Christopher Kincaid's Blog

What Does “Anime Tourist” Mean?

What do you think of when you read “anime tourist?” Anime tourist can refer to two quite different meanings. The first, and most obvious for older anime fans and people who aren’t in the fandom, relates to tourism. Namely, it refers to people who visit areas featured in different anime. Many towns and cities in Japan have taken to using anime to promote themselves as a tourist destination. The Anime Tourism Association is an public-private partnership devoted to encouraging people to visit these...

The Legacy of Hakuin Ekaku

You likely haven’t heard of Hakuin Ekaku, but you’ve no doubt heard of his most famous question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” This question is a koan. Koans are a method, tracing back to Chinese Buddhist tradition, to break the logical mind so you can be more open to nirvana. While koans predate Hakuin’s life by centuries, Hakuin revived their popularity in Japanese Buddhist and philosophical thinking. Koans became Hakuin’s primary way of teaching his students.

Hakuin wrote extensiv...

Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? The Doormat and the Emotionally Unbalanced

Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? is a romantic comedy with the usual love triangle set in high school. But this story has a few twists that are sadly realistic. I have to spoil the story to discuss the characters.

Yu Natsume is a high school boy who has an interest in flowers and wants to become a flower accessory maker and own his own shop. His best friend, Himari Inuzuka, acts as a model for his accessories and seeks to help his fulfill his dream. She likes nothing more than to watch him mak...

Is AI Translation the Future for Anime and Manga?

Manga is increasingly being translated by large-language models (LLMs), or artificial intelligence as most people call LLMs. The Ancient Magus’ Bride manga, for example, used Mantra Engine for part of its English translation (Schley, 2023). LLMs are software programmed to teach itself patterns in inputs and then use those patterns to generate new patterns based on request inputs. These models are fed massive amounts of data that improve the software’s ability to recognize patterns. Translation L...

Please Put Them On, Takamine-san: Ecchi on the Path to Censorship

If I was in Texas, I would (possibly) be going to prison for watching Please Put Them On, Takamine-san. In my quest to expand my exposure to stories I normally avoid, I gave this ecchi a watch. Okay, a half watch. I worked on writing projects and did other things as I half-watched it. This one made me roll my eyes. This is one anime to avoid unless you like ecchi and massive mammaries. I’m reminded why I’ve avoided the ecchi genre. The show’s titular (pun intended) character, Takane Takamine, ha...

Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty: Music as a Sexual Identity

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty sits in the girl-band subgenre of the greater yuri genre. The anime has overt lesbian tones to it, but with a twist. In order to discuss the story’s themes and character arcs, I will need to spoil the plot. But first, as a metal head–something that surprises many people, but then I also enjoy opera and classical music–watching these animated young ladies rock out is fun. This is helped along by the use of motion-captured 3D animation. The members of the Japanese rock ban...

Takopi’s Original Sin

 

If you haven’t seen Takopi’s Original Sin, stop reading this and go watch this anime–unless you struggle with mental health and suicidal thoughts. Takopi’s Original Sin is a rough watch with beautifully ugly, deceptively difficult animation. It has 6 episodes on Crunchyroll. I will have to spoil the story to discuss the many layers this anime has. This anime may well be one of the most important releases of this year.

When the pink octopus alien from the Happy Planet crashes to Earth, it has n...

The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom

I grew up reading high and dark fantasy, such as The Wheel of Time, Conan the Barbarian, Shannara, and so on. As a 1980s-1990s kid/teen, I consumed cheesy sword-and-sandal films like Ator: The Fighting Eagle, hair-metal music videos like Dio’s Holy Diver, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and other fantasy. I never got into Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering, if you are wondering. I didn’t (and still don’t) have time for those. So while many anime and manga fans go on about Berserk‘s da...

Aim for a Calm Mind

Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by passion of any kind. –Nitobe Inazo

A calm mind appears to be impossible. Everywhere we turn something is trying to disturb us in some way. News tries to make us feel unsafe. Advertisements and social media try to make us feel FOMO. Work and school teem with drama. Anime tries to make us horny. All of this works against having a calm mind and the inner peace that brings.

A calm mind allows you to be in control of yourself. You ar...

Lum [Urusei Yatsura] A Source for Moe and a First Tsundere

Osamu Tezuka is considered by consensus as the “father of manga” and the pioneer of the medium. However, he didn’t invent manga or its offshoot anime. Manga as a medium dates back into history, beyond the Edo period, with comedic scrolls of various sorts, including “fart scrolls“. Tezuka took all of these elements along with American comic influences and pulled them together to create manga. In a similar way, Rumiko Takahashi could be considered the mother of manga and anime. While many other m...