Category: The Orient

Novels and essays are very different things. Yet, Kiyoshi Kasai’s first attempt to write a Dostoevsky mystery novel comes shockingly close to hitting the mark.

Darkness is always out there, lurking in everything we fail to “illuminate” with our sense of understanding, fueling fear, terror, and anxiety.

The word “moe” is synonymous with anime girls and a “cutesy” style. But what if this way of thinking is hopelessly flawed? What else can moe look like?

Our search for the Nasu copycats means it is time to expand the conversation beyond just him. We came looking for a genre, but what does that even mean?

Fate/stay night and Kinoko Nasu feel like a whole genre on their own. But why aren’t there more Nasu copycats?

Nine book reviews to catch up on what I’ve been reading and enjoying while taking a bit of a break from blogging.

Love & Pop is a unique piece of art because it does not present answers, it presents a world too contradictory for any such thing to exist.

Tsukumojuuku by Outarou Maijou succeeds in crafting something that seems authentically confessional out of deconstruction and metatext.

It is true that Godzilla and nuclear disaster are deeply linked. But, simply applying the formula that Godzilla=nuclear weapons would pervert our thinking greatly.

To be direct about it, Our Broken World (Sekai vol. 1) is my favourite novel ever written. Here is a review.