If ever there was a need to reiterate it: successful comedy hinges on the delivery. Seitokai Yakuindomo somehow doesn’t understand this and after cramming joke after staid joke into an episode, it still comes across as bland and uninspired. All the constituent parts are there: the all-girls school recently turned co-ed, the […]
3 Episode Taste Test: High School of the Dead
There’s definitely a space between “High” and “School” so why High School of the Dead dropped it for the canonical abbreviation H.O.T.D. is unknown but this is just one of many oddities the first three episodes of the zombies-invade-Japan series contains. It plunders recent genre movies with gay abandon but still feels […]
3 Episode Taste Test: Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi (Ookami and her Seven Companions)
Playing fast and loose with fairy tales, Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi is a surprising comedy that straddles the line between familiar and fresh, whimsically mashing up elements pluck from its contemporaries. Certainly the protagonist’s hair colour and demeanour could have been lifted wholesale from Toradora, her pugilistic attitude and deviant sidekick […]
3 Episode Taste Test: Amagami SS (Gentle Bite SS)
Amagami SS parades hollow, vacuous simpletons around in a grotesque approximation of a romance plot; cretins drawn with all the grace of a gorilla with a crayon shoved up its nose, splattered wholesale into a story that is as if the plot of a romance novel were faxed to the writers but […]
Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential
Coming from the husband and wife team that includes Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku and WIRED fame, Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential charts the rise of schoolgirls in Japan from background to brand, exploring the details and influences that surround them. Printed in a stubby, easily held format, the book is littered with photographs and illustrations that support […]







