"Anime was a mistake." — nobody, ever
Hi everyone! It’s time for our monthly ‘state of the blog’ post. I’m going to keep it brief. The short version is this: while I greatly enjoy writing for Against Moe, I don’t particularly have the time to drive social media or monetization. Shortly after this announcement, I will close our Twitter and Patreon pages. …
Exuberant hijinks and melancholic narration meet in Honey & Clover, a sentimental show about art students, inspiration, and love. Its calm moments are poignant; its loud attempts at humor obnoxious (but still funny). Honestly, it’s a bit shrill in its first episode, and I don’t love it. I also don’t like stories about men deciding …
Uchiage Hanabi, Shita kara Miru ka? Yoko kara Miru ka? Roughly translated means: Skyrockets, Should we see it from the side, or the bottom? Uchiage is a movie produced by SHAFT, and directed by Akiyuki Shinbo. If you’ve seen some anime, then you know what you’re in for: Head tilts, right? There are some head …
If Inferno Cop and One Punch Man went back in time and had a kid, well, first of all, the world would work very differently from how we think it does. But secondly, that kid would be Astro Fighter Sunred. It combines the latter’s superhero parody with the former’s terrible production, but somehow it turns …
One Punch Man is a beautifully animated super hero series that seems to concern itself singularly with one somewhat weak gag: the main dude Saitama is too strong. He’s so strong that he defeats any enemy with one punch. Life has lost its meaning and thrill to him because no super villain comes close to …
It’s been a while since I last blogged about Dragon Ball, in part due to scheduling issues. Since last time I’ve only seen seven more episodes. Now I’m here to repeat the same tired warnings: don’t watch this show, it’s sexist, it’s dumb, yada yada. Since Last Time Dragon Balls Well, as I’d feared, they …
If Cowboy Bebop went back in time and had a baby with Golden Boy, well, first of all, the world would work very differently from how we think it does. But secondly, that baby would be Trigun. Vash the Stampede is a wandering outlaw who embodies the best of Kintaro and the worst of Spike, …
Is this a hot take? K-On! is a Moe Hellscape Let’s get the obvious out of the way: my “Why Against Moe?” article used the K-On! girls for its featured image. The series—a pseudo-comedy about a high school band that spends more time goofing off and enjoying snacks than it does engaging with music—is an …
Continue reading “K-On! is a Compassionate, Anti-Ableist Triumph”
Darker than Black has a large cast and an intricate world. It probably takes more than a single episode for the characters’ motivations and stakes to become clear and for the show to hit its stride, but if you don’t mind a bit of a jumble, the first episode of Darker than Black is pretty …
Death Note in its first episode carries many of the trappings of greatness. From opening theme to ending theme it is packed with mood and philosophical questions, delivered at a decent pace. The storytelling is good, with a lot of scene-setting done tastefully or even sometimes subtly. This may not sound like exuberant praise (“just …
If you ever wanted to watch a show that would make you want to run back to Sword Art Online with your tail between your legs, try sitting down with its genre sibling Overlord. This is MMORPG anime done horribly wrong, and that’s saying a lot, because the theme doesn’t tend to produce good shows. …
Steins;Gate 0 was a bit of an odd request for this category, since it’s a … continuation? spinoff? … something related to a show that aired a decade ago; that said, I went with it, and now I feel like I should go back and give Slayers NEXT more kudos for being eminently understandable. Steins;Gate …
There comes a point when an anime is so gratuitously extra, so ludicrously edgy, that it becomes completely unclear if there is any deeper theme, meaning, or even narrative progression beneath the bloody piles of mangled sex demon corpses. Devilman Crybaby reaches that point rapidly, and it never looks back. None of the characters have …
If Neon Genesis Evangelion didn’t meet your lifetime quota for shows about wimpy boys deciding to pilot mechs because they’re horny, let me introduce you to a show with an equally bizarre name: Darling in the Franxx. This show has everything: sizeism, public sexual assault without consequences, tragic romance, epic fights, post-apocalyptic dome cities, a …
Inferno Cop is a slideshow, for the most part, with close to zero animation. The GIF above is as action-packed as it gets. I criticized Sailor Moon for not animating characters walking; Inferno Cop doesn’t animate characters doing anything. There’s his fiery mane, and there’re some real simple translation effects, and that’s about it. As …
Yesterday, on Free Comic Book Day, an international holiday celebrating the fall of the French in Puebla, Against Moe turned one month old. I wanted to take today to look back at the last month and talk a bit about where we’re headed. Also, I only watched 3 episodes of Dragon Ball this week so …
Some might say that Neo Yokio isn’t really anime. It was produced by Japanese studios, but it was created and written by Americans. There is no original Japanese audio track. The argument could be made that this is an American cartoon, set in New York, starring Jaden Smith. I might have even made that argument …
Flying Witch is about a 15-year-old girl who moves to the country to live with her cousins. She’s a witch, but also a high school student. Despite vast magical knowledge, she’s socially oblivious and comically bad at directions. These drawbacks are moe staples, and I worry that, despite on all other fronts seeming to be …
In Chobits, Hideki is a horny farmer who, upon moving to Tokyo, stumbles into the world of personal computing. Only the world in this show is a bit different from ours, and “personal” here means “sexy gynoid.” The most baffling thing about Chobits is that despite the ubiquity of these sex doll computers, society seems …
If you crossed Air Gear and Code Geass, you might expect to find something not unlike Symphonic Psalms Eureka Seven, a mecha show predating both those titles wherein Transformers surf waves of light in the sky. The first episode follows the genre’s formulae very closely. We start mid-dog fight, then meet our protagonist (a civilian …
Several years ago, a “friend” of mine sat me down to watch the first fifteen minutes of one of the One Piece movies. I think it was called Strong World? He assured me it would be super awesome and also would make sense without any context. As it turned out, neither of these things were …
If you’ve ever wanted to watch a slapstick show about pirates whose cannon balls phase through ships instead of damaging them, who use anachronistic baseball metaphors, who wear anachronistic eyegear, oh and who are made out of extending Immovable Rods mistakenly referred to as “rubber,” then One Piece is just the slapstick show for you! …