April Anime 2025 Week 2

The Introductory post of this series.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2025/04/anime-year-2025-2026.html

My Anilist Profile.

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

And my Social Media

https://c.im/@KuudereKun

The Pilot of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX on PrimeVideo was good, and has a great English Dub Cast as well.  Looks like the part of the movie people were calling Episode 0 is actually going to be  episode 2 next week (Wednesday in Japan but Tuesday in the US).

Episode 9 of Loner Life In Another World was pretty good. 

Aemuk M.D. episode 11 introduced a new Denny’s variation, Bemmy’s spelled with Green Text.

On April 9th I finished Re:Zero season 3, it was great, and it looks like season 4 is gonna be pretty good too.

Rock is A Lady’s Modesty episode 2 was quite amusing. 

Moonrise on Netflix was a pretty decent Sci-Fi story.

The last episode of Guild Receptionist was decent.  I give the show as a whole an 8 out of 10. 

Detective Conan episode 1158 was an okay episode.  I was expecting it to be the tie-in to the new movie since it's the last new episode before the movie releases in Japan, but it didn’t end with an allusion to the film’s events.  However I can tell next week’s 1159 will be since it has the same writer as the movie.

Update: I just watched the first episode of Lazarus rather late on the Adult Swim app, and it looks like the second episode will drop today so I may add another update.  It was pretty entertaining, can't guarantee I'll stick with it but it has a good start.

The Overflow Wiki has Birthdates including Gregorian Calendar Years for the School Days Characters.

On their Character Pages, but the Timeline page itself states no Year dates are definitively given.

And I don’t think the years given on these pages had enough thought put into them based on how Japanese School Years work.

You see in Japan the School Year is April-March So I’m pretty sure that means Setsuna being born in February and Sekai in December of 1988 would not actually be in the same Grade. Now if their Birthdays do come from Canonical Material then Setsuna is more likely to be born 2 months after Sekai rather then 10 month before. Maybe I’m mistaken and there is some nuance to how who is in what School Year is decided I’m missing.

Japanese High School is also only three years, and it seems you generally begin as 15 expected to turn 16 before that School Year is over and end it as an 18 year old.

So on this Wiki

Setsuna is February 14 1988

Sekai is December 7 1988

Taisuke Sawanaga is July 19th but a year isn’t given

Makoto Itou is October 16 1988

Kotonoha Katsura is January 4 1988 (Kokoro is November 28 but no year)

So they decided to put all the cast in the same Grade as 1988.

If School Days takes place in the then present of when it was released, then all these characters being in their First Year of Japanese Highschool would more likely have been born April 1989 to March 1990. Coincidentally the first year of the Heisei era. Their Conceptions would then be the the Summer of 1988 through Spring of 1989.

School Days dropped in April of 2005 however, so maybe it wouldn’t make it that much of a period piece to imagine it’s drama as being primarily set in 2004 moving those estimates down a year.

Setsuna and Sekai’s mothers were previously Heroines of the original Summer Radish Vacation. It’s heavily implied we’re supposed to assume that Setsuna and Sekai were conceived during or within a year following the events of that game.

Based on the title I’m assuming that game takes place during Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation from School in Japan is only 6 weeks not the 3 months we Americans are used to (and certainly not the 104 days of Phineas and Ferb’s OP), generally starting around July 20th and ending around the end of August. Neither Setsuna or Sekai’s proposed birthdays fit being conceived during those 6 weeks.

Regardless of what Gregorian Calendar Dates you choose to lynchpin the Overflow timeline to, Setsuna and Sekai being first years in School Days creates a contradiction between the Overflow Wiki saying Snow Radish Vacation is 30 years before School Days and Summer Radish Vacation is 17 years after Snow Radish Vacation. However it could be where ever they got that 30 year estimate from really meant over 30 years.

If the title of Snow Radish Vacation is implying the Winter Holidays, in Japan that’s usually December 26 through January 6. But it opens on a sequence set at least 9 months before the main narrative so that would be in March probably, maybe early April.

There is more then one example across School Days HQ and Shiny Days of Youko saying she’d “long” had Sekai already by the time she was Sekai’s current age. But if her and Mai are in Middle School during Summer Radish Vacation they sure aren’t built like it. Shiny Days also says Youko is exactly 30 if you go down her Route.

It would be really funny if the most logical timeline places the events of Snow Radish Vacation in 1969.

Shiny Days and Kokoro Censorship.

In my playing of Shiny Days I’m in fact using the Censored official JAST USA release. I’m not good with Torrents and stuff like that so haven’t tried to apply it yet, and since I’m not myself into what was Censored out I probably won’t bother.

I read this article about how Censorship isn’t great but JAST had no choice due to the law in countries like Canada.

https://sanahtlig.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-i-endorse-jasts-censorship-of-shiny-days.html

But I’m posting this not to comment on the IF of the Censorship here but the execution.

In my view if you have to Censor Shiny Days there are two ways to do it but JAST instead used an in-between route. Having it still possible for Makoto’s assault of Kokoro to happen however censored, but removing the endings dependent on that, simply takes away the consequences.

Even the nominally "Good" Kokoro endings have an absurdist quality to them. But even if they wanted to keep only Reign of Carnage I would have considered that better. But more then that the Gift from my Father Ending or the Paris for Two variant dependent on apologizing to Kokoro would still be endings that acknowledged this happened and was bad.

The additional Explicit Kokoro Content would be just as easy to edit around as that initial beach scene. Especially considering the existing Censored version still has you stare at Kokoro’s Panties for a minute.

As far the option of removing the assault of Kokoro entirely goes, I guess the only question is what’s then the consequence for not getting the Setsuna Meter high enough during the first act of episode 4? I’d just lock the player onto one of those premature non endings which is functionally what happens in the existing censored version anyway.

And if you think it’d be weird to include so much Kokoro set up with no follow through, I’d say just look at Yamagta.

Madlax thoughts

Below I'm going to repeat some thoughts on the Anime Madlax I expressed on my Mastadon a couple years ago.

The cool thing about Friday Monday as a villain is that he has the ideology of Heath Ledger's Joker and methodology of Emperor Palpatine.  And Mike Kleinhenz personifies it perfectly.

Just another thing that makes Madlax really fun.

The thing about the ending of Madlax is that it's really really stupid, there is no pretending it makes sense, it is entirely built on asspulls and breaking rules right after establishing them.

And I love every minute of it, because for my tastes it's running on pure Rule of Cool.  I love every time Friday gets shot directly  in the face and brushes it off.  I love the Yuki Kajiura Music.  

