Nakama Britannica

In the harsh world of anime business, apparently a DVD only sells as well as the amount of scantily-clad females an artist can squeeze on to the cover. Whether or not said anime series is actually worth buying couldn’t be any less irrelevant. Money talks.

One thing that’s caught my attention lately is how, in terms of genre and target audience, categorising an anime or manga series is surprisingly complicated. Many titles are marketed along the lines of age and gender of the target audience or readership: namely shounen (young, male), shoujo (young, female), seinen (older, male) and josei (older, [...]

First off, my apologies. I’m a day late but alas it’s better late than never. I’m taking a step away from the world of anime and manga for a few articles (partly because i haven’t watched any in a few months) and i’m going to try and offer you some good, practicle advice if you’re [...]

One of the more poignant news items I’ve read recently is that the London Anime Club (LAC) intends to “close doors” by the end of 2008. The cited reason is plain and simple: low attendances, with the popularity of “the London Expo”, “fansubs” and the accessibility of popular anime and manga in “mainstream shops” all [...]

Weirdness is often utilised as a derogatory term to describe a person or object. However weirdness is, in a way, a very big part of being human as what one human thinks is just plain weird another thinks is plain genius. Japanimation is a great example of how being weird is somewhat better than being [...]

On Saturday, I returned home from my holiday in Hastings. Incidentally, it was fantastic! On our return home we always visit somewhere on the way back in order to delay our return home. This particular time we visited the De La War Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea. Exhibited there was a collection by artist Nathan Coley. Coley’s [...]

Browsing through the internet’s many blogs and forums, it’s common to find “fans” of anime trying to separate the best anime from the worst, trying to decide whether or not it’s okay to enjoy moe anime; one side says it’s good fun, the other declares it’s sexist and disgusting. They might shout at each other [...]

I was racking my brains over what to write for this blog entry: it’s too early to give a worthwhile run-down of what’s the best new summer show currently airing and wider-reaching topics such as the state of the industry have been done to death right across the anime blogosphere already. Looking at my own [...]

I read The Anime Almanac’s recent essay with a great interest. Effectively titled “Greg Ayres and the Fight Against Fansubs”, it presents an industry-biased perspective on the massive proliferation of anime fansubs, via the enthusiasm of Greg Ayres, a “hardcore otaku” turned professional English dub actor. Basically, this colourful-looking chap travels to conventions dotted all [...]

Despite the academic tone of this articles title, and my rhetoric (which is usually inevitable), I have noticed that the majority of the articles on our blog recently have taken to the same format, so I’ll be staying away from quotation marks or overly critical statements for the duration of this latest monologue.
One thing that [...]