Anime is a threat to American values. It injects foreign ideas into the veins of American culture, particularly American masculinity. But then, American masculinity needs the medicine. Click-bait title and introduction aside, let’s look at American values. The United States contains several core values: freedom of speech, rights of the individual, equality, achievement, social mobility,…
Category: Otaku Culture
Love, Chunibyo, and How to Cope with Reality
While I watched Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions, I began thinking about how the series illustrates the difficulties of coping with reality. Everyone has different ways of coping with their problems. We avoid, fight, deny, and face demons within and without. Reality is tough. It’s hard to face death. It’s hard to face loneliness, loss,…
Musings V – Adaptation in Japanese (Pop) Culture
One among many orientalist[i] stereotypes of Asians is that they are masters of imitation (or adaptation) but lack original creativity (or invention); an assumption which looks ridiculous when one spends just a little time studying any given Asian culture, I would say. Rather, I spot the tendency to imitate (instead of inventing) in modern popular…
The No Dating Clause in J-Pop Girl Bands
Take a moment to watch this video. Notice her shaved head? That is a traditional way to show remorse and a desire to repent in Japanese culture, a tradition quite rare for women to practice. So what was her sin? What terrible, despicable thing did she do that warranted a shaved head and this apology?…
Responsibilities of Blogging
This week, lets shift gears. Let’s look at our responsibilities as bloggers and why what we do matters. Blogging is a hobby that comes with responsibilities. The act of writing requires the author to think carefully about the quality of information and what message she wants the reader to leave with. Quality of information is…
Anime Blogging Tools
Blogging requires many different considerations. First, you have to keep track of what is going on in the communities you are a part of. You have to be careful of copyright issues. This is particularly problematic for images since it is very easy to just do a fast image search, right click, and snatch the…