AniNaNo 2012, Day 1: My Title Can’t Possibly Be This Bad!

Ah, it has started, NaNoWriMo 2012. We’re on the first day of November, and the adrenaline of those first few days have unsurprisingly started kicking in. By joining NaNoWriMo, you’ve convinced yourself that writing every day was a challenge that’s worth taking and bragging about. As such, you’ve taken on this journey of fifty thousand words (which …

Make Saimoe 2012 More Interesting With a Fantasy Saimoe League!

Earlier this year, I posted a series of posts relating International Saimoe to March Madness, a national college basketball tournament. I replaced teams in the bracket with moe characters and predicted the outcome of the tournament by comparing the relative level of moe of each girl representing the teams in the tournament. It was pretty …

Smile PreCure! Episode 15: Mama and Me

This week’s episode of Smile PreCure was a damn fine piece of work. It made use of its air date to create a topical episode surrounding Mother’s Day, much like it previously did with its April Fool’s Day episode, as well as Heartcatch PreCure’s Mother’s Day episode back in 2010. Not only was the warm …

Smile PreCure! Episode 14: Divide and Conquer!

After 14 episodes, we’re well past the first quarter of Smile PreCure’s televised run, and settled into what to expect from the show. With a wave of introductory character episodes, a cycle of spotlight episodes, and a recently wrapped-up vacation arc, we’ve come to know quite a bit about what this show can and cannot …

Smile PreCure! Episode 13: TERRIBLE LUCK

This week’s episode of Smile PreCure brings us to the ancient capital of Kyoto, where the girls are on an adventurous field trip. This type of episode is hardly new, as other PreCure shows have field trip episodes  of their own, including Max Heart (Kyoto, in episode 34), Fresh (Okinawa, in episode 39) and Heartcatch …

Smile PreCure! Episode 12: Double Rainbow (Healing)!

This week’s episode saw the introduction of a new Akanbe, a new PreCure finishing move, and a little bit of spotlight shared between Reika and Candy. It was also the first episode in this year’s continuity that chronologically leads directly into the next episode. All that aside, however, I found this week’s installment of Smile …

Smile PreCure! Episode 11: Nao or Never!

At 12:11am on Monday, this is easily the latest I’ve ever started on writing for a Smile PreCure post. However, don’t let the tardiness of this post be an indicator of the quality of this episode. It was remarkably fun, and despite a lot of silly nonsense that would shatter most people’s suspension of disbelief, …

Smile PreCure! Episode 10: You Go, Grill!

I apologize for the delay in this post, as well as what I suspect will be the shoddy quality of the post itself. I’ve been sick for the latter half of the week, which, combined with the onslaught of some very enjoyable Spring season anime, have made me put off the writing of this post. …

Taking the Critique-al Approach to Reviewing Anime

As a writer, I’ve been through the process of receiving feedback from other individuals who read my works in progress. Likewise, I’ve had my fair share of experiences with giving feedback to other writers as well, particularly those who I know fairly well (or at least, as well as one could know on the Internet). …

March Moe Madness, Part IV: The Champion!

On Monday, April 4, the winner of the 2012 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball championship was decided, and it was a victory by the number 1 seed Kentucky Wildcats over the number 2 seed Kansas Jayhawks. It was a wonderful game to watch, filled with as much as excitement as one could have, considering the eventual …