And Luci Christian gives some of the best line delivery of her Career, "You're a stupid person" and "I'm a Bad little Girl Friday Monday", I can't believe I'd forgotten about the second of those.

It's everything I watch Anime for crammed into 1 20 minute finale.

April Week 1

The Introductory post of this series.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2025/04/anime-year-2025-2026.html

My Anilist Profile.

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

And my Social Media

https://c.im/@KuudereKun

So I gave Please Put Them On, Takamine-san a shot and didn’t get very far.  I have no moral objection, I just usually wind up wishing these Fetish based Ecchis would cut out the pretense.

Episode 8 of Loner Life in Another World feels like a bit of a downgrade compared to the prior Arc. 

Episode 10 of Ameku M.D. is the first part of a multipart episode.  This being a show where most Cases are multiparters does work best to flesh out each case, but it makes me wish the show had gotten more than a single Cour. 

The first episode of Rock is A Lady’s Modesty was pretty cool.

Guild Receptionist episode 11 was good, it revolves around twists I’d rather not spoil.  I have already said on Social Media something I should also say on this Blog.  This show is at its best when it’s depicting things anyone working in customer service can relate to simply translated into a Fantasy setting.

Individualism in Anime

Japan is a much more Collectivist Culture than The United States of America is at its baseline, a fact that is indeed relevant to understanding entertainment media made in Japan.

But people with a Collectivist ideology (in both its Right Wing and Left Wing forms) do exist in America and do sometimes make art to reflect those values.  So I have no doubt there are likewise Individualists in Japan.

So I do think people analyzing Japanese Media in the West make a mistake in assuming by default it’s always intended to be read as Collectivist. 

Anime, or more so the mediums that are the frequent source material of Anime, are very Niche in Japan.  And Niche in a way that makes them attractive to a variety of different people outside the norm of Japanese culture in different and often mutually exclusive ways. 

Make no mistake, most Anime is still presenting an ultimately Collectivist worldview, especially the Anime that are among my favorites like Robotics;Notes and the entire Magical Girl Genre since I am a Leftist.

However I have spotted the occasional Anime I think does have an Individualist Message in rebellion against the Collective norms of Japanese society.  Interestingly they mostly seem to be Light Novel adaptations.  Not all LN adaptations however, Durarara!! Has a very Collectivist ethos as do most that got an Anime even before it did.  

It’s mostly in those very LN trends that have dominated LN based on Anime since like 2014 or so. Isekai, Magical Academy shows and so forth.  Not even all of them ultimately, maybe not even most, but enough that I find it notable.

Take the 2011 show Ben-To which I found very fun but did notice a few points where it’s moral seems to come from that “if everybody wins then nobody wins” mentality.  Shield Hero I know has appealed to the Randian Objectivists in the Anime Community and Log Horizon has also been described as preaching Libertarian ideology.  C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control is an even more economically Libertarian Anime but it's not a LN adaptation though.

Another interesting, indeed to me annoying, trend in Isekai is how whenever its premise involves an entire Classroom being Isekaied it’s always initially about the MC being separated from the rest for much of the story.   I really want to see one that’s from the start about the entire Class working together without there even needing to be a single main character.

This is paralleled by how those Magical Academy shows always star a main character whose special ability completely dwarfs everyone else.  The very aspect of the _____ ______ formula one would expect a more Collectivist Culture to remove or at least downplay they instead double down on. 

Among Americans who strive to be Collectivists there are still elements of Individualism that passively remain in our thinking because of that being our culture’s baseline.  A lot of Internet Leftist Infighting is Leftists accusing other Leftists of being Individualists while being blind to the Individualisms in our own thinking.

And the same frequently happens in these Anime I have alleged to be ideologically individualist.  Anime named for a single Chosen One protagonist often wind up doing better at depicting teamwork then American Superhero films named as being about a Superhero Team.

Those Entire Classroom Isekai premises I complained about before do inevitably reunite the Protagonist with the rest of the class, how long that takes varies.  The recent Loner Life in Another World that I’m watching the currently airing Dub of on HIDIVE is perhaps the most subversive of this trend as much of the comedy is the protagonist being prevented from fulfilling his desire to be left alone.  In fact at times it seems like its thesis is that a “Loner” is the best mediator between the various Cliques. Actually the most surprising thing about the show is how it opens on a whole “break down of all the High School Cliques” scene that I usually only expect in American High School Dramas. 

And then there is Classroom of The Elite, a Light Novel series with a contentious Anime Adaptation.  Long before I had any of the other thoughts I’ve based this post on, I've suspected that the key to understanding Classroom of The Elite may be that it is exploring the Tension between Japanese Collectivism and Capitalist Individualism.

Anime Year 2025-2026

I’ve decided to make another try at doing weekly Anime Updates for a Year.   

This year will be defined as April 2025 through March 2026.

And weekly is a rough estimate, they probably won’t come out consistently the day of the week, and if I’m slow in having interesting thoughts about any I may take 2 or three weeks. 

To start with I am continuing the Simuldubs of 

Ameku M.D.

Loner Life In Another World

Guild Receptionist

And I’ll be bringing the last 8 episodes of Re:Zero season 3 once all of it has been Dubbed.

As far as Winter 2025 shows I finished before March ended, I may post final thoughts on them separately. 

I’m very unsure what I’ll be watching for Spring.

I’ll be checking in on Detective from time to time but probably not consistently.  The most recent new episodes have been Anime Originals and now it’s returning an old 3 parter from the 500s that I can’t remember at the moment if it’s among the ones I’ve seen. 

Haite Kudashi, Takamine-san is one I’m considering, believe it or not. Shows labeled as Ecchi are often contrary to my tastes, but one bold enough to use that as its main promotional image is worth giving a shot. 

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty I’ll probably give a shot to.

The Shuiji Family Children I’ll give a look to.

Witch Watch and Once Upon A Witch’s Death interest me.

Oh and there’s 300 Slimes season 2

As usual though, my preference for waiting for Dubs means I’ll be behind, and so this series of posts will not actually finish what it’s meant to cover until deep into April 2026.  And also means it’ll be a few weeks before we really get started. 

Shows that have been announced recently I'm hoping will air within this timeframe include.

Fate/Strange Fake

The new Nanoha show

A Certain Darkside Item

A Certain Scientific Railgun season 4.

Rent-a-Girlfriend season 4

Skeleton Knight Season 2

Classroom of The Elite season 3.

The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat season 2

Spy x Family season 3 is currently announced for Fall 2025.

