End of the Year Anime Update

On Monday I watched the first episode of Eminence in Shadow on HIDIVE and today I did the same for Reincarnated as a Sword now that their Dubs are started, then I watched the 9th Detective Conan OVA putting my MAL Total Entries number to 1000 and my Completed list to 750.

Detective Conan has been a big part of my 2022 Anime experience, first diving in back in January, then going through another period where I focused largely on that show specifically.  I've now seen all the Theatrically released movies, a good chink of OVAs and Specials and more episodes of the show proper then I've bothered to keep track of.  A new episode should drop on News Eve making some Detective Conan part of how I'll end the year as well.

But I've also watched a lot of other stuff,  I completed Boochie The Rock last Saturday and returned Beast Tamer to my Currently Watching list.  

Other stuff I've watched since my last Updates post include all of Jobless Reincarnation and The Hidden Dungeon only I can Enter, all of Kaguya-Sama Love is War and what was left of Rent-A-Girlfriend, and also Love Live season 2.  Also the third Girls Un Panzer Das Finale went up on HIDIVE, I think I'd already seen the second Princess Principal Crown Handler movie.

Looking forward for 2023 I want to further do what I talked about in those posts I did on Early 2000s Anime.  2003 is arguably the last year of the early 2000s so next will be the year of the entirely of what can be described that way turning at least 20 years ago.  I'll look for stuff I haven't seen yet to finally watch, but also re-watch some of what I already like and try to watch more.  Noir and Witch Hunter Robin are both on Crunchyroll now, subbed and dubbed so that should make each of them more accessible.

That won't be all I'm doing though, I'll keep following what's currently airing, a few shows I already know are on the agenda.  And probably based on when I feel like it watching and re-watching stuff from other eras as well.

I think I'll spend what's left of this year trying to test more Isekai Re-watchability as I mentioned wanting to do in my last post.

I'm finally more motivated to try .hack/sign again then I ever was before but it's not legally streaming anyway.

Update: I went and watched Orbital Children on Netflix before the year was over as well, it was good.

Also I was wrong there isn't a new Detective Conan episode on New Years Eve, it's taking the week off.

Isekai ramblings

So this is for some Isekia related thoughts I've been wanting to document on this Blog but that I don't think any on their own could justify a whole post.

First is how historically I've come to feel like the Summer of 2017 was a key turning point in Isekai discourse, at least among English speaking Anime onlies.  Before then people being transported to another world may have already been observed as an increasingly popular plot device, but I think that Anime season with Smartphone and Restaurant was the beginning of it being spoken of as a Genre.

I'm pretty sure English speakers using the Japanese word Isekai at all was not as common before that season, like there were prior shows with that word in the title and so English speakers who liked to use the Japanese title would have been saying it in that context, (that word being in Japanese titles goes back to at least 2009 with War on Geminar), but I think that was mostly it.  When I look back on 2016 and early 2017 AniTube videos about Konosuba, Re:Zero, No Game No Life and Gate from people like YGG, Mother's Basement or Gigguk I don't think even they were using the word yet.

But maybe that's just my biased perspective from that being the season I became a fan of the genre principally via In Another Worl With My Smartphone.  I just did another rewatch of Smartphone which I mentioned on Mastadon and it still holds up.  Thing is while I see a lot of unique distinct value in that show it kind of is the first Anime to really tick off all the boxes of the current conception of a Generic Isekai.

I've been contemplating that it's about time I tried giving some rewatches to some of the other Isekai I've watched seasonally since and mostly liked at the time, see how their rewatch value holds up.  I just tried returning to Deathmarch to a Parralel World Rhapsody which I recall being the second Isekai I watched seasonally, and I wasn't into it but I kind of figured it would be the kind of show I wouldn't want to rewatch that much.

Shows I think might hold up better when I rewatch them include Isekai Cheat Magician, Make my Abilities Average (which I think I actually did already rewatch some of), Reincarnated as a Slime (season 1 at least, I kind of didn't like season 2), Highschool Prodigies, 8th Son, Spider-Chan, Million Lives Isekai, and In The Land of Leadale though that might be too recent still like the Lesbian Executioner one.  Some others might've slipped my mind.

Since these Isekai are supposed to be Fantasy settings with Medieval Western Europe principally England and France as the model, there are two common trends in these worlds I consider odd deviations from that model.  The presence of Chattel Slavery which during the real middle ages this specific region was just about the only place where that wasn't practiced.  And a tendency for the otherwise vaguely Aesthetically Catholic dominant Church to be seemingly Matriarchal with even the Pope analogue being a High Priestess.  I find it amusing how together both these details make these societies more like Ancient Athens then Medieval Europe.

