Pale Cocoon is a one-shot OVA by Yasuhiro Yoshiura. In a futuristic dystopia of rusted cubicles, disintegrating archives, and weary bodies filing along the darkened corridor of a factory warehouse, we are presented with the silhouette of a bleak reality that isn’t too hard to imagine for ourselves as a real possible future. Ura, our protagonist, is a diligent archaeologist of sorts within the “Archive Excavation Department”.
Prompt: Why do you watch anime? What do you get out of it? Think about this prompt in terms of escapism. What is it that you are escaping from? How does anime offer you an escape from your reality? Talk about the way in which anime distorts reality by offering up fan services of all types, fuzzy feelings, and happy endings. What is the appeal of anime? How do you balance reality with the unrealistic nature of anime? Does this make you feel like a coward for not being able to cope with reality? Or do you think it’s a healthy refuge from the stress and hard realities of daily life?
Participants: Hinano, elezend, animemiz, soshi, myu, blissmo, shizukie, choux, a day without me, usagijen, gia, kaeboo, and dick
Where do I even start with this entry? I’ve been meaning to write about “5 cm Per Second” for the longest time, but I kept putting it off because just the task of it was so daunting. For me, watching 5 cm is such a personal experience that I can’t write about it without empathizing to the point of being vulnerable. People see the act of showing emotions as a vulnerability and they reprimand me for being so stupidly open with myself. On certain days, I agree with them. But when it comes down to it, I can’t write in any other way because my emotions are what move me to write and put these words down onto the screen; otherwise I wouldn’t have started blogging at all if I couldn’t write about the things that have touched me in some way, left their impressions on me, made me laugh or cry or think really hard until my head hurt.
Kou Kou Kyoushi [高校教師], translated into High School Teacher, is about, surprisingly, a high school teacher and his relationship with his student. Koga Ikumi is the docile new teacher at an all-girls high school. The day before school officially starts, he meets a pretty stranger at a game arcade. And such is his luck, the next day said stranger shows up in class as one of his students.
