This essay was commissioned by Wendy Cannan. You can find out more about commissions here. The joke goes that MTV once played music videos, but for my money their more interesting achievement was the two decades long attempt to carve out a niche in American animation that would […]
It’s something of a custom around here to use this week of American Turkey Day to shine a spotlight on underappreciated artists. To that end, let’s talk about Let’s Players: folks who record themselves playing video games in whole or in part for the enjoyment of others. It’s […]
This essay was commissioned by Sinclair. You can find out more about commissions at my Patreon page or contacting me on Twitter or Tumblr. Sound!Euphonium is a show about two girls bonding over high school band. What kind of bonding? Well, that is ever the question, and there […]
If you’ve spent the last few months missing Serial, I feel it’s my duty to point you toward the impeccable in-progress podcast The Black Tapes. It too has a curious journalist with a soothing voice (Alex Reagen) and a fascination for unresolved stories – in this case, stories […]
Remember when the news broke out that we very nearly had an anime prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road? And then remember that other time we all deeply regretted clamoring for supplemental material about Furiosa and the wives, because there was that eye-gougingly horrendous comic that came out? […]
Imagine: Kenneth Parcell as an adorable, fuzzy lollipop alien, traveling the galaxy to help people alongside his grumbly best friend (think Amethyst with a side of Marceline); never visiting the same planet twice, and constantly thwarting the fairly inept galactic conquest of a hulking, bratty skeleton overlord and […]
This week’s Hannibal has topped off a truly stellar season of arthouse cinematography and their usual fine tradition of lovingly shot “S&P was drinking and crying the day this passed through” gore effects with a revelation that surprised nobody but Will Graham: that fancy cannibal Hannibal Lector is […]
[No, this is not a get-out-of-recap post, but it is a “Vrai is emotionally exhausted from watching the last Daily Show episode, and they thought you might want some content while they recover enough to power through the recap for tomorrow” post. Thank, and it only seems fitting […]
It’s been a dreadful summer for creative teams in the animation industry: not long ago Disney dropped the ball and leaked an episode of Gravity Falls on the UK iTunes (not even the next episode due to air, but the one after that) when the show was finally […]
Steven Universe’s occasional homages to Revolutionary Girl Utena are starting to feel less like cute nods to a beloved nerd thing and more like an earned, legitimate comparison: both shows feature a patchwork of complicated interpersonal relationships and great care for their very well written characters, deal with […]