Well, I'm hooked on Detective Conan now

The people following me on Twitter are aware of this already, but I figure I should mention it on my Blog.

How much I like the Mystery Genre itself seems to fluctuate.  But I now think Conan really is the modern Sherlock Holmes.  

I have been aware of this show for awhile, I knew it was one of those Anime super Popular in Japan but has been very limited in it's ablity to catch on in the States.  The show wasn't what I expected, I was expecting the Anime version of something like Nancey Drew, and indeed some of the one off episodes have that vibe.  But the show can get pretty serious and "dark", it also involves duel identities and a super secret international crime syndicate that keeps making my think of Paul Feval's Les Habits Noirs/The Blackcoats.  But most importantly has fun likeable characters.

Thus far I have still only seen a small percentage of episodes, at the moment all Dubbed content but that includes some Fandubed episodes.  That range of what I've seen is a lot of stuff from the earliest years including the first 6 movies dubbed by Funimation, and the most recent movies which have been Dubbed by BangZoom.  I am willing to try watching episodes Subbed, but suspect this genre is going to be difficult to watch Subbed, it demands one pay close to all the little things.  Speaking of which especially when Dubbed this franchise often goes under the altname name Case Closed.

My very first introduction was watching the theatrical crossover with Lupin The Third, and I would have to say that is a pretty ideal crossover movie.  It deliveries plenty of the kinds of fun interactions someone already a fan of both would want to see, but can also serve as a good entry point to either franchise for fans of the other.

But also for fans of Lupin The Third and the genre he represents any Kaitou Kid/Kid The Phantom Thief story should be worth checking out.  Of course in many key ways Kid is more like the original Arsene Lupin then Lupin III.

I might do a follow up post on my Detective Conan experience in the future, for now just know it's a show I recommend.

No Anime still isn't Mainstream

Like a week or so ago I stumbled upon a Twitter thread where someone lamented how Superheroes have become Mainstream now, among responders were people saying that Superheroes have "always been mainstream" and that is of course debatable.

Then someone made a comment implying that Anime is just as mainstream as Superheroes, and I of course objected to that sentiment as someone who gets "Anime PFP don't take seriously" anytime I insert myself into an Internet conversation not specifically in the Anime community.

One argument thrown out as proof that Anime is mainstream now is that you can buy it at Walmart.  And I found that very odd, there is plenty of niche stuff at Walmart, at least in the entertainment section, heck the book section seems to be only stuff I haven't heard of.  The only reason there is a narrower range of DVDs and Blu Rays you can buy at Walmart then at a place like FYE is that FYE sells more older and used stuff.  Yet all that said the Anime selection at my town's Walmart isn't great actually, Ghibli films, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, DBZ and maybe a few things that are indeed mostly known only within the community.  But apparently even Fate/ stuff is still too obscure for our Walmart.

Then this person went on to respond "just because not all Anime is mainstream doesn't mean Anime isn't mainstream", which floored me a bit as I was preparing to make the exact opposite argument, just because some specific Anime are mainstream doesn't mean Anime is mainstream.

And at this point I guess we have to define our parameters.  The context is comparing Anime to Superheroes, which is perhaps an innately flawed comparison, one is a medium the other is a genre, there are after all Anime about Superheroes, even by the narrowest definition of what makes a "Comic Book Superhero", One Punch Man and My Hero Academia are clearly drawing on American Superhero aesthetics and tropes.  And not coincidently those are two of the most popular mainstream Anime franchises born in the 2010s.  

However Superheroes in the strictest sense of what we're thinking here are strongly tied to a specific medium, American Comic Books.  And in that sense you could almost argue Anime is more mainstream since with the Anime that are mainstream it is the Anime people are watching, the mainstreaming of Superheroes is largely via adaptations into other mediums, actual Comic Books have not improved their sales at all.  However most Anime are adapted from some even more niche (at least to Americans) source material, like Manga (basically Japanese Comic Books), Light Novels, Visual Novels and certain kinds of Video Games, and fans of those mediums feel a similar resentment towards the Anime being what most people know that Comic Book fans feel.

But setting all those semantics aside, the reason Superheroes as a concept are mainstream now but Anime is not, is that while plenty of specific Superheroes still aren't household names yet, the moment a new Marvel or DC character gets a role in a Movie or Streaming App TV show announced they will start trending on Social Media just as much as the latest Batman news.  The same is absolutely not true for Anime.

