Shigurui: Death Frenzy is deathly serious, but I wasn’t expecting reach-into-your-stomach-and-pull-out-your-own-intestines serious. In one of the opening scenes a Daiymo’s advisor pleads with the lord not to hold a competition with real swords. To illustrate his point of what will happen to these promising young swordsman he reaches into his own seppuku wound and pulls…
Tag: Anime
JapanPowered isn’t just about anime (even if the bulk of it is). You can find all different types of anime in this section.
Anime Annoyances: Humor
Anime humor itself isn’t annoying (often weird, but not annoying). It is the when and what that makes anime humor annoying. Anime has the bad habit of interjecting humor during serious scenes and having characters that are more annoying than funny. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is especially prone to injecting humor during serious scenes. Several times…
There is Personality in the Blood
Ever wonder what is up with all the blood types in celebrity bios and anime? Well, apparently in Japan blood type affects personality. The idea started with Furukawa Takeji and his paper “The Study of Temperament Through Blood Type” published in the scholarly journal Psychological Research. Since then, blood type is used as shorthand for…
Xam’d: Lost Memories
One part studio Ghibli and one part Eureka Seven, Xam’d is a different entry into the mecha genre. In the world of Xam’d, the mechs are living things evolved from people (aptly called Human Forms). That’s right. The pilot is the mech. Xam’d begins on quiet Sentan Island. The island is cut off from the…
Air Gear
Air Gear follows Itsuki Minami and his friends as they form a gang to compete against other AT gangs. AT stands for Air Treks, special inline skates that allow the rider to do impossible things. ATs let people scale vertical walls and even fly. It all begins when Ikki is beat senseless by a gang…
Dance in the Vampire Bund
Dance in the Vampire Bund often left me feeling…uncomfortable. Funimation ended up releasing an edited version for the American anime audience. If the version I watched was edited, the full version would leave me feeling very uncomfortable. Vampire Bund opens with Akira, the stereotypical highschool student, suffering from amnesia. The world is in an uproar:…