Is AI Translation the Future for Anime and Manga? - Japan Powered
Manga is increasingly being translated by large-language models (LLMs), or artificial intelligence as most people call LLMs. The Ancient Magus' Bride| Japan Powered
Manga is increasingly being translated by large-language models (LLMs), or artificial intelligence as most people call LLMs. The Ancient Magus' Bride| Japan Powered
“In all things, do not have preferences.” Miyamoto Musashi wrote this in his work Dokkodo: The Way to be Followed Alone. His work is a collection of| Japan Powered
The wisdom of Japan and China remains valuable for us today. Like the wisdom of Stoicism, we can look toward the past for lessons on how to live in the| Japan Powered
The spiritual cousin of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo mixes hip hop with Japan's Edo period. Surprisingly this mix with a dash of punk and graffiti| Japan Powered
Texas's state senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 20 which aims at AI-generated child pornography but can also end up banning many anime and| Japan Powered
When it comes to ecchi anime, the characters all need to be having fun. Although I dislike ecchi, even I know this. Too often the genre falls into| Japan Powered
Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster! beyond being a mouthful is also an ecchi, uh, handful. For the longest time I've avoided| Japan Powered
If I was in Texas, I would (possibly) be going to prison for watching Please Put Them On, Takamine-san. In my quest to expand my exposure to stories I| Japan Powered
As the heat of summer wears on, winter haiku gives us a chance to think on cold days and all the pleasures of winter. Hot tea. Hot chocolate. Blankets.| Japan Powered
Haiku is a traditional Japanese poem consisting of three lines and 17 syllables. Unlike Western poetry, haiku rarely rhymes. This poetry conveys layers of| Japan Powered
I love winter. The cold may be uncomfortable, but it is the night of the year. It calls us to stop and rest and reflect. Although, as the climate shifts,| Japan Powered
Anyone who knows anything about Japan has heard of seppuku or seen it in a samurai film. Seppuku was a ritualized form of suicide and a judicial sentence| Japan Powered
John Allyn's version of Japan's classic story shows some of its age. Originally published in 1970, Allyn's writing has some jarring elements common to| Japan Powered
the pillows is an iconic Japanese rock band for many anime fans. They've been around since 1989 and introduced many to Japanese music.| Japan Powered
Yuri is a branch of manga that deals with girl romance. The genre was originally targeted toward girls, but there is a male-targeted branch as well. Yuri| Japan Powered
I enjoyed watching Iron Chef back in the day, but when I first saw a Food Wars preview on Crunchyroll, I had little interest in it. As you likely know (if| Japan Powered
I was hesitant toward Kill la Kill when I first started watching it. First, the style of the humor tends to turn me off. The obsession with frantic humor| Japan Powered
Sakuga is a term within the anime community used to describe animated scenes with fluid, detailed animations. Sakuga usually highlights important fights| Japan Powered
Canaan is an anime that acts as a sequel to the video game 428: Fusa Sareta Shibuya de. Which explains why I felt a little lost watching this 13 episode| Japan Powered
Bocchi the Rock! teems with experimental animation that captures the social anxiety and catastrophizing the anime’s namesake character experiences. It’s a| Japan Powered
Rock is a Lady's Modesty sits in the girl-band subgenre of the greater yuri genre. The anime has overt lesbian tones to it, but with a twist. In order to| Japan Powered
I love writing informative essays. I never know what goodies I will find when I set out to research for an informative essay. Informative essays involve| Japan Powered
The fall school season has started for many. That means a return to essay writing. Sometimes it's hard to come up with essay ideas that match an| Japan Powered
As you may have noticed, JP was down for few days. My webhost migrated to a new, faster server and broke a bunch of things. I think they are fixed. If you| Japan Powered
The Unfettered Mind contains essays and letters written by the Zen monk Takuan Soho, who was a friend and a teacher of Miyamoto Musashi. As Takuan neared| Japan Powered
