Omote, Ura and On: ERASED, Hanasaku Iroha and the Mother-Daughter Conflict

Families in fiction can feel like something universal. Loving your parents, and caring for your children, can strike us as things essential to our humanity; faulting them, likewise, can be monstrous.

But when we look across cultures, there is no single idea of ‘family’ that unites the world; household relationships are as much a product of our culture and society as the stories we tell about such structures. The families we see in anime are often readily understandable as though they were from the West, but there are details that become exposed when we tackle these stories with sensitivity to the way Japan thinks about its own families and social codes.

Why Genre Matters for ERASED: ‘Playing Detective’

If you’ve been following discussions over the quality of Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, or ‘ERASED’ for Western viewers, you’ll have surely come across the issue of whether or not it deserves the ‘mystery’ genre tag MAL and a number of other anime sites give it.

The camp that says it must be a mystery tends to just note that it has ‘a mystery’ and therefore must be of that genre – that genre being, more specifically, the ‘whodunnit’ genre where we expect to follow a detective as he slowly unravels a crime. The camp that disagrees tends to argue that the killer was supposed to be obvious, that Satoru ignores his expected role as a detective ad goes on a different path, and that’s what contributes to it being a drama-slash-thriller. But neither of these positions fully grasp what ERASED was setting out to do with its story. That being said, it didn’t do that particularly well either.

Why I’m Not on MyAnimeList

On the front page of r/anime today, filling the slot of the subreddit’s Daily Salt Thread, is a discussion titled ‘What scores on your MAL would make /r/anime question your taste the most?‘. I could stop here and let that post speak for itself, for why I think MAL and the community it facilitates is what drags down the potential for good, interesting discussions about anime online. But I might as well blog about it too.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Weeks Twelve & Thirteen

It’s the end! Some shows lost their way; some were never going to recover. But it’s still been an enjoyable season overall.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Eleven

This week: Satoru gets emotional over these Impressions getting posted on schedule this week. That and some stuff about Kayo.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Ten

This week: shifts in Shoujo-tachi, consistent crap in KyoAni’s fan-service flick, and continued praise for Boku Machi even if the internet is upset that the obvious villain was obvious.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Seven

Lucky number seven, and it’s fortunately been a good week all round.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Six

Had some technical hitches for the last few days, so again: this is a Monday thing. Mondays just don’t like me enough yet to allow it.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Five

So this was supposed to be a Monday thing now, but uni happened.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Four

So this a Monday thing now.

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Three

Slowly getting this blog back on schedule by slowly getting my life back on schedule. So, what did we watch last week?

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week Two

Inspired by the spirit of Kekkai Sensen’s finale, this post is finally here, better late than never!

Impressions: Winter 2016, Week One

This is going to be so much less time-intensive than full episode reviews. Plus, I get to talk about more stuff. In the words of Musani’s director, it’s a ‘win-win’!