Now you could say that's more about Marvel and DC as brands, but then you have shows like Invincible and The Boys becoming huge Pop Culture talking points for being alleged "Deconstructions" of Superheroes.  Anime "Deconstructions" rarely gain such automatic notoriety, even Ikuhara's 2010s work didn't get noticed much outside the Anime community.  And Anime does have at least one corporate Brand that can compete with DC and Marvel, Toei Animation, a number of Toei franchises are among the most globally mainstream stuff Japan has produced, but is every Anime they make cared about simply for being Toei?  No absolutely not, even Pretty Cure still struggles to get noticed in the English speaking world.

This debate was also about how mainstream Superheroes have become recently, their current mainstream status is the product of the last decade, maybe 2 decades.  In the 90s certain Superheroes already had their place in pop culture, even ones that hadn't had a big Blockbuster movie yet like Wonder Woman, The Flash and a handful of Marvel's.  But most of what people who'd call themselves a Comic Book Nerd cared about was not, if you told one of them in the 90s that within their lifetime the Goddamn Peacemaker would be the star of a hit HBO TV show, and there would be big budget Hollywood Blockbuster movies with Multiverse shenanigans, they would laugh in your face.

Anime Fandom currently is where Superhero Fandom was in the 90s, our existence is acknowledged more then we used to be, but only so we can be the cultural punching bag that people who knew what Pre and Post Crisis meant used to be.

The Anime equivalent of the Goddamn Peacemaker getting an HBOMax show would be Summer Radish Vacation getting a Netflix Live Action adaptation.

Fantasy stories are better with a focused narrative.

Last year I did a post about one aesthetic problem I have with most Live Action Fantasy TV shows of the last Decade or so.  But there is also a narrative problem.

Game of Thrones had a structure that involved jumping around between various characters and plotlines that were not directly connected in any way yet apparent.  And for Game of Thrones it worked, in fact that show's downfall seemed to begin when it started rushing to tie everything together.  But the problem with so much post GoT Fantasy TV shows is emulating that aspect of GoT's structure.

I prefer my Fantasy Stories to be adventure stories, about one protagonist or group of protagonists on a journey, with the audience learning about the epic scale and lore of the world as they encounter it through those protagonists eyes.  This is why The Hobbit, The Fellowship of The Ring, the Narnia Books, the first Dragonlance book, and most Fantasy Anime (Isekai or not) I'm a fan of work so well.  And outside the realm of specifically medieval European style Fantasy I can add The Phantom Menace and A New Hope, even Star Trek when it intentionally or not starts to seem more Fantasy then SciFi, I think both Avatar The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra originally worked that way as well but I didn't watch them.  It's also essentially how Fantasy Video Games like JRPGs wind up being structured.

Now some of the sagas I just referred to will eventually split up the main cast or even jump away from them altogether.  But that's after doing a lot of build up, Peter Jackson's version gave us 3 to four hours before the Fellowship was broken, but the content of the book could have given us a full TV season with more episodes then a GoT season.  Also cutting away to villains occasionally is a different matter.

I'm well aware that the Wheel of Time books are older then the books Game of Thrones was based on, and so fans of that franchise will be annoyed at me referring to it's new Amazon Prime TV show as the product of a post GoT trend, but it was largely my thoughts on how that show played out that made me start working on this post.

However I suspect the TV show is only doing what I don't like here because of the decision to cram 4 novels into one 8 episode season.  The series splits it's initial party up at the end of episode 2, and it goes on to treat that split and their eventual reunion with a gravitas I do not feel was properly earned.  How it feels in TV form would be like if the Fellowship of the Ring split up before they even reached Rivendell.

I've referred to the film Maquia as being the fantasy Anime that most resembles the Aesthetic I would want for an Animated film or series set in the First Age of Middle Earth.  But I've also now watched 11 episodes of Record of Grancrest War, and I think in a weird way that Anime most resembles the Inklings ideologically.  It's also another example of an Anime that handles this issue better then any of these American TV shows, it only spends any significant time away from it's main couple after spending a lot of time establishing them.

Isekai Light Novel Adaptations naturally focus primarily on the POV of the Isekaied protagonist(s).

