Category: Special Articles

Announcement Time – Writers Recruitment #2

by SuperWooper, posted in About, Special Articles

Applications are closed. To everyone who submitted, thank you for your interest!

In June of 2017, I applied to be part of the team here at Star Crossed. Now, nearly two years later, I’m writing our new recruitment post. Time flies when you’re blogging anime.

With Aidan’s recent departure, it’s time for us to shore up our roster a bit. More writers means we’ll be able to cover more series, include more perspectives in our First Impressions posts, and perhaps introduce new features like Lenlo’s Throwback Thursday. Seasonal anime will always be our bread and butter, so we’ll be asking new recruits to give us a hand starting with the Summer 2019 season. If you watch anime week-to-week and want an established platform to write about it, then we’d love for you to apply.

Text blogging isn’t a glamorous job in this era of video sharing sites and social networks. If your application is accepted, your only rewards as a writer will be a sense of accomplishment and the rare message from an appreciative commenter. Keep at it long enough and you may even get one or two not-so-appreciative messages! Mario, Lenlo and I will be grateful to have you, though. We’ve all got different tastes, so you’re sure to find somebody you click with. We’re also flexible regarding upload schedules and show selection, though we’ll begin to expect a bit more once you’ve settled in.

Still keen on applying? Hit the jump for details!

Continue reading “Announcement Time – Writers Recruitment #2” →

A Reflection: Ode to the other Mom in 3-gatsu no Lion

by SuperMario, posted in 3-gatsu no Lion, Special Articles

3-gatsu no Lion has just finished its 2nd season (on that notes, rest assured that Wooper will cover it till the end of this season and I’ll chime in to give a full post). After Burnt Field mini-arc – which was a solid arc by all means – it came rather natural that the last few episodes focus more on low-key drama instead of focus on another arc. All the better in my opinions since these last episodes elevate Hinata as one of the best girl on Earth and one side chapter that hit me hard on a personal level. So much that despite my laptop is currently broken and I still have two full reviews to write (that’ll come, I promise), I just wanna let this all out first. Keep in mind this is not a review, nor does this reflection piece have any point to make; just merely what I feel about it.

Consider how the second season ends in a satisfying note, I was quite surprised the show follows very closely to the manga’s structure, with only one chapter was adapted out of its order, and that chapter was “Other Home”, and for me it’s probably the best choice that Shaft made. Other Home sheds some more light to the crippled relationships and between him and the family members and the breakdown of the family. The trick here is the shift of perspective. This chapter gives a voice to the voiceless member of the his foster family. Damnit it’s such a brilliant character study in display here. The first notion that really grabs me personally is how this family represents accurately the family dynamic of Asian culture (East Asia to be more specific), so much so that it reminds me a great deal of my own and the one that the more I grow apart from it, the more I can look at it with different perspective. We have a Father who decides the best method to teach his own kids how to face their problem is to smirk “haha” and does nothing. We have a Wife who does housework everyday, stands there in the kitchen making dinner and wait for her husband and kids come home, even without anyone contact her. We have a Mother who constantly blames herself for raising her kids the wrong way, as if the way they turn out HAS ANYTHING TO DO with the way she raises them. And we have the only one member that tries her best to hold everything together since everyone else just stuck up in their own little worlds.

The framing device is pretty on point as well. We don’t hear any conversation between her and Rei, as if their conversation is just merely a facade, the mask that both of them put on. Throughout the chapter we rarely see her face, we see mostly behind her back, when she’s busy doing housework. Those motifs match with the way she smiles, and all the formal lines she about to say, but holds back. Here they sit, opposite to each other, afraid to look at each other’s eyes, and words come out their mouth are pointless. The home that never feels like a home. And it certainly shreds my heart when I realize that the only member Rei feels like his real family is their old dog.

