It appears that Himeji is a bad cook.
Baka to Test to Shokanju and the Obento
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Category Archives: Essays
Mina Tepes as a Reflection
In the 19th century, Dracula symbolized the foreign threat, the morally corrupting force preying upon British women. Now, in the 21st century, the vampire queen Mina Tepes dances seductively on a construction site, waiting for her man to catch her from falling. What has the vampire mythos become and what is it saying?
Aoi Bungaku’s “The Spider’s Thread” & “Hell Screen”
Aoi Bungaku ends with a pair of short stories from Akutagawa Ryunosuke. After watching these two episodes, I was left with a couple questions. First, did “The Spider’s Thread,” a children’s parable, really deserve one whole episode? Furthermore, why did a complex story like “Hell Screen” get so little time? I deliberate over Madhouse’s decisions in this entry.
Aoi Bungaku Ep. 9 & 10: Run, Melos
Aoi Bungaku‘s adaptation of “Run, Melos” weaves multiple narratives together into one complex but coherent story, masterfully utilizing the mise en abyme technique to its fullest potential. Although each narrative strand is merely a simple reflection of the legend of “Damon and Pythias,” they build and build upon each other in a unique way to deliver a refreshing story of vengeance, forgiveness, understanding and, naturally, love.
Aoi Bungaku’s Kokoro: An Indictment of Modernism
Kokoro, at its heart (no pun intended), is Soseki’s attempt to capture the loneliness of man, the isolation of our hearts from others. In this respect, I think the anime adaptation is somewhat successful despite being a wild departure from the original text. There are significant sections of the novel deliberately left out of the adaptation–whether this is due to having only two episodes to tell the story or for artistic liberties, I’ll leave that up to you. In other words, I won’t compare the anime to the novel as I had done with No Longer Human. I think the anime here is interesting in many respects and I would rather devote my effort to its deconstruction. In order to understand Kokoro, we must ask ourselves what makes man lonely? Drawing from the post’s title, I suggest that the answer to this question is modernism (by this, I mean the movement that preceded postmodernism).