Movies I’m waiting for include the Dubs for Princess Principal Crown Handler part 3 and the most recent Girls Und Panzer Das Finale episode.  The upcoming Madoka Magica Film.  And the new Detective Conan film coming out this month I probably won’t be able to watch till November or December. And maybe even hopefully the next Prisma Illya Movie.

I should also mention that I have stopped using MAL and am now using Anilsit and Anime-Planet.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages, Anime-Planet doesn’t include Hentai so that’s much of why my number is smaller there.  

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

https://www.anime-planet.com/users/KuudereKun888 

Girls of the Overflow Universe

When one first discovers the absurd Overflow Family Tree the specific character to catch people’s attention is Tomaru Sawagoe because he’s literally all over it.  And I like memeing on what an over the top villain he is too.

But I also believe plenty of the Girls on the Tree are more than just perpetual victims.  They have interesting stories to tell as well. 

For one thing I can’t help but see a possible compelling Marxist Feminist reading of the meta narrative, where this very literal Patriarch is the owner of the Radish Trilogy’s ritual Restaurant Chain, but it is all girls who are actually running and staffing it.  This is why the Radish setting is so interesting in Summer Days and really makes me want to somehow experience the Radish Trilogy Games.

The common “Apple not falling far from the tree” expression being said in reference to Tomaru’s sons I find amusing given we meet even more daughters and they never turn out to be bad people.  The most Evil Women in these games are the ones who don’t descend from Tomaru. So no being Evil isn’t Biologically Determined in this universe.

I feel like proclaiming Kagura Inou the Matriarch of the Overflow Universe.  Her mother may be Ancestral to even more branches, but Kagura is the protagonist of the Chronologically first game and is mentioned in key ways in both Summer Days and Shiny Days.  I do dislike Shiny Days revealing her to have passed away already.

Turns out everyone likes to watch someone else play a Video Game.

I consider myself a bit of an Apologist for Sword Art Online, but one key detail of it's climax hasn't aged well.

The original Web Novel version of Aincrad was published in 2002 before YouTube existed, but the Anime aired a decade later.  So Kirito saying "there's no fun in watching someone else play a video game" was already being proven wrong.

Honestly I kind of lament how dead the original Let's Play format is.  Live Streams and edited videos about challenge runs are also fun.  But watching people commentate on their casual play through without having to deal with a Live Chat is something I miss.

Live Streams with some Chat interaction re more tolerate when I'm watching someone smaller. But once their Chat has a larger population then some cities it can become an inevitably frustrating distraction.

Still there's lots of fun Casual Gameplay based YT videos being made which I still enjoy. 

Shiny Days Route Order

The most well known online walkthrough of Shiny Days, that is also used by people playing through the Game on YouTube and Lexa$! Video Essays on it, advise people to play the Inori Route branch first.

I hate this.

Shiny Days is a remake of an earlier game originally titled Summer Days.

The Inori Branch is 100% new to Shiny Days, the Setsuna Branch seems to have some new content but it all feels like it fits in with the original Summer Days material just fine.  

The Inori route may be narratively an alternate timeline but it’s metatextuality a sequel.

As someone who feels like they’re very Savvy to this kind of thing, certain events and plot elements in the Inori storyline feel like specifically events Summer Days players are used to playing out differently.  They are Subverting Expectations.

And the only thing I’d really call a Twist in the Game is definitely treated like a shocking reveal far more when it happens in the Summer Days routes.  In the Inori storyline it’s treated with much more dramatic irony. 

So when I see people on YouTube play through the game being shocked and surprised by this reveal while watching the Inori story and then playing Summer Days making fun of how they already know it, it definitely feels to me like they’ve gotten the intended experience inverted.

The Game’s own internal Route Map does place the Inori Branch up top and the Summer Days Branch on the bottom and I think that’s largely what caused this.  The original Japanese developers of the Game may not have considered how many people will wind up playing only this release of the Game.  But in fact for us Westerners this is the only release we officially have in English at all.

The way unlocked H Scenes are organized on the menu for watching them however confirms that Summer Days does still come first.

The Inori route is also kind of overall more Wholesome and so maybe some people felt that should be a Normie’s first impression.  But no one is playing the Infamous Sequel to the Infamous School Days because they are looking for Wholesomeness.  If you don’t download the Deconseoring Patch you won’t get the most problematic content.

Which of these two branches you wind up on is decided by the first choice Makoto is given.  I’m not gonna say any other choices are more correct after that, such would defeat the point of this genre. I just want people to play Summer Days first.

So the first choice is Otome asking Makoto what he’s thinking about doing for Summer Break.  Select the top choice “I want to make lots of Memories” to get on the correct Summer Days path.

I do like the story being told in the Inori route, the only detail I dislike is the reveal that Setsuna’s grandmother Kagura is dead.  She was born in 1958 at the earliest in my needless overthinking of this insane universe’s timeline, so dying by 2005 is way too young.

Gyaru are not Normies

I see people like Anime Vlogger OtakuSpirit in his Alya speaking Russian videos make this mistake a lot so I felt like talking about it.

American watchers of Anime confuse Gyaru for Normies sometimes because what Gyaru are doing is influenced by is what is or at least once was Mainstream Normie White Girl culture in the United States.  But in Japan that’s not normal, they are a subculture under constant pressure from mainstream Japanese culture to conform just like typical Otaku and Fujoshi.

Sometimes I think viewers fail to notice a character being a Gyaru when they are the main character, like in Citrus.  In what got animated the term is never actually used, at least not that I can recall, so it’s easy for someone not fully paying attention to think Yuzu is Blond for the same reason Sailor Moon is.  Citrus also catches a lot of western viewers off guard because Anime usually doesn’t fully acknowledge how strict the Japanese Public School system actually is, Yuzu getting crap from the authorities for not looking like everyone else actually makes the show more realistic than most Anime, but some casual critics of the show don’t want to think about that so pretend it’s just being cartoonishly dystopic.  Yuzu being a Gyaru is what makes her a rebel against Normie society.

I could also mention the Nur Hentai called Soshite Watashi wa Sensei ni…  The main character has recently become a Gyaru but her “best friend” and Teacher don’t like that so they are trying to make her stop being a Gyaru by…. Raping her repeatedly.... because Hentai logic.  4 episodes in and they haven’t succeeded yet, but Nur/PoRo isn’t known for having good endings. 

