pauseandselect

Superflat, Hideaki, and Chobits (Pre-approval)

As part of the $5 tier, I'll be releasing material that either is waiting approval, never made it for whatever reasons, etc., that are video material.

Here's the second half of the Thomas Lamarre video, but before it's approved. There may be changes and edits before actual publication, so I hope you guys like it.

January 2017 Expense Report

Because I believe my backers deserve to know where the money is going.

Article was 22 USD, so overall the expenses were 90.66. Minus the 20% from the December fund, I am under budget.

An unfocused love letter to The Anime Machine

I  couldn't contribute as much as I wanted to The Anime Machine discussion during the third book club, so I want to briefly discuss it here.

It is no surprise that I am a huge fan of Lamarre's work. Likewise, it is no surprise that I take more than a few cues from his material. Brian very amusingly said, "Now I know where Joe gets his ideas from, that hack!" No doubt. I get a lot of ideas from Lamarre. I love Chobits because of Lamarre. I owe him a lot.

Pause and Select December Patreon Notes

I hope you guys enjoy it - happy holidays to everyone!

Thoughts on Harmony

Sorry I don't have additional thoughts to provide. However, I've compiled a summary of my lingering thoughts on the last video of UD, which can be seen here:

 Given the things I say in this last video, I’m anticipating major criticisms. They are likely, mostly, legitimate. In hopes of addressing some of them, I have expanded on some points. Not well, but still expanded.

I will update this post as time goes on if criticisms and concerns arise that I think I can answ...

Community Funding has started!

Hi everyone! The video has been made! Sorry about the camera quality, I have an alright webcam, but I don't have any lighting equipment, haha.

Since y'all are backing me I will be posting applications (copy-paste) for the fund when they come through. Depending on traffic (it could be nonexistent for all I know or it could be crazy busy), update habits might change. Mainly I don't want to bother you guys too often.

Community Support Update

Hi y'all, with two videos, right now the support fund stands at $34 (not much but it'll accumulate!). As it is your money, I want to make sure that everyone is aware that they have a say in who gets what.

Therefore, if you know someone who needs help on an analysis video or post and needs material, please do not hesitate to suggest them or have them Tweet at me and I will update the Patreon feed accordingly!

Collections, Collectors, and Collectives

My understanding of AMVs has been from an outsider's perspective. I didn't really register AMVs as something more than a flurry of images and sound. jbone's Let Them Eat Rei really was what caught my eye, which is why it starts the video.

Honestly speaking, I can't say much about AMVs and folklore; I don't know them well enough to say anything. However, I noticed that over the course of looking through AMVs, I did realise that a significant portion of them spend weeks to mo...

$100 goal and funding updates!

Hi everyone,

Since we've reached the $100 goal, I'm going to start working on the first project, which acquiring, scanning, and cleaning the first manga for this, Rape Blossoms by Hagio Moto. Of course, given how busy I am, this is going to take a while, but I wanted to keep in touch with everyone so there is no confusion as to where I am with this.

I will have the October Patreon Notes PDF shortly within the coming week.

Community Grant?

On anot...

"You're a man, but you're good at cooking?"

One of Japan's great cultural fortresses is food, and not just how food is prepared or consumed, but what it embodies. Ashkenazi and Jacob's depiction of foodie culture in their wonderful text The Essence of Japanese Cuisine gets at the heart of the country's power structures and how they're reflected in food.

Sweetness and Lightning does talk about that foodie culture to some extent. Panels of Kouhei and Kotori taking pictures of their food pepper some of the chapters. The...

September 2016 Patreon Notes

This one is a much shorter one, mainly cause I've been busy and there was only one video released. October will be similar, but hopefully November won't!

Re:Zero and Musings on Terms

I'm posting this a few days late because I wanted to give enough time to get an idea of how people responded to the video. The reception has been phenomenal. Strong criticisms abound. Good talks, a lot of clever thoughts.

There are several major contentions in the video, but I want to talk about two. First, Hikikomori. Drawing from Tamaki Saito's Adolescence without end, Hikikomori has blossomed into a Frankenstein's monster. It's used interchangeably by media to talk about truants, th...

Panels, panels, and more panels

I think Oima's strongest skill in Koe no Katachi is her absolutely phenomenal paneling. There's a mix of both purposeful alignment and precision to them and at the same time there's a clear flow to them. I read a lot of shoujo manga, and one of the things is replicating a sense of ephemerality, an ethereal sensation through these blending open-ended 'panels'. 

You've probably seen them: they're the half-page (or more) spreads that have open, flowery objects or tones. It's meant to...

August 2016 Patreon Notes

http://bit.ly/2c0dK8V

I hope this format works for everyone. Let me know if there are any questions or concerns!

On Oshii, on Art, and on the Auteur

Mamoru Oshii is interesting.

I don't consider myself to be a Mamoru Oshii specialist in any capacity, but I find that he is this earnest man who imbues all of his work with this personal, powerful, emotional sentimentality. Those who look at Oshii can point to a lot of his works and say, "this is the guy who puts Bassett hounds in everything," and there's definitely been a joke or two levied at his expense.

But why the Bassett Hound? Why the Christian symbolism? Why the langu...

Sekaikei: the word of the World

Sekaikei is written with the katakana for sekai (セカイ,  world), and kei (系, story). If Katakana is useful for loan words or transcription of other languages into the Japanese lexicon, then is there a metatextual meaning to the neologism of the term sekaikei? 

After all, this isn't the first time that the construction of the text is a way to talk about the subject of the text itself - when we get into Hagio Moto, her story Rape Blossoms itself juxtap...

Stray Notes on Anime in Spring 2016

Let's focus on Kabaneri.

This is probably the video I'm most familiar with, since I studied Gramscian and NeoGramscian power during grad school. In that context, there's so much in Kabaneri that made sense to me that I really couldn't think of anything being more appropriate for understanding it.

Zombies come up quite often in studies on economics, particularly after 2008. The nature of Kabaneri, however, is that they're both vampires and zombies, primarily in how sapienc...

On Databasification

Understanding databasification is a tricky endeavor. Hiroki's language makes it seem like he's against linearity or that linearity is antithetical to flat, postmodern readings. I can understand a lot of critique levied against him. Regardless, I think the fairest way of understanding databasification is this amorphous 'soup' whereupon pieces are drawn and constructed.

In fact, while I'm being a bit reductive in an argument that heavily draws from Derrida, Kojeve, Deleuze, L...