I wonder if this is another carry over from Dragon Quest III?  For those who still don't know in Japan the Dragon Quest franchise actually tops even Final Fantasy as the most popular JRPG franchise, with Dragon Quest III specifically usually being the primary model for what "Generic JRPG" tropes are.  For example Dragon Quest II was the origin of Orcs being depicted as humanoid Pig/Boar creatures which I observed being a common thing across these shows in 2018 and 2019.  So Dragon Quest as a whole and III specifically is kind of the Ur Text for a lot about why the Fantasy Worlds we see in Isekai and other generic Fantasy Anime are the way they are.

But without playing the game myself the question of Slavery and Matriarchal Religious institutions are a more difficult world building question to simply google, they aren't simply in the Bestiary the way the Orcs are.  So It's something I'd have to ask people who've played them.

Sachi, Sword Art Online and Survivor's Guilt

The third episode of Sword Art Online is often considered a Christmas Episode because of it's last segment.

But what I like about it is it's depiction of Survivor's Guilt.  Survivor's Guilt is a fundamentally irrational phenomena where someone who survives something others did not feels guilty simply for surviving and latching onto anything to rationalize it.

But too often stories in fiction meant to address this do give the character in question a reasonable reason to blame themselves, usually nothing that would make them truly legally, ethically or morally culpable, but still some decision they made that if they decided differently could have made a difference.  Because modern standards for good writing are obsessed with things like "consequences" and "Cause and Effect" and trying to avoid getting a plot hole ding from CinemaSins.

What I like about this episode of SAO is that Kirto truly has no rational reason to blame himself, the thing he latches onto is the whole not telling them how high leveled he actually was, but what lead to their death was their acting rashly and overconfidently, knowing how OP Kirto actually was would have had the opposite effect.  

But as expected the SAO haters trying to give it the RLM treatment constantly do treat this as a pothole when it's in fact exactly what makes it a good depiction of Survivor's Guilt.  Yeah it does also serve the purpose of giving Kirto more reason to be a Brooding Loner while not undermining that he's the best at playing this game, but so what. 

SAO was never about IF Kirito is a good Gamer or not, it's about how this experience was Traumatizing regardless.

Gate is Fun and Problematic

Gate is an Anime adapted from Light Novels in 2015 and 2016 that aired as two 12 episode seasons but really feels more like one 24 episode season.  It's a show I enjoyed even though it's political messaging is very messed up.

Breadtube is constantly criticizing shows and movies with premises like this of not being critical of Colonialism and modern post WW2 Imperialism enough, they criticize stories trying to be critical of those things but falling short because they are starting from a Liberal rather then truly Leftist perspective.  Gate however is what it looks like when this kind of behavior is actually unapologetically lionized.

The story is written so that every intervention that takes place is justified.  But all those justifications are exactly what modern Democracy espousing Empires try to paint their interventions as being.

It's also such an idealized take on modern Soldiers in general, making clear to the audience that not a single one is partaking in this other world's native sex workers.  

There's a lot in this show that's good, lots of individual characters I like and some interesting world building, more interesting then most generic Isekai of the last decade.  And just look at this Screenshot.

I love the fact that I can show this to people and then explain how we know from earlier episodes that each of these Bas@$$ Lady Knights is a Fujoshi.

I think the Main Character of this show would have came off much better if they'd allowed him to be more like Captain Kirk.  What do I mean by that?  Once I watched a handful of episodes of the Original Star Trek with my Dad, and we observed how most of this set of episodes happened to follow a similar pattern where Kirk is unable to get a quick response from Starfleet so he has to make a decision to act in a way that could prove controversial, but then after things are resolved they finally get a response from Starfleet giving him permission to do what he already did.

Gate however keeps taking the opposite route, where our protagonist is basically given unofficial permission to go beyond the official limits of his orders in advance so the SDF can have the excuse they need to intervene further.  This approach besides just making the "good" side as a whole look a lot shadier then the writers intended also makes the MC less of a Maverick then they intended.

What really bugs me is the use of Rise of the Valkyries, I suspect that Zack Snyder's critics accuse him of in Watchmen not understanding the Irony in how Apocalypse Now used that song, but he absolutely did.  Gate however I don't think properly understood it, because I suspect a lot of people in Japan have only seen that movie through references to it in other movies and especially don't have the context for how it's a satire on Birth of a Nation's use of that song.

Update April 2023: Gate's Pilot and the 3 episode test.

Gate was a big part of YGG's How to Tell a Bad Anime from just one episode video, and even though that has little relevance to the original premise of this post I have thoughts on it and I don't want to make another post specifically about Gate.