So as I alluded to before Gyaru fashion is in part inspired by parts of American culture, so you could say they are a specific type of Ameriboo, that they are Otaku of sorts but instead of Anime it’s based on movies and shows like Clueless and Mean Girls and Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars.  PLL is still my favorite American TV show in spite of my issues with the last 3 seasons, so seeing an Anime where a character is explicitly a PLL fan would really make me Geek out, someone please make it happen. 

And all that is why Otaku Media depicting Gyaru do often express solidarity with them.  We saw this in the brief Gyaru appearance in the Nokotan Anime last year.  I’m currently watching the Dub for Loner Life In Another World as it comes out on HIDIVE, it’s depiction of its Gyaru clique seemed unflattering at first but they quickly seem to be getting better.

A good number of Hentai Doujins are about a male Otaku and a Gyaru having sex.  And yeah you could dismiss that as a pretty typical and generic self serving fantasy, but those Doujins are among the most Wholesome.  If you want Doujins where Girls can be consensually and enthusiastically sexually active without at all being shamed for it, your best bet are Gyaru Doujins. 

The 2000s is probably my favorite Decade of Anime

I’m not someone who confuses what personally appeals to me the most with what’s objectively the best, and I certainly don’t think modern Anime has fallen off completely.

And you’re probably now expecting me to express self awareness of how Nostalgia driven an opinion like this probably is.  But the thing is very little of the 2000s Anime I'm thinking of I watched at the time, I was late getting fully into Anime relatively speaking, the mid 2010s is when I became an Otaku.

Maybe you can say I saw just enough at the time that I can experience a sort of vicarious Nostalgia from shows that feel Homousian with shows I have actual Nostalgia for.  But what I did see at the time is mostly a few Genres, a huge percentage of what defines 2000s Anime I didn’t even get a sample of.  Plus as expected by my age the 90s is the era I'm generally most Nostalgic for.

Some of the shows I’m considering most important to defining what makes the 2000s special are what I’ve gotten into the most recently, post Pandemic as a person already in their late 30s.  The DotHack Franchise, Nana, White Album, Rumbling Hearts, Comic Party, Burst Angel, Mai Hime and Main Otome, Shattered Angels, Kanon, Shuffle, Tokyo Mew Mew, Elfen Lied, Baccano, a lot of the best Detective Conan content, and non Isekai Fantasy Shows like Scrapped Princess and Sands of Destruction.

The 2000s contain a linging influence of what people love about 90s Anime and the roots of lots of what’s dominated the 2010s and beyond.  But also plenty of shows that feel like they could only have been made in the 00s. 

The Volume of what I’ve seen is more recent, partly because how much Anime gets made increases exponentially, but also because again I started following currently airing Anime in the late 2010s so the disposable flash in the pan shows that don’t “stand the test of time” that appeal to me have been harder for me to miss, I have to seek them out for older eras. 

The thing is I'm not so sure the 00s would be all that over represented if I made a 3x3 or Top Ten list.  I think their specialness to me may be more with having a lot of shows I think about a lot regardless of how I rate them. And yet it’s not all that represented in that Twelve Unintentional Christian Anime list I made either.  Maybe what’s leading me to say this is more an appreciation for its perceived greater variety than actually thinking the shows were on average any better.

My absolute favorite of all time from the 00s, Noir, two of the shows that have hovered around the Number 2 spot are as well, Code Geass and Lucky Star.  My Favorite Pokémon movies are mostly from the 00s as well as what I consider the best era of the TV Anime, the character who is my current Avatar is from a 00s Anime, and so are the shows that I have called the best Christmas Anime and best Horror Anime. And my favorite Gundam series 00.

Maybe I should make a Top 20 of the 2000s.  But I'm not sure I can narrow it down to even 20.

Then there is the mildly controversial question of how to define the 2000s.  Usually Decades as defining Pop Culture is always based on year 0-9 formations because the fact that there is no year 0 at the start of the Gregorian Calendar is pretty irrelevant.  

But in terms of the Vibe Based ways I think of Anime time periods most Anime from 2010 feels more like 00s then the 2010s.  War on Geminar, Legend of The Legendary Heroes, Heartcatch Precure, Cat Planet Cuties, the first seasons of Oreimo and Durarara, Yosuga no Sora, Angel Beats, the Gundam 00 movie, K-On!! and the conclusion of the Diamond and Pearl era of Pokémon.  Most of what defines Modern Anime started in 2011 or 2012.

But do Anime from the year 2000 feel more 90s?  The Pokémon stuff could go either way and Boogiepop Phantom is a spin off of 90s LNs in a very Lain inspired style and a lot of shows on the air that year started in at least 99. So maybe?  

If I start this decade with Winter 2001 then it’s notable that I haven’t completed any TV Anime from that season and only even started Arjuna.

Of course another ambiguity to consider is the many ways in which in the Japanese Mind years kind of actually start with April not January.  And as a Mildly Hebrew Roots Christian I’m also very sympathetic to starting the year with Aviv rather than Winter.  

But then I’d have to consider Madoka Magica spiritually a 2010 Anime and that doesn’t feel right, though perhaps Wandering Son and Is This A Zombie do?

Anime has always been Mainstream Actually

I've been struggling to explain why NO Anime isn't Mainstream now without unintentionally sounding like I'm saying Battle Shonen and Ghibli films don't count as Anime.  

But as I was watching a recent video from a YouTube channel called RoyaltyIsHere I had an epiphany.

If all the examples of unambiguously Mainstream Anime you can cite are still 90% Battle Shonen and Ghibli films or stuff like that, then you aren't referring to anything that's changed from 15 years ago.  Dragon Ball was Mainstream in America already 15 years ago, it was 16 years ago that they made a Hollywood Live Action film out of it.  

It was over 25 years ago I was in Middle School during DBZ’s original Toonami Broadcast and guess what, liking DBZ was cool and hip at the Middle School I went to, no one was bullied because they liked DBZ or Pokémon.  I was weird because I also liked Sailor Moon while being at the time Male, I didn’t get bullied for it because I wasn’t brave enough to be open about that back then, I was bullied simply for looking like a stereotypical Nerd.  But for Girls Sailor Moon was just as mainstream, and plenty of guys who weren't cowards like I was.

The only thing that's different now is that the amount of Battle Shonen that exists with official English Localizations has increased.  We now get all the big currently airing Battle Shonen soon after they air in Japan.  Imagine if when we got DBZ in the 90s we also got every other Battle Shonen DBZ was competing with as it aired in Japan at the same time?

So the people who think Anime is mainstream in a way it wasn't before are misremembering the past by cramming everything together.  They’re pretending there was a past when DBZ and Naruto were uncool so they can pretend how cool they are now represents some kind of progress, but it doesn’t.

