Author Archives: Reslez

My favorite anime series sounds incredibly boring when I try to tell random people about it. “It’s about this kid who plays go,” I say, utterly aware that I sound like the Nerd-o-Tron 3000. “And there’s a ghost who teaches him how to play and the relationships are really interesting and wait it’s really not [...]

Death Note is a wonderful, intriguing series because of all the thought the authors put into devising its intricate world of humans and shinigami. So much thought, in fact, that my brain frequently sizzles and smokes when I try to follow each twist and turn of the very twisted plot. It’s probably inevitable that whenever [...]

It’s an almost spooky truth of storytelling that there’s only one hero. There is, by definition, just one protagonist, just as there can be only one narrator and point of view at any given moment. The Hero’s Journey is a path that has been tread by countless heroes over thousands of years — and though [...]

If you’ve ever seen a Star Wars movie (just say yes), you’ve probably heard George Lucas proclaim he made deliberate use of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory when he wrote his script. Over the past several decades, the idea that most great myths and epics follow a similar structure has grown to nauseating levels of popularity. [...]

Heroes are tricky. Ask anyone who’s been around the block a few times and you’ll hear the same thing: Anime heroes are all alike! If you’ve seen one harem lead, you’ve seen them all, and if you’ve watched three shounen series you’ve met your lifetime quota. It takes an exceptional anime series to bust open [...]