given – Grief, Moving On, and Queer Love

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This October it will be three years since my Dad suddenly passed away during my junior year of college. When he died, all of my memories of him were haunted by a clock over his head counting down the years, months, days, and even minutes he had left. For me, grief was something that felt like it changed both everything and nothing. I didn’t know how to talk about it with anyone, or even, for that matter, what I would talk about. I just felt empty. And lonely. Really lonely. Watching Mafuyu, one of the main characters in given, navigate his own grief around the recent suicide of his boyfriend, Yuki, I felt understood – two queers in a pod navigating the sad, messiness of grief (lol). While there’s honestly a lot to admire about the show in general, I deeply appreciated how it teased out a lot of that messiness and the difficulty of communicating about grief. I think this show does a really beautiful job of touching on the process of grief for this queer kid and what it means to hold onto someone after they’re gone. Continue reading

Not Dead

My favorite part about the unplanned hiatus I’m finally coming back from is that it started right after a couple of posts about how I was going to post more often. Joke’s on me, huh?

Well, to cut a long story short, I’ve re-realized that I’m a huge anime and manga nerd and that I actually really missed blogging and just watching/reading stuff. Anime and manga have brought me a lot of genuine joy and excitement over the years. Even when I wasn’t watching or reading anything, I would still find myself eagerly talking to my friends about the anime and manga I loved, hated, and everything in-between. For better or for worse, both have me hook, line, and sinker. Although the break was long, it’s only left me all the more eager to pick back up again. It’s good to be back. Now let the rambling continue!

(500) Days of Anime

A couple years ago my dad bought a book called 500 Essential Anime Movies – The Ultimate Guide by Helen McCarthy.  It’s huge, weighs a ton, and, as all good books should be, is full of colorful pictures. Aside from the occasional flip-through, though, the book has remained largely untouched, sitting on a bookshelf or under my bed for the better part of it’s stay in my house. Well, 500, the time has finally come. Since this is a book that has boldly declared all the anime within its pages to be worthwhile viewing and technically worth buying (for the most part) since they’ve all been released in an English-speaking country at one point, I figured why not actually go and watch all these plus tell all you lovely folks whether I, the 18 year old anime fan whose watching habits have been erratic at best over the past year, think these are actually worth your time.

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An Overdue Conclusion

Way back in February of last year, I decided to sign myself up for someone’s 2013 Manga Reading Challenge. Setting a lofty goal of 250 volumes with a minimum of 80 series of multi-volume length for myself, I kicked off the Challenge  full of optimism and spirit, determined to read and write about as much manga as could get my hands on.

Well, it only takes a quick glance at my 2013 Manga Reading Challenge category to see how quickly that dream went down the drain. Truth be told, I forgot about my goal a couple weeks into the Challenge and settled for reading whatever seemed interesting with the Challenge acting only as a bit of motivation to keep reading. With my list starting out at a generous  mere 100 completed series at the start of the Challenge and ending up at its current size of 168, I, to no one’s surprise, ended up falling a bit short of my series goal…and probably horrifically short on my volume goal. That said, if anything, I would say the Challenge ended up being a great success.

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Secret Santa: Koi Kaze

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This year, I decided to be “adventurous” and take part in Reverse Thieves’ annual Secret Santa event. Though I wasn’t sure how well it would work out, it turned out to be a really fun experience, and I look forward to doing it again next year (my only worry is how well my person liked the series I recommended)!

Out of the series I had to choose from, I ended up going with Koi Kaze which was a bit of a surprise. My other two choices, Dennou Coil and Kaibaare series that I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while now, so they initially seemed like the obvious choices. In the end, though, I decided to go with Koi Kaze because it’s the only one out of the three that I’ve been avoiding. When I originally happened upon the series a few years back, I almost immediately shoved it to the bottom of my priories list since incest wasn’t really my thing, and I wasn’t particularly interested in double checking. Well, come Secret Santa time, I decided I didn’t care as much about the topic as I did before and what the heck? It’s only 13 episodes.  Secret Santa, if you’re reading this, I want to take a moment and thank you for sticking that show on the list since I probably wouldn’t have watched otherwise! Continue reading

Abridged Season Preview

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Hey all! It’s been a while since my last post, I know. I’m sure you were all getting ready to pass this blog off as dead or dying, but ya can’t get rid of me that easily (I hope)!

Since I don’t have a ton of time right now, but I still want to post something if only to pump some life back into the blog, I decided to cheat a bit in terms of my season preview. Instead of my usual lengthy post full of my special brand of rambly, I just wrote on the Fall chart instead (an idea I stole from Draggle’s Anime Blog EDIT: emperorj, apparently). It was fun, but probably not something I’ll do on a regular basis since I quite like talking for a while about the various seasonal shows. Anywho, onto the preview!

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2013 MRC Review: Complex

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Complex is a yaoi that, over the course of four volumes, attempts to chronicle the lives of a couple, Tatsuya Fujoika and Junichi Shinozaki. The manga follows the boys from childhood to death, looking at the various trials and triumphs the two experience throughout their relationship, with each chapter typically focusing on a different year in the boys’ lives. At a four volume length, it’s an ambitious story, a bit too ambitious if you ask me. I’ll get it out of the way now and say that this isn’t a manga that I’d recommend to anyone. Though the story does have some standout moments, those are often overshadowed by the manga’s numerous problems, most of which revolve around the handling of the story and characters. Continue reading