IT’S A GOOD DAY! ✨😇✨
Jin’s designer PJs are THE most adorable clothing I’ve ever worn, I’m so happy and lucky and privileged to be able to own them 🥺😭 I can’t believe he personally designed them to be so comfy and oversized, but honestly what else would you expect from best boy? Always so considerate 💙 THANK YOU SEOKJINNIE AND BIGHIT 💙
Interested in more anime, manga, or K-pop content? Subscribe to stick around 🙏
Thanks for watching~!
– Takuto
My first BTS POP UP Shop merch ever!!
Hey guys, I’m back with another BTS related merch haul. This video combines the goodies I picked up from the Map of the Soul ON:E concert merch line with BTS’ latest POP UP shop line featuring specialty designed items themed for both ON and Black Swan!
I’m ecstatic to share what I’ve picked up with you all, and I hope you enjoy the video. Let me know what ON:E or POP UP merch you were able to pick up in the comments!
Interested in more anime, manga, or K-pop content? Subscribe to stick around!
Thanks for watching~!
– Takuto
Hello all,
I’m here with something a bit different today. As you may know, I love online shopping of any kind. Naturally, this includes clothing, something which I barely talk about.
I like to think I’ve upped my fashion game for 2020, and with BTS barreling through every single major news headline out there as of late, I figured now’s the best time to show off my collection of BTS-inspired graphic tees, long-sleeved shirts, and hoodies!
Most of these items came (recently) from TeePublic, a popular fashion and apparel website that works with independent artists to print their lovely works on clothing, prints, stickers, mugs—you name it.
I spent the afternoon setting up the tripod and some lighting and did a little fashion shoot for today’s post. So yes, that is ME in the photos you see. I thought this would be a little more interesting than just me taking pics of clothing. Enjoy the haul/try-on!
We’ll begin with the hoodie since it’s the only one from Amazon. I’m not the biggest person in the world, but I had to size up to 3XL to get the loose fit that I wanted. The seller was super nice and flexible, though, so that made the process easier despite the hiccups. Anyway, it’s SUPER soft, and the print has stood up the wash test! I imagine it’ll fade soon, given enough time though. It’s my first white hoodie, so I love it for that, but the floral design (which mimics the Love Yourself: Tear album cover) on the sleeves is what really caught my eye. Love having the boys’ names printed on my back too! >.<
Onto the tees! This Map of the Soul: Persona-inspired logo design has me LIVING. I love simple shirts. You can’t tell cause I filtered the heck out of these (for art), but the bright pink design is actually printed on a very deep navy heather-colored shirt. Heather shirts look best on me, so all the short-sleeved shirts are printed on this material. 😛
“You can’t stop me lovin’ myself” when I wear this shirt, that’s for sure! Guys, GUYS, “Idol” is easily one of my top three favorite BTS songs (if such a list were to exist . . . which it doesn’t cause my brain would implode). I specifically requested for the design to be printed on a dark blue shirt because it matches the “Idol feat. Nicki Minaj” thumbnail. The bright yellow and red vibrantly contrasts against the backdrop, and if you love this artist’s style, you’ll love the next look . . .
We just HAD to do it to ’em. “Yeah, you makin’ me a boy with LOVE,” baby, and this shirt is just so much fun to wear. Again, I requested that this particular design be printed on a bright heather teal shirt to match the skies in the “Boy with Luv” thumbnail on YouTube. Really happy with how this one turned out. If the retro design seems familiar somehow, it’ll be no coincidence for you to know that this artist ALSO made the “Fly Me To The Moon” Eva-inspired tee that was featured in a holiday haul a little while ago. I’ll defs have to find the artist on social media!!
Long-sleeved shirts are IN, y’all, and this Wings shirt (with a design ripped right from the album’s own cover art) has me reliving the angsty days of “Awake,” “Lie,” and “Blood Sweat & Tears” like no other. Also “Mama”—how could I forget our beloved Hobi??
