Hey hey hey fellow ani-lovers and ani-friends!! It’s Archi-Anime’s turn to contribute to the OWLS January blog tour. OWLS: Otaku Warriors for Liberty and Self-Respect, is a group that hopes to spread the important message of respect and kindness to every human being. Our monthly blog tours reflect this message of tolerance and self-acceptance, through various analysis of the anime medium; although it is not limited to anime.
January’s theme is “Revival”:
A new year implies “new beginnings.” Yet, rather than discussing the “new,” we will be discussing the “revival.” “Revival” has multiple definitions, but the meaning we will be focusing on is the improvement, development, or refinement of something. Our posts will be about characters that undergo a positive or negative transformation and what we can learn from them.
The life of an artist is a precarious path, and the same could go for us content creators. We all start from zero. We start with the basics and once we’re comfortable with that we start to add our own view, our own flourishes to make our content our own. Some people are born with natural talent while others have to work really hard. We’re inspired by others and strive to be like them so in a sense we also start to mimic those as well. We’ve all at some point hit a wall, a plateau, that hinders us from creating, this is usually the time we have to start changing things up and find new inspiration.
In the case of Barakamon, Handa Sei is a naturally talented calligraphy artist bound for glory in the same steps as his father, another renowned Calligrapher. Handa is quite proud of his work, it’s perfection in it’s subtlety, and its grounded in the foundation it was built on, the influence of his father and the basics he’s known all his life. He’s comfortable in thinking he’s the best, until one fateful competition that breaks him. What happens afterwards revitalizes him via his own renaissance and a better understanding of himself.
Continue reading “[OWLS Blog Tour] A Calligrapher’s Renaissance: Barakamon”
