Tokyo Ghoul: Visceral Queerness and Radical Vampirism
On anime, vampires, and the physicality of transgressive queerness (except, maybe, not).
Samurai Pizza Cats
During my childhood, I well and truly slept on Samurai Pizza Cats. I imagined to be just another half-assed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles clone and paid it no mind. Bad luck, teen me; that’s hours of weekday afternoons I was missing out.
Maken-ki! Two is Sexy, Silly, Self-Aware Fanservice Fun
Maken-ki!’s second season is densely packed with boobs, innuendo and more boobs. It’s trashy, but it’s a whole lot of fun.
Tony Soprano Meets The Bluths: How ‘BoJack Horseman’ Is Playing With The Golden Age Of TV
If Netflix is the future of television, then TV’s future might look a lot like its past.
Terror in Resonance
Terror in Resonance frames itself as a contemporary reflection on Japanese politics, specifically considering issues like protest – and its proximity to terrorism – and the nation’s relationship with the United States.
Melon Monsters and Nice Guys: The Strained Sexual Politics of Motto To-Love-Ru
Those who’ve followed this site for a while will have noticed that all the coverage of contemporary cinema is periodically punctuated by reviews of fanservice anime. In my first such review – of Ikkitousen’s third season – I made a serious attempt to grapple with the politics of a genre operating in the vein of…
Adventure Time: Stakes! and the Implacability of the Past
Any long-running television show tends to look to its past for inspiration. One of the primary drawcards of serialised TV is characterisation, and what better way to flesh out a character than delve into their past. There’s a tendency for this to go bad – I’m thinking specifically of a second season episode of The…
Over the Garden Wall
Ever wonder what might happen if Adventure Time’s Jake and Finn ended up in an Enid Blyton novel? Then Over the Garden Wall is the show – or ten-episode miniseries, if you prefer – for you! That’s a slight over-simplification of what’s going on here. Over the Garden Wall shares with Adventure Time a fondness…
Sailor Moon – Season 1
Despite growing up at pretty much exactly the right time to be exposed to Sailor Moon on a daily basis, the recent remaster rerelease of the show on Australian DVD is actually the first time I’d seen a whole episode of the show, let alone a whole season. As a child I’d always dismissed this…
Dragonar Academy
I can’t really complain about the woeful storytelling on display in Dragon Academy’s first episode. The series – set in a medieval-kingdom-slash-high-school where students train dragons – is the kind of slight anime entertainment that I don’t expect much from. So I can forgive the preponderance of “As you know, your father, the king” dialogue…
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