#programming note

[gameo-archive]

Taking tomorrow off, then FOUR NEW VIDEOS on Sunday!!

ETA: Guys, more videos are coming in on the daily. Reruns paused for at least a few days. 🎉

[troius]

Hi, Troius, I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate your commentary and analysis. I've been reading bleach analysis for like 15 years and I never stop learning more about this manga. But your perspective is one of the most interesting I've read (do you do this professionally?). I would love it if you could keep going with the anime or the novels or even the rock musicals xD (did you hear they are adapting the arrancar arc?).

Actually, if you want to talk about another series or manga, that would be nice too! Anyway, if you don't continue, I just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you so much for the compliments! I do not review or critic professionally (though I'm open to offers...), although I do in a manner of speaking write for a living.

And yeah, I think I'm going to keep things up somewhat? I don't think I'll go back and watch the OG anime, but I absolutely plan on keeping close tabs on the new series, especially as we get closer to the point where the manga got compressed and new material might be forthcoming. Maybe I'll make episode recap posts if I have some time on my hands...

...although who knows if I will, because there is additional blogging content planned. Another manga by another author would probably be a stretch, but I'd like to cover (and I think my audience would be receptive to) the rest of Tite Kubo's published works, namely:

The Bleach pilot chapter

Burn the Witch

Zombie Powder

The Hell Arc one-shot

And who knows, maybe there will be more to add to that list by the time I'm done!

[mahounomanga]

Programming note

Before revisiting previous decades, I want to talk about a magical girl or magical-girl-adjacent manga from the 2010s, but there are so many to choose from that I'm not sure where to start. I don't know much about any of these but I tried to choose a fairly representative sample of what was going on within the decade. Ideally I'd like to get around to all of these eventually but which would you like to see first?

[dweemeister]

For those who are wondering where they are, the Movie Odyssey Awards - including the result for the Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (MOABOS) - will come out tomorrow (Monday afternoon/evening Pacific Time). I always forget how much work is needed to close out a year's Movie Odyssey, and I underestimated how much I still need to write and edit.

Thanks to all of you who were part of the Movie Odyssey in some way - reading, liking, or reblogging a write-up; participating in MOABOS; or just talking to me about movies. It's always a pleasure and has been on this blog since 2012.

[groovesnjams]

It's time once again for the Grooves N Jams Song of the Year countdown! Today we'll post our respective honorable mentions, and then we invite you to join us Monday as we share the objective, literal, indisputably best 50 songs of 2024. It was a shit year in so many ways! Let's say goodbye in the best way we can, by talking about some bops (and long ambient songs too, because we contain multitudes.)

[dgcatanisiri]

For the record, I'll be using "veilguard spoilers" for things related to the Dragon Age Veilguard reveal and going forward. Adjust your blacklists accordingly if necessary.

[prokopetz]

The fascinating thing about this particular patch note is that it implies the game engine is fully rendering your character's penis at all times, not just when you take your pants off.

[bogsleep]

i forgot i turned my queue frequency waaaay down a month or two ago when i went on vacation, and now i have stuff queued out for over a month if i just go back to my regular pace (-｡-;) i dislike having such a long lead time on my queue, so i'm gonna be posting a lot more frequently for a little while to let it catch up. sorry in advance if i spam your dash heehee

[gameo-archive]

GUYS I'M OUT OF GAMEOS.

[dillyt]

Great news for uninsured adults in the USA who want a COVID-19 booster! It now appears that ALL CVS locations are now active participants in the Bridge Access Program. The Bridge Access Program gives out free Covid-19 vaccinations to 18+ adults who otherwise can't afford one, so if you have a CVS near you, please go get one! For others who don't have a CVS near them, please go to vaccines.gov, click on "Find Covid-19 vaccines", fill out which vaccines you prefer (you can mix different vaccines if you have to so i reccomend just marking all of them for the age groups you need), and when the next page loads mark the "Bridge Access Program Participant" option to see only locations that are Bridge Access Program participants. Hopefully, other places that aren't CVS will start participating soon, so just check back every so often to see if there are any updates. The CDC Bridge Access Program website also has more details on what locations will be participating, but only CVS is appearing as an active participant on the vaccines.gov location finder at the moment.

[troius]

PSA: the Discourse

Hey so things have gotten somewhat contentious in the reblogs here recently, and I've been getting some asks that sort of recognize that and are maybe casting aspersions on the folks doing the reblogging.

I'm not going to be answering any of those asks, because I started this blog to enjoy the manga, and I'd rather everybody do the same and stay focused on the work rather than police the second-order reactions of other people.

If you have questions for me about what I think of what's going on in the story, or want to share your reactions, the asks and submissions remain open.

[theofficialastronomy101]

(NEW UPDATE WITH PHOTOS) Send us your best photos!