If you haven’t seen Takopi’s Original Sin, stop reading this and go watch this anime–unless you struggle with mental health and suicidal thoughts. Takopi’s Original Sin is a rough watch with beautifully ugly, deceptively difficult animation. It has 6 episodes on Crunchyroll. I will have to spoil the story to discuss the many layers...| Japan Powered
I grew up reading high and dark fantasy, such as The Wheel of Time, Conan the Barbarian, Shannara, and so on. As a 1980s-1990s kid/teen, I consumed cheesy sword-and-sandal films like Ator: The Fighting Eagle, hair-metal music videos like Dio’s Holy Diver, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and other fantasy. I never got into Dungeons...| Japan Powered
Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by passion of any kind. –Nitobe Inazo A calm mind appears to be impossible. Everywhere we turn something is trying to disturb us in some way. News tries to make us feel unsafe. Advertisements and social media try to make us feel FOMO. Work and...| Japan Powered
Osamu Tezuka is considered by consensus as the “father of manga” and the pioneer of the medium. However, he didn’t invent manga or its offshoot anime. Manga as a medium dates back into history, beyond the Edo period, with comedic scrolls of various sorts, including “fart scrolls“. Tezuka took all of these elements along with...| Japan Powered
Robotech is a classic mashup anime, dating well before moe became the dominate style. The anime is actually a combination of several anime spliced into a single story. This was fairly common in American anime releases back in the day. Robotech comes from an era when television anime had a more limited budget and fewer...| Japan Powered
Anime and manga’s harem subgenre doesn’t share many links with historical harems once you get under the surface. The genre features a group of love interests which surround the protagonist. More specifically, a harem story features a male who is surrounded by females, and a reverse harem features a female who is surrounded by males....| Japan Powered
The strength of outward courage is like fire; the strength of inner courage is like water. Fire is forceful yet weak, while water is yielding yet so powerful nothing can oppose it. One with outward courage, like fire, has a weakness; one with inner courage, like water, is extremely powerful. –Adachi Masahiro The most common...| Japan Powered
So I've started a Substack to post all my other random essays and short stories that I spare you from here. Most of the essays languishing on my file| Japan Powered
Explore the intersection of Western culture and Japanese culture through anime, history, and more.| Japan Powered
I get it, some of you like fan-service, but fan-service has become a blight on anime as a whole. It's fine when it appears in genres you fully expect to| Japan Powered
What would happen if only women could pilot the most advanced weapon system in the world? They would all attend a school where they use high yield| Japan Powered
If you are brokenhearted, anime can offer some reprieve. Relationships can be rough, and they often end. If you are like me, when I'm brokenhearted I want| Japan Powered
Yaoi, also known as Boy's Love or 801, is an offshoot of shojo manga. Shojo is categorized by the primary audience: women and girls. Yaoi is focused on| Japan Powered
Horimiya appears to be a standard high-school rom-com, but it quickly shows how it is more. The series focuses on how people have hidden sides to their personalities that slowly reveal to those closest to them. The main characters Hori and Miyamura develop a relationship while discovering these layers. Hori is a popular, head of…| Japan Powered
Anime has its own vocabulary that's confusing for beginners. Tsundere is one such word. The word describes a type of character common to anime.| Japan Powered
We Never Learn: Bokuben follows Nariyuki Yuigi as he tutors three female geniuses in their weaknesses. Of course, this is a harem anime, so they all| Japan Powered
When Horimiya: Pieces released, I decided to revisit the original season. My original observations still hold. The series offers a heartfelt, nostalgic| Japan Powered
Anime has a problem with body boundaries, and the problem extends to both men and women. Fan-service centers on seeing breasts, abs, pecs, panties, and| Japan Powered
Back in the 11th century, a Japanese woman wrote the world's first modern novel. The novel remained unknown in the West until after the Meiji Restoration| Japan Powered
By the title you may be expecting me to write about the patriarchy in history. You’re right to a degree. After all, the patriarchy has hurt women, but it| Japan Powered