I love black clothing more than anything in the world, but sometimes ya just gotta have fun—and I find that a bold yellow is the best way to do that. Contrasting the purple font (also a decision I made to match the music video), the shirt features RM’s opening lines of “Idol” as the central design: “You can call me artist / You can call me idol.” The quote is so iconic, yet also celebrates the notion that fame can sometimes be a good thing, as it doesn’t always change the person beneath the shirt. 🙂
Last but not least is a return to black, my forte, with this simple long-sleeved Love Yourself shirt. (Yeesh, this one could’ve benefited from a good ironing. Oh well.) Yes, the design is printed with the pink-blue-white coloring that the album logo itself is done in. And yes, I DO love this shirt! Whether you’re a new ARMY, a hardcore fan, or even just a casual listener, I think this simple yet elegant design is perfect for anyone wanting to share their love of BTS and their music. ❤
Will I be buying more BTS-inspired clothing in the future? Umm, duh. But for now, this is what I’ve got, and I have so much fun coordinating each of these colorful designs with my OOTD. Do you have any BTS apparel that you like showing off? Tag me on Insta with a photo or comment below!
I’ve bought off of TeePublic in the past for most of my anime shirts, so if this kind of thing is something you guys show interest in, I’ll definitely make a separate post for those! I hope you enjoyed this sort of try-on/lookbook with me, and until next time, this has been
– Takuto, your host
Chances are that if you were linked here from another blogger pal, then you might be new. To those first-timers, “Hi, I’m Takuto, welcome to my anime cafe!” For the OWLS blog tour’s second monthly topic of 2020, “Legacy,” I’m gonna stand on the soapbox for a bit and just talk about my own experiences with the word, while also making connections to some of my favorite stories, both in anime and literature.
We have mentors, teachers, coaches, and role models whose stories inspired us in some way. Even when these role models are gone, their stories will live on from generation to generation. For this month, we will be exploring stories that have inspired or taught us some important lessons about life.
This will be a shorter post, but hopefully one still with merit to it. Thanks Lyn for the prompt!
So I’m currently taking this Survey of British Literature class at uni and we just read (well for me reread) the old manuscript of Beowulf. In case you didn’t know, Beowulf is the titular protagonist of the oldest poem in English literature. Set in what is currently the areas between southern Sweden and Denmark, the folk epic recounts the tale of one of the world’s oldest documented heroes. Battle-brave, brazen, and bold, Beowulf is a champion all throughout his lifetime—and for his mighty deeds and charisma, his glory continues to live on well over 1,000 years as students are told and retold the story of bravery, loyalty, and honor.
Our society likes heroes. Typically, such figures like Beowulf (or anyone from the popular MCU) provide icons we can admire or stories to fall in love with. Beowulf defeats the wretched, demonic Grendel, slays the beast’s sea-witch of a mother, and even conquers a dragon—the very representation of the mythical and the divine—transcending his mortality at the tragic cost of his own life. In his last moments on earth, Beowulf performs this unbelievable feat, and is rewarded for his courage and virtue by becoming a figure forever enshrined in the hearts of his men. Truly, Beowulf is a hero.
Even if it’s not the most “stimulating” read, I enjoy this Old English poem a great deal. The timeless values of a warrior society often feel much easier to discern than the overtly emotionally-conflicted minds of, say, a Shakespeare work. At its core, Beowulf is a simple tale, yet one that imparts upon the reader a vision of the past—of whale-path waves crashing against the beaten rocky shore, and of powerful sailors that can command these swan-road seas on a whim. As we behold a man in his final hours transcend heroism from one thing to something else, we find that Beowulf embodies the changing spirit of this long-lost warrior society—as well as its very best parts.
We flash forward a few centuries with a different set of morals and mindsets, but the same human heart, with the Arthurian legends. No more are people barbarians at sea; this is a time of knighthood, and with it comes refined honor and bravery, courtliness, gallantry towards women, and most of all, chivalry. Like most chivalric romance, Arthurian poetry employs the motif of a quest to tell its tales, which always comes in a familiar set of 3’s: a challenge, a journey, and a test.
Whether conquering an enemy’s castle for the sake of one’s kingdom or fighting off the nasty temptations of Morgan le Fay and at times even Britain’s own Queen Guinevere, upholding the virtues of a knight was certainly not the easiest task to accomplish. Courtly love can lead the men and women of this time to spiral into all kinds of romantic trouble, but the chivalric code must always be upheld. Stories like Lanval and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight perfectly illustrate the delicate balance between desire and doing what is right.