The premise of the Gate part of the video is that Gate's pilot is bad and the rest of the show is still bad in the same ways and does nothing to retroactively fix anything.  However there is one reason to be bugged by the pilot that she actually failed to mention.

I did not realize our main character was already a trained SDF solider before all this happened, I thought we were supposed to believe he knew exactly what do during this Fantasy invasion because of what he learned playing Fantasy Games, and then got sorta drafted because of his actions in this battle.  But several episodes later it becomes clear he was already a solider.

Maybe it's my fault, maybe the shirt he's wearing which I didn't notice the first time was supposed to tell us that, but other characters he interacts with didn't pick up on that either.  And so much of YGG's criticisms of the Pilot are that it tells rather then shows or does both which she consider redundant (Goodfellas shows right after telling in the exact same way as these scenes she complains about all the time).  But for this piece of information the show does the opposite and only shows.  On some level maybe I was supposed to pick up on it because of the fact that he knows what to do, but this Genre of Anime absolutely would do what I assumed was going on so I was not inclined to consider that.  In both Anime and western media I'm frankly not used to Solider characters who aren't telling people they're Soldiers every chance they get.

A lot of YGG's criticism of the pilot is it's structural incoherence and that definitely becomes less of a problem.  Or at least to whatever extent it still is a there it's less of once one's actually gotten into it.

YGG is correct that it's mainly the Premise that often takes 3 episodes to figure out, or in Gate's case the premise wasn't unclear in the Pilot but a lot of the meat of how it will function takes time to clarify.  I'm however the opposite of YGG in that I'm more interested in watching a flawed show with a premise that interests me then a perfectly executed show with a premise that doesn't.

So she talked about how the only reason someone would like the rest of the show but not the pilot is if they're into it for a specific character who didn't show up yet, as if that's irrelevant.  And yes it is irrelevant to the actual quality of the writing or animation.  But that doesn't change the basic point that most of what's "Fun and Problematic" about Gate isn't in the Pilot yet and therefore you are potentially missing out if you dismiss it based on the Pilot alone.

I think YGG's least valid criticism is her simply hating that the SFD beats the mediaeval army so easily.  Yes that technically does play into my criticisms, but I do not inherently have a problem with stories where the Protagonists are not actually challenged by the Antagonists physically, I think there are interesting stories to tell with that premise and Gate does sometimes kind of tell some.  YGG mentions some old Japanese movie where a time isekaied SDF unit gets totally beaten by Sengoku era Samurai tactics.  But that's not better, that's just the other side of the same coin, one panders to people who want to believe Sengoku era Samurai are the most awesome warriors ever while Gate panders to people who want to believe the modern SDF are the most awesome warriors ever.

Willow, finally a good Live Action Western Fantasy show

First I should explain that I'm new to this franchise as a whole, I watched both the original 88 movie and the first three episodes of the new Disney+ show today.

The original Willow is a satisfying charming 80s Fantasy film.  What's neat about it is while a lot of the influence Tolkien has had on the Fantasy Genre has been through LOTR and later the Silmarilion, Willow feels like George Lucas's take on The Hobbit with a little Narnia inspiration as well.

The new show however has proven to endear me personally even more.  After the late summer and early fall of 2022 being largely HOTD and ROP discourse, this show came along and frankly blew both out of the water.  It also easily beats all the SW shows Disney gave us this year.

HOTD is fine, it's what I'd expect from a GOT prequel, but GOT type shows are of limited appeal to me.  ROP I enjoyed plenty of, but I also hate how much it basically felt like a post GOT fantasy show wearing LOTR cosplay.

I made two posts in the last two years about why Fantasy Anime has generally been more appealing to me then any Western Fantasy shows of the last decade, one on how they look and one on the kinds of stories they tell.  Willow is finally a Fantasy Show taking the right approach to both those issues.

And comparison to Fantasy Anime isn't the only reason to recommend the show to Anime fans, Kit has a very Bifauxnen appeal, and her being canonically Gay seems to be where they're going, so it's something Yuri fans may like as well.

I'll be following the show every Wednesday till it's done.

Spin-Off shows waiting for seaosn 2 to bring in older characters

This is a Stragey for Spin Off builindg that I've noticed the existence of recently in fairly recent stuff, maybe it always existed.

Some people don't like it, or they don't like the second half of it.

Obviously I feel like I have to start with The Mandalorian since that's the first time I noticed this approach being a thing, but it may not actually be chronologically first one this post covers.  I've come to hate talking about Star Wars in the current climate of the internet, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

The Mandalorian season 1 features no characters we already knew, not even minor characters, it's always featuring Star Wars stuff, but while introducing new characters and usually new locations.  Season 2 then has Mando meet characters from Clone Wars and even the Original Trilogy.

