The Ninth Jedi is what the Sequel Trilogy could have been.

It manages to do much better the seeds of compelling new ideas The Sequel Trilogy introduced and squandered, but without all the falling back onto wanting to also be an OT Remake. 

The sequel trilogy wanted us to believe that Kylo Ren wasn't a Sith but something different, but no meaningful distinction was ever made.

Nawaan in The Ninth Jedi is the opposite of a Sith, while the Sith are all about indulging in your emotions Nawaan's ideology is about trying to empty yourself of Emotions.

And that context finally provides a new meaning to Balance. The Jedi are not the opposite of The Sith but the Balance between these two opposite approaches to Emotion. The Jedi's flaws in the Prequel Trilogy are a result of being a little too much like Nawaan. Nawaan is what most people wrongly think Stoicism is, The Jedi are at their best true Stoics. 

Now explaining why Kara makes a better Star Wars protagonist then Rey is going to be difficult to explain because of the sentiments I don't want to be mistaken for endorsing.  I don't agree with calling anyone a "Mary Sue", I don't even think having a protagonist be perfect from the start never making mistakes is an inherently bad thing in general, but it doesn't work for Star Wars. Kara makes mistakes and has to grow and learn in exactly the way Rey didn't. 

There are even other smaller ways in which this comparison is fascinating.

We have a story where one of our Mentors' has a valid reason to feel responsible for the villain's fall. But if this scenario or something close to it was done with Luke it would not have felt like a complete reversing of his core ROTJ characterization the way TLJ's twist does.  

There's also a character whose role resembles what Leia's could have been. 

Even the Kaiber Canon somehow does this,  Functionally it's the same as Starkiller Base, how it's an ever bigger superweapon then the Death Star is exactly the same.  But the context around it manages to make it more interesting. 

Also of course the fact that it isn't aesthetically repeating the Rebels vs Empire, or even prequel Aesthetics, it is mostly all new Stuff, lots of compelling Seeds for a new Expanded Universe.

It introduced what are essentially Star Wars Dwarves but without feeling cheap and unimaginative. 

The confrontation between kara and Nawaan in episode 4 felt evocative of Luke vs Vader in Empire Strikes Back but without feeling like it was simply copying. 

As an Anime it also satisfying what you would want from an Anime. Kara even turns a Bounty Hunter to her side by defeating him like a Battle Shonen. 

Code Geass and Genre

When discussing why I feel April 2006 through March 2007 can be considered the best year of Anime I referred to Code Geass as an important Anime that transcends Genre rather than as one of the shows I consider the best of its Genre. And I felt like elaborating on that.

As an Anime with a consistent spot in my top 10 since I first got into it, I feel I can safely call it my favorite Anime that can be classified as a Mecha Anime. And yet defining it as my favorite Mecha Anime when I talk about why I love it so much feels wrong. 

As a Sunrise show it is in conversation with other major Real Robots Mecha Anime in a way that makes it not something I can dismiss as merely a show that has Mecha in it like I can so many other 00s Anime. 

And yet it does not feel close to being a Platonic Ideal of what Real Robots Mecha should be. A Gundam or a Macross is probably the Anime that should be defined that way.

When we look at how the Mecha function in the show Real Robots is indeed the subgenre of Mecha it should fit into.  Except that when combined with so many other elements it feels less “Real” then any other Real Robot Mecha. All the Geass Lore makes the show feel more Fantasy then Sci-Fi. 

There was a time when I was contemplating writing a story set in an alternate timeline whose point of divergence was during the reign of Commodus and thus Rome never Fell or even became Christianized, Christianity remained a Minority Religion.  Many aspects of what I actually wanted to do in the present narrative were so heavily Code Geass inspired that I honestly suspect it could have been accused of Plagiarism. Except that the Mecha Element was removed, how I wanted to make cool fight scenes was instead going to rip off Star Wars.

I know there is a thing among Mecha fans on YT and Twitter about saying no Mecha show is actually about the Giant Robots, and I feel sad that they think saying that is necessary to defend the respectability of the shows they like. But objectively most Gundams and Macross and Evangelions are about the Giant Robots in a way that Code Geass is not. Code Geass is much more about the Geass powers being its defining fantastical element. 

Detective Conan Dubbed episodes for August.

 My prediction of what episodes would be included in the second half of the FBI collection were partly correct but not entirely.

Ayu's Tumblr Post hasn't updated the Watch order yet but I'm sure she will.

https://matchaandmayhem.tumblr.com/post/799001080524570624/detco-dub-order

[Update: It's updated now.]

If I have any criticism it's the decision to pronounce Yaiba as Yaiber. 

Now that I'm 40 I have to side with Yukiko about her being called old.

The Gunma detective makes i think his first apperence in this Dub.  And while we had heard Sato before this drop contains contains one she plays a prominent role in finally.  Once again the Nano casting is perfect.

The episode it chose to end on is a good episode, it's a Columbo case and a rare example of one where Conan doesn't tranquilize anyone but simply nudged Kogoro in the right direction.

But given the theme of this collection it felt incredibly random. They really should have included The Convivence Store Trap.

