Memories of Eternity – Page 16 – In search of anime enlightenment

A Comprehensive Guide to Selecting your Top 5 Anime

Ah, the good old favourites list. It’s a tradition as old as anime itself – perhaps older – but it hasn’t lost its significance over the years. Your Top 5 list is the first thing people will notice about you on MAL, aside from your profile picture and your total completions. It’s the first thing that comes up in conversation when you’re meeting up with your fellow otaku at a convention, and a good list might make the difference between a good first impression and an awful one.

However, contrary to popular belief, there is more to creating a Top 5 list than selecting your 5 favourite anime. In order for a list to be effective, you must consider several other factors, which include – but are not limited to – an anime’s critical reception, popular reception, and cultural significance.

Does that sound pointless to you? Are you silently thinking that a favourites list should be nothing more than a favourites list? Skepticism is understandable, but if you’re willing to bear with me for the next thousand words, we just might get to the bottom of this.

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Miscellaneous

Update: a Blog, a Story, and an Eternal Sakura Tree

The eternal sakura tree(s) are pictured above, albeit indirectly. Now for the more important things.

I decided to start a blog. Bet you didn’t see that coming! There’s a bit more detail on the site itself, but basically, it’s a side-blog for me to go off topic and post random pictures. It’s nothing too ambitious; I’d put it in the same category as Tumblr and MAL. That said, it’ll probably be updated frequently, so check it out if you’re interested. I’m excepting to keep each entry under 200 words so as to not detract from my real anime blog here.
Sepia Tears is underway, despite the outdated website. I w0n’t post anything online until I actually have something substantial to post, but rest assured, all of my creative energy is being poured into this one (instead of, say, NaNoWriMo). If you want to do the male characters designs or background designs, contact me. I have a feeling it won’t be easy to find the latter, but hey, it’s worth asking.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now. It would be kinda awkward to launch a side blog and not notify anyone of it, even if it’s mostly irrelevant. My posting schedule has been a little funny lately thanks to a multitude of things to do – university applications don’t wander into the most suitable schools by themselves – but I’m still at it. I’ve got a juicy post scheduled for Tuesday that you might find interesting.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to sleep and completely re-arrange my mindset for the English essay I’m working on tomorrow…

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Editorial

Starry Eyes and Rose-Tinted Glasses: Putting the Magic back into Magical Girl

[インマR.]

There are many adults in this world who enjoy fiction aimed at children. That isn’t news to anyone, and it shouldn’t need justifying. Be it for the magic and excitement or the hotblooded black-and-white combat, stories that are primarily aimed at teens – or younger – are often enjoyed by many demographics.

Sometimes, though, I wonder what it is about these shows that makes them appealing. Is it simply because they’re different, or because they’re less challenging? The thing is, age can be a misleading factor when looking at target audience. Some stories appear to be aimed at a younger audience when they can really be enjoyed universally, and I’m not just talking about otaku-targeted mahou shoujo. Age does have an impact somewhere along the line, but now that I’ve had the pleasure of watching shows from Ghost in the Shell and Mushishi to Cardcaptor Sakura and Hayate no Gotoku, I’ve come to understand the simple pleasures that can be found in stories free of moral ambiguity and psychological intrigue.

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Commentary

From Me to You with Kimi ni Todoke

[110 gou]

Kimi ni Todoke doesn’t jump out at me. It doesn’t make my heart go aflutter; it doesn’t make me want to sit in front of my computer with a box of chocolates in hand.

And yes, that’s been known to happen.

But even without the bittersweet pining and the hesitant blushing and the warm acoustic guitar, the show does have something.

It has heart.

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Fandom

To OEL or not to OEL? Gems from the Gaijin of the Internet

[Katawa Shoujo]

This isn’t quite a serious response to a recent Sankaku Complex article (NSFW). Their jab at Western “dating sims” was obviously not intended for any kind of serious contemplation, despite the fact that they overlooked something crucial.

The punchline, however, felt disturbingly familiar. It isn’t all too uncommon in anime fandom to criticize Western media, much moreso when a person is creating something that “resembles” Japanese media like anime and manga. It’s the typical “stop trying to be Asian” argument, which appears to be worse for the YouTube stars (although that may only be because they have to deal with YouTube commenters).

Anyway, media is the issue here, not culture. Put simply, some fans have a bad habit of underestimating Japanese-style media that wasn’t made in Japan, and that can be as unhealthy for the community as it is harmful for your own media intake.

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Review

Subtlety in Romance, Sweet Blue Flowers

I often ponder the appeal of yuri. Is it the forbidden, exotic allure of a pair of pining maidens, begging to be fetishized and capitalized upon by the industry? On some level, yes – but making that claim would be akin to claiming that all romanticized love stories with attractive females exist solely for the lonely fan.

Yuri, like all settings and devices and what have you, is simply a premise. It’s something that can enhance a story if used effectively, something that can potentially add that extra push to cross the line between good and great. Recently, one such series stirs warmly in my memory as I recall it: Aoi Hana, a warm love story about crying lesbians.

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