Spice and Wolf Review

     After 4 hours of television watching and 9 cups of black tea, I am ready to write a blog post at 6:30 AM. Anyways, Spice and Wolf is a pretty darn dope animu about Kraft Lawrence, a traveling merchant in a fictionalized Renaissance era  Europe who meets a pagan wolf goddess named Holo that he promises to bring to her home in the far north. Along the way, they try to make fat stacks of dank bank, lose a few of those stacks, gain some more, make bad business deals with sketchy muthafuckas, and meet a few friendly, non-sketchy people too.
     At its core, this is a romantic story, although if I had to give it a specific silly made-up genre, I would call it "business fiction." Unlike many romance shows, the tension between the 2 protagonists builds gradually over time instead of rushing into sappy shit in the first few episodes. I enjoyed this greatly because it feels much more realistic. Another thing that added a lot to the realism was the dialogue. The show was very well-scripted and the interactions between characters were exceptionally natural. This series did away with the common cornyness of romance animes and replaced it with a well thought out, elaborate love story.
     Something that made Spice and Wolf especially interesting was all the fancy business and financial talk. Believe or not, I actually feel like I learned a few things about old world economics from this show. I can tell that the writers put a lot of effort into making all the things about trading and banking and all that jazz accurate, which I appreciate very much.
     All in all, this show is fuckin' dank so watch it. SEASON 1 EPISODE 1

Not a Review: Animation vs. Live Action!

     Ayo! I have nothing to review right now so instead, I'm going to do a brief discussion on the advantages of animation and the advantages of live action filming.
     First off, the most obvious advantage of animation is that you can do things you can't do with actors and physical special effects. This is why even in live action movies, CGI is used for most effects and anything else that can't be real, or for gophers. Another great thing about animation is it leaves more room for creation. The characters, landscapes, and objects all have to be made from scratch, and thus are more original.
     Live action film has one advantage that animation has yet to overcome; it looks life like. Until animation is advanced enough to create images identical to real life, it will never have the realism of film. Using live actors also allows for more expression, with voice, facial expressions, and body language. This is why live action movies and TV shows are more common than cartoons.
     I personally prefer animation (see: this blog), but that's just me. Everyone has their opinion. I don't have a picture to go along with this, so have this one of me.

Watamote Review

     Aight mane. Watamote is a very swaggie comedy/slice of life anime that ran this season, from July 8 to September 23. I just finished the series yesterday, and I must say, I am quite impressed.

     The plot of the series is relatively simple. It revolves around Tomoko Kuroki, a first year high school student who has no friends at her school and wishes to become one of the "popular" girls. Despite the seemingly basic story, this show was very entertaining because the protagonist's conflict is something most people can relate to. Everybody has, at some point in their life, had to struggle to make people like them, and everybody knows that its a pain in the ass. Since the entire show centers around these ideas, its easy to relate to, and anyone could place themselves in the shoes of the main character.

     Another very dank thing about this show is the animation, particularly lighting and shading. There's a lot of it. And its all in weird polygons (see image below). I'm not sure why the animation team chose to draw it like this, but it looks pretty thug.
     Shows like this aren't for everyone. Lots of people prefer stuff with action or suspense and a lot going on, but if you like shows about regular day to day shit, then I definitely recommend Watamote. It is hella ballin' yo. THIS IS THE FIRST EPISODE SO CLICK ON THIS TO WATCH OK BYE #TYBG