“Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern,” as they say. So let’s make these yearly best-of lists a bonafide coincidence, following up from last year’s first edition, as we go through a pack of quality hit songs from 2018's American pop charts!
It feels like it all went by in a flash, but it’s true nonetheless: We’re at the end. The final day of the 12 Days of Anime! For this last entry of 2018—and on Christmas Day nonetheless—I figure it’s appropriate to go out big. To wit, maybe by talking about some of the absolute best anime in recent memory?
I was originally not going to write about Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, because I literally thought it was an anime from last year, rather than THIS PAST SPRING. Sheesh, 2018 amirite? I’m realizing just now that I must have been getting details mixed up with the actually-from-last-year Recovery of an MMO Junkie,…
There were two and a half years—nearly 30 months—between the release of Yotsuba&!’s 13th volume and the latest 14th volume. I was left severely wanting throughout the entire span of time. Would a continuation ever be released?! But recently, it has! And coming back to it felt as if Kiyohiko Azuma’s masterwork never…
Laid-Back Camp (Yuru Camp △) is a relaxing slice-of-life show about several high school girls and their forays into off-season camping. However, they are not all experiencing it together as a single group, but rather are two separate groups doing their own thing. That said, it’s not as if that state of affairs is a…
Anime is a form of art that’s been known to anthropomorphize and personify such non-people things as naval ships, guns, and even old Sega gaming systems. So hey, giving the same treatment to human cellular biology seems downright reasonable in comparison! It could even be...*gasp*...educational???
2018 has been such a long, endless decade, that chances are we’ve completely forgotten some of the things that did, in fact, happen or come out in 2018. For example: If you’re right now thinking WAIT, isn’t Devilman Crybaby a few years old? Well, surprise!!! It came out...*checks notes* This past January!!
I try to spend a part of my time not only taking in the likes of video games and anime, but also trying to make things of my own—criticism or otherwise—based on my passions. That once took the form of videos on YouTube. These days, it manifests through writing, mostly for Talk Amongst Yourselves. Sometimes, these…
Typically, an anime series whose length edges towards 400 episodes would lie so beyond “casual” that the mere suggestion of such a thing would be casual. Yet with my experiences hopping into and out of Gintama, either from dropping in on certain arcs or through being shown some standout episodes, I would say it fits…
Something funny happened in the orbit of Sword Art Online this year. In a world rife with fantasy RPGs, it was the post-apocalyptic science fiction shooter that became the official comedy game of the whole enterprise, all thanks to the anime for Keiichi Sigsawa’s Gun Gale Online spin-off. Honestly, I can’t even argue…
Man, when it comes to the anime movie business, I sometimes get the impression that almost everybody’s ultimate goal is gunning for that Studio Ghibli mantle. It seems to taken over famed director Mamoru Hosoda, that’s for sure; his latest film, Mirai, isn’t even his first go at this kind of thing. This time, however,…
I caught bits and pieces of Dragon Ball Z back in Toonami’s old heyday, but I was never all that much into it. Yet even with such minimal exposure, little me still thought about, and badly wanted, the bonkers fighting game that I knew the series had in it. It’s not often that the world fulfills dreams so completely,…
If I were to attempt putting together a top anime of 2018 list, Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san (Teasing Master Takagi-san) would be near the top. I’d even go as far as to say that it’s criminally underrated. Right on its face, it works that cute slice-of-life/comedy beat which already hits me like pure catnip. However,…
I’ve seen this put on for a few years now, and with a little upcoming PTO from work to spare, as well as a 60-day writing gauntlet already under my belt, it’s time to do away with hesitation: This year, I will try my hand at the 12 Days of Anime.
To this day, one of the best anime series about music is still BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad from nearly a decade and a half ago. Naturally, it features some pretty awesome tunes, and recently, my appreciation of one of my favorites has deepened even more after taking an honest musical dive into one of the UK’s most…
I’m stranded all the out in Texas for work, cooped up in a hotel with basically no WiFi, so this page is unfortunately not going to look much better than “pretty rough.” Sorry for that.
Last week, I sent my Switch out for repairs after realizing that its game card reader was not reading game cards. It took a short wait, but yesterday afternoon, after a knock on the front door, there it was! And look!! The repairs took effect!
I was going to wait for clothes to get clean at the laundromat yesterday by playing some Nintendo Switch. Instead, I found out that it could not read game cartridges. Not just one single game; that would be too easy! None of the games whatsoever.
It was just this past summer that I participated in the Talk Amongst Yourselves SixTAY Days of Writing Challenge. A sublime two months with enough literal output to sustain sixty straight days of blog posts. Now, how about what’s been written during the eighty-one days since the challenge’s final day?
