Well, whoops, I guess I’ve not posted for a while, so let’s just ramble for a bit.

If you’ve been into London recently, it’s probably hard to miss the fact that the British Museum are running a Manga exhibit through to the back-end of August, largely because of the large posters of Asirpa from Golden Kamuy that are plastered all over the public transport network there. It’s a wee bit of an excursion from my neck of the woods, but I ended up popping along for a look yesterday.
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From whichever episode of Jewelpet Sunshine I was watching the other day, used to prop up the Go table being used here by the pink Dolphin and a dragon. If you’re only vaguely aware of Sanrio’s larger Jewelpet franchise, there’s a good chance that Sunshine is the particular instalment you are aware of, mostly thanks to it’s recreation of a famous scene from Flashdance in it’s 21st episode, though it’s also a show that somehow managed to clear the music rights for Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing and even a Beatles track (and Ai o Torimodose, but that maybe isn’t quite so shocking).

Anyway, that I’m posting about this as opposed to, say, the Mikan box in that foxgirl show that I’ve totally been made aware of is largely indicative of the fact that I’ve kind of been watching sod-all this season so far outside of a couple of first episodes and Sarazanmai. I should probably catch up with Hitoribocchi or something at some point, but I have at least been using the time to endeavour to catch-up on some of the older shows I’ve been meaning to get around to, even if most of those do largely fall into the category of “Nonsense Kids Shows” (which, admittedly, is the best kind of anime).

From the current ending of the current version of GeGeGe no Kitaro, being polluted by that ass Rat-Man.

There’s probably a lot I could say about the current Gegege no Kitaro – it’s certainly one of the more reliably entertaining shows I’ve been watching over the last year, particularly as something which has, in fact, been running for a year. There’s an awful lot to be said about the fact that it’s a rarity in that it’s a franchise that has existed in multiple distinct adaptations at pretty regular 10 year intervals, often with common stories being adapted between the various iterations.

There’s probably a lot more to be said on just the way that, despite having it’s basis in comics going all the way back until the 60s, it’s surprisingly modern in it’s outlook. It’s a show that started with an obnoxious Youtuber being punished for his inconsiderate behaviour, by being consumed by a Vampire tree in an incredibly painful looking sequence, after all. It’s a show that, despite theoretically being Quality Children’s Programming, doesn’t particularly shy away from being gruesome or explicit in it’s social messaging. It’s a show that talks about the importance of not teaching whitewashed history, about organised labour and collective bargaining, about exploiting immigrants and the treatment of refugees.

It also has multiple episodes about how being terrible on social media can have implications, even if you think you are being anonymous about it.

This weeks episode, coincidentally, sees the return of the aforementioned asshole Youtuber, as he first propagates widespread knowledge of Yokai, only to turn around instigate hate mobs against them, based on flimsy evidence, all for those mad Streamer Bucks. Thematically, it’s kind of a rough episode to be airing this week.

Anyhow, good show. I should probably actually endeavour to write something more meaningful about it once it wraps up, rather than hammering out something unplanned in the ten minutes before this Google stream starts just because I’m feeling bad about not posting anything in, errr, three months. Whoops.

(Coincidentally, geez, this new WordPress editor is garbage. Need to install one of those classic editor plugins, I guess…)

Because nothing says Christmas like Drive-In Tori, I guess?

Err, three months since my last update, huh? That’s… actually entirely unintentional. Certainly, been plenty of stuff I could have been writing about – SLA and my annoyance with I Want To Eat Your Pancreas, AnimeNYC, London Miku Expo and, well, just anime in general, but hey, life keeps one busy on occasion, and with age comes less wisdom than it does a perennial sense of exhaustion.

Still, I should probably write about at least one of those things still, maybe for the New Years post. We’ll see, I guess.

In the meantime, though, I hope the season treats you well, and you have yourselves a better 2019, regardless of how 2018 found you.

Apparently it’s the 13th (scary!) anniversary of me taking up this particular, infrequently updated, corner of the internet, and because I’m terrible at remembering dates and forgot to draw anything new, I’m just posting something from my non-public images directory that only maybe six people know the context of because finishing projects is hard. I’ll leave you to ponder on the unexciting ramifications of it.

Anyway… despite best endeavours to post at least something every month, I guess I skipped August, despite the fact that I started drafting out an Otakon post-mortem (which, honestly, is mostly superficial thoughts on Release the Spyce). It was a busy month though – I was off in the US for the best part of a fortnight, and kind of been clobbered with work stuff once I got back. Next few months are going to end up pretty hectic as well, honestly – SLA in October, then Hibanacon and AnimeNYC in November. Not rest for… well, me. And I guess I do, actually, technically rest, and it’s not like I’m up to much in September.

Not that I’ve not been watching anime either, mind you. It’s been a pretty good season. I’m generally all in on the kids stuff these days – and the current Precure and Gegege no Kitaro both continue to be great on a weekly basis – but Planet With and Revue Starlight have both pretty consistently been knocking it out of the park, and the new Lupin is good, and I gather there are some other quality shows I’ve not been watching.

But, anyway, as I say, Scotland Loves Anime in a few weeks. Looking forward to Penguin Highway. Maybe I’ll actually remember to get around to writing something about it!

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