As many of you know, I don’t mess with review scores. But I know how popular assigning scores are for many anime bloggers. Well, I dusted off some of the things I learned in my statistics classes and put together a tool that might help you. It can be hard to quantify a feeling about…
Capsule Hotels
Space is precious and expensive in Japan’s dense cities. Enter the capsule hotel. These sleeping coffins maximize space. The idea came to Kurokaw Kisho back in the 1970s with a shipping container. Capsule hotels can stuff about 40 people into a single room. Each space tend to measure 2 meters long by 1 meter wide…
Babymetal, the Future of American Metal?
What happens when you take American heavy metal and infuse it with the kawaii saccharine of j-pop? Kawaii metal. At least, that is what the metal group Babymetal wants to create. Babymetal is a j-pop idol schoolgirl trio set against the demonic riffs and imaginary that defines metal. The outlandish whiplash mix reminds me of…
Musings On Nameless Old Women in Edo-Period Popular Literature
About a year ago, I was looking at Edo-period book illustrations and reading name cartuoches – until I stumbled upon two which did not actually contain a name! I was working behind the scenes of an exhibition at my former university (Goethe-University Frankfurt Main, Germany[1]), which owns a small but very well-preserved collection of mid-…
Shockwaves of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Rise of Manga and Monsters
August 6, 1945 marked a turning point in human history. August 9, 1945 left no doubt. Humanity had entered the Atomic Age. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaska burned itself into the memories of the Japanese and the Americans. In many regards, the rise of the atomic bomb, and later the hydrogen bomb, gave…