Despite being some of the hardest Old English literature out there to decipher, endless fun can be had with Arthurian lore. Today, the names of King Arthur and his knights are often trivialized, which is saddening given how excruciatingly poignant the tragic irony of a given character’s betrayal or death can be.
Yet, when done justice, we get incredible works like those from Type-Moon’s Nasuverse, including the Fate/Grand Order mobile game, Yoshiyuki Asai’s Fate/Apocrypha, and Gen Urobuchi’s masterpiece of pseudo-historical fiction, Fate/Zero. Fate‘s portrayals of Artoria (Arthur) Pendragon, Lancelot, and Mordred are easily my favorite ones out there, as their combined cinematic lore is almost as deeply interwoven as the original legends themselves are.
I suppose having your name recorded in the history books is a form of immortality. But if that just means your name gets passed down for two thousand years and nothing else, I’d have preferred to have even a hundredth of that added to my actual life. — Rider, Fate/Zero
And while on the subject of past deeds influencing the present, seeing how intensely Alexander the Great (Iskandar) continues to influence young Waver Velvet’s life even a whole ten years after the Holy Grail War in The Case Files of Lord El-Melloi II lends allegoric proof to the fact that history’s greatest heroes can especially impact our hearts with the legacies they leave behind.
The tales of Beowulf and King Arthur’s knights have long-since been told. While we know they lived valiant lives, we’ve also come to understand that even heroes die. Unfortunately, we are past the time in which we can rely on a single hero. We can’t rely on just one person solely to be responsible for watching after us all. And so, we must become heroes in our own lives, even if our deeds often go unrewarded. We can choose to embody the fiery bravery of a warrior, the dutiful chivalry of a knight, or even some other code of honor that I didn’t discuss in this post.
We don’t have to be the strongest or the greatest. We can be weak heroes, for even a weak hero is still a hero. This sentiment is echoed in K-pop sensation BTS’s “Anpanman,” which describes the popular red bean bun mascot’s determination to help those who are closest to him, even if he’s no Batman or Superman.
Anpanman is the local hero in our own lives we can rely on time and time again. The best part is that we can be each other’s Anpanman, so long as we are willing to help those in our lives who need it most. We can be heroes, too. And just like those who inspired us to be great, our legacies can live on in the lives we touch, and maybe—just maybe—be remembered for a long time to come.
Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you. — Shannon L. Adler
For the first time, coming up with a single series to talk about proved more difficult than it should have. Maybe that is why I settled on this loose discussion over something current and relevant to my life: Brit lit. Or, perhaps, I had been wanting to talk about these famous knights and warriors from the days of old for a while now . . .
Regardless, I had one more quote running through my head as I was writing this: “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever. The goal is to create something that will” (Chuck Palahniuk). As a blogger, artist, and musician, all I can do is create things. And thus, even if this blog is the only thing even remotely memorable I can leave behind, I’d still be eternally grateful for the opportunity to share my words with people like you. Please, continue to chase after your dreams and your passions, for what you can share with others will only add to the stories they will share about you!
This concludes my February 8th entry in the OWLS “Legacy” blog tour. Megan (Nerd Rambles) went right before me with a post about the literature that has left an impact on her, which you can read right here! Now, look out for Aria (The AniManga Spellbook) with a post over the recently aired Magia Record anime on Tuesday, February 11th! Thank you so much for reading, and until next time, this has been
– Takuto, your host
Evening all!
As the title of this post suggests, I have for you all the final big update post of 2019. In the last update, I spoke briefly about how I hadn’t watched much anime due to school and, well, not much has changed since finals haha. Goal reflection in general will be pretty weak this time around, but hey, it’s the last couple days of 2019—new goals will be on the way before we know it!
If any of these goals had the greatest crime done to it, it’d be this one. Guys, I am criminally behind on keeping up with the community. My phone home screen is once again backed up with posts I’ve been wanting to read, and that doesn’t include all of the OWLS posts I’ve missed out on since January. Yeah, not good. But with the New Year, hopefully I’ll dedicate some time to some much-needed housekeeping.
You know, just scrolling through the site’s main page at all of the posts, I think I have done a better job at keeping things on the short and sweet side. Between October being nothing but Animanga Festival posts and November and December being full of hauls, there hasn’t really been too much to say for each post. Thinking in terms of the entire year, I’ll count this one as a win.
