Author: edsamac

Fall 2017 – First Impressions

edsamac5 Comments

mpv-shot0005.jpg

Whew, what an intense first two weeks for Fall 2017. There are many reasons to be excited for the offerings this time around, but as usual I tend to be a little cautious given this is a honeymoon period of sorts for all of these shows. On a different note, I’ve bumped up my viewing palette to whopping eleven titles — twelve if we include March comes in like a Lion, which will be premiering later this week. Long week-in-reviews, here I come…

Anyway, same ‘ole applies: shows are ranked in descending order of interest. So sit back and relax as we run ’em down! Continue reading →

Fall 2017 – Previews (Part 3)

edsamac1 Comment

mpv-shot0001.jpg

So I ended up not working on the last of the previews for this Fall 2017 season because I randomly decided to pick up Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage after having stopped playing for roughly 7 months.

I have no regrats.

I mean seriously, man how this game has changed so drastically in terms of visuals — so much so that it heated up my ancient iPhone 5s to the point that I think the battery is starting to swell since the front panel is starting to buckle forward… That can’t be good.

Anyway, that aside, it’s time to finish up the shows for my previews this season. And it’s weird because I just realized that I forgot to do my silly habit of using weird descriptors to describe the shows I’m going to be featuring in my previous posts. So, ahem… without further ado, let’s wrap things up with three more shows, including a boy who wants to be able to use magic, a girl who’s being groomed to use magic, and a girl who’s looking for magic. Make sense? Read on! Continue reading →

Fall 2017 – Previews (Part 2)

edsamac4 Comments

mpv-shot0006.jpg

It’s just one of those days…

And I don’t mean it in the sense that I’m tired. I just feel kinda “floaty” every since I obtained my post-graduate degree from the UK; so having finally returned to the hospital for my clinical rounds, I find myself staring off into space wondering what it is I should be doing.

And then I think to myself: “I ought to start writing part two of the Fall 2017 previews.”

So yeah, here we go! Continue reading →

Fall 2017 – Previews (Part 1)

edsamac3 Comments

mpv-shot0001.jpg

It’s fall!

But it’s also hot as hell where I am now. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually MISS the droll cold of a British winter. Guess you don’t really know what something means to you until it’s gone.

So yeah, we’re a week-and-a-half into Fall 2017 and I’ve only just sorta burned through a couple shows to preview for you all. I almost kinda got used to cherry picking certain titles to the point I forgot that I’m supposed to make myself suffer a bit for the sake of “broadening my horizons”… and what this means was testing my patience with more shônen battlers or whatever was generally dismissed my the majority as banal if not to see, for myself, what’s up.

Surprisingly, though, the shows have been quite impressive — as if no shows haven’t been impressive during their first “honeymoon” episodes. The art in general has been shockingly pleasing, but there are a couple odd balls mixed into the bunch. So sit back as I run down some of the shows I’ve been picking up this season. Hopefully, one or two of these picks might be to your liking, as well. Let’s do this! Continue reading →

Summer 2017 – Season End Ranking

edsamac5 Comments

mpv-shot0001.jpg

I dunno about you, but I actually, legitimately enjoyed this season. Maybe it’s because I cherry-picked my titles early on; or maybe it’s because I intentionally went for a light viewing to save myself the agony of having to trudge through so many shows once they hit the back burner. Regardless, it was fun, and most of the shows (I can say with some confidence) actually lived up to their initial hype and made me feeling a little sad to see them go. Although to a certain extent, you could say that I was hoping for something a little “deeper” from some of the titles, but these are minor quibbles to the overall satisfaction of me being able to watch these shows without a distasteful hiccup at the end.

So yeah, same jazz as always, shows are ranked from bottom to top with a final rating at the end. Do share your thoughts about any of the shows I watched in the comments below. And with that, let’s do this! Continue reading →

[Update] Restoring order…

edsamacLeave a comment

8d892f78

Okay…

I know I said previously that I was now “free”, and that I’d have more time to write stuff… but then I finally returned home from the UK and found my internet disconnected at home and have since spent the last 2 or 3 weeks fighting over customer service to get decent internet back whilst trying to figure out a way to finish the remaining anime that was left “stock piled” over the last few weeks.

Man, it was hectic.

Anyway, good news is that I’ve finally updated myself with animu and even had the added bonus of (finally) getting my college letter, which states that I was awarded my masters with distinction. Naise. Now it’s time for me to throw it into my CV and shoot for that scholarship in Japan I’ve always wanted. Let’s hope that goes without a hitch.

