[OWLS Blog Tour] It Takes a Village: Four Phenomenal Anime Mentors

Hey Hey Heroes, Travelers, and Wandering NPCs, I’m back with another super special awesome OWLS Blog Tour! What’s that you say? You don’t know about OWLS? Well, for those of you new here, OWLS or Otaku Wariors for Liberty and Self-Respect is a group of bloggers, vloggers, and writers who seek to promote acceptance and equality through thoughtful community activism, with an otaku twist! Each month we decide on a theme and each member writes a post or records a video, on that theme through the lens of something from pop culture. We have been known to cover a wide range of topics, from anime and manga to video games and film, most subject matter is up for discussion so long as it fits with our monthly theme.  This month’s theme is Mentor!

Throughout our lives, we might have encountered someone that we admired as a role model or has guided us in some life dilemma. This mentor could be a teacher at school, a coach, a boss or team leader at work, or a family friend. Whoever it is that person impacted your life in a positive manner. For this month’s OWLS topic, we will be writing about mentors or mentorships in anime and other pop culture media. Some topics we will be exploring include how a mentorship impacted a main character’s life, the types of mentor relationships a person could have, and/or personal stories about mentors or mentorships.

July “Mentor” Blog Tour Prompt

I’m just one in a long line of Blog Tour stops this month, and I highly recommend checking them all out when you have the time. Just before me was Miandro from Miandro’s Side, with his awesome post about Detroit: Become Human.

I originally planned on writing about a specific mentor/mentee relationship, but, ultimately I just couldn’t decide on a single mentor/mentorship to discuss, so, I scrapped my original idea and decided to go in a different direction. Since there really isn’t a one size fits all mentor relationship, I figured why not discuss multiple types of mentors and the benefits of their methodologies. So, I picked four anime mentors that I felt best represented each of the four core mentor archetypes (which now that I think about it seems like more work on my part).


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[OWLS Blog Tour] A Year in Lessons: Looking Back at Blog Tours Past

 

Hey Hey Heroes, Travelers, and Wanderings NPCs, today I’m bringing you all another super special awesome OWLS post!! If this is your first time here at Nice Job Breaking It Hero, you were probably linked here by Lita Kino, she did a super special awesome Birthday/Blog Tour combo post over on her blog, Lita Kino’s Anime Corner!! If you haven’t read her post yet, I highly suggest you do so, she did a phenomenal job!

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I joined OWLS: Otaku Warriors of Liberty and Self-Respect, but here we are with a few days left in 2017 and I am so glad I became a part of this wonderful group! For those of you that are new here and haven’t heard about OWLS, we are a group of bloggers and vloggers that hope to spread a message of acceptance and understanding through thoughtful community activism!

So, in order to spread our message of self acceptance and tolerance, we’ve decided to hold Monthly Blog Tours! During Blog Tours, we each write individual theme posts on our blogs that promote our group’s values, with a bit of an otaku twist. December’s Blog Tour topic is Warmth!!

It’s the season of joy, thankfulness, and love. This month’s topic is “Warmth.” Whether it is spending time with family members during the holiday season or with that special someone during New Year’s Eve, we will be discussing moments in anime and pop culture media that convey a feeling of happiness in our hearts. During times of struggles, we look towards the things that matter to us as a source of strength, hope, and happiness. We hope you enjoy this round of posts and that you, too, will have a wonderful holiday season!

-December “Warmth” Blog Tour Prompt

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[OWLS Blog Tour] Forged Through Adversity: A Look at Killer B and the Shinobi of the Hidden Cloud Village

Hey hey all you Heroes and Travelers out there today I’m bringing you all another super special awesome OWLS post!! Back in December I mentioned that I’d joined OWLS: Otaku Warriors of Liberty and Self-Respect, a group of bloggers and vloggers that hope to spread a message of acceptance and understanding through thoughtful community activism!

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So, in order to spread our message of self acceptance and tolerance, we’ve decided to hold Monthly Blog Tours! During Blog Tours, we each write individual theme posts on our blogs that promote our group’s values, with a bit of an otaku twist.  April’s Blog Tour topic is Colors!

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Melanin Monday: My Top 5 Favorite Black Male Anime Characters

Hey, hey all you wonderful Heroes and Travelers out there it’s Monday, and that means another Melanin Monday post!! For those of you just joining us, Melanin Monday is a special weekly post series that I started for Black History Month (I might be persuaded to continue the series, if interest is high enough), where I talk about Black and Brown skinned characters in anime, manga, video games, etc. Last week I switched things up a bit, with an op-ed like piece on the negative portrayals of black characters in anime and I’m not gonna lie, it wound up being pretty ranty! So for this week’s post, I wanted to transition to something a bit more chill…

Two weeks back I spotlighted  My Favorite Black Female Anime Charactersfive phenomenal women of color that I felt everyone should know about… Well, this week, I’m giving the fellas a chance to shine. These fierce fellas know how to take care of business! Because I think all the men on this list are fantastic, this won’t be a ranked list, I love them all equally!!

