Frieren is not the Best Anime of 2023

I realize the Anime most prominently featured in the Thumbnail of a Best of ____ YouTube video is usually not given the number 1 slot because they want that to be a bit of a surprise.  But giving Frieren this role in your Thumbnails still endorses that it's the easy pick to be at least near the top and I really would not put Frieren even in 2nd or 3rd place.

First of all, Frieren in 2023 specifically is fundamentally incomplete. I realize some may find it unfair to rule out from AOTY contention any multi-cour shows that straddle the Gregorian New Year change over. But in the case of Freiren the way the final episode to air in 2023 doesn’t even finish the Arc it’s a part of is just really on the nose with it.

Now obviously a popular show from Fall having this role is partly a result of recency bias but ya know what as someone who’s actively tried to avoid that I feel like Fall 2023 may genuinely deserve it’s current dominance over the year as a whole simply because there aren’t a lot of Seasons that I’ve already completed this many shows from within a month of it ending, 9 TV Anime and two ONAs of comparable size to a TV Anime with more I likely will complete later (that's not counting how I've seen all of the 2023 episodes of Freiren).  There are older seasons I still haven’t watched close to that much of.

I do like Freiren, I’ve been recommending it as one of the best, not even vaguely Isekai like Fantasy Anime we’ve gotten in recent years. I recommend it to old fashioned Tolkien and Lewis style Fantasy nerds who have no tolerance for Anime BS.  But the thing is I am an Otaku, for my actual Anime rankings Anime BS is a feature not a bug and that’s just one reason Frieren isn’t in my top three even of Fall 2023 specifically.

First I’m gonna mention Spy x Family season 2, if you're gonna make a contender a show that is incomplete within the year in question I’d rather have an Arc that was built up to rather than an introduction.

But I think the actual best shows of Fall 2023 are two Netflix ONAs we got in October.  Good Night World and Pluto both get 10/10s from me, Frieren I doubt will get that even for the entire first season much less what is in 2023 on its own.  Pluto will likely be the subject of its own post on this Blog in the future.  Good Night World is a show I found fun and interesting from the start yet still managed to emotionally hit me way more than I expected.

But even comparing Freiren to other first cours of something still incomplete, SHY and I’m In Love With The Villainess both justified themselves as somewhat stand alone first seasons way more then the 2023 content for Freiren did even though Frieren had a few extra episodes to work with.  But I won’t put Freiren at the bottom of this sub sub category either, as much as I am still a fan of 100 Girlfriends I think it’s season 1 struggled with pacing slightly that form what I’ve heard about the Manga future seasons will at some point not have anymore.

There are at least  two TV Anime of Fall 2023 that stand on their own completely whether or not a season 2 of some sort ever happens and those are Tearmoon Empire and 16bit Sensation. 

All that is just Fall, shows from earlier seasons include second seasons for Jobless Reincarnation, Eminence in Shadow, Vinland Saga and The With From Mercury each of which I’d personally rank higher than Freiren.  Zom100 which was phenomenal.  Maybe some of you think I’m biased against Freiren for not being Actiony enough, well I also place Rant-a-Girlfriend season 3 above Frieren, and maybe also My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999.

Winter 2023 does compete with Fall 2023 in terms of how much of it I’ve completed.  But only 3 I’d call AOTY contenders, The Magical Revolution of The Reincarnated Princess and The Genius Young Lady, Onimai and Buddy Daddies each of them is better than Freiren.

Actually maybe a 4th if we count Eminence in Shadow Season 1, I would generally rather count a MAL entry that started the prior year rather than ended in the next one.  But in this case only 7 episodes of season 1 aired in 2023.  If we just counted all of Eminence as one candidate ignoring the MAL divisions it would be top 10 for certain.

So basically no Freiren as great as it is can’t even make my top 10 of 2023.

Even if your agenda is specifically to bias a Normie accessible show, Vinland Saga season 2 has even less Otaku elements then Frieren and Pluto is designed to be a new modern entry point to Anime's oldest franchise.

No movies are not worse now then they used to be.

People have always somewhat felt like the present quality of Cinema is the worst it's ever been, exactly how prominent that discourse is does have it's spikes and we seem to be in one right now.  "Justified" by how financially poorly the film industry did in 2023.  People are going to theaters less because of the lingering impact of the pandemic and normalization of streaming, I don't think it'll be permanent, I think it's gonna go up and down, but it definitely does not speak to the quality of 2023 films.

I even saw the title of a YouTube video I didn't watch explicitly saying "No you aren't just nostalgia blinded", I refused to even dignify such a claim with views.  I guarantee you in 20 years people will be Nostalgic for phase 4 MCU and DCEU films and Live Action Disney remakes.

The current Golden Age people look back on is the 90s and early 2000s, but I unlike most my age don't just remember the movies from that time, I also remember the internet discourse around them, and it was essentially no different then now, only the details of the theories on why things got worse might have changed.

To an extent what percentage of movies are considered to be good or bad isn't actually viewed as being any different.  It's just that the "forgettable" movies of the past are forgotten and the old "bad" movies still considered bad people talk about in ways that emphasize their charm, how they're a product of their time made in ways you won't see today, or from a respected director who's fanboys refuse to see no value in even their "worst" films.  While everything today is just "soulless" focus tested corporate mandated garbage. 

And people who insist on maintaining that the revaluated films shouldn't be revaluated blame it on Meme Culture, on people watching bad movies ironically and Memeing themselves into liking them.  And that issue may tie into a potentially entirely different thesis, I may write something about the concept of "So Bad it's good".  With movies like the Star Wars Prequels it is well documented that the people who like them always existed, the GenX haters just lost their control of internet discourse.

