Figured I’d switch things up with a Japan-related prompt every so often. Although this question certainly isn’t any easier! It’s hard to just pick one place, but there is one clear choice here. Tokyo! You’re probably going to end up here anyways if you visit Japan, as most flights lead to Tokyo. And honestly, Tokyo is amazing. It’s got (almost) everything one could possibly hope for, all within distance of public transit. Parks, zoos, aquariums, restaurants, shops, tourist attractions, malls, et cetera. I could easily spend an entire trip to Japan in Tokyo and have no regrets. In total, I’ve ..read more

Alright, let’s tackle another question that I think is a pretty good one. It’s been on the list for a while, so it’s about time I chose this one. There are a few different avenues by which I think of Western culture in anime. First is the Catholic church and related symbolism. I’ve seen comments before from people criticizing various series for depicting the Catholic church, or its likeness, as a sort of authoritarian organization that seeks to control people or something like that. The clearest example I can think of is the church in Shield Hero, which even has it’s own pope-like figure with ..read more

I guess this one could get controversial. I’ll try my best to think of a good safe answer here… Well, I feel like no matter what answer I give there will be disagreements from someone, but that’s just how these sort of questions go. My answer is maid outfits. At a glance it may seem like you’d only encounter them in ecchi anime, but in reality they’re pretty common in all sorts of slice of life and other anime. Especially in school anime, as there is often the inevitable maid cafe during the school’s cultural festival. It’s actually quite difficult to avoid seeing the maid outfit in anime, wh ..read more

One interesting phenomenon that has sprouted out of seemingly nowhere over the past decade or so is the creation of very specific “fandoms”. Does liking something automatically enroll you in the associated fandom? Am I a part of the In Another World With My Smartphone fandom by default? Or is it the fantasy isekai fandom? Surely anime itself is too broad for a fandom these days, so I won’t even make the mistake of asking about that one. I can’t help but feel like fandoms seem very specific and broad simultaneously. Within any given fandom I imagine there are seperate groups on Twitter, Reddit ..read more

Let’s keep some of these easy prompts coming, cause I can quickly write up this post and then have more time to watch some anime before I sleep! As usual, I’ll give multiple answers for this one. First is the literal answer, which is difficult since my memory isn’t good enough to know whether it was Dragon Ball Z or Pokemon that I first saw. If I had to guess, it was probably Pokemon. And now, I wouldn’t say that I enjoy it. I have no desire to actually watch it, and I don’t remember very much about it. But it’s hard to say for sure, I truly don’t remember much about the original pokemon anim ..read more

Over the years I’ve watched pretty much all genres at some point, and earlier on I was basically watching anything and everything. But I’ve definitely formed preferences over the years, and fallen into a few go-to genres over just watching whatever. So I’m sure that I’ll be able to scrape together an answer for this one. There are a few answers that I could come up with, but I think the best answer I can give here is Keijo!!!!!!!!. The anime where you check it out for the ridiculous premise, and stick around till the end because it’s actually really engaging and a lot of fun to watch. Normall ..read more

Now here is a question I feel qualified to answer, considering how often I rewatch anime versus seek out unseen series! While there are several aspects to a great rewatch, one key is a bad memory of the series you plan to rewatch. Naturally, we tend to have a fairly good memory of something we’ve just seen, but as time goes on, our memories get worse. Non-important details become forgotten, followed by events and series of events, story elements, and so on. To the point where you may not even remember much about a series except for a few distinct memories of scenes that stuck around, general ..read more

Figured I’d toss in a short and easy one here, since not every question has to be all that thought-provoking. Of course there is no objective “best” time, and even on an individual level there are always going to be changes in our routines that may influence when our personal best time is. For me, the best time has always been at night, before I go to sleep. I watch some anime, then possibly a video or two on YouTube on my tablet, and then I go to sleep. It’s been like that for many years. There was a time when I was a university student where I would also wake up and watch an episode or two ..read more

I saw this one and it made me laugh so I figured I’d give it a shot. But before I can even get into my answer, I may have to do a little research as I’m not quite up to date on my knowledge of man / wolf hierarchical terminology. All right, I’ve done a little research. You know, when I first heard “sigma male”, probably years ago, I thought that in the man / wolf hierarchy, a sigma male was below a beta male. Boy was I wrong on that. It turns out, the sigma male is a lone wolf that exists OUTSIDE the wolf pack, a true maverick amongst men. The alpha male is all preoccupied in his social statu ..read more

An anime theme that I have a love hate relationship with? I can certainly think of some things that I love, and others that I hate, but both at once? Looks like I’ll need the thinking cap for this one. Alright so after some thinking this is what I’ve come up with. The first answer I came up with is the actual “isekai” (other world) part of the isekai genre. Because when done right, in a way that actually makes use of the “other world element” (for example: Mushoku Tensei) I think the isekai element can lead to some great angles on stories that regular fantasy couldn’t achieve. Even a simple t ..read more