Premiering earlier this spring season was Umamusume: Pretty Derby, an anime series featuring horse girls – “human” girls with horse characteristics such as tails and ears, not to mention speed – competing against each other in horse races to become the fastest runner in Japan. Continue reading
Made in Abyss. What a beautiful series unlike any other in recent memory and one of a kind I doubt we’ll see again in a very long time. For my lack of ability to convey how absolutely special it is, I’ll leave you with this simple description: it is one of those series where everyone involved in its creation – whether the original manga creator or the anime adaptation staff should be valued the most I don’t know, nor does it matter – just get “it”. This intangible “it” here represents what one could call a wondrous sense of adventure and discovery, loneliness and friendship, beauty and horror of the world. Together with its sublime soundtrack, one that might be one of my favorite in all of anime only rivaling my eternal favorite ARIA the Animation, it on a whole to me felt something much more than a short series. One month after having finished it, it still lingers fresh in my memories as if it has never left me. Truly, if time is scarce and you only have enough to watch one series in 2017, this would be my recommendation.
Yet, for all the praises I sing there was a time when I almost turned it off to never once more continue. Continue reading
Last year there was an anime-related creative contest online. In it, you could enter up to three different categories including things such as holiday cards, confections or shorter stories. Normally I never enter these types of competitions as I often lack the creativity and skill required, often resulting in never actually giving it a chance in the first place. This time, however, I did decide to give it a go.
It was a lot more fun than I had anticipated! Continue reading
Climbing, hiking and camping. These are all things I have not really done outside of more casual occasions, yet those times live on as warm memories inside of me. Despite being years ago since I last did any of these, my fondness remains the same as if it was yesterday. If possible, I would like to give them a try again – especially in the case of climbing or hiking. Continue reading
Today marks the start of another yearly iteration of the “12 Days of Christmas” blogging tradition. This means each of the twelve upcoming days will have an accompanying blog post about something I perhaps found especially noteworthy or fun during this year. As this is an anime blog, this will naturally all be tied to anime in one way or another.
To kick things off, let me start by talking about two blog posts that were essentially completed yet never published. Continue reading
In only a couple of days I’ll be moving away from home due to university studies on campus. Considering this being my next step in life, it fills me both with an equal amount of excitement as anxiety. After all, I will live in a completely new city where I won’t know anyone besides myself. In other words, you could say my life will essentially start over from the beginning.
This has unsurprisingly led me to think about the process of making new friends all over again. Continue reading
When Sword Art Online aired two years ago it left me disappointed and frustrated. As I’ve written before, the idea of focusing a story around video games and virtual reality is one that has fascinated me for a long time. Instead of using that idea to its strength, it merely seemed like an afterthought in Sword Art Online.
In episode after episode the game rules were smashed into an unrecognizable mess, making it feel less like a game world and more as a self-fulfilling fantasy world where anything could happen if it meant to spur our hero Kirito. Furthermore, the world was never very carefully crafted and the story felt haphazardly put together – jumping from side story to side story with no tangible relation to the overarching plot – along with characters with paper-thin personalities. It felt like the author Kawahara Reki never actually had played video games.
As such, the second season comes a bit of a surprise. After four enjoyable episodes in a row, I must admit that I really like Sword Art Online II at the moment. Continue reading
Note: This post was originally meant to be part of “This Is How You Can Watch Anime Legally in 2014”, written by Justin at the website OASG. It ended up too long, however, so I rewrote it and published it on my own blog.
When it comes to the legal outlets for streamed anime there are few available in Sweden. Essentially, it all boils down to Crunchyroll as the few other alternatives are too weak in comparison. Those alternatives are, in my case, Daisuki and Viewster. Not only do these two have meager libraries, but they also have poor video quality to boot. However, whereas Viewster at least has titles unavailable elsewhere, Daisuki offers nothing of worth which surprises me.
With this in mind, let me share a story regarding my very short experience using Daisuki and a few questions which arose about the platform. Continue reading
It was a whole lot of nothing.
A few days ago the leading legal English anime streaming website Crunchyroll decided to run a so-called “AMA” on Reddit:
“I’m Kun Gao, the CO-Founder and CEO of Crunchyroll, the global Anime streaming service, AMA!”.
This stands for “Ask Me Anything” and can be used by anyone from your everyday person to the largest of companies. Its purpose is exactly as the name implies – to let users ask relevant questions and learn something about the host – although when it comes to companies, or famous persons, its use begin to muddle. Continue reading
Angel Beats! was the first anime I cried to. No, scratch that. It was the first anime that left me utterly emotionally devastated after finishing the final episode. There had been emotional anime before, plenty of them in fact, but none hit home as well as Angel Beats! did. Continue reading
Anime Viking 