So yeah, it’s back to anime for me, yey! Expect a season end wrap up (as usual) in a bit, and after that a couple random articles running up to the previews for this incoming Fall 2017 season. See ya!

Summer 2017 – Mid-Season Round Up

edsamac2 Comments

mpv-shot0003.jpg

Okay, it’s been a while since I wrote anything, partly because I think I burned myself out trying to write some in-depth analysis articles on Owarimonogatari, but I personally think the essays, themselves, aren’t really shaping up the way I want them to. For now, I’m just gonna put that aside and clear the table for this mid-season round up and then, perhaps, go on to some other reviews and/or editorials.

That and the fact that I’ve been basically enjoying my newly-earned “freedom” by sleeping in till mid-day and playing enough Splatoon 2 to get me an A-Rank in all of the Ranked Battle modes. If any of you guys out there play Splatoon 2, feel free to add me up as a friend (my friend code is SW-0054-9953-4514). I’ve always wanted to take on the League Battles, but I have no friends who own a Switch to play it with. *sniff*

Anyway, back to the Animu. This season is surprisingly functional enough to be good — and I say that quite deliberately in that there is a particular reason as to why each show is working (in one way or the other) to actually make my collective viewing enjoyable. You could say it’s a funny little happenstance that these shows can actually complement one another to make up for whatever shortcomings one or the other might have. And so with that said, let’s run down how all the shows are doing in this mid-season review!

As usual, these are ranked top to bottom, with a tl;dr in bold for your convenience. So with that said, let’s do this! Continue reading →

[Update] Finally free…

edsamac7 Comments

8d892f78

Okay, so I disappeared this past week because I was preparing for my final oral viva… and it’s finally over!

God, I’m free. I’m a free man again. My second life as a post graduate student is finally over.

So yeah, just a couple plans. I wasn’t expecting Owarimonogatari (ge) to come out as a digest of three episodes, so I’ll probably go through them part-by-part alongside my episodic re-reviews of owarimonogatari (sho). That also means I’m thinking whether or not I’ll just combine the missing weeks in review, do a mid-season run down, and then just focus on the monogatari reviews.

Yeah, I might just do that.

Anyway, today is celebration day. I have a 6-pack of Tatcher’s and a barbecue raring to go, so don’t mind me, I’m just enjoying my life right now.

 

See you guys soon.

NisiOisiN and the deconstruction of language: a primer to discussing Owarimonogatari

edsamac5 Comments

og.png

That’s an intimidating title, I know. In many ways, NisiOisiN’s approach to psychoanalyzing human behavior is no less complicated, owing to his strong grasp of the Japanese language and the ways by which he manipulates it in order to subsume the many “apparitions” that pepper his thematically chaotic stories. Be it a story about a young girl pushed to the brink of desperation due to a life of domestic violence, or the fantastical pursuit of an object of affection that transcends time and even death itself, NisiOisiN has always approached his stories through the thoughtful deconstruction of the language of his characters, introducing a thematic “object” that is subject to identification as the show unfolds. And this need to “identify” is central to the existentialist dilemma of “knowing thyself”, as is exemplified by the many arcs that focus around specific heroines and the “apparitions” of which they are tasked to come to terms with.

But this is where we run into the main issue of NisiOisiN works: its reliance on the deconstruction of language — and not just any language — but the Japanese language. Here, I discuss some of the paradigms of NisiOisiN that will allow us to gain a better understanding of the context behind his manipulation of language, which will hopefully serve as a useful primer for the upcoming episodic review articles I will be writing on Owarimonogatari. Continue reading →

Summer 2017 – Week 4 & 5 in Review

edsamac3 Comments

mpv-shot0005.jpg

Okay, so apparently someone here doesn’t know how to count. And that same person couldn’t half-ass himself to correct his previous post so he decided to just combine weeks 4 and 5 in one post since for some weird reason, one show had two episodes aired in the same week. I’ve always been terrible at timing these week-in-review posts, anyway, so I guess it’s about time people were used to it by now.

But then I realized that a problem with my weekly review naming convention is that episode numbers can be ambiguous to the actual week in question, meaning if my naming sense for the week is totally off, it can throw of a reader unless I explicitly state what episode I’m talking about.

So to reduce confusion, I’ll be including the episode number in the header titles for each of the shows to be discussed — that way, no matter how stupidly I label my week-in-review post, you can be assured that you’re reading the right thoughts on the right episode.

So with that aside, let’s run down just what happened this week in animuland. It’s been a bit tiring — both in real life and in anime itself — but hey, that’s the way it is once the honeymoon of the first few weeks of a season has ended. Continue reading →