The first arc of The Apothecary Diaries begins and ends with a mystery that relatively few people in modern Japan have to reckon with: why would a baby die before their first year of life? It’s a stark window into a time when high infant mortality rates were seen as an unavoidable fact of life. …
It’s that time of the year again! Looking back on this year’s English light novel debuts, there were a handful of titles that I was really looking forward to but which ultimately disappointed me (Agents of the Four Seasons, The Ephemeral Scenes of Setsuna’s Journey, and Days With My Stepsister, to name a few), but …
I am shook. I am trembling as I write this post. I did not expect Butareba: The Story of a Man Turned into a Pig to actually be a good series. I did not expect it to tug on my heartstrings and leave me staring blankly at the ceiling for a long while after I …
As sometimes happens on Discord, instead of Twitter, these days, I was talking with some friends about Makoto Shinkai, director of smash-hit Your Name., regular-hit Tenki no Ko, and not-really-a-hit Suzume. It reminded me that I’ve never really set down my thoughts on the three films, nor on Shinkai’s evolution since he made a it …
In the afterword of Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me‘s first volume, author Makiko Nagaoka remarked: “If I got lucky enough to date a beautiful voice actress I admired, would I give up on the idea if I found out she wasn’t a virgin? There’s no way I would…” She has …
Before you begin to read, please allow me to inform you that there are spoilers ahead for the anime adaptation of Jujutsu Kaisen up to episode 43. I tell you this because, unlike the lawless land of Twitter where the social contract of posting about weekly shows with some semblance of awareness that many people …