Ten posts in October, four posts in November, and so far five posts in December makes my initial four-posts-per-month goal a success! Productivity definitely slowed down for school, but even with a three-week study hiatus in there, I’ve still managed to blog as often as I wanted to in 2019. Maybe I’ll kick things up a notch in 2020, who knows, but for now—WE DID IT Y’ALL.
Hahaha nope. I don’t know what’s stopping me from writing these kinds of posts, especially when they can be the easiest things in the world sometimes. But here we are. Overall, this was 2019’s most-failed goal.
Guys, GUYS—I’ve done like SIX haul posts this winter season, and honestly, I could totally throw together another one if you guys were interested in seeing the straggler TOM pick-ups or what I got for Christmas. If goal #4 was my worst-achieved goal, #5 is 2019’s big winner. Hooray for hauls!
Well this part isn’t gonna take long (LOL). For Halloween this year I binged all of Castlevania seasons one and two on Netflix. Excellent series, full of incredible action sequences and bloody good comedy (surprisingly). It was easily one of my favorite watches of the year, especially for the spooky season, and I honestly can’t wait for season three. I’ve actually got notes for the entire series ready to be transformed into a review, so hopefully I’ll muster the energy to finish that and get my thoughts out there.
Around the same time before finals started hitting hard, I picked up a little extra time to watch Fairy gone in the mornings. While I’m only five or six episodes in, I don’t think it’s as bad as everyone said it was when it aired. Plus, the dub is really good. (Special shout out to Caitlin Glass for making that one of the show’s redeeming qualities!)
Skipping ahead to the colder days of winter, I began an unexpected watch with Yumeiro Patissiere, which I actually featured in my November OWLS post that you can read right here! Most of my thoughts on the series are contained within that, but long story short: Watch Yumeiro Patissiere. It’s light-hearted and fun, but also sometimes bittersweet and full of heart. Easily a better food competition series than Food Wars! in my humble opinion.
Fall simulcasts have also been slow for me. Like, really slow. Notice how I never posted a fall seasonal line-up post like everyone else did? Yeah, it’s cause the only show I’ve managed to keep up with has been Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front – Babylonia, and my motivation for watching that namely stems from seeing anime Gil once again. Even still, it’s also been one of my favorite watches in years, and just might end up being my favorite Fate anime besides the glorious Fate/Zero where my love for the franchise all began. Can’t wait to see how it ends!
While we’re still on Fate, I’ve rewatched the first 12 episodes of Apocrypha since the entire series is on Netflix. Only this time it’s dubbed, and the English dub is FANTASTIC. I think all the VAs were perfectly cast, and I’m excited to watch the epic second half!
In case I never make it apparent, I’m a half white, half Korean 21-year-old currently residing in the U.S. I’ve liked K-pop ever since I became an anime fan, but never really rocked out to it as much as I did J-pop or even Western pop music. Until now.
To make a long story short, I’ve fallen back in love with BTS. They’ve had my heart since 2017, but this time I tripped BIG and fell down several flights of sparkly stairs into K-pop hell. And I have no regrets. I’ve listened to BTS, Super Junior, Girls Generation, NCT Dream, and Red Velvet albums literally every second of the past two weeks, and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. Please share your K-pop recommendations with me in the comments!!
Naturally, my rekindled love for K-pop brought me to K-drama and idol culture in general, so I’ve been bouncing between Hello, My Twenties on Netflix and The iDOLM@STER SideM on Crunchyroll. If you have any K-drama/idol recs (and the places I can watch them), please send me those too!
I feel like I’m chasing a vibe whenever I do my daily workout to these pop icons, or even unhaul more parts of my collection to make space on my shelves for some added greenery. For sharing these personal parts of my life, I think these quarterly updates work the best both for me as the writer and you all as readers. So, expect these to continue throughout 2020. A goals and resolutions post for 2020 will be out very soon, along with a very, very special surprise announcement for all my followers!
