Category: Ask John

Question: Is J.C. Staff overdoing it? Are they going to end up like Gonzo? It seems to me that J.C. Staff is making more and more series. This

Question: Having recently listed my nominations of the finest anime television series from 2000 to 2010, I thought that a similar list of the decade’s most unrecognized and

Question: Like many of your readers, I have really enjoyed reading your answers to the year review-type questions, and have found them tremendously helpful in deciding what shows

Question: My friends keep insisting that My-HiME is a “deconstruction of the magical girl genre” that parodies all of the genre’s major tropes. Admittedly I’ve only seen a

Question: In mid-2009 Gonzo’s stock was finally delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange when the company’s total liabilities were revealed to exceed their total financial assets. From a

Question: For a variety of reasons, I have long since lost all interest in anime and manga. I loved Maison Ikkoku and Kimagure Orange Road and wanted to

Question: Having recently discovered the “fake Mai-Hime Movie” trailer featured as an extra (omake) on one of the DVDs of the My-Otome TV series – if it were

Question: I fail to understand why so many people are such rabid fans of the anime Azumanga Daioh. I mean to me it just looks like a cheap

Question: Why did Hanamaru Kindergarten and Chu-Bra! do so poorly? I heard both of these sold pretty low numbers in Japan.

Question: I came across this question and thought it was interesting. When was the last time a mecha anime actually contributed something completely original? That’s right, over 40

Question: Why is fanservice getting blamed for the downfall of anime. All I hear these day is how ecchi fanservice/harem show is killing the industry, why is that.

Question: An issue arose over the comparison in character design between the manga One Piece and Bleach and their anime counterparts. Basically, some of the female characters have

Question: I’m finally starting to watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I was wondering if this series could somehow start a trend with studios animating an incomplete manga series and

Question: What do you think of Ken Akamatsu’s recent comment saying that moé and harem anime are dead/nearly dead?

Question: What are the longest and shortest openings and closings ever produced for an anime TV series? And for an OVA series? I know it’s a really weird