Tales of Ise is referenced throughout early Japanese literature. If you hadn't read it, you won't catch some of the meaning Sei Shonagon, Lady Nijo,| Japan Powered
Most people think of Basho and haiku when they think about Japanese poems. Japanese poetry encompasses more than lovely nature images. The word literature| Japan Powered
Miyamato Musashi's work "The Way to be Followed Alone," or Dokkodo, is the samurai's lesser known work next to The Book of Five Rings (Gorin no| Japan Powered
Teahouse Mysteries Kanzashi Mameko never thought she’d witness a murder.Her life consists of songs, stories, lessons, and the other social demands| Japan Powered
There are a lot of ghouls, ghosts, and other nasty critters spooking around Japan. From bathrooms to cemeteries to the deep woods and everywhere in| Japan Powered
The Book of Bushido by Antony Cummins summarizes the landscape of bushido history and thought. Cummins touches on the contradictions found in the various| Japan Powered
Okakura wrote The Book of Tea in 1906. The books seeks to bridge and explain the Eastern perspective to the West. At the time, most people weren't| Japan Powered
Do you know what happens to a tool when it becomes 100 years old? What about a tree when it sees its 1,000th birthday? What does it matter if a dinner| Japan Powered
Geishas and the Floating World by Stephen and Ethel Longstreet examines the history and development of Tokyo’s red-light district of Yoshiwara. The name| Japan Powered
Bushido Explained offers a good primer to how samurai thought across Japan’s different time periods. As the subtitle of the book states, it is a new| Japan Powered
Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard's book African Samurai tries to mesh nonfiction with historical fiction. The result is a patchwork that felt more| Japan Powered
What does nudity have to do with terrorism and politics? Quite a bit it seems. Eden of the East opens with a naked man who calls himself Akira Takizawa in front of the White House just as Saki Mor…| Japan Powered
Dance in the Vampire Bund often left me feeling…uncomfortable. Funimation ended up releasing an edited version for the American anime audience. If the version I watched was edited, the full v…| Japan Powered
Akira Toriyama died from acute subdural hematoma. He was 68 years old. Toriyama’s started in manga by entering a Weekly Shonen Jump contest, which he lost. But his entry attracted the attenti…| Japan Powered
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead continues the zombie genre’s tradition of critiquing capitalism and groupthink. Whereas George Romero’s zombie films centered on satirizing consumerism …| Japan Powered
Few Japanese words dominate otaku lingo as the word senpai. Senpai, also spelled as sempai, sometimes appears more as punctuation to speech than a proper honorific. It also has a distinctive submis…| Japan Powered
Japanese honorifics confuse us Westerners. The closest matches we have are Mr., Miss., and other addresses. Unlike English’s polite addresses, Japanese honorifics denote social standing and r…| Japan Powered
When I saw the title Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai and the advertisement of an anime girl dressed as a Playboy bunny, I groaned. It looked bad. Like exploitative-of-women-and-badly-ste…| Japan Powered
It’s hard to review an anime that isn’t my cup of tea. Ouran High School Host Club is one of those. It is shojo, but I tend to enjoy their stories and characterizations better than sho…| Japan Powered
Modern Japan is well known for its fascination with all things robotic. This is rooted deep in their history, when they used clockwork puppets called the Karakuri Ninyao to play out folk stories du…| Japan Powered
Well paint my butt blue and call be a baboon! I actually enjoyed this series. I normally find these style of anime too random, cute, or feminine for my taste. School Rumble is most definitely rando…| Japan Powered
My Dress-Up Darling surprised me with its heart and layers. I watched it on a whim, expecting the usual tired ecchi nonsense, but I quickly connected with the characters and how Darling develops th…| Japan Powered
Komi Can’t Communicate focuses on the perception and the challenges of having social anxiety. Komi is the most beautiful and popular girl in high school, but she suffers from social anxiety to the …| Japan Powered
Kaguya-sama: Love is War shares a lot of similarities with Seinfeld. Seinfeld made a fuss out of nothing, such as waiting to be seated in a Chinese restaurant. Kaguya-sama does the same thing, but …| Japan Powered
