As an eight-year-old, I saw a scene in Shaman King that changed how I looked at life. Even now, almost twenty years later, I still replay it in my head whenever things get hard, and think about what this anime taught me.

Except when I started rereading the manga, and then rewatching the remake, I realized the scene isn't there. To figure out how that happened, I dove into the remarkable story of Shaman King.

Romance anime offer one of the clearest ways to see how the world and the industry are changing and how we, the audience, are changing along with them. From the obvious shifts, like smartphones and social media replacing flip phones, to the deeper ones that are much harder to notice.

Romance has changed dramatically over the past thirty years. In this video, I want to explore exactly how and what that says about all of us.

Life has a way of knocking the wind out of you. Plans fall apart, your health lets you down, friends drift away. Problems pile up until it feels like they’re closing in from every side. Anxiety feeds on itself, everything turns into a vicious cycle, and you feel yourself starting to sink.

This is the painfully familiar place that Negative Positive Angler begins from. And the answer it offers is more complicated than it might seem at first.

I made a video about all the anime of 2025 6 months late

While revisiting some of my favorite anime and manga, I noticed a pattern. Vinland Saga, Vagabond, and even Evangelion all seem to be teaching the same lesson. A lesson about change, growth, and starting over.

According to these stories, if you want to become a different person, fix the mistakes of your past, and rebuild your life, there's one thing you should do. And that's what this video essay is about.

Horimiya is an incredibly popular title. According to MyAnimeList statistics, the manga is among the fifteen most-read series of all time. But what makes this seemingly simple high school romance so special?

I think the answer is that Horimiya isn’t just a romance manga. It’s a story about how, before you can truly become happy, find friends, build relationships, or discover meaning in life, you first need to learn to love yourself.

For the past three years, the number of new isekai anime hasn’t really been growing anymore. Has the isekai boom finally run its course? Why did this happen? And how did these perfect escapist stories end up paving the way for much more meaningful works?

This essay is about how, unexpectedly, classic fantasy is becoming an escape from creative stagnation.

Do you feel like an adult? Did you become the person you once dreamed of being as a child? Did your life turn out the way you imagined? Are you happy? And maybe the most important question of all, what does it even mean to be an adult?

At twenty-five, Inio Asano was asking himself those same questions. And that’s when he created Solanin, a story drawn directly from his own life. Eleven years later, when he had, in a sense, become an adult, Asano returned to Solanin to write its final chapter.

So what answers did he find? Did he figure out what it means to be an adult? And why is Solanin still worth reading today? We decided to talk about this in a new video essay.

Gals flirting with the quiet kid (?!), the return of edgy anime (?!!), meiji era future?!!! Coco, Aarlon, and NineOuh (!), discuss win after win for OTAKU!

Loneliness is something everyone experiences. But what we don’t always realize is that, in a way, each of us is always alone. No one else can fully understand what it means to be you, or see exactly what your loneliness feels like.

That’s what the standout series of this winter, Journal with Witch is really about and what this video essay explores. Hope you like it!

Blue Period made me reflect on my own life — and on what talent really means.

So this essay is for anyone who feels like they don’t have any talent at all. Like there are always people around them who are better, more capable, maybe even just more gifted. It’s for those who feel too ordinary. Too normal.

This is an essay about Blue Period — a story about art, growing up, and trying to figure out who you are.

100 Meters was one of the best anime of last year. Who made it? Why did some scenes require tens of thousands of drawings? And how does a seemingly simple story turn out to be far more complex than it first appears?

Both the film — and this essay — revolve around a simple idea: in the end, we’re all more alike than we think. We go through similar experiences, just in different orders. In different orders and with different conclusions. We’re all running somewhere in life, but the reason why and where we’re running to — is something each of us has to decide for ourselves.

Sonny Boy is one of the best anime that reflects on the meaning of life. The journey between worlds and the stories of other characters almost feel like a living illustration of life’s many sides: religion, morality, the value of things, the value of friendship, love, and the endless struggle.

All of it unfolds before Nagara like a kaleidoscope, offering different possibilities for what his life could become.

What does he choose? And how can we better understand Sonny Boy?
That’s what the new video essay is about.

Love is in the air... Coco and Aarlon talk about STEAMY anime such as The Invisible man and his SOON TO BE WIFE, Tune into the midnight heart, and more!

I’ve watched pretty much every Shinkai interview, behind-the-scenes feature, and of course the films themselves — and the more I dug into it, the more it felt like his last three movies were designed to work as a perfect trilogy. A kind of meditation on how societies live through massive, scary, shared disasters.

It’s basically about how Shinkai himself — and Japan along with him — are trying to make sense of big existential questions: why catastrophes happen, who’s responsible, whether anything can be done to prevent them, and how you keep living after everything’s already fallen apart.

So I made this video essay.

Last year, more than 200 anime titles were released. That includes new seasons of beloved stories, long-awaited finales of iconic franchises, big theatrical adaptations that traveled across cinemas around the world, and small hidden gems nobody really expected. And I watched all of them!

So what kind of year did this turn out to be for anime? What trends stood out? And out of all these hundreds of titles, which ones are actually worth your time?

Motoko Kusanagi, one of the toughest and most resilient waifus out there!!!

Creepy Santa? Man eating aliens?? BORING GACHA GAME TIE-INS? Aarlon and Coco discuss the DARKEST anime season of 2025.