And that comes to another brilliant part of this chapter, the chemistry (or the lack thereof) between Rei and her. I am always find one of the most intriguing relationship is the one like this. The one that always rely on other factors to work, and then when you pull these factors out of the equation, what’s left between them? From her perspective, her husband just agrees to bring another boy to live as a family, so what she’d do best is to support him. Then she sees her own children crumbled right before her eyes because of the presence of that boy, and the family keeps falling apart beyond her hands. Underneath all that she knows it all and she knows that Rei understands it too. What kind of emotions and what kind of behaviour will she act when she meets Rei alone, then? I love it that she has a dream that night that Rei were her own child. That maybe the closest distance that she ever regards him to be.

Announcement Time – Writers Recruitment Results

by AidanAK47, posted in About, Special Articles

Ladies and gentlemen it is I, your resident anime blogger AidanAK47 and I bring with me news. As those of you who visit our little abode might know, we have been running a recruitment drive to get more writers so that we can cover more shows each season. Thank you to all that applied for the position. It is great to see those who wish to contribute to this site and help keep it strong. But alas you could not all be chosen. The results are in and we have decided to take on two new writers: Lenlo and Superwooper.

Lenlo:

Hello everyone! I want to take this chance to quickly introduce myself and tell you afew things about me, so lets get started. I am a recent University Graduate with a degree in Computer Science, my personal focus being Machine Learning. I currently live in Texas in the United States but expect that to change soon. My hobbies include Fencing at the regional level, gaming with my current addition being Final Fantasy 14, and now writing. As far as anime goes, my tastes are pretty simple. I enjoy drama’s, things with a meaty story, and darker pieces with no guarnteed happy ending, things such as Monster, Mushishi, Sword of the Stranger and more recently Rakugo. I also enjoy a good romance such as Ore Monogatari and Your Lie in April, though those are harder to come by. Finallly, for this season I will be covering Stan Lees The Reflection and Katsugeki Touken Ranbu. Im looking forward to writing for you all!

Superwooper:

Hey there! I’m Superwooper, a 27 year old Education student and recently-minted anime blogger. When I’m not at school or working as a tutor to pay the bills, I’m usually attending Smash Bros Melee or Pokemon TCG tournaments. My list of favorite anime includes Cross Game, Mushishi, Seirei no Moribito, and Usagi Drop. I’ll be writing about Ballroom e Youkoso and Shoukoku no Altair this season, along with Space Battleship Yamato 2202 if the next few episodes appear online soon. I’m grateful to be writing for a blog that’s been a personal resource for years now. Thanks for having me!

So what does that mean for you? Well it means that more shows will get covered each season and this site will be significantly more active with content. Now I must ask for you readers to be kind to our new writers. Constructive criticism is welcome but blatant abuse will be met with the reception it deserves from yours truly. Now I doubt such a scenario will come to pass as I like to believe our little reader community has a little more class than others…well, mostly. Thus I hope this change will result in a more positive direction for this site. Our two new writers will be starting with us in this new summer season so we will be covering quite a lot from this point forward. May you enjoy reading our written musings on anime to come.

Announcement Time – Writer’s Recruitment

by SuperMario, posted in About, Special Articles

UPDATE: WE HAVE ANOTHER WEEK TO GO. THIS APPLICATION PROCESS WILL CLOSE AS SOON AS THE FIRST SHOW – KAKEGURUI – STARTS AIRING. WE WILL SEND EMAILS TO THE APPLICANTS AFTERWARDS TO INFORM THEM WHETHER OR NOT THEY MADE IT. THANK YOU.

I’ll be straight to the point, it’s time for us to recruit a new permanent writer.

The reason, you ask? Welp, as much as I don’t want to admit, each season I feel we left out too many shows that worth covering. Having another writer on board, along with the support from casual writers like Helghast Killzone or Bam, we’re aiming at 9-10 shows per season. With psgels is now returning on the site with his monthly summary, the site can finally be in an active mode. Having new writer also mean that more shows for you guys to follow and enjoy.

But I’ll stress this again, for those of you who wonder if this site is ever going back to the glory times before psgels left, I can safely say we won’t, nor we intend to. We run things differently now with all the respect towards his bloggings from before, and rest assured that we still inform psgels on any development/ change we plan for this site, such as this.