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas if you celebrated it. Mine was quite pleasant and relaxing—in fact, I’m still in vacation mode, which is why I haven’t done much of anything (besides listening to BTS, of course)! I’ve got one more post for 2019, so please look forward to that. Till then, this has been
– Takuto, your host
Chances are that if you were linked here from another blogger pal, then you might be new. To those first-timers, “Hi, I’m Takuto, welcome to my anime cafe!” For the OWLS blog tour’s twelfth monthly topic of 2019, “Holiday,” I wanted to sit down and have an honest little conversation with you all on my anime collection. Specifically, how I will spend the remainder of 2019 with a focus on giving rather than receiving gifts.
We are at the end of the year! For this month’s topic, we will be discussing what the holidays mean to us. Some of us have a religious perspective on Christmas, while some of us see Christmas as a celebration of family. For this prompt, we will be exploring how the holidays are celebrated around the world using various pop culture media. We will also describe what the holidays mean to us. Happy Holidays! – OWLS Team
Sounds pretty first-world, I know, but maybe you’ll read this and take it as cautionary advice for any eager collectors out there currently doing their own holiday shopping. Thanks Lyn for the freedom with this prompt!
We begin this post with a brief etymology of the subject word here. As you’ve probably guessed by now, “unhaul” is not a real word. I was introduced to this term by fellow anime and manga-collecting enthusiast Simply Gee over on YouTube through her video, “The Great Unhaul: Unburdened for 2020.” If to “haul” something means to address recent pick-ups or goods that are new to one’s possession, ‘un’haul means just the opposite:
un·haul (verb): essentially, to oust items from one’s possession, either by selling or donating.
It’s not a novel concept by any means; people have been tossing out old junk or selling their collectibles on eBay for ages. And yet, the video struck a powerful chord with me. “What does a collection represent for its owner? What does it mean for someone to own something that they a) do not like or b) will not watch/read/use/wear/etc.”
Just when I thought my collection was at its peak and brimming with success, I found these fundamental questions to be picking at my brain all through the night. I couldn’t sleep. I had too much stuff, and only now just realized it, which brings me to my next point.
I mean this in the least bragging way possible. Guys, despite posting all kids of crazy hauls of fancy anime limited edition boxes and figures (especially as of late, yeesh), I am not a wealthy individual. Really, this is money I should be saving for my higher ed stuff to come later. But like most of us, I find ways to pocket money to my hobbies.
Within these past couple of telling days, I finally realized that maybe I am spending a bit too much on hobbies, though.
I never understood it when anime collectors talked about “running out of space,” or “putting stuff in storage.” How could someone have so much as to put some of it away? I didn’t get it, until this year I found myself stressed that I couldn’t maintain the balance of white-space-to-object ratio.
AKA I have too much crap, and if I get more I risk losing any sense of aesthetic or clean organization.
Guys, I spent a lot of money on hobbies this year. A LOT. From cosplay and books to anime and figures, I spent far more than an undergrad student in college should. And now, I’m gonna get rid of some stuff.
I’ll skip the part where I stayed up till two each night the past couple days just going through everything I own and throwing away “old shit.” (Yes, I recycle. And YES, I have plans for proper dispersal of all this stuff from my room.) I got rid of clothes from freshman year of high school, recycled tons of old papers from middle school, and disposed of the junk that just plain didn’t work. It was, as I reported on Twitter, “the most intense decluttering of my life.”
You may ask, “Why have you held onto all this crap all these years, Taku?” The easy answer is I’m a hoarder, but the more truthful one is that I genuinely apply the same collecting mentality to my school work, old hobbies, etc. as I do my anime and manga.
Until now, that is.
It was “a great unhaul” indeed, and once I got started (following my mental breakdown where even looking at my shelves started making my breath heavy), I couldn’t stop. I got rid of everything. ALL of my possessions were thinned, combed through for the usefulness and happiness each item brought me. Only the things that gave me #goodvibes stayed; for all else, it was the great purge. Eventually, all that remained for me to examine were the shelves themselves: the heart that I’ve been filling for the past six years of my life.
Methodically scanning through each shelf, one-by-one I started pulling various manga volumes, novels, and eventually anime down from my shelves. “If you have (or I know can) make me happy, you stay,” I told myself as I held each book, each Blu-ray, and weighed their fate. The volumes, series, prints, and knick-knacks that my siblings don’t want will be sold online to any willing buyers. As for the “good” stuff . . .