This approach works, if Mando was sharing screen time with older legacy characters right from the start their shadow could have made it difficult for him or the other new characters to make their mark.  But once they're established it's then cool to see these new characters we've come to like meet other characters we like.

But now I have to address what I said above.  There is a certain type of aggressively anti-fanservice fan among those who make YouTube Videos that liked the independence of season 1 and felt season 2's bringing in the older characters was chickening out on that.  And I feel like you're not really a Star Wars fan if you're so damn hostile to seeing Star Wars characters in a Star Wars show.  I'm a fan of Star Wars because it has characters I like, not vauge late 70s aesthetics.

Mando season 2 is still principally about Mando, none of the other characters detract from that but are  there to serve Mando and Grogu's story.  But JustWrite in his Andor video said season 2 was still good but it feels like the story was built around enabling all these cameos and crossovers.  And I say so what, every story is written to do what the writers want it to do, which may or may not also be what the fans want.

I have mixed feelings on Andor, I feel it is not remotely the bold and brave political manifesto so many shallow online leftists are pretending it is, but I did enjoy it more then I expected to, which is frankly at all.  However JustWrite's praise of the show's avoidance of Fan Service, even noting the lack of Aliens, I can't agree with.  Because for me that just makes this story feel like any other shallow YA Dystopia from the early 2010s barely even wearing Star Wars clothing.

I suspect Andor when it gets a season 2 will also follow this formula I'm talking about here.  Now it's technically not because it's main/title character is a prior established character, but Cassian Andor in Rogue One was such a bland blank slate generic cishet male hardened solider archetype that this show was effectively building a new character.  In a way it hurts Andor's status as a prequel to a prequel as I'm wondering where this personality is going to disappear to, but whatever.  Now that he's signed up to the Rebellion I predict season 2 will inevitably bring in more characters we've seen before, even if they're mostly characters from prior Disney Star Wars, both Solo and Obi-Won featured Proto Rebel groups who could play a role, and most of the cast of Rebels have Live Action actors now thanks to Ahsoka.  I hope Disney has the guts to bring back CGI Leia and Tarkin.

But it's time to finally move this discussion outside of Star Wars.

Disney had actually done this before with Milo Murphy's Law, in season 1 it's connections to Phineas and Ferb are just occasional in-jokes until the very end, then they do the big crossover and former P&F characters become a more regular presence in season 2.  And it worked out great, I'm still annoyed at the lack of a 3rd season.

I was in fact already noticing this about Mando years ago and back when Pennyworth only had 1 season I was hoping it'd do the same.  But it's a Batman prequel way to far in the past to really feature any more then who they did and where the show did wind up going is mostly fine, I feel it's underrated in fact, it's a better fictional depiction of Fascism then any Star Wars has ever been.

But I'm mostly a Weeb now and so the rest of this post shall be about Anime.

The principal Anime example of this approach is Lostorage incited Wixoss.   For the first 9 episodes I didn't even think it was actually in continuity with the original Mari Okada written Wixoss saga with it's very different rules and everything.  Episode 10 however establishes that one of the most minor notable characters in this show is also one of the most minor notable characters from Selector infected Wixoss.  But it's a subplot that doesn't really impact the resolution.

That show's second season Lostorage conflated Wixoss is then about bringing the Lostorage cast and the original cast together.  So I entered it very hyped and do like it over all, but I don't feel like I can praise it's execution of this approach as much.  Now the thing is in the rules of good writing people like JustWrite base their career on this season 2 crossover may well qualify as more "organic" then Mandalorian Season 2, but Organic vs Contrived is not a dichotomy that concerns me.

I first of all simply feel that basically doubling the cast of this show for season 2 kind of made it need more then just 12 episodes.  This is after all the first show where the rules for the new version of the Selector Battles aren't even partially set up in the first episode.

Now the character who was very minor in all previous shows becoming the Main Character for the Avenger Assembling is itself probably the best part of how they approached it, and this character being a Kuudere of sorts makes her very appealing to me personally.

But I also can't help but feel like I'd have preferred the only additional OG Wixoss character to be added was Akira Aoi.  Akira was the only major character of the original who's story felt incomplete, plus her specific history with the character serving as the glue connecting these stories fits perfectly.  But instead Conflated winds up effectively regressing her Spread development and using her mostly as a punching bag, very mean-spiritedly.  I like Akira and one of the things I like about Anime is it not being as Hostile by default to her personality type as western Nerd media often is. Conflated's opinion of Akira seems like what a western Nerd's would be, and it's shockingly not the only time Conflated does something that feels more western.