But if you’re tempted with the idea of blogging anime, let be warned: this is a job that have little to no reward, time-consuming and require a strong commitment and frequent update. If you frequent this blog you would notice that usually we have little response rate, we’d be lucky if we have 1 or 2 response per post. Writing a post can eat up a lot of your free time as well. Usually, it’s about 3 hours per post, and you need to write them constantly almost every week.

Now, are you still keen on giving it a shot? Then, to the application:

– Tell us a little bit about yourself, your favorite anime/ genre, what can you bring to the site (nah, we are not some kind of stuck up employers), and a sample post on any recent episode of your choice, or even a full review. The main reason for this sample post, apart from us having a good grasp of your writing style, is a little challenge for you guys to test yourself. “Try to write a post a same size as us (about 500 – 600 words), time how long it takes and ask yourself if you can really do that 3 times a week, for every single week of the year.” I’m just quoting roughly what Aidan said to me when I first approached him for the job and it did scare the hell out of me, but I survived. Ask yourself can you devote that much time each week to write reviews. If after you finish this sample post you still feel perfectly fine with all that, then you’re basically who we looking for.

One more thing that I suggest you do if you give this blogging a shot, just be yourself on your writing. Having a competent writing skills and good critical writing ability of course help, but having your own voice is what matters most. Let us know more about you through your post.

–Send your application to this email: redriver(underscore)2005(at)yahoo(dot)com with the subject: “[your username] psgels.net Writer’s Application”. The deadline will be until the start of next season (1st of July), meaning you will have approximately 3 more weeks to get involved. Depending on how many applications we get, we will try to email you back whether you made it or not as soon as the decision is made. If you have any question, shoot it down the comment section. We honestly don’t know how many applications we will eventually get, but it’s part of the fun. Remember, as long as you think of this blogging as your hobby, you’ll be fine. That I can assure. You won’t go far for things you don’t enjoy. So don’t be shy, give this a shot and good luck.

Announcement Time – User registration

by AidanAK47, posted in About, Other:, Shoutbox Topics, Special Articles, Uncategorized

Hello one and all. As I am sure you have noticed, there have been changes going on around the site as of late and I understand that change is scary. Please take heed to not suffer three simultaneous heart attacks upon seeing the banner up there change for the first time in several years.

Alright, to get serious for now. Things have been going on around the site as we have been basically fixing up the site to be more efficient as how it was previously configured was hardly ideal. We also have had to deal with problems with our server as it seems it can barely handle the slightest bit of hard labor and has caused us to compromise on a few things. Likely our biggest change is the new chatbox which I understand some have grievances with. However it does have several advantages over the old chatbox and what I have to say here will address the biggest issue with it so far. As it is currently, users can only keep their name for a day. If you leave psgels and come back you cannot assume your old nickname until 24 hours pass. To fix this we have added that little register box over on the right side. With it you can register with the site and keep your username in the chatbox as well as use it for commenting. For now those are it’s main uses but we may add new features to make use of it in the future. No promises on that as we do want to keep this Anime Blog as an Anime Blog

You may notice that if you attempt to register you get a popup asking for another username and password. This is a security measure added by our host to prevent the thousands of bots desperate to sell you Viagra and prevent them from overloading the server. To get past this, just put in the username and password as “wordpress“. Check remember me to make it you only need to press ok if it pops up again in the future. Then you will be able to register with the site and log in to post in the chatbox or likewise. This may be inconvenient to some but remember you can save the login information when prompted by your browser and make it a painless 2 click process.

I would like to thank K-Off and afgm for their efforts to help the site. Well I say efforts but quite frankly they did all the work while I sat twiddling my thumbs. Lastly I would like to say that while changes are taking place, we do not intend to change this site from what Psgels intends it to be. In fact we make sure to inform him of what we are doing and ensure we have his consent on all important matters. We hope we can bring bring this site back to it’s former glory and beyond. As well as provide you lot with the best anime coverage possible.

I will try to get the next season preview your way soon and thank you for your patience.

Quick Announcement: Direction, Writers, and Content

by K-Off, posted in Special Articles

I never expected the site would come this far to where I’d feel the need to make an announcement – but here we are, and it’s only right to let you know what’s happening behind the scenes with the site. So as a public service, this is meant to inform all of you who don’t frequently visit our chatbox as to where the site is going, and the gradual changes that you can expect over the coming months.

