Sometimes a single Show gets Sole Credit for a Trend it's only the most well known example of.

The almsot over current Fall 2023 Season of Anime includes not one but two Fantasy shows where part of how the story starts is the idea of beginning at or after where a traditional Epic Fantasy story ends [Update: turns out it was three actually].  They are massively different from each other in almsot every other way from vibes to art-style to what subgenres they fit into to.

But the thing is nether is actually the first Anime that can be described that way, it also applies to Dead Mount Death Play earlier this year, to The Devil is a Part Timer several years ago, and I feel confident I recall one or two others in recent years who's names now escape me doing it [Update: Endro is one of them].  And yet if this concept becomes even more popular in the coming years I suspect a narrative will develop that Frieren, one of the two currently airing, started the trend even though it didn't since it has a respectability or at least staying power that A Returner's Magic and those shows which came before it largely do not.

Because this has happened before.  It's like the Great Man Theory of History but applied to popular pieces of Media rather then people.

Take how Sword Art Online is blamed for the broader Anime trends that those above shows merely fit into Sub Genres of.  There were shows that actually qualify as Isekai airing during the same season and in preceding seasons.  Even if we distinguish what modern Isekai is like from what we usually got in the 90s and early 2000s then still War on Geminar from 2009-2010 largely fits the modern criteria, and in Japanese it even has the word Isekai in the title.  

But even if we go back to the era of SAO's original Web Novel publication a decade prior, 2002 had other fully immersive VR Video Game themed stories like .hack//Sign and all the way back in April that year's annual Detective Conan/Case Closes film The Phantom of Baker Street.

Sometimes many artists are coming up with similar ideas at the same time organically for reasons that can't be chopped up to one innovator who everyone else copied.  A common term for this kind of thing is a Zeitgeist.

Take for another example how throughout the 2010s every Incest Anime was viewed as part of a trend started by Oreimo.  Oreimo season 1 was again not even the only Incest show of it's season. Yosuga no Sora was also a pretty big deal at the time.  And earlier in the same year we had Kiss X Sis as both OVAs and a TV Anime.  But what bugs me about this is how people forget that Little Sisters being already a thing in Otaku culture is partly what Oreimo was about.

Or we could talk about the narrative that Neon Genesis Evangelion "Altered Anime Eternally".  In that case it's not so much a specific trend or genre or trope that Eva is given sole credit for but the entire landscape of modern Anime.  I absolutely agree that 1995 was the beginning of an Era of Anime.  But Eva premiered in the last season of that year, the prior 6 months had already been filled with TV Anime and Movies and OVAs that were ground breaking and game changing in their own ways, and to a lesser extent so had the 6 months prior to that.  Eva was just one final Cherry on top of a very innovate Sundae.  (Also Metal Fight Miku was a completely original TV Anime in the Summer of 1994 that had no connection to any prior IP in any medium, and it was popular enough to get an English Dub.)

However It's not just in the world of Anime this happens.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a show I was once and kind of still am a fan of, it was my favorite TV show of all time before PLL and Anime entered my life.  But the narrative often presented by many of it's fans that it was not just the first Girl Power TV show but also the beginning of what I'll call Semi-Episodic Television in general, annoys me.

That narrative forgets that La Femme Nikkita started airing at almost the exact same time in January of 1997, and that Xena Warrior Princess had been on the air since September of 95.  "Neither of those is about a Blonde High School Girl with a superhero like double life" you may retort.  Well The Secret World of Alex Mack started in October of 1994 and lasted 4 seasons overlapping with Buffy.

And all of that is without even getting into the Girl Power Anime that was already officially available to American audiences.  Sailor Moon's DiC Dub debuted in Canada in late 95 and was on American TV by some point in 96.  The early episodes of Slayers were dubbed by the end of 95 as well, also Bubblegum Crisis had been released in the States in 91 and 92 and was Dubbed in 94.

But speaking of Sailor Moon perhaps it's hypocritical of me to say all this now when earlier this year I tired to defend the notion of Sailor Moon single handedly creating her genre (whatever you call it), well really Codename Sailor V in 1991.  The thing is 1990 had the first Devil Hunter Yohko OVA which technically fits all the requirements for being a Magical Girl Warrior but really doesn't fit in Aesthetically or Thematically.  And 92 also had the original video game debut of Galaxy Frauline Yuna. Then there's other niche things like Dream Hunter Rem.  So I still agree with distinguishing the Magical Girl Warrior genre from the Sally the Witch style sitcoms or the Idol variation.  But Sailor Moon is merely the biggest not only piece of the puzzle of how that genre formed.

And all this is part of why even when a trend does seem to Chronologically have a pretty undisputable singular starting point I still oppose dismissing everything that came after as mere copycats.  Yuki Yuna Is A Hero and Daybreak Illusion and Blue Reflection Ray each feel to me like shows their creators were trying to say something with, and that they would have tried to make in some form even without Madoka Magica coming first.