My Stuff

{WIP} This Day In Anime History: A site that shows historical anime news everyday. This will probably take a year or two to build the database, set up the calender, and pretty it up. But this is the basic mockup.

Other People’s Stuff

Academia

Anime and Manga Studies: A website focused on academic publications on anime, manga, and Japanese culture. It has the most complete list of anime academia book releases anywhere, so check it out before you go to Reddit or wherever for book lists.

University of Illinois’ Journal of Anime and Manga Studies: Another thing also called Anime and Manga Studies, but this one is an academic journal. One of the two main anime-based academic journals in publication.

Mechademia: A standalone academic body that publishes the other main anime academic journal of the same name. Additionally, they host yearly conferences in the US and SEA.

Bloggers

Ivanhobe: A blogger who I found out about through the PreCure fandom. He’s was the biggest influence on my earliest pre-Otastorian blogging. He’s funny and writes a lot about tokusatsu. Much more active on Twitter.

Denpa Pentateuch: Blog breaking down denpa music and fanculture. It’s defunct at this point, but it’s still the single best jumping off point for deep diving denpa.

like a fish in water: “Otaku Ethnographer (ANTHROPOLOGY DISCIPLINE MENTIONED)” blog focusing on anime pilgrimage. In addition to his Weekly Review of Transit, Place and Culture in Anime series of 500+ entries, he also assisted with this great intro to anime pilgrimage story on Polygon.

Sakugablog/Sakugabooru: Easily the best resource for learning about anime production. The blog has great in-depth articles and the booru is an animation cut database.

Washi’s Blog: An old blog also about anime production like Sakugablog. It’s dead, but it has some good articles like this breakdown of the anime production process.

J-En Translations: Blog of professional translator Jennifer O’Donnell. She has lots of interesting posts about the translation industry, reviews on translated media, and interviews with other translators.

The Land of Obscusion: Blog about random old anime no one has seen. He usually dives pretty deep into historal context, so fans of my writing style will probably like his stuff probably already read his stuff.

Animétudes: A current blog about old anime production. It’s a good place to start if you’re interested in anime history, with several in-depth series on different studios and influential artists.

OGIUE MANIAX: Fellow Genshiken fan. They write about various different anime and manga but mostly Genshiken. They also do a monthly roundup of tweets from Genshiken author Kio Shimoku.

Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster: Writer for PC Gamer sometimes. The blog is 99% non-reviews of obscure Japanese video-games, but sometimes she writes about games you actually have heard of. 

Frogkun: Formerly Anime News Network’s Tokyo correspondent and professional light novel translator. She mostly writes about light novels.

Kayo Kyoku Plus: Blog of a long time J-pop fan J-Canuck. He mostly reviews 70s-80s J-pop, but sometimes talks about TV shows too.

Wave Motion Cannon/Full Frontal: Blog of translations, interviews, and animation analysis. WMC is the old version and FF is the new fancy version. Animétudes writes for this site! FF has a cool interview about the making of the anime film Gothicmade, and WMC has a great translation of a cool old Animage interview with Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hideaki Anno.

YouTubers (I don’t watch much :^/)

Pause and Select: Anituber with a background in critical theory. He did a pretty good video series interviewing Patrick W. Galbraith on otaku culture.

Karl Andersson: German Anthropology PhD researcher. He’s currently researching shotacon media and fan culture.

TheCynicClinic: Very old school Anituber. His videos vary on specific topic, but basically he talks about how Japanese culture specifically impacts the creation and creative process of anime.

Red Bard: Newer Anituber. She focuses on US anime fandom, and recently has done videos on the histories of different US anime conventions.

[JP] Active Otaku Channel: Akihabara based YouTuber. He mainly goes around Akihabara talking about different sites. The channel focuses on things often overlooked by English speaking YouTubers, like different (non-maid cafe) restaurants and interesting things after hours.

Podcasts

(short blerbs, as I became a bigger podcast listener I’ll flesh these out…)

Retro Mecha Podcast: A podcast about retro mecha anime.

Vintage Anime Podcast: A podcast about vintage anime.

Mobile Suit Breakdown: A podcast about Mobile Suit Gundam.

Dude, You Remember Macross?: A podcast about Macross.

Manga Machinations: A podcast about manga.

Anime World Order: A REALLY old anime podcast.

Others

Anilinks: Massive compendium of links related to anime and manga. Everything from fansites, official sites, old sites, new sites, Japanese learning sites, local community sites. It’s still being updated!

[JP] Circle.ms: Catalog all of the upcoming doujinshi events in Japan. Check it out before you go to Japan, or if you just want to see what’s going down in the otaku space.

AnimeCons.com: It’s like Circls.ms but covering anime events around the world, but most specifically anime conventions in the US and Europe. It also has a YouTube show AnimeCons TV where they do interviews and talk about con news.

[JP] Yokote Masuda Manga Museum: A manga museum in Yokote City, Akita Prefrecture.

[JP] Anime Tokusatsu Archive Centre: An archive center for anime and tokusatsu. Hideaki Anno (Evangelion, director), Shinji Higuchi (Shin Godzilla, director), and Meiji Univeristy Professor Ryusuke Hikawa serve on the director’s board. They have a YouTube channel that they update periodically.

[JP] Mogra: An ani-song club in Akihabara. They stream on Twitch from time to time.

Rumic World: Database dedicated to the great Rumiko Takahashi. It has information on all her manga, translated interviews, image galleries, and other stuff.

VGDensetsu: A massive video game staff database. Pretty much the closest thing video games have to something like AniDB.

[JP] Photo Akiba: Archive of photos taken in Akihabara mostly from 2000 to 2013. The photographer also continues to post on Twitter.

Dragon Quest: The Ultimate Game Experience: A classic Dragon Quest 1 battle “simulator”. It’s funny.