Japan Powered
Exploring Japan Through Anime and History
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Latest posts
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The Advantages of Fewer
When I was a younger, I would get only one or two video games a year. In part, this was because video games were expensive. Games would cost as much as $80 back in the the 1990s, which is around $179 in 2026’s money (I’m amused when people grouse about game prices today when I…
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The Price Paid for Being Born in the Free, Independent, Egotistical Modern Age
“You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves.” ― Natsume Soseki, Kokoro Natsume Soseki’s novel, Kokoro, released back in 1914 and yet still contains many useful observations…
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Involuntary Consent and the Japanese AV Industry
Let’s talk about Japanese porn and not the animated kind, or more precisely, a book which looks into the adult video (AV) industry. Let me get the dry synopsis for the book out of the way: In Involuntary Consent, Akiko Takeyama examines Japan’s adult video industry to challenge…
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Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You Shows Anime Can Depict Adults
I’ve long groused about the lack of anime stories that focus on adults. Coming-of-age stories are forever popular, considering they trace to the dawn of storytelling, and in the modern world high school marks the most common place people come of age. Although I would argue that…
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Mono no Aware and the Limits of Words
Consider this, we generally see a man’s life as rather fleeting, like the dew in the evening or the frost of the morning. –Daidoji Yuzan No doubt, as a fan of Japanese culture, you’ve encountered the idea that some Japanese phrases are “untranslatable.” This idea tends to tie…
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Finished a Video Game and Feeling Depressed? Here’s Why and What to Do About It
Sometimes when you finish a video game, especially a story-based video game, you can come away depressed or feeling in a stupor. Anime can also leave you feeling similarly depressed. Many people scoff at this idea. After all, it’s just a video game! It’s just a cartoon! Avid…
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Chainsmoker Cat: Controversy, Commentary, and Censorship
Chainsmoker Cat revels in being lewd, crude, and rude. The comedy follows Yaniko and other beastfolk who live in a small apartment building. Yaniko lives in squalor, which the series uses to disgust the audience, and is addicted to smoking to the point where she can’t do…
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The Dangers in My Heart: Exploring the Dangers of Puberty
Anime and manga focuses on the middle school and high school years because of their natural drama and coming-of-age nature. Anime likes to lean on characters’ lack of social experience, especially with relationships, as drama points. Often, this leads to what I call “meathead”…
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The Spirit of Japan: A Lecture in 1916 Foreshadowing World War II
In 1916, Rabindranath Tagore gave a a series of lectures in Japan. Tagore was a British Indian poet, writer, philosopher, and painter. He became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He criticized nationalism and advocated for Indian independence.…
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The Dead Internet and Dead Manga
The Dead Internet Theory is the idea that the majority of internet traffic, posts, and users are bots and ai-generated content. People no longer shape the Internet. The idea first floated around 4Chan in the 2010s, with forum members claiming the internet died between 2016 and…
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Agents of the Four Seasons: When the Prince and Princess Save Themselves and Each Other
There’s a tension between folktales and the stories that draw on them and modern sensibilities. Most often, the tension stands with how female characters are treated: as damsels in distress that need rescued by the man. This is sidestepped by dropping the prince altogether.…