I’ll be giving away parts of my collection, my very soul, to my siblings. By reading my personal posts, you may have realized that I’m very close with both my older brother and younger sister (yeah, I’m the middle child). I’ve watched just as much stuff with them as I have on my own. Through this unhaul, it finally dawned on me, like a light-bulb clicking on in the dark:
Why don’t you give the shows that your siblings like more than you do to them?
I’ve always been the one they came to for entertainment; rarely was it the other way around. If they want to watch something physically, they’d come to my room and peruse the shelves, not unlike how someone would at a library. I have so many wonderful memories with all different kinds of anime—but half the reason I have those memories is because I didn’t watch those shows alone.
So for the holidays, in addition to whatever gifts I had already bought, I’m giving back to my siblings the shows and series that mean something to both of us, in addition to the memories we made along the way. I think this focus on giving rather than getting will prove psychologically beneficial, as well as help free up shelf space.
Yeah, I spent a lot of money on anime stuff this year. Yes, I realize I have accumulated some stuff that I know I’ll never get to, but bought anyway cause it was “on sale.” And yes, my own collection, that which I hold most dear—which I *literally* look up to each day for inspiration and motivation—was somehow able to make me physically sick just looking at it.
That was where I was two days ago. Through ousting piles of old papers, clothes, and junk from a decade ago—and by listening to lots, and lots, and LOTS of BTS—I’ve come to realize that receiving can be a deceptively more draining and daunting act than giving. When you get something, it’s gotta go somewhere, and I had finally run out of space for new stuff to go.
So, what goes in that space I just made? Love for myself. Happiness for myself. I’m not kidding: I’m keeping these blank spaces on my walls, in my closet, under my bed, and on my shelves to remind me that if I can’t breathe in my own room, I’m doing something wrong.
This enlightening philosophy has also transferred to other aspects of my life: I filtered through my phone’s photos and music, only keeping the pictures and songs that make me feel happy about myself. Additionally, I’m eating healthier AND exercising to k-pop music every day, and I honestly haven’t felt this much body positivity in ages—perhaps BTS is the real hero of this story, hahaha!
I’m unhauling pieces of my collection for 2019 because others might be able to get more happiness out of something than I could have, absolutely. But also, I’m unhauling because I have to. This is self-care for me, and thanks to seeing that life is much better when you can feel light and weightless—physically and emotionally—I can finally charge into 2020 feeling unburdened, content, and lighter than ever before.
And honestly, I’ve never felt better.
Twinkling starlight
Building with blinking light
We’re shining brightly
In our own rooms, in our own starsMikrokosmos – BTS
Wow, that’s a load of my chest. This holiday season, I encourage you all not necessarily to toss out a bunch of shit like I did, but just to sit down for a moment and get in touch with your own belongings. What brings you happiness? If something doesn’t, why have you held onto it? Would my life be better without this thing I won’t ever use? You’d be surprised how such simple questions can lead to life-changing moments. I’ve always been a cheesy one for liking that “New year, new me” bullshit. But this year, more than any other before, I actually feel in charge of my life—who knew all it would take was leaving behind all the weight that held me back.
This ended up being much more personal and diary-like than I initially intended, but I hope you, too, might be able to help yourself out with my story. Be cautious of hoarding stuff and overbuying this holiday season; it’s a terrifyingly easy thing to do. Love each and every thing you own—if it doesn’t bring you happiness, chances are you’re better off without it, trust me!
Guys, this officially completes three full years of my being with OWLS. I’ll have another Top-5 post for that coming out soon. Until then, this concludes my December 19th entry in the OWLS “Holiday” blog tour. The incredible Irina (Drunken Anime Blog) took to the keyboard once more to write about her beloved Natsume that you can read right here! Now, look out for THE Lyn (Just Something About LynLyn) of OWLS herself with a post this Sunday, December 22nd! Thank you so much for reading, and remember, pursue happiness—you owe it to yourself!
– Takuto, your host
Tanner's ENG 602 Portfolio
Anime that pops!
This library aims to bring you many happy returns.
My corner of the Internet.
Welcome to BAYOG, a blog by a group of friends. We cover various topics that interest us from gaming, anime, manga, dramas, music etc.
blog from the author of the 真柏Project series
Let's otaku out
Half the comedy, all the taste
Manga and Comics Reviews
A person who writes about anime.
Takuto's Anime Cafe 