Oct 28, 2018
Gunslinger Girl
(Manga)
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This is a manga with a very silly premise, but it addresses that silly premise so earnestly, in a way that only manga really does. Troubling implications are taken seriously, and disturbing aspects evolve towards their natural conclusions. Violence is never shown as uncritically "good". It's a bit of a stretch to imagine how Italy got to the point of using cybernetically modified little girls as assassins, but aside from that—and a few other details—this is a realistic story about something that could actually happen (and in some ways, something that really did happen in Italy in the 1970s, and in many other places continuing
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Jun 19, 2018
Nil Admirari no Tenbin
(Anime)
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I'm mostly going to talk about the setting, since that's what made me want to watch this anime in the first place.
In the real world, the Taisho Emperor had poor health from a young age, and died in 1926 after only ruling for 14 years, leaving his son Hirohito (the Showa Emperor) in power. The emperor's illness created a power vacuum that allowed the Diet and the political parties to gain more influence. the Taisho Era is often seen in history as a brief period of more democratic government, between the strict monarchy of the Meiji Era and the dominant militarism of the early Showa ... |