I’m not one for comedies, anime or otherwise. They usually strike me as dumb and trying too hard. My sense of humor leans toward satire and slap stick like Takeshi’s Castle (if you have…| Japan Powered
I have a bad habit. A sin, if you will, to confess. I envy people from “old” countries. As a history nerd, I read about Europe, China, Japan (of course!), and other old cultures. When I…| Japan Powered
Sometimes I struggle to keep a large picture view of history. When I’m researching or reading about a time period, I don’t think about what was happening elsewhere in the world at the t…| Japan Powered
One aspect of Japanology I’ve neglected so far is the role of China. I’ve only touched on it here and there throughout JP’s articles. But if you are serious about studying Japanes…| Japan Powered
The Confessions of Lady Nijo is an example of Japan’s traditional women’s literature: the diary. Her father was the head of the Minamoto clan: Major Counselor Masatada, who served the E…| Japan Powered
The Rape of Nanking covers the destruction of present-day Nanjing City by the Japanese during World War II. The book doesn’t hold back. In several chapters, I had to take a break from the rel…| Japan Powered
My work Tales from Old Japan: Folktales and Legends from the Land of the Rising Sun proved to be a 4-year writing challenge. It’s my most ambition project so far, and one that I felt inadequa…| Japan Powered
More than a century ago, the West had little contact with Japan. The fabled Asia, distant and strange to Westerners, was a land of mystical stories, of elixirs of immortality, and lands where gods …| Japan Powered
Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch and Grassman, can be found in Native American folklore and in modern sightings. I know many people who have seen Bigfoot or something like it. Not far from my homet…| Japan Powered
Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) offered a view into Japan during the Meiji Restoration with his books: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Out of the East, Kokoro, The Boy Who Drew Cats, In Ghostly Japan, Kwa…| Japan Powered
Incel, or involuntary celibate, was coined in 1993 by a Canadian woman named Alana who used it to describe her experiences as a college-aged virgin. Ironically, the term now labels a section of the…| Japan Powered
An isekei with a female lead? Sounds good! Unfortunately, The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent has many interesting aspects, but suffers from a passive protagonist. Sei Takanashi sits in the…| Japan Powered
Shigurui: Death Frenzy is deathly serious, but I wasn’t expecting reach-into-your-stomach-and-pull-out-your-own-intestines serious. In one of the opening scenes a Daiymo’s advisor plead…| Japan Powered
Who knew boredom and apathy could be so entertaining? One Punch Man, so far, has plenty of all three. Saitama approaches superheroing as a hobby. What’s his main problem as a part-time superh…| Japan Powered
I cannot recommend Gushing Over Magical Girls, but the story has its merits and has more going for it than it appears on the surface. The story plays with the magical girl genre in uncomfortable wa…| Japan Powered
Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser| Japan Powered
What will your final words be just before you die? Japan has a long history of jisei, or death poems. Jisei is the "farewell poem to life." These poems| Japan Powered
The Hagakure appears obsessed with seppuku when you read through it. In the book, Yamamoto Tsunetomo collected myriad accounts of samurai from Saga domain| Japan Powered
Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun surprised me. As long-time readers know, it’s a rare comedy to make me chuckle. Kaguya-sama: Love is War is one of the most| Japan Powered
Horimiya appears to be a standard high-school rom-com, but it quickly shows how it is more. The series focuses on how people have hidden sides to their| Japan Powered
Murasaki Shikibu wasn't her name. Like many female writers in history, we don't know her real name. Murasaki, however, is a nickname derived from her| Japan Powered
Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book offers a look at the Imperial court from around 993 to the end of 1000, when she served as a lady-in-waiting for Empress| Japan Powered
Here's a collection of books to help expand your knowledge about Japan. I’ve referred to these books for my various writing projects. This list skews| Japan Powered
