12 Days of Anime #2 – Nine Great Anime Related Moments from 2014

Tomorrow I’m going to post the anime moment that had left the deepest impression upon me this past year. I’ve already written of 10 moments, but here are nine more moments that I thought merited a paragraph each, of an exciting, impactful or “other” moment in my anime-related life from the past year. Why nine? Because tomorrow is the tenth, the big one (Order of following moments is arbitrary).
Moments will be included for: Nobunagun, Mushishi, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Chihayafuru, Princess Tutu, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (and Stardust Crusaders), Log Horizon, Hunter x Hunter (2011), and Madoka Magica: Rebellion.

1. Princess Tutu is a Magical Show: Princess Tutu is hands down the best show I’ve watched this year, which makes me not finishing it even worse. I’ve listened to a lot of classic music and ballets as a child, and Princess Tutu using them all was splendid. The story is basically timeless, speaks to my love of narratives and meta-narratives (similar to The Witches’ sub-series in Terry Pratchett’s The Discworld series), and the more thought you put into the show, the more you get into it. Would be a great show to watch with one’s children, for the older readers of my blog.

Media Month in Review – May 2014

I use this post to go over all the media consumed/experienced over the past month, with 2-4 sentences per item. A way to give short thoughts on each topic.

Movies:

Only anime-films this time around. Didn’t catch anything this month either. Hope to fix that with both films at home and at the cinema :-/

• Wings of Honneamise – A film from the late 90s, feels like an attempt to speak of humanity’s woes, and how we can always be forgiven – even if we ruin Earth, we can still make it to a new clean planet, which we’ll destroy again, but on the other hand, if we just believe, we can fix it all. Definitely feels like an “end of the Cold War” sort of film, but one which presents both how we’ll keep ruining every other world as we ruined this one due to our pettiness, but also how if we but believe, it could be made better. I actually find it more than a tad boring, with only the last 30 minutes being of any real interest.

Media Month in Review – April 2014

April was my Spring Break month, I had a lot of plans, and ended up doing nothing… oh well. Happens. Too much vacation, I guess.

I use this post to go over all the media consumed/experienced over the past month, with 2-4 sentences per item. A way to give short thoughts on each topic.

Movies:

Only anime-films this time around. I hope I’ll catch Captain America: Winter Soldier, before it leaves the cinema theatres.

• Richard the Third – Theatre – I used to go to a lot more plays in the past. This is actually my first time hearing the tale of Richard the 3rd, in any media. It’s interesting, how most collections of Shakespeare leave out the bloody and political tragedies (Richard the 2nd, Richard the 3rd, Titus). The writing was solid, they added a certain modern decadent atmosphere that reminded me of the Titus version Anthony Hopkins starred in. The actor of Richard the 3rd was very good, but most of the other actors weren’t overly impressive. Seems they went for melodrama, on purpose. Of the three female actresses, the Queen Mother was good, but the other two were either wooden and stuck too close to their lines, or just felt out of place altogether.