4Kids Entertainment. I’ll wait while you hug the porcelain and bring up your last meal. Feeling a little better? Anime fans detest 4Kids for how they localized and censored and cut series like Pokemon, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and others. However, the company is behind successful children’s shows that didn’t suffer the same fate: Cabbage Patch Kids and Teenage Mutant…
Category: Otaku Culture
How Anticipation Helps the Enjoyment of Anime
I enjoy a good Netflix binge, but in our age of on-demand content, we lost the value of anticipation. When we can watch anime whenever we want, for as long as we want, we lose the slow build of excitement waiting can bring. Unfortunately, American society disdains patience. Sure, we say patience is a virtue,…
2 Steps for Better Anime Blogging
You, the anime community, are great. I’ve seen a lot of positive things in my time with you, and its time we extend some of these positive aspects to other parts of the Internet. Lately, the Internet suffers from vitriol and low-leveling writing: crudeness, profanity, and bad writing. Yet, most of the anime blogging community…
Anime’s One-Piece Swimsuit Fetish and the History of Japanese Swimsuits
Form-fitting, sleek one-piece swimsuits dominate high-school anime’s depictions of girls. Fans demand, in fact, require their anime to feature their favorite female characters in these iconic one-pieces. More than a few fetishes in the fandom focus on this blue spandex swimsuit. The swimsuit features in high-school anime because it is a part of Japanese school…
The Shinigami Behind You: Considering the Messages We Consume
A shinigami waits behind you, counting your limited heartbeats. It’s not a comfortable thought, but one we must all face. We will die. This realization should govern our every action. Many times while watching a terrible anime, the thought strikes me, and I turn off the drivel. Each of us have a set number of…
Am I Addicted to Anime?
Most articles about anime addiction tend to be comedic lists about how everything has to be in Japanese and how you lack money because of all the merchandise you bought. Let’s have a serious discussion instead. We toss around the word addiction in ways that belittle the term. Liking something and enjoying something isn’t addiction….