When the first wave of new writers after psgels (including Aidan, Ninjarealist, and myself) came onboard, we did so fully intending to never deviate too far from the kind of content that Psgels had always maintained since the site’s days on Blogsome in 2005, and for the most part, that still holds true – we’re very consistent with episodic reviews, on top of the usual Seasonal Previews, and anything before them. However, we realize that we can’t limit ourselves to what we consider “playing safe,” and that it really doesn’t hurt to try something new for a change. As a result, the influx of all kinds of original content has reflected that. Besides, whether it was SuperMario’s Versus Show, Aidan’s Manga Spotlight, or my Game Reviews, the positive feedback from you guys, long-timers or not, have continued to encourage us in our efforts to improve the blog in our own ways. So, as far as content goes, you can expect a lot more interesting takes on the site like the Versus Show, on top of the usual seasonal content.

Lastly, you’ve probably noticed that the site has been in a constant state of construction with the chatbox over the past few days, but it’s an extension of our efforts to modernize the site. There’s still some tweaks to be made here and there with the entire site in general (for example, the site eats up A LOT of cpu and the chat needs more work), but I’ll be working with everyone, including Psgels, in order to clean up the site’s coding over the next few months. This really is a site you can fully customize from top to bottom, so if you have a suggestion for a new feature, please don’t hesitate to throw some ideas our way.

 

Announcement Time!

by AidanAK47, posted in About, Special Articles

Well hello there my precarious readers, this is AidanAK47 here to bring you news most unexpected. And before you ask, no. It’s not that I finally gave up and decided to ditch you all like the rest. Through what is an unexpected turn of events I have made this blogging thing a bit too much of a habit to give up so I ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. So while I wait for Dark Souls 3 to download and suck the remainder of my free time into a endless void; I wish to share some news.

We have a new writer on board! Please welcome Mario_Thang or whatever they decide to call themselves during their time here.

Due to circumstances they will be posting using Lightningblot’s account who you might remember as that guy who wrote two posts on your lie in April and disappeared into the abyss. I happened to get a hold of his password thanks to shenanigans involving lightningblot’s poor choice of password and a rather insolent but laughably stupid troll.(Still brings a smile to my face when I recall just how I managed to wrestle back control of his account from that silly troll)

So that’s all well and good but what does that mean for you. Well it means that this site will be more active and we will be covering more anime each season. It’s means that this will truly become a multi-writer Blog as Psgels intended and there will be someone to contrast my so far one man show on this site. Put simply thanks to jolly cooperation there will be more content on this site for no extra cost. All I ask is that you be gentle with our newcomer and offer constructive criticism  in order to help them improve and get more sunk into the role. Don’t be mean. Of course our newcomer has no obligation to this site and is free to leave whenever they so wish. Though I have made it clear just what kind of hobby this is and they seem keen despite the downsides so I think this one won’t disappear as fast as our previous writers.

Well that’s all I have to say. Psgels, if there’s any small slim chance you might see this then hows about you hand over admin rights so I can finally fix the headers and get rid of that annoying spam. Not to mention make some improvements like a search button and for the shoutbox an edit button. Well then, I am off to slaughter hellspawn with my trusty zweihander.

 

Praise the sun,

~AidanAK47~

Recommendation Corner 01 – Anti-Harems

by AidanAK47, posted in Special Articles

This is just to try something new. As I tend to come across a number of new and interesting things I thought I might highlight some current unknown or interesting gems.Be they visual novel, manga or light novel.

Abnormal-kei Joshi

Description: High-schooler Shiina Shinya thinks that all girls are pretty much good-for-nothing, mostly because he doesn’t understand them at all. That doesn’t stop him from being surrounded by strange girls! Tsubasa Tooka, a cute, much-admired girl, stalks him. Shikimura Masami is majorly into masochism, and has recruited Shinya into her play sessions. Ikari Satsuki seems suspiciously interested in the recent serial stabbings, and seems to want to drag Shinya into it. Banjou Yoruko, a normally quiet, bookish girl, has decided she and Shinya are bound up in some fantasy setting. Uchida Yumeji is the school’s sleeping beauty, who spends all of her time in the infirmary because she requires so much sleep. Shinya brings her newspapers, so she can keep up with current events in the short time she spends awake. Lastly, Okui Akane is convinced she is a vampire. For all Shinya knows, it could be true, but in practice it just means that he has to let her drink his blood. How will Shinya deal with all these good-for-nothing girls that complicate his life?

