deal with the effects rather than figuring out the cause. While the term was first coined by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925, there are numerous examples of works predating this that could easily be considered part of the genre. As with any genre, there is some debate as to which titles fit the criteria of Magic Realism and which ones go too far/not far enough so please be aware of this throughout this article.

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Taking A Look At Some Anime Based On MAL Score Vs. My Score

Published October 26, 2023

I was perusing MAL ( MyAnimeList) and noticed a link due to a big ‘New’ icon being beside it called ‘Statistics’. Clicking on it, I saw that there was a little bit of interesting information, much more information seems to be hidden behind a paywall, but what stood out to me was a section that compared some anime that I liked that others didn’t and anime that everyone seems to love but that I didn’t. While I won’t cover every title that’s mentioned, the image is below, I thought it worth taking a look at some of these anime based on the MAL score vs. my score and explaining my thoughts behind them.

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An Overview Of The Black Jack Franchise

Published October 5, 2023

Osamu Tezuka’s massive body of work is sometimes overshadowed by the success of Astro Boy, to the point where I’m only able to tell certain people who Osamu Tezuka is by bringing up Astro Boy to them. However, one of the most important series that Osamu Tezuka ever created has, itself, grown into quite a respectable franchise, one that easily attains greater critical reception than that of Astro Boy and is also commercially successful, being Osamu Tezuka’s second bestselling manga behind Astro Boy itself. Therefore, I thought it worth providing an overview of this fascinating franchise, Black Jack.

The Black Jack manga ran from 1973-83 in Weekly Shonen Champion and proved to be so successful that it’s often referred to as having rejuvenated Osamu Tezuka’s career. The manga follows the titular Black Jack, a genius surgeon who is unlicensed, as he encounters all sorts of unusual cases, patients and situations alongside his assistant/adopted daughter Pinoko. The series itself is told episodically with a few chapters fleshing out the background of its main cast but the quality of these stories proves remarkable and, in my personal opinion, is much more consistent than Astro Boy. It is also one of the best-selling manga series of all time with an estimated 50 million copies being sold in Japan!

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