Ode to Broken Things

If your anything like me you have found yourself dissecting your choices in entertainment and what they mean about you. I occasionally sit back and wonder why I truly enjoy the things I truly enjoy. During these examinations I have come to one major conclusion. The artists and works I usually like the most are usually very flawed. I loved Kinoko Nasu, Rumiko Takahashi, and Yoshiyuki Tomino but they are all idiosyncratic artists with highly imperfect works under their belt. This realization lead me to another even more shocking revelation.  All the most influential works in a genre are not the masterworks but flawed works. All the shows that define radical shifts are often riddled with major flaws but are inspiring despite that fact.

Flawed works are sometimes the most special of all; they are chance taking stories that don’t quite have all the details worked out. When breaking new ground it is no surprise when one gets lost along the way. This can occur in many different facets from having the amount of episodes suddenly shortened due to low-ratings or lulls in the middle of the story as they try to stretch or even extraneous characters taking up too much time. But these are also stories that surprise you with their decisions and that’s a most powerful and memorable reaction.

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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

hisuiconSince Narutaki is still on vacation and Secret Santa project is over now is the time for me to lay the seeds of turning this into the proper Type-Moon blog it has always been destined to be. While most people take enjoyment of the December holidays I have taken immense pleasure in the sheer number of Type-Moon related announcements this month. It is a good time to be me with so much wonderful material coming out next year.

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Gluttons For Punishment

hisuiconEvery week I see a bunch of tweets all with the same general theme. “Why did I watch Milky Holmes this week? This show is so terrible.” Why should I see that so often? I can enjoy things on an MST3K level of bad as my movie collection shows. I am sure that almost everyone who watched the colossal disaster that was Musashi Gundoh did so out of a morbid curiosity to see exactly how bad it could get. But there is a distinctly vocal part of the anime community that seems hellbent on watching things they hate and then complaining about it. That makes no sense to me. Either watch what you like because you enjoy it, watch what you hate because it is fun, but don’t watch what clearly makes you miserable. Unless you are a professional reviewer there is not reason to subject yourself to torture. Continue reading