There is a plotline in the latter half where the villain manipulates the main protagonists of the prior shows into fighting each other, and it so annoyingly reminds me of how every DC or Marvel Superhero crossover has to feature them fighting each other for some dumb reason first.  And I know this probably isn't the only Anime to do this, it's maybe even in Anime I've watched before, but in a show that I'm thinking of as tangentially related to the Magical Girl Genre it feels wrong.  As a fan of both Batman and Superman I understand why those characters would sometimes come to blows, but as fan of these Anime protagonists and others like them I know them jumping into a fight without even trying to talk first is really out of character.  And the thing is this franchise has built in reasons for people who aren't enemies to still battle each other, they didn't need to do this trope to get this fan service, they chose to.

But I also feel Conflated should not have included Yuzuki if they were going to be afraid to even acknowledge the existence of Kazuki.  My personal headcannon for what happens after the end of Spread/Destructed is a Yuzuki/Kazuki/Hanayo threesome.  This show wants to neither confirm or contradict any shippers on that triangle to appease them while not grossing out whatever normie audience the show has.  But to me Yuzuki simply isn't Yuzuki if that is never on her mind.

Basically the difference between Conflated and Mando season 2 is that Mando didn't turn the entire Original Trilogy Cast into new main cast members.

There is actually a third Wixoss show now but I haven't watched it yet, I will probably give it a try eventually.

Another Anime that does this to a lesser extent is Magia Record.  The original Madoka cast have a handful of cameos in season 1, but season 2 is where they team up with the new cast, and then they're mostly out again for season 3.  Magia Record was fine but I'd already talked about why Madoka EU stories the way they tend to be handled have a limited appeal to me.

Update February 2023: Season two of House of the Dragon can't do this in terms of specific characters, but in a sense the Starks finally entering will have the same effect.  Having no Starks in season 1 is part of what helped it establish it's own identity, but now that the Dance has started the North is going too have to play some role.

Another update on my Anime watching

To pick up from where we left off, I finished both Lycoris Recoil and Engage Kiss and gave both very high scores.  LycoReco is the kind of show that I think is better off not getting a second season while for Engage Kiss I'm very curious to see where they could go next.

All of the fall shows I was following I either dropped or put on hold for now.  Call of The Night I simply lost interest in  Spy x Family's Joke was starting to run thin but maybe I'll return when I can binge the rest of the season, Beast Tamers is still fun but I just don't feel like continuing it right now.   Taming The Final Boss however is the one I'm most disappointed in, it was good till episode 4, but durring Episode 4 they clearly rushed to the ending of the first Light Novel when in fact I feel this should have been fleshed to 6 or 7 episodes per LN like Haruhi.  Then in Episode 5 the new arc just instantly lost my attention.

However I've started a new show, Boochi The Rock which I"m actually watching Subbed, it's adorable and fun.

There are three Falls I am still waiting for Dubs for.  Two of them I have no doubt will be dubbed.  Detective Conan: Hanazara The Culprit has been picked up by Netflix and they dub everything they get, and there's no way the new mainline Gundam show won't be dubbed.  So the only real question mark is Akiba Maid Wars, I feel like there is still time for Sentai to decide to Dub it, but if they haven't by the end of the year then I'll try just watching it Subbed in January or maybe even right before New Years.  [Update: Sentai has announced an AMW Dub, we just don't know when exactly it'l start.]

But I also have stuff outside the seasonal docket to mention.  I already posted on the first SAO Progressive movie.  Before October was over I watched Housing Complex C and will going forward be adding it to my Halloween Anime Recommendations.  I have also now seen both already released Princess Principal: Crown Handler movies and the shorts that came with them, but I don't think I'll be able to properly form an opinion on them till they're complete.

Rumbling Hearts and Comic Party are both older shows I got into recently that I've already commented on in recent posts, and I highly recommend them.  Which reminds me I should link to my Mastadon account, I've talked about those shows and some others a lot there, last I checked the tags seemingly the only person talking about them there.

https://c.im/@KuudereKun

@KuudereKun@c.im

I've also watched a bunch of Galaxy Angel and Kodocha which are both good Comedy Anime, and I watched all of the original Nurse Withc Komugi which was awesome.

I've also done some retro Pokemon Rewatching and finally watched all of the Twilight Wings shorts on the PokemonTV App which I'd regrettably ignored when they came out.

I also rewatched both seasons of Selector _____ Wixoss and think I'm maybe finally ready to just watch the rest of that franchise Subbed.