Angels, kaiju and the noble failure of SSSS. Gridman

Sometimes a reaction to a show feels so diverse that I wonder if the two sides are legitimately watching the same show. A few months back, I watched SSSS. Gridman, along with everyone else in the #Anitwitwatches crew. It’s a group organized by Jon Spencer Reviews that I’ve been part of for over a year […]

RahXephon does NOT equal Evangelion

I am writing this post in the hope of ending a needless and futile debate. I’m writing it knowing that I’m talking about the anime community, and unnecessary and futile debates have been their bread and butter since Harmony Gold first licensed Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross. But I’m writing it anyway because I feel like I’ve […]

In My View: Why Ideon doesn’t matter

For the last week or so I’ve had two discussions bouncing around in my head taking up space. One was this post over at Full Frontal Moe criticizing the idea that Eva is a deconstruction of the mecha genre, and the other is this tweet thread from Thaliarchus about how we judge newer examples of […]

The Otakusphere: Mecha, coronavirus and too many beers

I normally limit myself to a single beer in one 24-hour period. Mostly, this is because I’m no longer 23 and can’t just bounce back from a night of drinking like nothing happened. Well, last night, I decided I really wanted a second beer, and I paid the price by needing to sleep until 11 […]

Is RahXephon a mecha show?

When I was writing about Evangelion, I said the angels don’t matter. Perhaps it could be better stated that the angels are only important to the story when they tell us more about the four main characters. For example, we have an angel who splits into two separate bodies because the writers wanted to put […]

Why we need to stop comparing RahXephon characters to Eva

One of the first things I ever wrote on this blog was about the common comparison between RahXephon and Evangelion. In a nutshell, people will often go with a simple straight-line comparison between the characters in the two shows. They’ll say Haruka is Misato, Quon is Rei, Megumi is Asuka, Itsuki is Kaji, and sometimes […]

The story of two girls and trauma in RahXephon

This is a post about two girls. Well, not really two girls, but a picture of two girls in an image of RahXephon. It’s really the childhood selves of Kim Hotal, who we are fully introduced to in Episode 6 “Obliterated Cities/Lost Songs, Forgotten Melodies.” While RahXephon stays fairly rooted in reality much of the […]

The War of Misunderstandings in RahXephon

For the past few days, I’ve been struggling with how to explore the larger war in RahXephon. Unlike other shows, RahXephon seems to be difficult for me to break into discrete chunks. Partially, it’s because of how familiar I am with this series. I know how the themes of the war between the Earth and […]

How RahXephon is more like Gundam than Eva

One of the temptations I’ve faced as I’ve been watching RahXephon is to compare it to Neon Genesis Evangelion. There are two reasons for that. The first is that everyone compares this show to Eva, even if they’re doing it in a positive light. I’m just as guilty of this as the next person. I […]

What I talk about when I talk about RahXephon

I can still remember the first time I watched the final moments of RahXephon. I remember the dingy college apartment, the hand-me-down couch, the giant CRT television and my brand new combination VCR and DVD player. I had just started renting anime from the comic store in the next town. I remember just being blown […]