Category: The Orient
Returning to the End Sky
Darkness is always out there, lurking in everything we fail to “illuminate” with our sense of understanding, fueling fear, terror, and anxiety.
Godzilla: King of the Moe-blobs?
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?
After Nasu: The consumption of myth as data
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?
The rise of Kinoko Nasu: A cultural autopsy
Fate/stay night and Kinoko Nasu feel like a whole genre on their own. But why aren’t there more Nasu copycats?
Catch-up: Nine book reviews
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 & End
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 and Symbolic Realities
Tsukumojuuku by Outarou Maijou succeeds in crafting something that seems authentically confessional out of deconstruction and metatext.
Shin Godzilla and the Tyranny of Metaphor
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.
Fiction and the world: Our Sekai Breakdown
To be direct about it, Our Broken World (Sekai vol. 1) is my favourite novel ever written. Here is a review.
Wonderful Everyday and the landscape within
No matter where one looks in Wonderful Everyday (Subarashiki Hibi), there is no escaping the pervasive importance of its landscapes.