If Battle Shonen seems even more mainstream now it’s an increase in popularity that has been perfectly parallel to Superhero Comics and Star Wars.  To some extent they have been Mainstream as long as they have been part of American Culture at all.  But you will get called a Nerd for being particularly obsessed, both back then and now.

Same with Ghibli films, they've been getting American Theatrical Releases distributed by friggin Disney since 2000.  Stephen Spielberg cited Castle of Cagliostro as an influence on the Indiana Jones films. Oh that’s right, how could I forget one of the biggest Hollywood film franchises of the 1999-2003 era was openly inspired by Anime, The Matrix.  Akira also gets refenced all the time.

And even more genuinely Niche Anime making somewhat of an impact on Pop Culture is nothing new, remember Kite inspired a Gwen Stefani Music Video.

However, the extent to which liking “Moe” Anime will get you suspected of being a potential Pedophile has if anything only gotten worse as Pedojacketing people for clout has only become even more trendy.

As I said before VTubers and Luce only represent an increased vague familiarity with the Anime style but not what it truly represents. The only VTubers who at all seem to me like they actually like Anime beyond the most surface level are the ones at Phase Connect and a handful of Independent VTubers like Shondo.  The least Mainstream VTubers. 

I’ve talked before about the distinction between how NTR and Western Cuckolding Erotica usually goes.  Well that exposes why so many Erotic ASMRs with Anime Style Images are still driven by western Porn Logic, their takes on Cuckolding are purely western.   And I don’t particularly mind since as a Femdom fan that is more to my general preferences.  But since no NTR Hentai has ever gotten an English Dub I would like to hear English VAs perform a true NTR scenario for a change. 

But Femdom itself is different in Doujinshi than it is in Western Porn.  Western Femdom feels dominated by what I call Pseudo-Femdom, they’re about “Weak” men being emasculated by High School Mean Girls in a world who’s internal logic is still solidly Misogynist.  If you want Femdom stories that actually feel like an ideological threat to the Patriarchy, I advise checking out Doujins like Eaten Up By The Bookworm Girl, Invited to The Girl’s Dormitory, Sweet and Sour, and IMAIZUMI BRINGS ALL THE GYARUS TO HIS HOUSE. And that’s without even getting into the wholesome Feminization stories that I’m unsure whether to classify as Het or Yuri.  So I also wish English Language ASMR VAs would try drawing inspiration from stories like those instead of just putting an Anime Style avatar over Audios that sound like they could have been on any normie Femdom site 20 years ago. 

The ASMR community is good at recreating the Yandere appeal, I give them credit there. But that’s about it. 

The point of this post is, Mainstream Anime has always been Mainstream, but true Otaku Culture is not and never will be. 

My Recent/Current Anime watching.

I watched Shirobako very recently, that's something I should have watched a lot sooner, it's very good, a 10/10 but I haven't seen the movie yet since it hasn't been Dubbed and seems oddly like won't be.

Demon Lord 2099 finished a few weeks ago I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I decided to drop  100 Girlfriends.  It's sense of Humor just doesn't gel with me, and it's gonna be awhile before it's pacing improves.

With both Arifureta season 3 and Re:Zero season 3 I'm waiting till all the remaining episodes are Dubbed to then Binge them.

The most recent addition to what current shows I'm watching is Zenshu, it's a very fun show and I think may prove to have a compelling message as well.

I May Be A Guild Receptionist, but I'm Solo Any Boss to Clock Out On Time is at it's best when it's going for situation that should be relatable to anyone who works in Customer Service in-spite of being in a Fantasy Setting about a Fantasy Concept.

Ameuku M.D. I've already talked about.

Magic Maker is a neat premise, the idea of exploring how to discover and figure out Magic in the first place.  

Other current shows/Simuldubs I'm thinking of picking up but haven't fully decided yet include Loner Life In Another World, Headhunted to Another World, I Left My A Rank Party and maybe possibly Blue Exorcist.

Death Note’s Near & Mello Arc is important

Tolkien’s distinction between applicability and allegory is a conventional topic on the Internet because in modern usage what he means by applicability also counts as allegory.  But I tend to agree with Tolkien on this because of how calling something an Allegory leads to obsession with making things very 1 to 1. In a way that both oversimplifies and overcomplicates.

And this is reflected in Anime discourse in the narrative that Bakuman is allegorical about the author's prior experience making Death Note.  That inference is definitely applicable to a lot of it I'm sure.  But many other things clearly don’t line up, the Manga being made in Bakuman is a much more conventional Battle Shonen.

The big problem is people then citing what happens in Bakuman as proof that they never wanted to write the Near Arc but were forced to artificially drag out the story so the Manga can still be published alongside the Anime adaptation airing.  Which is refuted by the simple fact that the Death Note Manga including the Near Arc wasn’t still ongoing when the Anime started, the Manga ended on May 15th 2006 and the Anime started on October 4th 2006 over 4 and a half months later, and entire season of Anime started and ended in between.

Anime Onliers have a low view of the Near largely because it was adapted differently, in the Manga L’s death is the halfway point not two thirds, so the Near Arc in the Anime is much rushed and less fleshed out.  

That said I enjoyed it even in the Anime just as much, and the first 25 episodes were not exactly flawless either, I’ve never liked Death Note because I thought it was brilliantly written.

However the principal logic behind rejecting the Near Arc is that a lot of people mistakenly got the Vibe during the first half that the story was about L equally as much as it was Light and therefore the point of the story is gone without L.  But if that were true then L would have been in the first episode.  The story is about Light/Kira and everyone else exists because of how they relate to Light, that’s why it’s a rare Anime that doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test.

Light is not a morally ambiguous character, he is pure Evil, there is no Slow Descent into Madness, he went full God Complex during the first episode’s time jump between his second kill and meeting Ryuk.

There is no point to having him win the struggle with L if we don’t see what he does with that victory, and morally would feel off to not see him face consequences eventually.  

But even if L wins it would still be incomplete to not progress the story to that point, that’s the problem with the first Live Action Death Note Adaptation.

It suits the values I like to see in Anime in general that what truly defeats Light is a team effort not simply a rival Great Man.

How many VRMMO Anime are actually about VR?

In shows like Sword Art Online and Quality Assurance in Another World the being literally unable to log out plot devices is enabled by it not being Virtual Reality but rather your Brain is literally plugged into the Game.