Update November 2022:  I have very mixed feelings on The Rings of Power series, most of what I don't like does come down to it forcing the GoT story structure on Tolkien. 

The 2000 Sci-Fi Miniseries is still the best Dune adaptation

This post is not about me bashing any of the others, the Lynch film had it's moments, Jorodowsky's Dune sounds like it could've been very interesting, and the new 2021 film was very good, I enjoyed it and will be giving it re-watches in the future, it is second best by far.

The new film has the best Special Effects of any Dune adaptation so far, and it's also the first time Paul in the early part of the story looks even close to as young as he should.  And the 2000 Miniseries may have created more not in the books original material.

But what I like about Dune is not Special Effects or Epic battles, I like it's Philosophical and Shakespearean qualities.  So it is what the Theatrically trained actors of the 2000 Ministeries bring to the table that makes Dune feel how I want it to feel in a dramatized medium.

In addition to the New Dune falling short of what I want from the Acting, it was also just simply too short.  I wanted more then 3 hours just to get to the end of the first part.  So this film went further into the book then I would have wanted a first film to go while having less runtime.

No cutaway to the Emperor is what I prefer for a film actually, but the lack of Feyd was really weird.  There was also no exploring of what a Mentat is, nor did Yueh's character get the time needed for his role in this part of the story.

I think part of why they did the first movie this way is they wanted Chani to be more then just dream cameos in the first film, after all they cast Zendaya and then made a big deal out of it.

Also book accurate or not I very much prefer the miniseries version of the Fear Mantra, their version is what my mind has firmly memorized and every time I hear it different in another version it just sounds wrong to me.

What bugs me is how all the YouTube videos on new Dune when comparing to prior versions only bring up the Lynch film or various failed projects.  They don't respect the 2000s Minisieres as even worthy of mention because it wasn't a big name Hollywood Director with big name Hollywood Actors.  But to me those actors all should be more famous then they are, whether "accurate" to a fanboy's imagination of these characters or not they all gave great compelling performances, similar to why I prefer Anime Dub Voice Actors over most Hollywood actors.

Normie Friendly/Otaku Oriented Anime levels

This post is a revision of sorts of a post I made almost a year ago.  I'm no longer naming each level after a Fate/ show mostly because some have names to long to make a good short hand.  But I will still list at least one Fate/ show first for each level because it's status as I think the only franchise to exist on every level makes it useful to help understand what I'm talking about.  I've also changed my mind on where to place a few shows, even since the update I added to that post.

I also want to have at least one Magical Girl show on each level, since I presented a thesis in June of last year that the Magical Girl genre is the most important Genre in all of Anime.  That genre existing on every level should also back up that thesis.

This is not a quality rankings list, all of the Anime being mentioned are either ones I personally like at least in part, or ones too popular within the community to not mention.  They all come recommend by someone, this is just one measuring stick of how broad their appeal is.

There will be some popular shows I won't mention largely because I haven't seen enough of them yet to have any idea where they'd fit.  I'm hoping people who have seen them can read this post can offer me their own theories on where they'd fit.

A Level:  Shows with no real Otaku elements at all, or if they do have some they are in a way you'd have to already be an Otaku to notice.

Trixie The Golden Witch once said her problem with most "entry point Anime" recommendations are that people just list shows that have broader appeal because of how they aren't like what Anime is normally like.  Shows on this level are what she was referring to.  

You might at first think this would be just a list of the most well known Anime, and indeed almost everything so well known you don't have to be an Anime person to already know of them are here.  But there is also niche stuff, some shows I often feel like I'm the only person who still cares about them at all.

And Otakuness is just one measuring stick of how broad something's appeal can be.  Some stuff here might not appeal to you for reasons that have nothing to do with that but simply what their Genre/Style is.  It also includes stuff that is weird and experimental in their own way.  Also some stuff might be more impenetrable for Western audiences because of mainstream Japanese culture rather then Anime Culture (contrary to some jokes people make most of Japan finds this Otaku stuff just as weird as Americans do).

Basically if you watch one of these and don't like it, don't blame it on Otaku, it was something else that turned you off.

