Category: Other

It’s been over four years since I released my first post on this blog and, ever since, I’ve been releasing two blog posts a week almost continuously. However, I’ve recently felt the need to change this schedule due to other aspects of my life. Therefore, I thought it worth devoting a blog post to this change in schedule, what’s happening to the blog for the foreseeable future and some of the reasons why I feel the need to do this.

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room, the change in blog post schedule itself. Rather than continue to release two blog posts a week, I’m now going to be releasing only one blog post a week. This was actually something that I intended to do far sooner, probably within months of first starting the blog, but I felt the need to continue after several of my early goals weren’t met. I believed that having more and more content on here would eventually solve the problem and, to some extent, it has. Viewership has increased over time with more views in 2023 than in 2019, 2020 and 2021 combined! However, I will say that a couple of those early goals have, even after all this time, still not been met and the benefit of releasing two blog posts a week has steadily depreciated over time. That’s why I feel that now is the time to go back to my original plan and release blog posts on a weekly basis.

I recently went to the cinema in what seemed like a very, VERY, long time to see the newest Godzilla film, Godzilla Minus One. For those wondering, I thought it was an excellent movie and is one that I’m eagerly anticipating seeing again with some friends once the home video release is out but I also took note of the UK and Ireland distributor of the film, that being Anime Ltd. I was already aware of this as I’d read that they’d expanded the number of cinemas due to demand but I still wondered whether the film would prove successful for them. It seems that it has as Godzilla Minus One has already become the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film ever in the UK and Ireland box office! Therefore, I believe that now is the time for Anime Ltd to finally move into an area that I’ve been asking companies for a while now, that being to release tokusatsu films and TV series.

Just to briefly remind readers of what tokusatsu is, it refers to Japanese live-action media that focus on the use of special effects and is most heavily associated with the Kaiju and Henshin Hero genres. I was curious whether Anime Ltd had even released any live-action media before and, while certainly not comprehensive, I looked through their website’s catalogue in order to see. As far as I can tell, the only live-action media that Anime Ltd have released prior to Godzilla Minus One is the live-action adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul as well as two documentaries, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki and 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki. Even if they have released some others, if you’re aware of any others feel free to leave this information in the comments below, it’s clear that tokusatsu is a relatively underdeveloped part of their business model and one that I would love to see expand.

I was recently watching the Higurashi anime series and there was a scene, which in Higurashi fashion we saw again later on, in which the main characters partook in a card game that involved grabbing them quickly when something was said. I recognised that I’d seen this game in other media and decided to take a look into it. Therefore, I thought I might explain what karuta is and as well as some of the history of these Japanese playing cards.

First off, let’s take a look at the cards themselves and, more specifically, the types of games you can play with them. Karuta cards are broken up into two groups, cards that are descended from Portuguese-suited playing cards and cards whose lineage hails from E-awase. The two most popular card games, Uta-garuta and Iroha karuta, come from the E-awase group while cards of Portuguese-suited playing cards descent continue to be used for gambling games such as Koi-Koi, Oicho-Kabu, Tehonbiki etc.