What is sound and fury anime about?

I've been seeing and reading a lot about Japan's recent, unexpected surge in anime sales lately.

I suppose some of you guys already have a sense of what I'm talking about, but for the rest of you, here's a quick summary. Anime is back!

Anime is not the one genre that went up in popularity in the past few years; there were always plenty of fans, especially older ones. What changed was that in the past few years, new anime started to become available for general consumption, with the result that for the first time in history, more people than ever became aware of the existence of anime (or at least became aware that they hadn't previously). Before, new anime was a rarity, something people who'd followed the industry for a while would be excited about if they found themselves at a convention. Now it's becoming common enough that many people outside the anime world even know what anime is.

So why has anime suddenly surged? One reason is the rise of streaming services like Crunchyroll and FunimationNow, which can stream many, many new shows from different studios, while also making old titles that once seemed too niche to be worth viewing available to a new audience. Another is the rise of the niche market, where the shows aimed at a specific audience with a specific story and style have become more popular than the general release shows from the mainstream studio.

So why has this happened? One theory is that as the niche anime has become more popular, it's become more widely known, and thus as a result it becomes more attractive for companies wanting to expand their business beyond just a small circle of fans. Another theory is that the niche market is an escape valve for shows that aren't going anywhere, but don't want to take a chance by moving to a mainstream anime studio. The more obscure the anime is, the less risk the company takes in producing it.

Personally, I'd think that the main reason is that new media, both in Japan and in the West, are increasingly popular. Anime is no exception.

Is Sturgill Simpson a veteran?

The answer is yes.

I know that for a fact. I was at the Gramophone in downtown Louisville, KY, last week to see him perform. He opened the show with a cover of Stupid by the Stooges. I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping for a We're all gonna die! type of opening. But, I can say that if you're wondering if you should be concerned about the health and well-being of your favorite artist, I would say the answer is no.

He's been on tour for most of 2025. And, the amount of shows that he's been able to do, let's say, is pretty impressive. And, in true indie rock fashion, he's been doing as many as he's wanted to.

In February, he played the Newport Folk Festival, the largest music festival in the country. He's been touring with other artists such as Gary Louris of The Jayhawks, who have done a few of his own solo shows, as well. In April, he did a show in Atlanta, GA, with his band The Dirt Brothers. And, in May, he played a three-night show in Minneapolis, MN, at the Triple Rock Social Club, the home of The Replacements.

On top of all this, he's had some time off, which is probably why he's only been back on the road for the past two months. He just returned from a four-night run in Chicago, IL, and also, he played at the Hangout Fest in Gulf Shores, AL, this weekend.

Last night, he played a show at the Lexington, KY, Public Library, which was part of the The Big Read Kentucky program, which I assume means it was free. And, he played a sold-out show at the Lincoln Theater in downtown Louisville, KY. (I did not attend this show.) I got to see Sturgill Simpson and Gary Louris play at the Lexington, KY, Public Library and they were both amazing.

The biggest difference between what I experienced last night and the show I attended in Louisville, KY, was the crowd. In Lexington, KY, there were about 400 people in the audience.

What is the story behind sound and fury?

Why do we care so much about our words and why are they the last line of defense?

Why do we keep looking for a new way to speak up or even, dare I say it, a new language?

In a nutshell, it all goes back to the invention of writing, which has shaped our culture for thousands of years. This year we celebrate the 5,000th anniversary of the birth of written language in China, the beginning of history as we know it.

The word written language is based on the pictographs we use to represent sounds. The word is derived from the Greek letter gamma. That's because it was the first letter to be invented.

The story of the alphabet is really one of the most amazing stories in the history of writing. What began as a way of recording the sounds of spoken language by a few early Sumerian farmers (who lived around 6000 BC) who used pictographs, or pictures representing sounds, as a method of communicating. The earliest forms of writing are so ancient and so primitive that no one can quite agree on how to name them. Some call them the earliest forms of writing and some call them hieroglyphics or proto-cuneiform, others call them pictographs and yet others call them proto-alphabet or proto-syllabic.

In any case, as with so many other things, it was not long before the idea of using letters to record speech spread to other languages. In fact, the earliest alphabets originated in the Middle East, with the Phoenician script, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Greek Linear script, and the Mayan script, which all used different letters to represent the same sounds, but with different styles.

These scripts had many advantages, among them speed of communication as well as efficiency in record keeping and document making. In fact, so widespread was their use that they had taken over the world, with the Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans bringing them into Europe and Africa.

In China, the pictographic characters gradually evolved into the Chinese character. It was used to write all kinds of texts and documents including poems, religious writings, government directives and literature.