Code Geass, Nina and Racism

Nina Einstein is by the end of the R2 not at all Racist anymore. Which is not unique to her, the show is filled with Britannian characters who were being quite racist to the Japanese early in the show and aren’t at all anymore by the end. None of them have a particular moment where they repent of their past racism and denounce it, it simply becomes apparent that they clearly aren’t racist anymore.

Her primary sin is creating and then at first consenting to use of the Fleija. But she’s far from the only person complicit in that, we’re introduced to the plotline via Lyod learning about it and encouraging her. But more so it is Sechenizal's manipulation of her that really drives that plotline.

But let’s return to the topic of racism.  Why is it in a show filled with people who are racist at the start and not by the end is it Nina alone whose early racism is treated as a defining character trait and an unforgivable sin? 

Racism seems to have been a more passive character trait in a lot of other characters.  But they are also people in real positions of power. It is how casual they are about it that in my opinion makes it worse. Characters like season 1 Cornelia and Jeremiah whose use of Racist rhetoric is more a means to an end in their political power playing are not materially speaking less racist because of that, they’re Herman Goring. 

Nina at the start of the show is a teenage girl with severe social anxiety in a highly systemically racist society, and also a repressed Homosexual in a pretty systemically homophobic society. She didn’t choose to be living in a colony rather than the homeland, that was her parents decision. By the time she actually does anything significant in the plot her Racism is no longer a primary motivating factor in her actions but at most a filter in how she’s directing them. Finding out Zero isn’t Japanese wouldn’t make her not want to kill him anymore. 

I’ve seen people say they wish there was more of an explanation for why Nina is this way, a specific thing to happen to her to cause it. But I feel that misses the point of viewing Racism as a systemic issue. Nina is Racist for the same reason everyone else is, but innate issues with who she is as a person makes it harder both for to change when presented evidence contradicting that world view, and to hide it.

There are a number of YouTube videos I started watching but didn’t finish because they open with a rant about how “most” Gay Representation in Anime isn’t great, such sentiments annoy me since I feel exactly the opposite. One uses footage of Nina among its visual B roll for this which I found interesting. With Nina it is definitely backwards, to me Homophobia and Misogyny is clearly a huge factor in why she is such an irrationally hated character. 

This is not about making excuses for anything, it’s about having coherent standards in how we judge people. If some former Racists can be forgiven for their past Racism while others can't, that's fine. But Nina’s circumstances should clearly make her the easiest to forgive not the most unforgivable. 

The many John Carters of Anime.

John Carter is the name of a 2012 film adapted from a 1912 Pulp Sci-Fi series originally titled A Princess of Mars but it and it's sequels are often called the Barsoom series. 

The way this movie was seen as so generic despite how it's source material predates everything it was seen as derivative of has made it a euphemism in my mind for all similar scenarios, something highly influential that later fell into obscurity and become overshadowed by it's children which got high profile mainstream adaptations way sooner.

For Otaku Media the comparable situations on my mind are mainly source material from the 90s or early 00s that didn't get a full TV Anime adaption till the 2010s or 2020s. 

The big one I've already talked about is YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. It's 2019 Anime was dismissed by casuals as just another Isekai but with a drawn out Steins;Gate/Re:Zero set up thrown in.  There were not zero Isekai prior to the 1996 release of the YU-NO game, but it still long predates the main formative texts of modern Seinen LN Isekai. 

But those kinds of Anime aren't the only ones I feel YU-NO influenced in some way. When I was watching it not even knowing how old the source material was yet, the talk about being "outside the four great Ancient Civilizations" reminded me of exposition from Madlax a now largely forgotten 2004 Anime. Mio Shimazu I feel is a very formative early Tsundere and Kanna Hatano likewise is an early formative Kuudere. I also feel like Shimazu was a very direct inspiration for the main girl of the third episode of the 2002 Hentai OVA series titled Unbalance directed by Akiyuki Shibo. 

John Carter the film you can argue doesn't do itself any favors in avoiding the generic accusations in how it presented itself.  And YU-NO is similar, as much I love the 2019 Anime I do lament that it's using the modern character design revamps of the game's then recent remake. In 2026 we have Anime like Red River showing us a modern Anime can still feel faithful to it's source's original 90s Character Designs. 

Red River can indeed be added to this list, as a classic Shoujo Time Isekai it's Manga predates Inyuasha. 

But another big Visual Novel example is Muv-Luv.  It's original release was 2003 and the first version adding Alternative to the title was 2006. There was no proper adaptations of a version of it's main story till 2021-2022, but it has spin off Anime in 2021 and 2016. 

The pilot of the 2021 Anime is one that I'm sure watching no knowing the history of Muv-Luv would have been comparing to the pilot of Attack on Titan, but it's Manga didn't start till 2009. It all shares a lot of vibes with many modern Gacha game based Anime. 

There are of course some major important early Visual Novels that still have no TV Anime. Shizuka, Kizuato, Silver, Cross Channel, Tsui no Sora. 

Was 1990-2004 the Peak era for Fantasy?

