A long long time ago, in the distant past of yesterday. Doing my usual activities of plotting my next plan for world domination. Something suddenly came over me, but I ignored it training my subjects of evil penguins. Once I went home, I was unable to enter my domain. Locked under a spell, I was given a great challenge. Something I only heard about in myths. These things called tags, and I got tagged by none other than Jenn from Welcome to Hell Zone. I got no idea what voodoo, or pop idol magic she used on my house, but I’m going to break it! So Jenn, thanks for the tag, and I accept your challenge! (epic violin plays me out)

So firstly, the rules of the tag!

Rules of the tag:

1. Headline your post with “The T.A.P. Tag!” and put “tanka” as one of your tags.
2. Make sure to link back to the original post that started the tag (this post!).
3. Make sure to mention the person who forced introduced the tag to you!
4. Pick 1-3 of your favorite anime.
5. Write your tanka about the anime you’ve chosen. It’s fine if you decide to do only one or two if the schedule is tight.
6. Tag at least 3 or more bloggers you know, and get their creative muscles flowing.

So what are tankas? I don’t know. I never heard of them before, but lets pretend I do, and let’s also pretend I didn’t copy, and paste this explanation from The Luminous Mongoose blog post on this tag either.

Tanka (短歌 tan-kah) poems are short poems that originated in Japan in the 13th century. They are five lines long and often convey deep feelings about nature, love, or desire. They usually have a structure of syllables that starts similar to haiku (5-7-5), but ends with two more 7-syllable lines, making it 5-7-5-7-7, for a total of 31 syllables.

I followed this quick guide that explained the core concepts of it, but for a TL;DR, here’s the structure of a tanka.

• Setting up the scene (two lines that describe a moment)
• The “pivot” line (middle line that links the top and bottom lines together)
• The payoff (last two lines that describe your feelings toward said moment)

I gotta reach deep inside myself…I ain’t got no soul right now. One moment, gotta find me a penguin’s soul. Okay, now I got me a soul. Reach deep inside myself, and get poetic. This should be easy I said to myself a day ago, and here I am just now posting this. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Didn’t help that Jenn’s, and The Luminous Mongoose tankas were so good. I chosen three of my favorite animes to do my tankas on, and hopefully they’re good enough to break the spell. I really need my coffee!

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Death Note

Shaping the world, taking names

A silver line crossed

Trying to find myself

Becoming further from myself

I am, the light outside

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Fullmetal Alchemist

The past I won’t forgive

Memories fading

Form a link between our hearts

Hold your hands out to me

We push on together

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Cardcaptor Sakura

On a desk, a bear sits

Alone, but filled with love

In the distance, another soul

Returning those precious words

“I love you”

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What tripped me up on these tankas were the syllables of all things. I wanted to keep in spirit, and so I tirelessly edited them all until they were all within 31 syllables. The hardest to work around was Cardcaptor Sakura. It was too good to give up on, but in the end I found a way to make it work. Also, I wanted something sweet, and simple to end my series of tankas on.

Now time for my targets. I would have tagged another user, but according to him on Twitter. He’s currently on the path to reaching godhood building his harem. So these three will do nonetheless.

Nenha senpai – Here’s a guy who puts in serious work into his reviews. What I like most his blog is the variety of thing he covers, and all with the same amount of effort. Also, this will help you remove some of those spider webs you mentioned in your Akira review.

TPAB – Here’s a guy I haven’t seen in my feed for a while. I’m very jealous of what I’ve read of his body of work. The man knows to analyze, and critique anime. Just do what you typically do TPAB; takes the pants off, and get those creative juices flowing!

Yomu – I recently started reading his stuff, and quite enjoy the posts I’ve read so far. Also, having read a bit of his collab commentary on Divine Gate (as of the moment of this writing) he’ll be bursting with inspiration from such a well written anime as that one.

Now that I have completed the tag, now time to back get into my house, and it’s still locked. Who did it this time? Huh, a note from Ai Enma? “I know who you were with!”. Oh well, until the next tag folks.