The Rose of Versailles

Yesterday I finished watching The Rose of Versailles, an anime that ran from 1979 to 1980. It's a 40-episode tale of French nobility, specifically the fall of the Bourbon dynasty. It begins with the arrival of Marie Antoinette in France and ends with the fall of the Bastille, the peasants' riot that toppled a fortress and signaled the rise of the people as a dominant force in France.

The show isn't about the French Revolution, though. Rather, the reign of Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution form the real-life backdrop for a fictional story of a woman who was raised as man, determined to become a soldier and to not have her value as a person defined by her gender.

Hunter X Hunter

A while back I started watching this anime I saw on Netflix. I think I was just coming off of Bob's Burgers, and I needed something new to watch with my meals. I didn't know if I was going to keep watching after the first few episodes, but here I am, having just watched all five seasons on Netflix, eager to talk about what I've just watched.

Movie Review #22: Spirited Away

I'm finally back to Miyazaki films. The next one I hadn't seen before was Spirited Away, which I'm only really familiar with due to a scene or two I once watched while in a hotel in Houston many years ago.

Short review: another beautiful film by Studio Ghibli, but this time with relatively few environmentalist themes. It's good, go watch it if you haven't.

Sword Art Online

Not too long ago while browsing Netflix I noticed an anime I'd never heard of before: Sword Art Online. I'm not generally one to start watching anime randomly since, honestly, I find most of it to be inane, formulaic, and/or filled with "fan service."

However, for whatever reason I went ahead and watched Sword Art Online all the way through. Short review: it's not a great anime, and it's certainly very shallow. Except when it suddenly isn't. For a more in-depth review, read on.

Japan Trip XI: The Ghibli Museum

I've already reviewed two Ghibli movies this year, and I have several more to go before I feel truly caught up. Can I truly call myself a Ghibli fan?

Well, yes. Yes I can. You don't need to be completely familiar with all of an artist's work to be a fan. Just as many people are fans of George R. R. Martin despite having never read Armageddon Rag or watched the Beauty and the Beast soap opera, I would consider myself a Ghibli fan based on my love of Kiki's Delivery Service alone.