Absolutely beautiful! I hope everyone took this in! Makes you think just how small we are. A moment the world comes together as one! That’s true humanity . We will be uploading more amazing photos to this same post. So come back later on and check out our 2024 once in a lifetime eclipse photos.

[mahounomanga]

Plans for Mahou no Manga in 2025

Hi everyone! Happy belated New Year. I wanted to share a peek under the hood at my plans for this blog going forward.

2024 was, let's say, a difficult year for me, and as such, manga reviews have slowed to a crawl. This doesn't necessarily mean they've stopped for good though. As I confirmed in a recent ask, Nico in Fairyland is still planned as the next magical girl manga to get its' own post. I'm already eyeballing a tentative 2020s manga to post about after that, and then I'm potentially wanting to return to some of the oldest entries in the genre that slipped through my fingers the first time around, as well as ones from the 1990s and 2000s that got official English releases (which may or may not involve buying physical copies).

The caveat of course is that all of this will take time, and much of it may not even happen by the end of this calendar year. I would ideally like to keep this blog predominantly magical girl focused however, and am mulling over less research-intensive ways to do that. One of the reasons I selected manga as the primary medium for this blog to examine is it seems an underrepresented facet of the magical girl genre (not counting source material for popular anime works). One other side of magical girl media I think doesn't get enough attention is live action productions. The most well-known ones tend to be the Toei Fushigi Comedy heroines, the Girls x Heroine series, and live action adaptations of popular magical girls like Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon. To that end, I was considering making posts spotlighting other entries in the genre by essentially liveblogging and reviewing just the first installment of a given series.

This method could even work with other magical girl media; it doesn't necessarily have to be obscure. I could watch/read and react to animated magical girls, magical girl indie comics, and even magical girl manga that don't otherwise meet the criteria for the blog, all of this as determined by recommendations from readers such as yourself.

I would also like to point out that more of Super Rose has been fanslated into English since my original post about the series, and as such, I was considering the possibility of making a part 2. She is my icon after all, and as the oldest magical girl series of any kind that I know of, I think she deserves the attention.

One other particularly ambitious project I was considering undertaking this year is compiling a list of magical girl manga I know of that initially met my criteria for inclusion in the blog, which I would ideally post in the latter half of this year to help indicate what is and isn't on my radar.

The upshot is, I have a lot of ideas for what I want to post here, but I'm hoping to get some input to help determine what I should prioritize. Please reach out in the notes of this post, or by sending me an ask to indicate what you would like to see on Mahou no Manga.

Thank you so much for your continued support these past few years. The likes, reblogs, asks, and more are always really encouraging. I genuinely appreciate all of my followers, and I hope that 2025 exceeds all of our expectations in the best possible way. ♡

[dweemeister]

Closing out 2024

Hello everybody. First things first. If you were invited to or were interested in participating in the 2024 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (MOABOS XII), your deadline is Sunday, January 5 at 9 PM Pacific. Adjust accordingly to your time zone.

The next few days will partake in a few more traditions that you often see on this blog.

Sunday, December 30: This blog's annual "Hail and Farewell". Beginning at 6 AM Pacific Time and ending at midnight, this blog will launch into its annual in memoriam honoring those in the world of cinema who passed away this calendar year. Photos, gifs, gifsets, obituary articles, etc. For those who are and even aren't part of this tribute, this is to celebrate their contributions to film.

Monday, December 31: Beginning at 8 AM and running until 8 PM is the 2024 Movie Odyssey in Review. Every hour will cover one month of movies that I saw for the first time this calendar year. 8-9 AM covers films I saw in January 2024; 9-10 AM covers February 2024; etc. Photos, gifs, gifsets, and more!

Movie Odyssey For-Fun Awards: What are these? Well, I haven't done an edition since 2018. And I want to try to revive this. This will appear either New Year's Day or perhaps late on New Year's Eve.

The 2024 Movie Odyssey Awards - honoring the best (and in one category, the worst) in movies that I saw in their entirety for the first time in the calendar year - will occur after the final tabulation of the Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (MOABOS).

I certainly hope the holiday season has treated all of you well. And mind the mass of posts from me coming to your dashboard in the next few days.

[groovesnjams]

It's finally time, once again, for the only good year end list (ours.) Join MG and DV over the next few weeks as we count down our 50 favorite songs of 2023. Continuing the tradition from previous years, it will be a countdown unlike any other!* Full of chaos and fun juxtapositions and some weird themes as we try to make sense of what was frankly yet another fucked up year.

*Except that it does also have boygenius on it somewhere. In that way, and that way only, this is exactly like every other 2023 list.

[citricacidprince]

I noticed that their dynamics were so similar… what if they swapped for a bit

As a treat (For Swansea and Daisuke) and a punishment (For Stan and Soos, but also me, because that shit hurted)

Also, bonus doodle under the cut but be wary of Mouthwashing Spoilers!