Nexus Analysis

One of the things that surprised me the most about watching The Batman was how effortlessly Matt Reeves was able to sell Selina Kyle and Edward Nashton as foils to Bruce Wayne and each other, without losing anything fundamental about their characters.  For a long time now, Batman stories have struggled to construct meaningful foils and parallels for the titular Caped Crusader. Bruce is a character of extremes, and many of his most iconic relationships exist by pairing him with an equally extreme character on the opposite end of the spectrum. His non-nonsense, brooding attitude juxtaposes with Selina’s playfulness in most stories; his dark justice contrasts Joker’s colorful anarchy; and his grounded detective work stands out with the rest of the Justice League’s larger-than-life adventures. The few times DC has tried to make meaningful foils to Bruce Wayne, they’re either blatant copycats defined only in relation to Bruce who cannot exist as characters on their own (Prometheus, Owlm...

  Yugioh Arc-V is the installment of my franchise that, in my opinion, had the most missed potential. But at the same time, I do still feel like there’s a certain brilliance to it. Maybe it’s just my nostalgia talking, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s a celebration of a franchise I love so much; but I think Yuya, his counterparts, and their connections to the previous series are genius .  Do you guys remember how The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra had a lot of emphasis on the “Avatar Cycle”? The gist is that it was the order in which the Avatar had to learn the elements, the order in which Aang traveled through his adventures, and (as we learn in Korra Season 2) the order in which bending was discovered.  The Cycle goes Air-Water-Earth-Fire, and it’s interesting in that it loops around back to Fire-Air-Water-Earth and can still make sense in this order, as seen with Wan and Roku.  With Aang, he visits the nations in this order (being born and raised in the Air Te...

For practically as long as I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of comics, American comic books and Japanese manga. Both types of storytelling have been home to some of my favorite pieces of fiction ever, such as Saga, Hunter x Hunter, Spider-Man, Batman, Berserk and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure . I'm endlessly fascinated by these worlds, and I find myself coming back to them again and again, no matter what style they are in.  Yet, others obviously don’t feel the same way. Some people out there are obviously fans of American comic books--whether it be Marvel, DC, Image, or something else entirely--yet they cannot get into Japanese manga. Maybe it’s art style, or panel layout, or comedy that gets lost in translation, or any other reason.  Similarly, fans of manga aren’t necessarily into American comic books. There are plenty of people who are captivated by the universes of manga, but don’t want to dive into the works of Marvel or DC.  But why is that? On paper (pun intended),...