Fate/Zero, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Lupin The Third, Miyazaki/Ghibli films, Noir, Witch Hunter Robin, Madlax, Vampire Hunter D, Cardcaptor Sakura, Angelic Layer, Pretty Cure, Little Witch Academia, Detective Conan/Case Closed, Cowboy Bebop, Romeo x Juliet, Monster, Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 Trilogy, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080 War in The Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt, Macross/Robotech, Attack On Titan, Legend of The Galactic Heroes(either version), Serial Experiments Lain, Revolutionary Girl Utena, The Rose of Versailles, Princess Tutu.

B Level: The True Anime Gateway Drugs.

Shows on this level are the answer to the problem Trixie mentioned.  Everything here I think is mostly just as potentially appealing to Normies as the A Level stuff, just as much of a good choice to potentially be someone's very first Anime, but still has a noticeable Otaku character to them, these are shows I consider ideal for easing someone into those Otaku tropes.  A few of these shows were among the first I watched, then I returned to them years later and realized how much distinctly Otaku stuff I'd been exposed to long before I knew the terms for them.

The only people who'd be turned off by the Otakuness of these shows are not Normies really but Anti-Otaku, that's my term for people who watch Anime in-spite of Otaku values rather then because of them.  

There are problematic elements in some of these shows, but problematic in a way that bothers me no less now then they would have before I got used to it.

Fate/Stay Night adaptations (the best of which is UFOTable's Unlimited Blade Works), A Certain Scientific Railgun, Code Geass, Death Note, Sword Art Online, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, Pretear, Neon Genesis Evangelion, SSSS.Gridman, Tenchi Universe, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy TV Anime., Higurashi When They Cry (the original 2006 show and Kai), Boogiepop and Others, Kanon, Clannad, To Heart, Citrus, Azumanga Daioh.

C Level: The Center of the Normie-Otaku Spectrum.

Anime on this level could be enjoyable to a person who's still a Normie if they've gotten somewhat used to Anime via shows in the above levels.  And maybe even rarely could work as someone's very first if they're the right kind of Normie, if they already have at least an element of the Otaku mind set.  Christians who believe in Universal Salvation would be one example.  But in those cases you still need to know the right show to recommend.

For the last 15 years or so, this level is about the Average of where most Anime winds up falling.  Which makes it a pretty significant percentage of the total Anime that exists.

Fate/Apocrypha, A Certain Magical Index, Occultic;Nine, Yuki Yuna Is A Hero, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Selector Infected Wixoss and Selector Spread Wixoss, Daybreak Illusion, Darling In The FranXX, Re:Zero, Tenchi Muyo Ryuohki, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy OVAs, War On Geminar, That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime, Rebuild of Evangelion films, Umineko When They Cry, Mawaru Penguindrum, Strawberry Panic, So I'm a Spider, So What, Nerima Daikon Brothers, Eden of The East.

D Level: Highly Otaku Oriented.

This level is for shows that someone still considering themselves a Normie could enjoy, but definably not as their first.  But it's also possible at least some shows on this level can still be in some ways respected by some of the Normies who can't get past their Otaku elements.  For Otaku however this level contains many of the shows that we would cite as a manifesto.

Carnival Phantasm, Lucky Star, Yuru Yuri, No Game No Life, In Another World With My Smartphone, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, School Days, Chaos;HEad, Chaos;Child, YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World, Excel Saga, Higurashi OVAs, Shattered Angels.

E Level: The Point of No Return, once you like one of these you can't claim to be normal anymore.  

Before I had literally only one show I listed here, and I was hard pressed to think of any others that aren't just plain Hentai.  And I don't want to simply say "and Hentai" because believe it or not some Hentai I do place on other levels, though I'm choosing not to name any for this post, I'll save that for a potential future project.  But after putting some thought into it, I think I do have some now.  But also I think most Otaku content on this level just doesn't have an Anime incarnation yet, the other mediums associated with Otaku culture like Visual Novels, Light Novels, Manga and Independent Video Games is where the really out there stuff originates.

Fate/Khalied Liner Prisma Illya, Engaged to The Unidentified, School Days: Magical Heart Koroko-Chan, Eromanga-Sensei, A Sister's All You Need.

Update: I quickly started to question putting A Sister's All You Need on the E Level, this is a show I'd recently re-watched a bunch of before 2021 ended.  The character of Miyako is clearly meant to serve as an audience surrogate for any Normie who winds up watching the show.  So in that context it clearly wants to have at least some Normie appeal, the question is does it succeed?