Then there are shows like And You Though There Is Never A Girl Online and My Love Story With Yamada-Kun where the Games being played are just regular contemporary MMOs, the way the In Game world is Animated is an artistic liberty for the benefit of the audience, it’s not meant to be taken literally.

The various Isekai about a Game Becoming real in some form presumably were actual VR MMOs but that’s not what they’re experiencing anymore.

At the end of last year when I finally started watching some old .Hack Anime it kinda hit me how different it is because it is in fact actual Virtual Reality.  The ability of whatever the given plot is to trap people in the game or harm people in real life is presented as seemingly Supernatural and I don’t think is fully explained in any of what I’ve watched yet.

It’s mostly very small things, but they become in hindsight quite notable, like the references to someone using Graph Paper to help them navigate.

It’s not just an Anime thing, SciFi is often skipping the Virtual Reality phase for some more truly Transhumanist plug-in, like in 2009’s Caprica.

It might have to do with Virtual Reality being technology that does already exist, and has since the early 90s at least, it’s just not widespread and normalized and cheap enough yet to be the standard way Video Games are made to be played, and perhaps it never will be.

Or maybe Virtual Reality is a broader term then I’m treating it and does technically apply to some of the things I’m talking about.  But you know what I mean.  These “Full Dive” things are not something I think I’d ever want to do, but standard VR might be fun to try some day.

Ameku M.D. so far

House M.D. was a show I was somewhat of a fan of, I never actively tried to watch every single episode but I saw a lot and usually enjoyed them.  The currently airing Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective has been hyped by more than just me as House but an Anime Girl and that hook worked in getting me to watch it. 

Of the episodes I’ve watched so far (those Dubbed already as usual) episode 3 is the one most comparable to a typical House episode.  It seems like the creators in Japan are more independently doing the Sherlock Holmes as a Doctor idea. And like most Anime mystery shows Detective Conan comparisons are inevitable.

As a Sherlock Holmes Homage it’s more like it’s source material then House in more ways than just involving actual Murder Cases more often.  

One aspect of Watson’s role in the original stories is sometimes being the Muscle due to his Boer War combat experience. My remembering this is why I’m the only Detective Conan watcher who sees Ran Mouri as the Watson., but it’s something this show includes as well.  Only in Anime would the male character being the Bodyguard ever feel like a Gender Subversion.

However what really bugs me about modern takes on Sherlock Holmes is the desire to assume he must also be a cynical Atheist and hyper Materialist and House was perhaps the most extreme manifestation of that.  Holmes as written by Doyle explicitly believes in God and in Hound of The Baskervilles does not out of hand rule out the possibility that a Supernatural explanation could be real.  So seeing Ameku be outright excited at the possibility of encountering some kind of Curse is a refreshing change of pace.

But let’s return to the matter of episode 3.  For being the one episode that does follow the structure of a House episode I actually found myself lamenting its shorter runtime, feeling like the Case was solved when it was just getting started.

That doesn’t usually happen, I watch Anime desiring to enjoy them as much or more then their double length Western TV counterparts all the time and am usually satisfied.  Whether it’s comparing Conan to Detective Shows, Witch Hunter Robin to both Nikitas, Magical Girl Anime to Buffy, Teen Dramas, SciFi, Fantasy ect.  Why is the less runtime per episode only a handicap here?

House episodes were usually equal parts actually investigating the case at hand and relationship drama involving the cast and so it feels like that’s the issue, with less runtime there's less character stuff.  But the same can in theory apply to all those others?

With Detective Conan a very large percentage of episodes are at least two parters, but nowhere near all of them, and that’s usually not the case in Magical Girl shows and wasn’t for most of Witch Hunter Robin.

Maybe in my head I was simply making a more 1 to 1 comparison than usual, I kinda was just wanting more House but Animated?

Or maybe it is something in the execution that they will hopefully get better at in future episodes.

Update a Week later: I should also note that when interacting with the Cops this show has both a Gregson and a Lestrade which is rare even for Holmes adaptations.

It's funny that I made that "only in anime' comment and the next episode does reveal the other female Doctor in the cast to have Combat usefulness as well.

And it seems episode 5 of the second episode of at least a 3 parter.  I have to remember that Manga is so often written in Arcs that a single cour mystery show may give us only 2 or 3 casses.  If this was an older show I'd be starting to suspect episode 3 was an Anime Original Filler episode.

Twelve Unintentionally Christian Anime

This post is about a select group of Anime I uniquely view as being unintentionally Christian, in terms of what The Gospel means to me personally.  But I suspect even people who disagree with me on certain controversial doctrines still could see similar Christian meanings in these stories if they gave them a chance so for once I’m not gonna lead with my most controversial disagreements with mainstream Christianity.

I do not brute force such an intense Christian reading onto every Anime I like, in fact my long time absolute favorite isn’t among these, nor is the show with the character I use as my Avatar. There are plenty of other shows where I have more partial and specific Christian readings of specific parts or aspects of them, but these are Anime where The Gospel is there, unintentionally.  And also the show as a whole, it's main plot, I could in the future talk about individual episodes of highly episodic shows but I'm not sure I have enough of those yet.

Key emphasis on the “unintentionally” part, this is not me speculating about the religious affiliation of anyone involved in making these shows or the Source Material they were adapted from.  I’m the kind of Christian who believes the gist of The Gospel simply has spread all over the world now and so can be stumbled upon by even the most Heathen of Pagans, like the Altar of the Unknown God.  The secular Media Analysis precedent for this is Death of The Author, Art can have meaning the Artist didn’t intend.

I’m doing this in part because on YouTube lately Christians talking about Anime and Anime YouTubers hinting at being Christian have become more common.  But what shows they lead with as Anime that a Christian can enjoy are not the same ones I would.

I’m not going to elaborate much on most of them here.  I'm hoping they will be self explanatory to others who are already Biblically literate Christians and then someone more analytically skilled than me can break them down in a Video Essay or Sermon (Peter Hiett likes referencing movies in his Sermons).  

I have talked about aspects of my Christian readings of a number of them before, on this Blog and on others, and maybe will more in the future.  For now I simply want to list them.

I will try to lead with the most Normie Accessible and save the most densely Otaku works for the bottom.

Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind.  Yeah I'm starting with one who’s creator has openly expressed dislike for the existence of Christian readings.  The way Mizayaki went on in the Manga to strongly emphasize the permanence of Death demonstrates the point I often make that how you view Death as a concept is the key difference between Paganism and The Gospel.  But it’s not just The Title Character’s resurrection from apparent death at the end that makes her Christlike, it’s her Self Sacrifice and her Pacifist ideology and how unrelentingly Empathetic she is.

