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Eripyo and Maina

Last night I finished watching “If my favorite pop idol made it to the Budokan, I would die”. It wasn’t a great anime.  I didn’t feel like I didn’t want to leave the world it created, like I did with some anime.  It was actually just fair to middling, I even rated it 6 on MyAnimeList. But I didn’t regret watching it, because it’s one of those anime that made me think. Parasocial idol relationships are something that’s interesting to me.  Creepy, yes, but interesting as well.  There’s a lot of… Read More »Eripyo and Maina

The Customer is Always Right

“The Customer is Always Right” is one of the most misunderstood adages, mostly because people forget or are conveniently unaware of the second half:  “When it comes to matters of taste”. Practically, what this means, or what it’s supposed to mean, is that if there is a widget that is shiny, chrome with black highlights, and is beautiful and refined, and I want it neon orange with purple polka-dots, your job is not to criticize me for my choices.  Your job (assuming you offer customizations, of course) is to say… Read More »The Customer is Always Right

Liminal Anime

So it’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve finally processed my feelings on “Love Live” and similar anime, and now I will inflict it on you, who may even read this. Anyone who’s watched anime for any length of time knows that there are a few different broad classes of anime.  There’s “Slice of Life” anime, there’s “Cute Girls doing Cute Things” anime, there’s “High School Rom-Com”, there are the action “Shounen” anime which involve a lot of fighting and girls with unrealistic bodies, Shoujo anime which involve… Read More »Liminal Anime

Why I love “Love Live”

I just watched “Love Live”. It’s a cheesy and rather stupid anime, with lots of plot holes.  It telegraphs plot lines from even the beginning, and so far from what I can see, the different incarnations of “Love Live” are essentially the same plot with different characters and location.  It’s cheesy and it’s stupid and I loved it. But why did I love it? Well, one reason is, it had heart.  It was cheesy and stupid and it really tried to treat the girls as real, emotional people, and not… Read More »Why I love “Love Live”

Idol

The thing that got me into anime (after mostly eschewing it for years) was the OP for “Oshi No Ko”, “Idol”, by Yoasobi.  I didn’t even encounter it on its own at first, I saw a music youtuber analyzing it, and thought it was so amazing I listened to it, and have probably listened to it hundreds of times since.  It’s amazing, not just because of the music, but because of how real it is. When I first got into Japanese media, it was through Morning Musume, which is an idol… Read More »Idol

Thoughts on Idols

I mentioned a couple of posts back about a video by Sakura Gakuin, where they were singing a song called “Graduation Toss” and where they pretty much were finding it impossible to hold it together.  You could see it on their faces throughout the song.  One girl was just about one word away from completely losing it, and as the song progresses, you can see them falling apart in real time.  At the end of the song, they’re trying to do their smiley wavey thing at the end of the… Read More »Thoughts on Idols

The Three Japanese Cultures

Hi!  It’s been a while since I posted here, so I have a lot to say.  Truth be told, I don’t really think I’m fond of the blogging method of expressing myself, but I haven’t come up with anything better yet.  I’m working on it, though!  First, an update. The Lily project (https://lovelylilylives.com, in case you didn’t know) is almost a year old now!  In that time, the story has progressed from a sweet but confused girl who didn’t know who she was, to a sweet but confused girl who… Read More »The Three Japanese Cultures

Japanese: a Failed Experiment – Part Deux

I attempted to write this post previously but it took on a tone I didn’t like, so I’m going to try to redo it.  Last time I talked about why I consider learning Japanese a personal failure.  Now I want to talk about why I don’t think it is. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I failed at Japanese.  But it did serve a very important purpose, and I may yet pursue it for other reasons or considerations. I remember when I first truly became interested in learning Japanese.  I don’t… Read More »Japanese: a Failed Experiment – Part Deux

What I Musically Love about Japanese Music

I may be able to extract a post for Texihabara on this subject from this, but I kind of want to be a little freer here. There is something about Japanese music that fascinates me.  Well, several things, really. Babymetal has a song, “Da da dance”.  It’s an extraordinarily high energy song with lots of flaily dancing and mostly meaningless words.  Basically somewhere in the techno genre – I’m sure nerds out there will have a better name for it.  EDM?  But there’s this part in there that really fascinates me… Read More »What I Musically Love about Japanese Music

Am I Otaku?

Am I Otaku or even weeaboo? This is a question I’m asking myself more and more lately.  I mean, I guess I fit some of the definitions.  I like JPop – enough so that I’m maintaining an entire website about it, and other pop culture things.  I’m familiar enough with different idols to have a semi-intelligent conversation about them (can you ever have a truly intelligent conversation about a Japanese idol?). I even have some anime figures sitting on my dresser, and some of them I can’t post to Facebook… Read More »Am I Otaku?