O3BN Reads

ESSAYS FOR
THE GROWN
NERD.

Anime criticism. Gaming retrospectives. Manga deep dives. Afrofuturism. The Black nerd experience, written by people who've lived it for 30+ years.

All Reads
Gaming

Every emotion I have ever felt, I first felt in an RPG

Before we had language for it, we had side quests. An argument for why JRPGs shaped the emotional lives of an entire generation of Black nerds.

Gaming · 8 min read
Anime

Afro Samurai was talking to us. We just didn't have words for it yet.

A Black samurai in feudal Japan voiced by Samuel L. Jackson. We accepted it at face value then. Here's what it was actually doing.

Anime · 7 min read
90s Vault

What the Pokémon card economy taught us about capitalism at age 10

Holographic Charizard. The schoolyard market. The moment the hobby became an economy. A nostalgia piece that goes somewhere unexpected.

90s Vault · 6 min read
Manga

Vagabond is the best sports manga ever made and nobody talks about it

Miyamoto Musashi as the lens for examining discipline, ego, and what it means to dedicate your life to craft. Inoue never gets enough credit.

Manga · 9 min read
Anime

Ghost in the Shell asked every question we're still answering about AI

1995. The Major. What makes consciousness real? The film had the entire argument before the internet existed.

Anime · 10 min read
Grown Nerd

Raising kids who love anime in 2025 is completely different and completely the same

My kid watched their first Ghibli film at age 7. Here's what happened after — and what it made me remember about being 7 myself.

Grown Nerd · 5 min read
Sci-Fi

Octavia Butler wrote the world we're living in. We should have listened harder.

Parable of the Sower. Climate collapse, fractured communities, a prophetic leader building something new from the wreckage. It was all there.

Sci-Fi · 8 min read
90s Vault

Outlaw Star never got the credit it deserved and that's a crime

Space Western. Gene Starwind. The ship. The atmosphere. It aired alongside Bebop and somehow got left behind. A long-overdue correction.

90s Vault · 7 min read
Culture

Being the only one in the room who gets every reference is lonely. We fixed that.

The particular isolation of the Black nerd who moves between worlds. And why Over30BlackandNerdy exists in the first place.

Culture · 4 min read
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