Pretear.  The Magical Girl Genre as a whole has an extra good chance of having these qualities, but of Classic Shoujo Magical Girl shows I think it’s most potent in Pretear.

Robotics;Notes.

Steins;Gate

Blue Reflection Ray

Yuki Yuna Is A Hero

SSSS.Gridman.

Re:Creators 

Chaos;Child

Higurashi When They Cry (The original 2006 Studio Deen Anime and its sequel Kai not anything newer).

Mawaru Penguindrum

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz

Anime from 1995 turn 30 this year.

 I covered a bunch of 95 Anime back in 2020 already.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2020/07/looking-back-25-years-at-anime-of-1995.html

I've also since developed a thesis that 95 is the beginning of The Bronze Age of Anime.

Stuff from 95 that most reflect it as a year that ushered in an Era would include be Wedding Peach as both the launch of OLM into TV Anime and when the Magical Girl Warrior Genre truly starts to be more then just Sailor Moon.

But also Tenchi Universe and Gundam Wing and finally Evangelion.

It's a pretty interesting year to look back on.  And Wedding Peach has gotten some new love thanks to Aishyo.

Comedy is Conservative by Default

That’s my problem with the common “Conservative Comedy is always bad” meme that Breadtubers go on about sometimes.  The Bad Conservative Comedians they are focusing on aren’t real Comedians, they’re just using the format of comedy to virtue signal.

Conservatism and Comedy both have in common being largely built on an innate appeal to “Common Sense”.  The problem is that sometimes “Common Sense” is in fact correct, but other times putting too much stock in it will lead to rejecting truths that require actual thinking to understand.

I’m a Leftist but I’m also capable of enjoying entertainment I don’t agree with, and that includes getting and laughing at jokes founded upon presuppositions I consider false.

Two of my favorite Stand Up Comedians to watch back in the day were Christopher Titus and Ron White.  And I really don’t care if they actually always voted Democrat, the core ethos of their Comedy appeals to broadly Conservative Values.  Titus was all in on mocking Participation Trophies and White always included a segment dedicated to defending Capital Punishment.  I reject those values yet their Jokes still make me laugh.

But it goes beyond just those two, if you actually stopped to think critically about the Comedy you enjoyed growing up you’ll realize how much casual Conservatism is always peppered throughout. All the Comedians I remember seeing back in that day loved to advocate for parents beating their kids.

Left Wing Comedy can be done, all my favorite Leftist Online Content creators are also very Funny, but it needs to be deliberate, and often involves making fun of Conservatives using their own tactics.

I’m also certain that a lot of what I find Funny in Comedy Anime is stuff that can seem Left leaning to a Westerner while being in fact more Conservative in Japan.

Update February 20th 2025: Well it seems Christopher Titus has become more Woke in recent years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qh9lH3NOkA

Sequels have an advantage in MAL ratings.

Why is because most of the people who really disliked season 1 and gave it very low rating or even a mid rating probably didn’t bother with any further seasons.  So a sequel would have to really drop the ball pretty hard for anyone who overall liked season 1 to give it a very low rating.

We see this with In Another World With My Smartphone, where even its season 2 has a higher rating than season 1. I have interacted with other Smartphone fans on Reddit and the disappointment with season 2 isn’t just me, most everyone agrees it rushed through too much too quickly and thus is a downgrade as both an adaptation and an Anime compared to season 1.  So season 1 having a lower rating is all because of the haters of “generic’ Isekai who watched it just to clown on it and then forgot about it.

However, Smartphone season 2 only has slightly higher ratings.  For sequels who have more substantial leads over earlier installments you really shouldn't dismiss that as just this phenomenon at play.

The beauty of Anime lies in part in how many sagas produce their best content 3 or 4 or even 5 seasons in, or 100s of episodes in if it’s all still one MAL entry like Detective Conan. This is not an artform where the popular perception that everything is only good early on then it runs out of ideas fast applies.  The shows that I do feel have a central gimmick that got stale fast couldn't keep me for even a single season.

Rent-a-Girlfriend is a show I enjoyed even in season 1, but season 3 was a massive elevation, and a lot of the most hated qualities of the series are muted drastically during that season.

And even with Smartphone it’s an adaptation issue, I'm confident that if the content of season 2 had been fleshed out to fill 2 or 3 seasons it could have equaled the quality of season 1 or maybe even surpassed it.

Nonlinear Storytelling can be a Cheat Code with Critics

I enjoy a lot of Nonlinear storytelling.  You may have gotten the impression I'm biased against it because how many of my recommended watch orders are more chronological then the release order, but that’s not always the case, and I’m not talking about franchises here. When a single movie or episode of a series is being told nonlinearly I am inclined to trust the writers that this is an effective way to tell their story.

But I have noticed from watching YouTube Video Essays that some stories told nonlinearly will get a lot of credit simply for that, there is a desire to always praise nonlinear storytelling as braver and more “creative”.  But sometimes the reason events are not being shown in chronological order is a matter of convenience rather than artistry.

Take for example the Anime titled Baccano!

I love Baccano! It's fun and cool and a lot of the time it’s fun and cool because of how nonlinear it is.  But it isn’t that Deep, it didn’t need to be Deep, I wasn’t watching it expecting depth but a fun Anime homage to classic Gangster films and Pulp.  If any Nariato saga has something Deep to say it’s Durarara!!

It’s nonlinear the way it is because like many Light Novel adaptations they decided to make a full cour out of 4 novels.  However Baccano! as a LN series follows a mostly different core cast each volume, how they connect to each is very broad worldbuilding.  These three different stories were not written to parallel each other Cloud Atlas style.  They are edited together only to prevent this 13 episode show from feeling like its narrative stops and starts again repeatedly.

But some Baccano! Video Essays don’t know that and insist on pretending this timeline jumping has some deep artistic symbolism like it does in Once Upon A Time in America, it doesn’t.

What is somewhat deep in Baccano! doesn't exist because of Nonlinearity, they exist within how that specific story is told.

Time Bokan and the Skeletons of Cartoon VIllainy.

The Time Skeletons of the 1975 TV Anime Time Bokan are in Japan among the most Iconic villains in all of Animation.  This year will be their Fiftieth Anniversary.

But we Western Weebs haven’t had a lot of direct experience with them.