 I made a prior post inspired by a BookTuber named EverymanReads where he argued for that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2026/02/booktuber-overing-classic-fantasy-novels.html

There we were talking just in the context of Prose Novels. Looking beyond that the case becomes even stronger.

For movies we have Hook, Army of Darkness, Peter Jacksons' LOTR Adaptations and the first two Star Wars Prequels to name just the first that easily pop into head.  For TV we had Hercules and Xena, that Sam Neill Merlin miniseries. And Urban Fantasy was largely defined by shows like Forever Knight and the Buffyverse and Charmed and Anime like Witch Hunter Robin. 

Speaking of Anime and Manga, this era had classics like Berserk and Escaflone and forgotten classics like Maze, and adaptations of some of those LNs I talked about, and most of the most defining entries of the Magical Girl Warrior subgenre as well as Battle Shonen.

But Video Games is where things were even more genre defining. It'd almost be easier to name what Video Games aren't either Fantasy or Sci-Fi in some ways, the defining franchises of the medium like Mario and Sonic and Kirby and Pokémon are distinct Fantasy settings that only Gaming as a medium could come up with. 

But even if we limit ourselves to Games that feel more inline with conventional Fantasy there is still a lot.  For Zelda this period includes A Link To The Past, Link's Awakening, Ancient Stone Tablets, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Oracle Games, The Winder Waker, Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures and The Minish Cap. All those genre defining JRPGs of SNES and PlayStation that were important to prior post of this blog are this era, as well as much of the PS2 and Game Cube era. Then there's Casltevania and lots of classic Star Wars Games. 

And spinning off from that are Visual Novels like YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound Of This World, Higurashi, Tsukihime and it's sequels and Fate/Stay Night. 

For Otaku media I almost want to shift it a year to be 1991-2005. I don't even know much what I'd be loosing dropping 1990, but I know I'd be gaining Fate/Hallow Ataraxia, Mai Otome, the second seasons of Nanoha and PreCure, most of the Shuffle Anime Adaptation.  Or heck maybe even 1992-2006.

Why limit myself to 15 years per era? Because it feels like that's the average for the pretty agreed upon language for talking about eras of American Superhero Comic Books.

And speaking of which the 90s and early 00s is when most of my favorite DC Comics came out as well, most of which have some degree of Fantasy in them.

Otome VIllainess Anime defy a certain common narrative.

I’ve done a post on why I technically have beef with the starting premise of the genre, and another where I explain why I do enjoy some of these shows regardless of that. 

But today I want to discuss how the history of this sub-sub genre goes against certain common narratives about the relationship between trend setters and trend followers. It’s a conventional wisdom I often personally disagree with, but I can usually still see why the OG is viewed as above the rest.

Once one big hit is followed up by a bunch of shows doing something similar, it's common to see a lot of talk about how most if not all of the imitators missed the real point of why the original worked. With the implication that what makes them different from the original makes them more generic or less artistically interesting.  I'm often a contrarian on that, but I can still generally see why it can seem that way.

The Otome VIllainess genre started with My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Sometimes called HameFura for short. I liked it, well I liked season 1 but never finished season 2. But it’s hard for me to imagine even people who love it much more than I do, who may personally still like it the most of them, being able to argue in all seriousness that it has a depth its imitators have hollowed out, that by default they are more shallow. No matter how much you love it, HameFura is objectively the most shallow take on this premise.

I stand by my conviction that it was never common for Otome Games or Shoujo Manga to treat an OjouSama character as a completely unsympathetic one dimensional villain. But there is still legitimate social commentary that could be made by exploring this hypothetical archetype. Or even without touching on the politics, just many interesting ways to play around with it. 

HameFura is the show least interested in doing that. When Caterina’s memories of her Japanese life awaken her “villainess” personality is just completely overwritten, there is no engagement with asking the question of why that person became a “villainess” or if she were really as one note as she seemed.  The story is solely about the Japanese High School Girl who unintentionally stole her life with no acknowledgment of how existentially terrifying that is. 

The strictest definition of this genre is it being the Villainess who the reincarnator reincarnates as. Of those, the one I like the most is definitely I’ll Become A Villainess Who Goes Down in History, commonly shortened to Rekiaku from Fall 2024. 

I’m The Villainess, so I’m Taming the FInale Boss aka Akulas from Fall 2022 is a show where I liked the first three episodes, but then episode 4 felt liked it rushed to the end of the first LN when this arc should have had six episodes like the adaptations of the first LNs for Haruhi and Index. 

Both those shows have in common how in different ways the MC embraces the Villainess role becoming a sort of Antiheroine rather than just being comedically the opposite of who she was supposed to be. 

The other two of my personal big three for this trend are adjacent examples where the villainess isn’t the person who's a reincarnation of a player of the Game but completely still herself. 

I’m in Love with The Villainess shortened to WataOshi from Fall 2023 (it seems like the gems kept dropping in Fall, yet I didn’t catch any in 2025). It’s a Yuri and is great, it’s the one I most hope gets a season 2. 

The third is MobuSeka which I talked about in one of those prior posts. Its second season is about to come out and I know enough spoilers to know things are getting pretty interesting.