Some of you may already be aware of this but the first video game that ever had a profound effect on me was Final Fantasy IV. The story and themes blew my 8 year old mind away and allowed me to view the world differently. However, the Active Time Battle system also had a profound effect on me, allowing me to control up to 5 characters at once and harness their abilities. Naturally I continued to gravitate towards turn-based JRPGs as I grew up but, in contrast to my personal tastes, JRPGs began to drop turn-based combat in favour of…
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Usually when I’m discussing manga with people, the easy path to conversation is to discuss recent manga. It’s natural with any medium that most people will be far more familiar with recent releases than older ones. Think about when you talk to people about film, television, music etc. It’s usually about recent releases isn’t it? Personally, I feel that manga fans tend to be a little resistant to the notion of pursuing the classics. This was the feeling I got when I established the 24 Hour Manga Marathon several years ago. In it, there was a mandatory category of reading…
4 CommentsYou may or may not be aware that 2019 is the 40th anniversary of the airing of the original Gundam series which debuted on the 7th of April, 1979. This, of course, is a significant milestone and cause to be celebrated by Gundam aficionados and newcomers alike. However, Gundam can be intimidating to many and so I thought I’d give an introduction to the franchise. The first thing to note is that Gundam is a mecha series but, more importantly, it’s a war series with the vast majority of Gundam content taking place during times of war and conflict. The…
5 CommentsI’m a gamer. While I do tend to lean towards Japanese games, I still play a variety of games of various genres and national origins. Despite this, I do not own a PS4, Xbox One, Switch or any eighth generation gaming device. The PC is my only source of games and while some may find this strange, I do have my reasons. This is not meant to be taken as hostility towards consoles and people who use them. There are plenty of good reasons to own a console, from exclusive games, the portability of the Switch and the lower upfront…
3 CommentsA common issue I hear when discussing the topic of manga with people is the sheer length of most series. To be fair, when thinking of how many volumes there are in many popular series such as Naruto (72), One Piece (93-), Fairy Tail (63) or Detective Conan (96-), it is no wonder that many people can find the prospect of reading and (heaven forbid) collecting manga to be intimidating. However, I would point out the myriad of manga that consist of only a single volume. As with any industry, releasing continuous content in a franchise typically has diminishing returns.…
3 CommentsIn modern times, there’s an expectation that almost all anime is edgy and mature. However, around the beginning of the medium, with early works like Momotaro, Sacred Sailors (1945) and The Tale of the White Serpent (1958), anime was mostly aimed at children with only relatively few works for adults. By the late 1960s, with the rise of the Gekiga movement which demonstrated how manga could be targeted at adults, Osamu Tezuka sought to change society’s opinion of anime and established Animerama, a project to create adult animated feature films based on historical tales. The first film of the trilogy…
2 CommentsHowdy, Immortallium here! My plan is to write articles about Anime, Manga, Video Games etc on this blog. This is the first time I’m writing a blog so any thoughts and advice you could provide would be appreciated. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this content and find it informative and interesting. The content plan is to release a post a day for 10 days just to get this blog up and running with content (Not including this post). After that, I’ll see how the blog is received, make any adjustments that are necessary and then continue to release content regularly. I’ll also…
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