Dotting All the Lines, All the Time
Introducing our newsletter, bringing the best in animation journalism to your inbox.
Welcome to the newsletter of The Dot and Line, where we’ll send you the best of all things toons, all the time.
Here you’ll find a bit of EVERYTHING! But mostly we wanted to make it easy to deliver the animation and cartoon #content that will put a little pep in your step at the end of the day, and some per in your spective. Every month (for now), we’ll send some of the best of the best from the site straight into your veins…uh, we mean to your inbox.
This is our very first send, so we welcome any notes, feedback, and—especially—tips on what to watch next. We hope you dig it.
What’s neeeews, pussycat?
The Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Cast, in Their Own Words
John Cho, the new Spike Spiegel, once tweeted this in 2014: “Stop turning Asian roles white. It’s bullshit and we all know it.” While there’s a lot we still don’t know about how the upcoming live-action Cowboy Bebop remake, there’s plenty we can learn from the cast’s past interviews collected by Eric Vilas-Boas.
Love, Death + Robots Is Heavy Metal for 2019
We now have a new anthology of animated over-the-top violence, sexuality, and comedy in Love, Death + Robots, a collection of 18 (mostly) animated shorts that are truly an experience to behold. Here Patrick Craig breaks down what to expect.
What else is another year older?
Who can say where the rooooooooooad goes, where the daaaaaaaay flows? Ooooooooonly time. Okay, we won’t serenade you but we will remind you that every second is another oppor-toon-ity for another classic’s anniversary.
You bet your ass we did a whole Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood package.
One decade later, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is still as good as ever. All the Fullmetal content you could ever want is alive and well on The Dot and Line. Check out the full thing here, and a few gems below.
What was the most important lesson from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood?
In this essay, Maya Gittelman peels back the layers of the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood’s most important lesson: Equivalent Exchange. One is all, all is one, and in life and love, one thing for another is a mug’s game.
The series showed us why the past should stay dead
All traumatized children would bring their parents back to life if they could. John Maher explains how FMA:B shows us why some things belong in the past.
And speaking of shows with important lessons…
Ed, Ed, and Eddy Turns 20
That’s right. Ed, Ed, and Eddy is a college sophomore as of January 4, and it’s sassing all of its professors. Here Marley Crusch breaks down why we still haven’t forgotten it long after it debuted on Cartoon Network right before Y2K.
Revisit some of our greatest hits!
5 Spoiler-Free Reasons to See Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
If you haven’t seen the Academy Award-winning movie, now’s the best time. It’s on Blu-Ray and available for digital download. Amanda Ramsaran has broken down all the reasons this movie’s special, without spoiling anything.
Stevonnie Survives—As Do We
Hollywood has had a hand in rendering nonbinary people nearly invisible…which is one reason the Stevonnie pairing in Steven Universe is so important. Lean into the tenderness of the duo with us, and as Maya Gittelman writes: “Imagine everything truly feeling a little softer, a little safer, a little more like home.”
When Bugs Bunny Beat the Bible
Before there was Green Day, there was evewyone’s favowite wascawwy wabbit helping to redefine culture (and our cravings for carrots). Alex Costello walks us through how Bugs Bunny redefined the meaning of the word "nimrod" without anyone realizing he was doing it.
What we’re watching right now
Eric is watching…Gundam ZZ
This one’s an odd egg. It's tonally inconsistent with its darker, more polished predecessor Zeta Gundam. Entire episodes early in its run are basically extended gags where hero Judau Ashta and his Riverdale-esque gang of friends play with WMDs on a futuristic starship and blow up bad guys almost by accident. Nonetheless, I find myself genuinely caring for Judau. He loves his little sister, like I love mine, and every uncannily smart or hilariously dumb decision he makes feeds back into that love.
ZZ ain't my favorite Gundam show, but it’s got heart and sass. (And pssst if you like the Gundam shows, tune into our Wars Is for Losers editorial collection this week, celebrating 40 years of the franchise.)
John is watching…F/sn:UBW
No, that's not government code. It's the ridiculous acronym for Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, the 2014 anime and alternate-ending reboot of Fate/stay night, the 2006 anime adaptation of the 2004 Japanese visual light novel Fate/stay night and precursor to the 2011 original video animation Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works.
The acronym is no more confusing than the nature of F/sn:UBW itself, but if you're the kind of person who'd gleefully watch Queen Arturia Pendragon, AKA Lady King Arthur, fight Hercules, or the Greek witch Medea summon the samurai archenemy of Miyamoto Musashi to vanquish all comers, who cares if it's confusing?
Sammy is watching…Rurouni Kenshin
I know I'm [checks calendar] more than two decades late to this, but I'm so into Rurouni Kenshin right now. It’s a story about a wandering samurai who refuses to kill, and each episode is peppered with humor, humanity, and action in equal measure. I'm a beginner when it comes to anime, but this show has officially got me hooked.
And hey! If you’d like to send us a few lines about what you’re watching, email us at thedotandline@gmail.com! We’ll reprint them here.
Aaaaand…that’s all, folks!
Thanks so much for reading. This newsletter was produced by Elly Belle. If you liked it, forward it to your friends, yell in their face until they forward it to all of their friends, and then we…do what we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!
Love,
The Dot and Line