Christopher Kincaid's Blog, page 11

Another Revisit in the Eye-Patch Girl Era

Another is a horror-mystery anime from 2012. I first saw it and reviewed it at the beginning of my blog writing. For Halloween, I added it to my watch list. The anime follows a middle-school class that’s cursed. Time-to-time, an extra person appears in the classroom. Whenever this happens, death begins to claim students and family members associated with the students. To remedy this, the class picks one student to ignore. That student ceases to exist, which keeps the curse at bay. This remedy i...

Download “Tamamo” and “Kanzashi” for Free!

Download a free copy of Tamamo February 2 – February 6 from Amazon

Tamamo‘s blurb:

Tamamo grew up in the imperial court, where the space between words mattered more than the words themselves, where battles were fought with poetry. As the favored of the Emperor Junnin, Tamamo knew well how poetry could cut. As the adopted daughter of a once-great noble family, she had no business loving the emperor, nor should he had loved her. After all, that was for the prominent Fujiwara family to decide. It ...

Revisiting Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I’ve given Brotherhood flak in the past for Edward and Al not acting as intelligently as in the original series. But that doesn’t mean I dislike the story. As I revisited the anime, I still found Edward and Al a bit annoying with their lack of thinking. For example, there was a scene where snow was used to make a fog. The original Ed would’ve used his alchemy to pull the fog out of the air. This Ed just flounders around blind. But Ed’s hothead personal often clouded his thinking, which is a fin...

Revisiting Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

As I watched Code Geass when it came out around 2007 on Adult Swim. I was still relatively new to anime at the time. I remembered the show as a rush of twists. Well, after so many years, I surmised I would’ve forgotten most of the plot. The lanky character designs of CLAMP stood out against recent character designs, and the angular face designs contrasted against the post-moe designs. Code Geass, and other anime from the early 2000s, had a different design pattern than today’s anime. Back then ...

Revisiting Twin Star Exorcists

It had been awhile since I watched Twin Star Exorcists. This article will assume you’ve seen the anime too. I will skip the usual summary and sketch of the plot to focus on my impressions, for what they are worth. Everyone has their opinions. My opinions don’t matter. I share them to try to get you to think about your own impressions and explore what different fiction means to you. Thinking about the stories you consume involves understanding your own impressions about them: what makes them amu...

The Value of (Re)watching and (Re)reading

How often do you revisit an anime or a book? With new anime and books coming out at all times, we can get stuck on the new-and-shiny. But rewatching anime and rereading books can offer a deeper appreciation for something you enjoyed in the past. Of course, it can also lead you to ask “why did you like this?” While the book and anime doesn’t change, we do. We have different experiences that shift our perceptions of a story. We can become more aware of messages that we missed or hadn’t given much...

Looking Back on 2023: Another Year of Anime Writing

Time for my usual, end-of-year indulgent reflection.

So its another new year, and I’m still alive and writing, which is more than I can say about a pair of friends. The past several years has seen a lot of death around me, from library patrons to family members and to friends. I had spoken with each friend a few days to just two weeks before heart problems claimed them. One was younger than me; the other friend was just a little older than I am. I also lost a cousin this past year. Death can cl...

Atelier Ryza 1 and 2

As an old-school JRPG player, I hesitate toward anime-themed games. Seems odd considering how I watch anime and spend too much time writing and thinking about it. But in the past, anime-themed JRPGs weren’t that great compared to the likes of Chrono Trigger, which acted as my old-school standard for anime-ish JRPGS. I’ve finished Final Fantasy 1 through 12, exempting Final Fantasy 11. With Final Fantasy 6 remaining my favorite. So when I think of JRPGs, I think of these games. But with modern g...

Anger, Gamers, the Brain, and Benefits to Gaming

In a survey of 1046 US residents who game at least 4 hours a week, some interesting data about anger shook out. Whether or not these data can be generalized is another question. In any case, the survey (Treanor, 2022) found the following data:

How often do you feel extreme anger while gaming?

xboxplaystationpcswitchOne per week:38.7%46.7 %40.1 %42.8%Daily or more:21.3%12.4%14.1%10.5%

73.2% people in the survey reported breaking a controller, keyboard, or mouse. Another...

Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World For My Retirement

Isekai focuses on power fantasy. Usually someone from our world is transported to another world and pick up some sort of overpowered ability in the process. Saving 80,000 transports Mitsuha Yamamano into a feudal world and gives her the ability to transport herself and other objects and people between our world and the feudal world. She also gains the ability to heal quickly. Unlike most isekai protagonists who want to be some sort of hero, Mitsuha just wants to retire early when she learns the...