Christopher Kincaid's Blog, page 4

New Book: Kappa The Deadly Finger Puller and Bonesetter

I’ve been behind with my book projects; I didn’t release anything last year. But publishing can take more time than you’d expect. I have several books awaiting release this year and next year. The first will be Kappa The Deadly Finger Puller and Bonesetter. In this brief book, I trace the traits and origins of the kappa. I also include a selection of common, archetypal stories. Here’s the blurb:

Kappa are best known as cute turtle-like mascots, advertising Japan’s rural tourism and other projec...

Japan’s Once Exotic Culture is Now Humdrum

More than a century ago, the West had little contact with Japan. The fabled Asia, distant and strange to Westerners, was a land of mystical stories, of elixirs of immortality, and lands where gods were found everywhere. It was civilized and pagan, advanced and locked in time. Japan had just begun to open to the West after the golden isolation of the Tokugawa Period, a period of cultural flowering, of geisha and ukiyo-e, of hedonistic kabuki actors and honorable, stoic samurai. Japan rushed head...

Learning Without a Goal: The Joy of Learning

In the United States, learning is seen as a means to an end, not as an end of itself. You go to college to get a degree that will net you a good-paying job. You learn new skills on that job to get a promotion that will increase your wages. You learn that side hustle to make more money on the side. Education ties with money. Money, in American society at least, is the final measure of someone’s worth. Education becomes just another commodity to consume and to show off your social status. Much of...

An Outage and a Good Problem

You may have noticed JP was down for a good part of the weekend. I didn’t notice the problem until Sunday morning. So what happened? JP outgrew its hosting. If you aren’t aware of how web hosting works, you subscribe to a package which offers a certain amount of bandwidth, storage space, and processors. I had a grandfathered account, but JP crossed some thresholds by a small margin. But mostly there are so many of you reading, that the old plan couldn’t handle the bandwidth and processing requir...

5 Steps to Handle Your Anime Backlog

I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
–C. S. Lewis

While C.S. Lewis was talking about books, the sentiment also applies to anime. Revisiting stories allows us to see those stories in a new light. While the stories remain the same, we change. And as we change, we notice different details and resonate differently with characters. Familiar, favorite stories provide comfort when we need it. But each time you revisit, takes time away from discovering a new story. We ...

Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, 3D Animation’s Not That Great

Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is a pure 3D computer-generated short series which takes the perspective of the “villains” of Gundam. The story follows Iria Solari, of the Zeon people, as she tries to survive against the Earth Federation Force and their new wonder-weapon, the Gundam. The Gundam series likes to play with the grayness of war, the fact no one is really a hero nor a villain. But normally the story takes the perspective of the pilot of the Gundam instead of the opposite perspective. R...

The Tenant of Silence

Generally, it is despicable for a warrior to use many words. -Daidoji Yuzan

Bushido holds silence in high esteem. Quietude seeks to measure words, speaking only what is kind, necessary, and helpful, and so respecting the value and danger of words. Once you say something, the words are no longer yours. They can be interpreted in ways you didn’t intend. Speaking on emotion and impulse can lead you to hurt others and yourself. You may be able to apologize or correct a misunderstanding, but people ...

Factors Behind Population Decline and the Ancient World’s Solutions

Birthrates in the developed world, especially in South Korea and Japan, have fallen below the replacement rate. Japan’s total fertility rate dropped below replacement back in 1974 with population decline beginning in 2010 (Oizimi, 2022). Japan’s population also declines because of people migrating out of the country. This has led to concern about demographic collapse, the point where the number of elderly who need financial support and care outstrips the number of younger people who are able to...

Gushing Over Magical Girls and The Stretch of Art

I cannot recommend Gushing Over Magical Girls, but the story has its merits and has more going for it than it appears on the surface. The story plays with the magical girl genre in uncomfortable ways. Enter Utena Hiiragi, a shy middle-schooler who admires magical girls. In the story’s world, magical girls appear on television and are a reality. One day, Utena (a reference to Revolutionary Girl Utena) is coerced into becoming a villain who must fight against her favorite, local magical trio–Tres...

Too Many Losing Heroines! Makeine

Too Many Losing Heroines!, also known as Makeine takes a different perspective on the usual romantic-comedy story. In a normal shonen romantic-comedy (Notice that young men, the main audience of shonen, also enjoy romance), the male protagonist is the one involved in the romance triangles, squares, and dodecahedrons in the case of harem stories. When the protagonist acknowledges one of the female leads’ feelings for him–which happens less often than it should–all the rest are left behind. Makei...