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Melanin Monday: I Am Not Your Stereotype- Racial Representation in Anime [Part I]

Hey, hey all you wonderful Heroes and Travelers out there it’s Monday, and that means another Melanin Monday post!! For those of you just joining us, Melanin Monday is a special weekly post series that I started for Black History Month (I might be persuaded to continue the series, if interest is high enough), where I talk about Black and Brown skinned characters in anime, manga, video games, etc. Last week I did a Top 5 List of My Favorite Black Female Anime Characters and this week, I’m gonna do things a little differently…

As a Black nerd, it’s hard to find strong characters that look like me in the media, more times than not people of color, especially African American people are cast as criminals, villains, or worst of all hurtful stereotypes. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen my people used as the butt of someone else’s joke and quite frankly, it pisses me off! Even my beloved anime, as progressive as it is, has some rather questionable black and brown characters… So, for this week’s post, I wanted to look at the various ways anime portrays people of color, both the negative and the positive portrayals. This post wound up being longer than I originally intended, so I decided to split it into two parts! Part I focuses on the negative stereotypes and Part II which will go up on the last Monday of the Month will focus on the more positive depictions of POC in anime.

*Disclaimer: I realize that this is a touchy subject for some people, but I want to let you all know right now, that while comments are welcome, I will not tolerate any personal attacks or overtly nasty comments. If you can’t discuss this post in a respectful and civilized manner, then keep your hands off the keyboard… I promise you I will not be very forgiving of anyone that uses my comments section as such! 😀

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30 Day Anime Challenge- Day 25: Saddest Anime Death

It’s not uncommon for people to grow attached to anime characters. In most cases we spend a lot of time watching these guys on screen, so it makes sense that we’d grow attached to them. So when an anime character dies, it’s only natural that you feel sad about it….

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If I’m being completely honest with you guys, there are actually two anime deaths that I consider to be the saddest anime deaths ever. So, instead of going through the trouble of picking one over the other, I’m just going to share both of them! My picks for saddest anime deaths are…

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30 Day Anime Challenge: Day 23-Favorite attack someone used in an anime

I feel like my answers for these posts are getting sillier and sillier the longer this challenge goes on. So if you are expecting a serious answer Day 23’s prompt: My favorite anime attack… you’ve come to the wrong place. In fact this is probably one of the silliest attacks used in an anime, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t think long and hard about my answer…

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You know what I’m not going to do an introduction for my choice this time, in fact I’m going to just get right to it… My pick for my favorite attack someone used in an anime is…

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30 Day Anime Challenge- Day 20: An Anime character that gets on my nerves

We all have them, that one character that we just can’t stand! The character that pisses you off ever single time they show up on screen. Maybe they are the antagonist that always seems to get in the way of the hero, maybe they’re one the protagonist’s allies, or maybe they’re the protagonist of the series. Whoever they are, you can be sure that just seeing them is enough to get your blood boiling…

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This was actually a pretty easy prompt to write for… I’m starting to sense a pattern with this Challenge, the posts about things I dislike are much easier to write than the posts about things I like…

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30 Day Anime Challenge- Day 17: My Favorite Supporting Male Anime Character

It’s Day 17 and I’m supposed to talk about my favorite supporting male character… Well, I have quite a few favorite supporting characters, so this choice was much more difficult than I thought it would be…

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Sometimes the supporting characters are better than the actual protagonist. I dunno, there is just something unique about supporting characters, that just makes them easier to relate to. Unlike protagonists, they don’t necessarily follow a specific pattern which allows for a greater degree of variability in their characterization. Which is the case with my pick, this guy is so much cooler that the protagonist… it’s a shame that they killed him off though. My pick for my favorite supporting male anime character is…

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30 Day Anime Challenge-Day 7: My Anime Crush

Asking anime fan to choose just one anime crush is like asking someone to pick a needle in a haystack. Asking an anime fan to choose just one anime crush is like asking a person to choose just one fandom on Tumblr…. I could go on, but the point is choosing one anime crush is not a simple task!

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I have had several anime crushes over the years, each one with their own special charm points and features. So believe me when I say that this was not a decision I took lightly. I spent days trying to figure out which character I would write about for this challenge and every single time the result was the same… So without further delay, here is my anime crush…

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