I’m among many who the first time I heard about them was in an AniTube video about how they were a big part of the inspiration for Team Rocket (Jesse, James and Meowth to be precise) in the Pokémon Anime.  The 2018 Anime Last Period had a group of villains I was comparing to Team Rocket as it aired and then when I learned about the Time Skeletons I immediately made that connection.

More recently we also learned how Waluigi was based on Glocky and the discarded Wapeach was based on Marjo which retroactively makes Wario into a Walther, or maybe he always was? 

There are no doubt many more.  When considering how similar to the Time Skeletons a group of villains are, there are many factors to consider.  Are they just functioning in the plot/story the same way or are there more specific parallels?  Are they only similar as a group or can each member be compared to a specific Time Skeleton?  Do they visually look similar?

Team Rocket are among the most distinct from the originals of confirmed admitted Time Skeleton descendants by pretty much all of those metrics.

For as much as the Time Skeletons are the Ur Text of so many Anime villains they are themselves also a product of trends and archetypes that came before them.   Who their predecessors within Anime are is something someone who knows way more than I do about very old Anime will have to look into.  But I happen to know a bit about what prior American Cartoon villains have some similar qualities.

Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle are among the first to come to mind.

I had long thought of Waluigi as looking a lot like Dick Dastardly, so after learning about this I’m thinking maybe Glocky is the missing link.

Marjo’s Iconic Costume actually reminds me a lot of a costume that Catwoman wore during much of the 70s in DC Comics.  But this Costume didn’t appear in Animation till Batman The Brave and The Bold in the 21st Century and I have no idea if any actual Batman Comics made it overseas to Japan during the 70s, so that similarity could be a coincidence.

This is one of many posts on my Blog where I don’t have a final thesis or anything, I just like thinking about these kinds of things.

Update March 2nd 2025: So in turns out what I said about the relationship between the Time Skeletons and Waluigi/Wapeach was actually me misremembering references to the similar villains in Yatterman an Anime that started airing two years later in 1977.  And my comparison of Marjo's Costume to that 70s Catwoman is also much more true of Doronjo.

But again these character are also very Time Skeletons inspired, in fact the show literally took over Time Bokan's timeslot. But they were famous enough on their own that even Miyamoto thought of them before the Time Skeletons when shooting down Wapeach.

Public Domain Expansion continues.

This is a follow up to a post I made in January of last year, make sure to read it first.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/01/popeye-and-betty-boop-should-be-next.html

Popeye is in the Public Domain now, but many aspects of his lore are not yet, most notable some key supporting characters like Bluto.

Some have made a thing out of the Spinach connection technically being added years later, but that lame Horror movie felt safe including it.  Since Spinach itself is a real vegetable that can't be Copyrighted there's a good chance including it in ways other then as a Power Up is probably fine.

Poopdeck Pappy will be one of the last major Popeye characters to enter the PD.  But on some level now that Popeye's in the PD can you really copyright the idea of having a character who looks like him but older and saying that's his Dad?  It's really just a matter of specific names.  (For years my ideal fan casting for Popeye's dad has been Michael Hogan most known for playing Colonel Tight in BSG 2004, but due to his recent Medical Concerns he may not be acting again in the future.)

Maybe you can try to argue the same thing about Bluto?  A Character who's at his core just Bigger bad Popeye?  But I think that'd be a harder case to argue, and that no fans of the character would be happy with a version changed and renamed to avoid Copyright.

I want to return to the topic of the biggest next year entrant, Betty Boop.  I've recently learned she was originally an Anthropomorphic Dog and that the Character Design we usually think of when we hear the name isn't introduced till 1932.   Now I wouldn't be opposed to Mahou Shoujo Betty Boop also being a Dog Girl Furry.   But still what people really want to see won't be available till 2028.

Anime 2005 Twenty Years later.

I’m not going to go as in depth as my equivalent 2004 post last year.

A lot of Anime in 2005 were continuations of 2004 shows, or sequels to 2004 shows, or spiritual follow ups in some fashion.  From getting more Pretty Cure and Nanoha to Mai Otome.

But it was also a year where new trends were started and new groundwork laid.  Air and Shuffle ushered in a Golden Era of Visual Novel adaptations. And in the Hentai world the start of PoRo as a studio and NTR as a genre with True Blue.

Blood+ and Karin are both neat Vampire shows to remember when October rolls around.

In the world of what was getting Localized in the West, I don’t have any specifics on me right now but I suspect most stuff from 2000-2002 that got Localized at all had the localization started at least by the end of 2005.

In the world of source material that got Animated later we had School Days, the second Durarara!! LN, and more of both Index and Higurashi. 

For Detective Conan, nothing really big happened in the TV Anime main plot wise, I don’t know how many 2005 episodes I have seen but 394-396 was that year’s Kaito Kid appearance.  It’s possible the big Anime events of 2006 happened in the Manga in 2005 including episode 425 but I'm unsure. That year's movie was the 9th which some consider the last good one. I consider it pretty good. 

Superman fans need to stop bickering and act like Superman

I’m tired of seeing discourse around the new Superman Trailer be all about fighting between Snyder fans and James Gunn fans, from both sides.

Going off this trailer I personally expect Gunn’s movie to be my favorite Superman movie so far, the closest any Live Action film has come to what I personally would make or want to see.

But I'm not a hater of Snyder’s Superman, go through the history of this Blog and you’ll see what a long time Snyder apologist I’ve been.  Yes there was a time after Batman V Superman first came out when I was sometimes down on that film but the more I rewatched it the more I came to appreciate it.

The Snyder haters keep accusing those being negative about this trailer of being “stuck in the past” but so are you that can’t praise something you like without dwelling on some decade old films you still have a grudge against.  Calling “Cultists” anyone who liked Snyder’s take and wanted more of it is absurd.  

There is one Live Action Superman movie I have no fondness for (and a couple Animated ones) and would even at one time have said I Hated, and there was a time when I was young and immature and in my 20s when I wouldn't shut about it. But then I grew up, now I prefer to just pretend that movie doesn't exist.  I don’t feel the need to complain about the takes on Superman I don't like every time I express excitement for the many I do.

But to Snyder fans, every time you hate on every little detail of this movie that isn’t out yet you are being the same as the 2013 people who hated everything about Man of Steel simply for not being exactly like Richard Donner’s Superman or STAS or whatever Comics they were Nostalgic for.  

Snyder got a full Trilogy which is more than many MCU directors got, he’s happily moved on to his Rebel Moon project which I have very much enjoyed.

And if you honestly are genuinely upset at this new movie not having the Darker Depressing tone of Snyder’s movies, congratulations you are everything I was trying to convince people Snyder fans were not.