There’s only so much I can say in these intros so, uh…I still think the intro for my Konobi ep. 11 post is great! You can check that, and more, out below.

If it’s not specified, the time period covered in this post is from the 18th of February 2019 to the 25th of March 2019.

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Other People’s Reads

It wouldn’t be a round-up post without them. However, since I scour people’s archives on a regular basis, these may not even be from the right time period…

• Sunday Spotlight: Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold by Ayano (KawaiiPaperPandas) – It was hard to decide what to include in the final Showcase, but in the end I cut this because Ayano already had an entry, albeit one that wasn’t suggested herself. (Hopefully you understand!) Anyways, this post discusses revenge using Yut-Lung from Banana Fish as the central narrative (which I admit I haven’t seen, but a Showcase post is a Showcase post), and aside from the generous sprinkle of GIFs/images, I think what drew me to it was the specific flow it has, which is a hallmark of Ayano’s posts.

• Boogiepop Doesn’t Laugh Episode 2 by Benigmatica (The Anime Rambler) – Boogiepop doesn’t make much sense even after 3 episodes, so imagine me further down the line! So I’m throwing this down as a point of future reference, rather than a recommendation (because I know eventually I’ll start digging through my own archives).
• Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka Episode 1 by Landon (Shin Mecha Guignol) – Due to Irina’s round-ups, I’ve been digging through people’s episodic impressions and these ones for Spec-Ops Asuka always have a much more outside-the-box perspective to them in comparison to others…mostly because they offer up questions in a premise that is designed to interrogate both military anime and magical girl anime from the inside out.
• Anime Has a Curation Problem from All Hail Haruhi – What if anime has a problem, not because “Japan wants what it wants” but because “Crunchyroll flings money at every show it can gets its hands on”?
• Mob vs. Saitama: How ONE’s Protagonists are Inversions of Each Other by Dirk from Weeb the People – You know Mob Psycho and One Punch Man are from the same author. You know, even if stories from the same author can be completely different, they tend to support the same themes. But did you ever put those two ideas together? That’s (quite obviously, from the title) going down in this post.
• Fruits Basket: Learning to Love Yourself – a Manga Review by Shaddowcat from Exploring the World of Anime and Manga – It’s more Fruits Basket! The post is simple but not too blunt about why you come to love this series, although it’s hard to remember the plot with any real clarity when your first and only experience was bingeing all the manga volumes years ago…(which is the case with me.)
• The Professional and Consumer Merits of Writing Your Own Synopses by Neko Neha (Biblionyan) – For fellow bloggers. I don’t think it ever occurred to me exactly why copied-from-MAL synopses pissed me off so much, so having a stack of ideas – particularly ones I’d never even thought of – was an interesting read and it was even more interesting to peer through the comments.
• Anime Buzzwords (Part 1: Dismissive) by Lyonface (Jessica) from the Lyonfaced Blog – Another discovery from rompin’ through archives like no tomorrow is this series of 10 or so posts about anime buzzwords, written with professional footnotes and the works, so if you thought you knew these words, wait until you see the explanations from a fellow anime fan’s view! It’s a shame this blog hasn’t been updated since 2017 though (I think the statement in part 3 about catering to a straight female audience has aged badly as a result) – I would’ve loved to have interacted with the writer…
• No, you’re not too old for anime fandom by Lauren (Otaku Journalist) – There seems to be some preconception that anime is for children and teens, but as I start to contemplate scary things like My Future In the Long Term, it’s reassuring to hear there’s some things you might never grow old of…although the fact I’ll never get to meet Lauren at a convention is just icing on the melancholy cake…
• The Royal Tutor by Irina (I drink and watch anime) – The Royal Tutor is great. Sure, it’s a bittttttttttt superficial, but who cares when you’ve got this much blonde man candy??? (Also, cheesy live-action dance endings are good too…it turns out I’m not alone when I say Victor was my favourite while the show was airing…and, most importantly, there’s a follow-up post that was released a few days before this one!)
• Anime Corner: Phantom in the Twilight Review by Chris Joynson (Never Argue with a Fish) – I’ve been following Chris for a while – let’s just say I argued with the fish when I was looking for more Kado things to read – but…let bygones be bygones. Phantom in the Twilight needs more love, as terrible as certain aspects of it might be, so let this argumentative fish be your guide to the good and bad of it all.
• Pick of the Month: My Brother’s Husband by Mythos for The Backloggers – Finished this manga last month, and it’s surprisingly family-friendly for a mangaka who established himself in the bara genre. Regardless, don’t take my word for it – take Mythos’s.
• Kimi no Na Wa (Your Name): A Review and Full Recommendation on Makoto Shinkai’s 2016 Film by Infinite Zenith – By far, this is the nastiest I’ve ever been to my readers, since I stayed up late (past midnight) to finish reading this monstrosity of a post without really liking the film myself when I finished it last month. That said, the ideas in this movie are teased out not just from a personal perspective, but also a cultural and scientific one, making the read all the more worth it. (Plus if that’s not enough – as stated in the post – there’s always 1080p wallpapers!)
• Quotorium Reviews: Mob Psycho 100 from The Quotorium – Digging through archives comes in handy once again, although I’m not sure if I’ve read content from this blogger prior to this post. This may be a fairly standard review, but the level of analysis is what causes it to be better than the competition. (I couldn’t find an author name for beyond the blog title, so if anyone can point me in the right direction as to what they want to be called – including the author themselves – please do!)
• Not Everything Needs a Review: A Commentary by RiseFromAshes (Phoenix Talks Pop Culture Japan) – You’d probably think someone who doesn’t subsist on reviews doesn’t need to peddle such content, but you’d be dead wrong on that front. Again, this is a post which says everything that needs to be said in the title, but sometimes it’s reassuring to have it be said to you, rather than having to realise it yourself (like I did when I was watching Mob Psycho 100 s1).

