Chris over at Anime Science 101 nominated me for the My Pirate Crew Blog Tag. Boy, this sort of chain post brings me back! When blogging blossomed, these sort of tagging posts were a nice way to discover other blogs. Sadly, I don’t follow that many anime blogs anymore. Most writers I used to follow…
Category: Otaku Culture
What Does Tsundere Mean?
Anime has its own vocabulary that’s confusing for beginners. Tsundere is one such word. The word describes a type of character common to anime. When we meet these characters, they are initially harsh and even violent. Other times they are just cold and aloof on the outside, but either type eventually warms to be…
Is Being an Otaku Cultural Appropriation?
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate borrowing from another culture. Usually, it happens with a culture that has been oppressed in some way. Think about the Native American cultures in North America as an example. But cultural appropriation has a soft line. It’s hard to know when the line of admiration and appropriation is crossed…
The Problem with Today’s Hype and Spoiler Culture
I’m an old school gamer, the type that grew up making maps for myself. The habit stays with me today. I prefer to go into anime, movies, and video games blind. But it’s terribly hard to do that now. The Internet has made hype and spoilers almost unavoidable. As many of you know, I’m a…
The Problems with SEO, Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, concerns many anime bloggers just as it does businesses. SEO is a package of techniques that are supposed to attract search engines like Google to your content. The best SEO is supposed to get an article onto the coveted first page of a search. Few Internet users go beyond the…
Reveling in the Ridiculous: Anime is Tame
Despite how odd anime and manga appears, with their fan service and visual language and odd stories, they’re tame compared to Japan’s literature. I spend a fair bit of time beating up on fan-service, but fan-service doesn’t compare to shunga and the woodblock print books from the Edo period. Manga has roots in ukiyo-e, or…