Eric Thurm Mar 31, 2022. 3 minute read
Should You Watch Ranking of Kings? A Prospective Viewer’s Guide
Do you like “nice” TV, but wish it was a little less… well, nice? Did you enjoy Parks and Rec, Ted Lasso, and every other show that’s been called “radical” solely because it lacked conflict, and now feel a little embarrassed about it? Do you want to feel good about…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Mar 31, 2022. 3 minute read
Should You Watch Raised By Wolves? A Prospective Viewer’s Guide
Do you miss classic sci-fi TV, with its blend of heady ideas and almost laughable production value? Do you wish you could still roll out of bed on a Saturday and watch endless episodes of Farscape or Babylon 5? In other words, do you miss when sci-fi TV was fully…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Dec 9, 2019. 4 minute read
Who Will Be Watchmen’s Next Dr. Manhattan?
The penultimate episode of HBO’s Watchmen ended with a shocking development: Doctor Manhattan, the series’ only character with actual superpowers and the closest thing Watchmen has to a god, is captured by the white supremacist Seventh Kavalry and sent to his presumptive demise. Exactly how this happened is a little…
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TRENDING
Eric Thurm Nov 25, 2019. 3 minute read
How Psycho Pass Explains The Housing Crisis
In some ways, Psycho Pass is pretty easy to classify. The series, which premiered in 2012 and is currently streaming on Hulu, is a classic dystopian sci-fi story: it takes place in a future Japan where the unseen computer Sibyl System constantly measures the mental health and general motivation of…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Nov 19, 2019. 2 minute read
A Tale of Two Trainers, Chapter Three: Premature Conclusions
Welcome to A Tale of Two Trainers, a series where Features & Trending Editor merritt k and Fanbyte Contributor Eric Thurm play through Pokemon Sword and Shield as very different trainers with very different priorities. Previously, our heroes challenged the first two Galar Gyms. In this installment, they meet untimely…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Nov 7, 2019. 7 minute read
How to Make Better Reboots With The Help of Friedrich Nietzsche
Why do we reboot popular media? Of course, there’s a financial motivation — this thing did well, so we’ll try it again, and wring millions of dollars out of consumers’ nostalgia for Batman or whatever. But the business incentive for rebooting old properties only exists, or continues to exist, in a…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Sep 16, 2019. 5 minute read
Anime Takes on Life in a Post-Collapse World With Dr. Stone and 7SEEDS
A medium that exploded in popularity in the wake of multiple atomic detonations, anime has long dealt with ecological frailty — which is to say, the fraught relationship between humans and the litany of other organisms and environments that make up the Earth. Several Studio Ghibli classics, like Princess Mononoke…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Sep 10, 2019. 3 minute read
Pokemon Masters Review: Gotta Friend ’em All
If you want out of a Pokemon game is the experience of catching, naming, and raising Pokemon while clearing the gyms of a fantastical region then no, Pokemon Masters is not a great Pokemon game. The new mobile game from DeNA doesn’t even provide the Pokemon Go portion of the…
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REVIEWS
Eric Thurm Aug 28, 2019. 3 minute read
5 Pitches for British TV Series Starring Pokemon
Finally, Nintendo seems to have given up on designing tons of new Pokemon. This lack of imagination sounds like it should be a bad thing, but it’s actually led to the best element of recent Pokemon games: updated, regional versions of classic Pokemon that look absolutely insane. Consider the humble…
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LISTS
Eric Thurm Aug 19, 2019. 5 minute read
Evangelion’s Long Shots Hold Its Audience Hostage
For a show about angst-ridden, volatile teenagers piloting enormous cyborgs through a series of cataclysmic battles, Neon Genesis Evangelion is remarkably calm. Sure, the series occasionally erupts into a massive, city-leveling fight. And sure, one of the characters (probably Asuka) might yell at someone, exploding in a fit of pique. But…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Aug 7, 2019. 4 minute read
Kengan Ashura Falls Flat as Corporate Fight Club
Early in Netflix’s new anime series Kengan Ashura, an adaptation of the manga of the same name by Yabako Sandrovich and Daromeon, the CEO of a major corporation lays out the hidden shape of the world: nearly all serious business transactions are secretly resolved by brutal fistfights. This is kengan:…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Jul 22, 2019. 5 minute read
Why the Second Season of One Punch Man Doesn’t Quite Land
The long-awaited second run of One Punch Man, based on artist ONE’s acclaimed webcomic, premiered in April and wrapped at the beginning of July. The reviews were, to put it mildly, mixed. Other publications have covered the reasons for the decline in quality — changes in personnel, the shift in…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Jul 10, 2019. 5 minute read
Jumanji 4 is Absolutely Going to Be Fortnite
In a world of unlikely franchises, the success of Jumanji stands out as especially bizarre. The original children’s book about animals escaping from a board game was first adapted into a ’90s movie about a kid getting sucked into the same board game and turning into Robin Williams, followed by…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Jun 27, 2019. 4 minute read
Aggretsuko’s Power Walking Women Are Basically Dragon Ball Z Characters
There are a lot of things to love about Aggretsuko, the Netflix anime series about Retsuko, an adorable red panda who is deeply unhappy at her office accounting job. The show, written and directed by Rarecho, an animator who first came to mainstream attention with the Flash-animated series Yawaraka Tank,…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm May 14, 2019. 3 minute read
Did Bill Nighy Shtup His Ditto in Detective Pikachu?
I really, truly cannot stress enough how excited I was for Detective Pikachu. The first trailer was released just days after I’d had major surgery, and it sent me into a giddy haze. I immediately made a Google Calendar event for an opening night screening. While I was waiting, I…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Apr 9, 2019. 6 minute read
Shirobako Has a Lot to Say About Women at Work
The upcoming FX series Fosse/Verdon centers on Bob Fosse’s creative partnership with his estranged wife, Broadway star Gwen Verdon. It’s part of a recent attempt by shiny TV shows to excavate the often-invisible work of women in creative fields — Ryan Murphy’s Feud dug into the psychic toll of Bette…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Mar 25, 2019. 8 minute read
Psycho-Pass Does Dystopian Storytelling Right
Fictional dystopias are, increasingly, boring and lifeless. When so many of the usual concerns of the genre — sexism (The Handmaid’s Tale), anti-intellectualism (Fahrenheit 451), and bread and circuses distraction (The Hunger Games) are so obviously woven into the fabric of everyday life, why even bother? These stories often boil…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Mar 19, 2019. 4 minute read
Monster Factory Movies That Need To Exist Immediately
In a cultural climate where remakes, sequels, and reboots are the name of the game, it’s almost impossible to find viable intellectual property. Most beloved characters are already owned by someone, whether that’s Disney, Marvel (owned by Disney), or Fox (owned by Disney). Wandering through this wasteland, a light emerges:…
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LISTS
Eric Thurm Mar 12, 2019. 8 minute read
Haruhi Suzumiya and the Tragedy of Entertainment
At first glance, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya appears rather whimsical. The show, which originally aired in 2006 and 2009 and is based on a popular series of light novels, follows totally average teen boy Kyon as he accidentally becomes friends with the title character, a manic, overbearing girl who…
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FEATURES
Eric Thurm Feb 26, 2019. 5 minute read
Embracing the Absurd in Steins;Gate
On the surface, Steins;Gate seems like a simple thrilling, twisty time travel story about trying to escape fate. And on one level, it is: the 2009 visual novel, adapted into an anime series in 2011 and then readapted into a game using visuals from the anime as the just-released Steins;Gate…
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FEATURES