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Spellbook Offerings

Yomu’s Konobi collab

• Ep. 7: When Staring at Backgrounds, Make Sure Not to Get Lost in Them… – This time, it’s watching the background for interesting things. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to work with so I ended up staring at sunsets instead.
• Ep. 8: Let’s Nickname Everyone! – Exactly what it says on the tin.
• Ep. 9: Thrown Into the Deep End – (Despite the name, the one getting thrown into the deep end was me, mind you.) The real point of this post is “Let’s guess everyone’s academic grades!”
• Ep. 10: …But President Doesn’t (Keep Being You, Prez!) – The only thing more worthy of praise than the President himself…is the President’s motivation…
• Ep. 11: Robbing the Bank – Hypothetical robbery is better than actual robbery for the honest citizen, so…since anime characters are above the law, why not make them do the robbery instead?

Other Stuff

• The Mob Psycho 100 Guide to Relationships (OWLS Feb. 2019 Blog Tour) – This post took a bit of polishing to get right because it’s Mob Psycho and OWLS in the same basket, but I think I did it justice in the end.
• Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka Asks Some of the Big Questions… – …but does not answer others. At least, it hasn’t gotten there yet. 
• Ode to Anime Studios – Studio Ghibli – I figure this’ll be popular in some capacity, so here you go.
• Don’t Just Read It, Buy It…? – It seems reading manga in stores that offer it is generally frowned upon, even by manga readers themselves…(Make sure to check the comments for some insights!)
• Jon’s Creator Showcase (February 2019) – It’s finally here! It was quite tough choosing what to include, but in the end, I think my choices of “unique content in regards to the Showcase” or “less popular blogs in the community” were enough to satisfy everyone.
• The Shield Hero’s Road to Emotional Development – Coming-of-age stories come in all shaps and sizes, but it never really occurred to me that Shield Hero was one…until a particularly odd idea struck…
• Morose Mononokean: The Least Expected Second Season – A lot of this post was written prior to the 2nd season’s airing, hence all this talk about expectations. However, my lazy butt didn’t get it finished until three quarters of the way through the season…

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Coming up next…

• I was very close to having a week without any posts bar the Konobi post…but I caught up, enough to leave for an entire month (!!!)...Yeah, I get paranoid about deadlines way before things are due. I probably haven’t proofread the posts much as a result. The reason why is there’s an entire week of posts lined up for when I’m gone to Japan (I’ve been preparing for it for a few months) – there will be a warning post for when that’ll happen so you know it’s happening, though. I’ve also said no to April’s OWLS post for that reason, as interesting as my take on the month’s topic might hypothetically be (I know what the topic is, but I’ll keep it a secret for the sake of the OWLS team).
• I was wondering why people were so startled by my change in avatar over the past two or so months…but it turns out where I revealed it was still in my drafts. (Sorry about that, everyone!) So, my original announcement from January said: ‘When I switched over my avatar (using a rendition of myself made using the Strong Woman Maker – yes, that’s the name of the site), I never thought I’d be so attached to that one Mandelbrot fractal I’ve used as a placeholder. Nonetheless, I’ve changed it so you – and all the other people participating in the Showcase – now have a “face” to remember me by.’

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