Nopy's Blog

Since the release of Makoto Shinkai’s latest film, The Garden of Words, the general reaction to it has been positive with unanimous agreement that it is a visually stimulating work of art. Unfortunately, there also seems to be a number of people who think that The Garden of Words is lacking in story, character development, and closure. I have to disagree with those people as I found the 45 minute film to be bursting with hidden meanings that address all of those things. In fact, I think The Garden of Words is Shinkai’s most thought-out and deliberate film and I will discuss why by offering some of my interpretations.

I have structured this post to cover aspects in roughly the same order that they make a significant appearance in the film. It may seem awkward with the way they’re connected, but it helps to highlight just how much is going on in the background.

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“I’m busy, I have no time for anime.” – Aging anime fans.

It’s largely accepted that as people get older they start to gain more responsibilities and have less free time for things like watching anime, but is that really true? After giving it some thought, I really started to wonder if people stop watching anime because of time and responsibilities. Without much information to go on, I decided to look at how my viewing habits have changed over the years.

If you want to know how I got into anime, you can read my anime history, but to give you a quick run-down, I was hooked in the 90′s and have been actively seeking it out ever since. Things were pretty good for about a decade, but when I graduated from high school and started university in 2005 it certainly felt like all of my free time just evaporated. The same thing happened again in 2010 when I got my university degree and started working. I didn’t want to think about it, but I could feel the time that I had for anime start to slip away. In order to see how much anime I’ve had to give up over the years, I decided to chart all of the TV anime (this excludes movies and OVAs) that I have completed from 1990 to 2012. Thanks to MyAnimeList, this data was readily available and I took the midpoint of each series to be the year that it “aired” so that it doesn’t stretch across multiple years. The results are a bit surprising, as you can see below.

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Decades of sci-fi robot anime has given us a good idea of how to become the pilot of a high-tech giant robot, commonly known as mecha. Admittedly, not everyone who wants to become a pilot will, but there are some things that you can do to increase your chances.

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I had never seen any of the Da Capo series before , but after hearing about how good Da Capo I was, I thought that maybe I should give this franchise a shot. Since Da Capo III was airing last season, it was my first foray into the Da Capo universe… and I was sorely disappointed. I’ll just cut to the chase and say that the series was utter crap… so why did I keep watching to the end?

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Shin Sekai Yori is a 25-episode series produced by A-1 Pictures and released by Aniplex. Shin Sekai Yori had by far the most intriguing storyline of any anime I’ve seen recently, but it lacked in other areas, which prevented the series from becoming a masterpiece. I’m going to do this review a bit differently and look at the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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This month has been one of the busiest in my life with having to put in overtime hours, participate in competitions, and catching up with volunteer work. In that time I’ve come to realize how dedicated to anime I am. Despite all of the work I still managed to preview all of the new anime this season and compile my thoughts on them with a rundown of the best and worst anime.

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Psycho-Pass is a 22 episode series produced by Production I.G. The story is set in a futuristic Japan controlled by the Sibyl System, which monitors and guides peoples’ lives. The Sibyl System also identifies individuals that pose a threat to society, those with a tainted Psycho-Pass (a measure of a person’s state of mind) and high crime coefficient, known as latent criminals. These people usually have not committed a crime, but the system believes they will in the future. Akane Tsunemori, a young prodigy with an uncorruptable Psycho-Pass is assigned as an inspector in Unit 1 with the Ministry of Welfare where she meets fellow inspector Nobuchika Ginoza, and their underlings, known as enforcers: Shinya Kogami, Shuusei Kagari, Tomomi Masaoka, and Yayoi Kunizuka. Enforcers are people who have been identified as latent criminals but have agreed to help the Ministry of Welfare for limited freedom. Together, the members of Unit 1 hunt down and remove latent criminals from society.

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Kokoro Connect is a 13+4 episode series by Silver Link based on the light novel by Sadanatsu Anda. The story starts off with a group of 5 friends: Taichi Yaegashi, Iori Nagase, Himeko Inaba, Yui Kiriyama, and Yoshifumi Aoki in the Cultural Research Club who suddenly start swapping bodies at random. The phenomenon is caused by a being known as Fuzen Kazura (Heartseed), who appears to be experimenting with the five club members. When the club confronts Fuzen Kazura, they realize that they can’t do anything against him and must find a way to deal with their problem until he is satisfied.

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For the past few episodes of Shin Sekai Yori I’ve thought that there was something fishy about Yakomaru’s plan. Now that episode 23 has aired, I am looking forward to seeing what Yakomau’s ultimate goal is and how he’s going to achieve it.

There’s no denying that Yakomaru is a brilliant strategist. His attack on the humans has so many layers that it seems almost impossible for the humans to have prepared for it. To recap, here are the different points of his plan so far:

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At first glance, the worlds in Psycho Pass and Shin Sekai Yori couldn’t be any further apart. One has a megalopolis where humans have come to rely on machines so much that a central system now dictates everything they do. The other has people living in villages with wooden houses and no electricity. Taking a closer look at both worlds reveals that their social structure and method of reasoning are nearly identical. How did two vastly different worlds arrive at the same social structure?

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