given – Grief, Moving On, and Queer Love

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.

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.

Secret Santa: Koi Kaze

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 Kaiba, are 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!

Abridged Season Preview

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!

First Impressions: Chronicles of the Going Home Club- Please, go home.

Brothers Conflict was better.

First Impressions: Gifu Dodo!! Kanetsugu and Keiji- Giants Among Men

In a world where only the horses tower above the great, best friends Naoe Kanetsugu and Maeda Keiji, sit in the moonlight, sip their sake, and reminisce about their glory days. Gifu Dodo!! in a surprising turn of events (for me at least), ended up with less action and more meandering which I actually didn’t mind. 

Summer 2013 Preview

Summer, the season of hot weather, frigid houses and playing catch-up. I typically spend Summer cooped up in my house reading books, watching anime, and sleeping, blissfully lazing my summer away. This is the season where I usually manage to watch shows week to week instead of saying I will and then forgetting about them. Miraculously, I managed to finish 2 last year, so here’s to hoping I’ll be able to top that this year. Though I went in thinking this season wasn’t too spectacular, after looking at the chart and crossing off all the stuff I won’t watch, there’s actually a decent number of shows left that look like they could be entertaining.

As usual, I hope you all read/skim through and enjoy. Please don’t be afraid to comment and tell me what you all think of the season and what you’re planning to watch or not watch.

*Note: Not included-sequels to shows I haven’t watched, movies, OVAs

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Say “I love you.”

So, after 13 episodes of drama and relationship building, did Mei actually say those three magic words to her beloved? Well…no, no she did not, but she thought them at the very end of the show so that’s gotta count for something!

Season Impressions

So, if you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a bit lacking in the Spring Impressions department. Well, that’s going to change anytime soon, unfortunately. With AP testing and the SAT around the corner, I’ve decided that not getting into weekly shows right now will probably be for the best right now. I’ll probably start them all sometime after May 15th, but until then, re-watches and Hataraku Maou-Sama will be all that’s keeping me going.

I have done a few impressions for OrgAsg, though, so here they are (click to visit the page):