Report aesaloniichan's Profile

Born in the early days of the Reagan era, I grew up in northern California, but have spent half my life in a large city on the US East Coast.

I work in IT and am in grad school for computer science, so I don't have a whole lot of spare time these days, but I like having a way to track how much of my life I've wasted looking at other people's drawings instead of learning how to draw myself and reading subtitles instead of learning Japanese. I try to write thoughtful reviews when I have time; I'm usually aiming to look at things from a fairly critical perspective, both in a literary-analysis sense and in a social-commentary sense. I achieve this intermittently at best. (I am kind of proud of my reviews for Valkyrie Drive and Kancolle though.)

My rating scales are usually based on what the work is trying to do and how well it achieves it, rather than the One True Hierarchy of All Anime. There isn't a numeric scale that's going to let you meaningfully compare Love Lab, Serial Experiments Lain, and Ninja Scroll. (Honestly there isn't a numeric scale that will let you meaningfully compare K-On! and Sabagebu!.) So I'm generally rating on a combination of "How pleased/disgusted with myself am I that I watched this" and "How likely are You, Generic Viewer, to enjoy this, if you enjoy the kind of thing this is."

I like sweet things, slice-of-life, and love stories, though I'll also happily read SF/F (probably more fantasy than sci-fi) or other genre stuff (not very into super heroes though). Dark can be good as long as it's not also overwrought; I love drama that leads to a happy end (and sometimes a bittersweet one); I'm not generally into horror. I read a fair amount of yuri but cringe at the all-too-numerous stories that commodify a particular fantasy of queer women--I'd rather just read love stories that are free from men, or at least the more toxic forms of masculinity. I read things because I want well-crafted characters I can be emotionally invested in, which generally requires having traits other than "moeblob" and goals other than "Be The Best". I'm particularly interested in works that take sexuality seriously, as an important part of romance and relationships, without fetishizing "purity", but also without being just straight-up porn. See Hanjuku Joshi, Hetakoi, etc. (That's not to say I'm above reading the occasional ecchi harem or something, but I'm usually in it for the humor or occasionally the plot--even if my list includes a few variations on Fantastic Beasts and How to Date Them--and could honestly do with a bit less of the more exploitative types of fanservice.)

Someday I'll actually add my real plan-to-watch here. When I Have Time.