The good: This guy has the most twisted and odd line-up of haremettes to date. A narcoleptic, a masochist, a stalker, a girl who thinks she’s a vampire…and that is the hook. Seeing our protagonist interact with these twisted creatures.

The bad: The manga does not have a ongoing main plot and the protagonist doesn’t have much of a personality. The harem is already set up from the start so we don’t even see how our protagonist got involved with these girls. So while the novelty is nice there not much else going for it.

Current number of translated chapters: 10

Recommendation level: 50%

 

Shinigami 4 nin no kanojo

Description: Minaguchi Kaoru is nothing special. He’s no good at sports or school, isn’t in any clubs, and he’s not popular. He has no friends and isn’t even interested in any of the girls he knows. He’s also teased due to the fact that he loves shoujo manga. Unlike the harem daydreams of his peers, he dreams of finding his true love. Unfortunately, a shinigami comes to kill him, simply because he’s a “forever alone” sort of guy. When he gasps out his intention of embracing life with his final breaths, though, she takes it back! As long as he follows through on his intentions, he won’t be killed. To convince the shinigami that his plans are genuine, he declares that he will confess to the girl he likes, the very next day. Expecting failure with confessing to random girls in his school, he sends out love letters to four different girls. To his surprise, they all agree to be his girlfriend. Now, this shoujo-manga-loving guy has ended up in a kind of harem story, quadruple-timing four girls! Will he be able to stay involved enough with society to avoid an early death?

The good: So far the most well executed harem deconstruction. Genuinely funny and a plot that keeps you interested. The girls may not have the deepest characterisation but their quirks are far from the norm. This is a personal favorite of mine.

The bad: Its been axed. Its confirmed that chapter 18 will be the last and considering the untapped potential of the story it is a great shame. Those 18 chapters are a great read though.

Current number of translated chapters: 17

Recommendation level: 90%

 

Mousugu Shinu Hito (Haruse Hiroki)

Description: Kominato Riku is a high school student who aims to be a game designer. The girl next door is his childhood friend Haju, is in love with him, but he has fallen head over heels for the school idol Riko. And lastly, there is the transfer student, Nodoka. With that all said you’d think this is the start of some love-comedy harem, but a rumor spreads that Nodoka’s received a message that says, “you will die soon”. Riku and the gang’s fate will change in a major way. Who will live, and who will love?

The good: Psycho girls scheming and fighting each other in a harem which is a matter of life or death? Whats not to love? While not perfect by any means its a very entertaining read with plenty of twists and turns. The supernatural mystery is intriguing as well. But the highlight is seeing just how far these girls are going to go to get chosen.

The bad: The girls personalities change too rapidly. Going from perfectly sane to downright psychotic in a matter of pages. The art heavily dramatises the story as well. Subtlety is not the name of the game here. Parts of the story are downright ridiculous. Also not for those who are not good with gore or disturbing concepts

Current number of translated chapters: 12

Recommendation level: 80%

 

New and interesting

  1. Dead Tube
  2. Boku no Hero Academia
  3. Inuyashiki

Announcing some site changes:

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

It’s time to announce some site changes: over the past months obviously a lot has changed. Star Crossed can’t continue on like it has been, because I just can’t write episodic posts anymore and in the meantime between me posting first impressions and finishing series the site will have quite a bit of inactivity. I just don’t have the time to fill this site with posts anymore. Fortunately in the past few months, I’ve been talking to a few very talented people (ninjarealist and k-off), and we’ve come to the following conclusion:

Star Crossed is going to become a multi-author blog.

The change will be gradual, but over the next season people will start posting episode reviews, first impressions, editorials and reviews along with me on this site. So from now on each post will have an author. This will bring more activity into the site.