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I never expected a crossover between the Taiwan-Japan puppet series Thunderbolt Fantasy and arts and culture VTuber Juufuutei Raden of hololive, but it seems the world favors me specifically.  Raden recently showed on stream a video of her trip to Taiwan and a visit to Pili: the studio behind Thunderbolt Fantasy with a long history of doing elaborate, action-packed puppet shows for TV and film.…

The dream of the 3D concert is a unique aspect of VTuber culture, and I’m glad that there exist organizations that help make the goal feasible for creators who aren’t part of big companies. One such group is Fantastic Reality, and this past July 4 weekend, they helped produce two in-person concerts: Found Futures and Doki Doki Rewind Time.  Found Futures Taking place on July 2, Found Futures…

I don’t always know what to make of Phase Connect. It has a (not entirely unearned) reputation for being unhinged both in terms of its talents and its audience, yet it appears to be the most stable and enduring of all North America–based VTuber companies. I think Phase’s aura may be one that straddles the line between underdog success story and big player, and each of the girls conveys this in a…

As one of the biggest names in VTubing, hololive has done a great deal of growing and expansion in recent years, and part of that process has involved experimentation. Some things have worked out after some bumps (such as the musical performance–focused DEV_IS branch), while others have been canceled or downsized for better (the holoEarth metaverse) or worse (Holostars). One of the latest…

Rooster Fighter is an anime and manga whose title is both self-explanatory and woefully inadequate for capturing its full scope. The rooster indeed fights, but he also does so much more. Cut from the same cloth as classic manly action series like Fist of the North Star and Golgo 13, the simple twist of Rooster Fighter is that its gruff and grizzled hero is the literal cock of the walk. Keiji is…

This month, I feel incredibly fortunate to have a good life, and I wish to have a country that could provide good fortune to others, now more than ever. I don’t know how long it would take, but I hope we can someday live in a place where all the xenophobia, sexism, racism, and continuous trampling of the poor are no longer systemically baked into everything. I want people to love and thrive and…

This month, Kio comments a bunch on his titles for the Monthly Afternoon 40th Anniversary exhibit.  Also, it turns out that he drew a short comic about how he became a fan of futanari. ウフフ……あやしげなお店で素敵…… https://t.co/JHN107ebMY— 木尾士目＠はしっこアンサンブル全8巻 (@kioshimoku1) May 31, 2026 Manga author panpanya drew the final web bonus for Rakuen, which involves exploring a store based on all the different…

Dooby3D is one of my favorite VTubers. As an independent creator, she had a lot of say in her own design, and something I find really charming and noteworthy about her look is her large ears. In a field where it’s more common to find animal ears (like those of a cat girl or dog girl) on top of the head or elf-like knife ears on the side, it’s actually quite rare to have two honkin’ huge ones…

Todoroki Hajime of hololive held her 3D birthday concert in June, and one of the biggest moments was a group performance of the song “Kokkara” featuring her, Hakos Baelz, Isaki Riona, and Mizumiya Su. As expected, they all showcase why all four of them are almost inarguably the best dancers in hololive, but one thing that really stood out to me is how they were given opportunities to show off…

For a couple months, the yuri film Cosmic Princess Kaguya seemed to be all over my social media timelines. It was a big enough hit for Japan to screen it in theaters after its Netflix release, multiple VTubers mentioned it or did watchalongs, and there’s still a lot of ongoing buzz. Before sitting down to watch it, I only knew two things: 1) It’s inspired by the Japanese folk tale The Tale of the…

As part of a trip to Japan earlier this year, I ended up eating a lot of curry, both Japanese-style and otherwise. Some were places I had scouted out, but others I just happened to find by happenstance. One such instance happened on an evening walk back to my hotel, where I got lost. While trying to find my bearings, I ended up in front of the original Hinoya Curry. A sign proudly boasted that it…

Last month, I attended a US screening of the second movie in the Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway trilogy, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe. It was actually my second time seeing it, having catched it during a trip to Japan. I had originally planned to write about it after that first viewing, but I came away confused about a few things that I felt would benefit from a repeat viewing. Prior to the release…

For some reason, I continue to watch MF Ghost. I think the races have genuinely gotten better, and it’s just enough to overcome some of the weird aspects of the series that comes partly from an old man trying to write a young romance for an old man audience. Something I’m more neutral on that keeps popping up in the anime are these scenes that are basically shilling Japan and its culture, like…

In 2006, I met up with a group of friends from online in New York City. We were all there for the Pokémon National Video Game Championships, and these were people I had known through the competitive Pokémon community—in some cases for years. In a time when Smogon had just begun establishing itself as the go-to hub for serious multiplayer and Pokémon Showdown had yet to even exist, I had spent…

This past month was lighter on anime and manga–specific content for that reason, which I hope to rectify. My mind feels like it’s in a whirl. There are a lot of things I want to write about anime-wise, but I find myself unable to get everything out there in a timely fashion. On a personal level, I think I’m struggling with writing well and putting out insightful commentary. I’m shooting from the…

https://twitter.com/kioshimoku1/status/2050574580306325942 Kio read the first volume of Kuroda Iou’s new manga, Sendou Yasugorou, and loved the realism and sense of tension. (Incidentally, Kuroda is one of my favorite manga artists stylistically, so I gotta check it out!) https://twitter.com/kioshimoku1/status/2050955657168445524 アニメの茄子も好きです！— 木尾士目＠はしっこアンサンブル全8巻 (@kioshimoku1) May 4,…

To celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of Gundam in 2029, an animated music video featuring virtually every series in the franchise was released. It follows three different generations—father, son, and granddaughter—discovering and growing up with Gundam in different ways over the decades.  One thing I find noteworthy about this animation is that it implies the father, a fan of the original…