However an interesting case study here is The Mummy film from 1999, the people hyping it up as an unironically great example of the kind of 90s/early 2000s film they don't make them like anymore seemingly don't even know there ever was an Internet Echo chamber that considered it a very bad movie and an example of how 90s and early 2000s attempts to "rip off" Indiana Jones pale in comparison to the real thing.  My memory of the era is that people who liked the movies existed but GenXers who hated it for not being a pure Horror Movie also largely dominated Internet Group think.

There are plenty of films, even Hollywood Genre films in 2023 that are not all that controversial to consider good, the Super Mario Bros movie, Across The Spiderverse, Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves, each considered perfectly fun movies that at the very least succeeded at what they were going for.

Now as far as the movies that I liked just fine but that enough Internet Group think hates to make them be perceived as failures, no thesis about why current movies are so bad fits.  Peter Coffin's "Wookieepeditis" thesis doesn't explain The Flash which made Canon more flexible then ever.  And culture war stuff influencing both films and internet discourse about them isn't new either, it's just the exact terminology that has changed.  

On the subject of Indiana Jones anyone who thinks Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is worth redeeming but not Dial of Destiny has no consistent logic, both are exactly parallel in how much they either follow or break from the formulae of the 80s Indiana Jones movies.

I'm also going to just assume Anime films aren't being considered in this Normie discourse since it's technically a completely different Industry.  But at any rate we got the best Detective Conan film in a decade, Maboroshi which I was not expecting but was awesome, a new Psycho-Pass movie that was great though I had issues with it's message which stem from those I always had even of the original show.  And a new Miyazaki film which I haven't seen and probably won't but most people seem to think lived up to the expectations.  I will see the Sailor Moon Cosmos films when they are Dubbed and I'm fairly confident they will be great.

There is a common claim some people make that children will enjoy everything they see and thus potentially be Nostalgic for it as Adults so the existence of very young people who liked something can never be a vindication.  I hated Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory as a kid, I have Anti-Nostalgia for that movie.  And it's not just that, even at my youngest there is plenty of stuff meant for my age demographic I saw and didn't enjoy.

My firm position is that if anyone liked something no matter how much I don't like it that vindicates it as being Good in some way, even children, especially children if they were even partially the target audience.  

The problem with Nostalgia, the thing that can make it Toxic, isn't the positive feelings it provides you for your happy memories of the past, that is objectively what's good about it.  It's when it causes you to irrationally hate the present by seeing every difference as only for the worse.  So what bugs me now is people ironically using their critiques of Nostalgia to justify saying movies are worse now because Hollywood can't make anything that isn't pandering to some generation's Nostalgia.

New IPs are being created for future generations to be nostalgic for, it just may less often be movies and Triple A Video Games.  And the truth is I think these people are massively underestimating how much of what they're Nostalgic for was also in part made to appeal to the Nostalgia of their Parents or Grandparents or even older siblings.  Millennials have Nostalgia for Tiny Toons and Muppet Babies and Adult Swim Cartoons which were made by GenXers to parody cartoons they were Nostalgic for, and Degrassi's reboot which seems to have overshadowed the original.  Hell I have a lot of Nostalgia for watching Nick at Night reruns of Happy Days.

Anime Recommendations for Inklings.

Anime is such a vast and diverse medium that I truly believe it has something for everyone even though a lot of it will struggle to appeal outside the specific subculture that created it.  So one recurring theme of this Blog is me as a person who was once a more normal western Nerd with a wide range of interests for a long time before Anime took over my brain appointing myself as an expert recommender.  And of course one of my top Western Nerdy interests is J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Now if any long time followers of this blog exist you may think I’ve already covered Tolkien and Lewis like Anime in various ways, but the truth is the prior examples of one or both of them and Anime coming up in the same post were more the other way around if anything.  In this post I want to focus on Anime that I think could have appealed to Tolkien and Lewis themselves if they were still around, not merely fans who like their work but also a lot of stuff very unlike them.

So for example while I’ve made a few posts on why Fantasy Anime even at its most Generic and Gamerfied would appeal to someone whose tastes in the Genre were shaped by them more then the slew of GOT wannabes that western “Prestige” television spewed out in the 2010s.  I am still not insane enough to think either of them would like a show that’s basically literally about being in a Video Game.

Maquia and Frieren are the top two Fantasy Anime I would truly call Tolkienesque.  Maybe Grimoire of Zero and Dawn of The Witch could fit in.  Something that actually qualifies as Isekai would have a better shot with Lewis but not most modern Isekai.  Lewis and Tolkien’s different views on Allegory would have me recommending something like Princess Tutu or an Ikuhara show to Lewis way before Tolkien.  The third Pokémon movie Spell of The Unown might be able to appeal to both.

Also Tolkien's anxieties about Technology and Nature make him a bit of a kindred spirit with Miyazaki but that's not something people needed me to learn about, there's already a YouTube Video Essay on it.  I have also already stated that the ending of Nausicaa counts as a Eucatastrophe, also an observation I didn't make on my own.

However I want to remind people that Tolkien was capable of enjoying more kinds of fiction than just the genre he's most well known for writing.  

For example I was intrigued when I learned that Tolkien was a fan of Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Now the first Anime that I would recommend to any Clarke fan is the Gundam franchise, the Childhood’s End influence is there right form the original Mobile Suit Gundam, I often feel like I’m the only western fan who notices that the term Newtype itself is basically a Childhood’s End reference.  However I feel the best Gundam in many ways including as a Clarke homage is Gundam 00, now 00 like a lot of non UC Gundam Anime in my opinion struggles in its early episodes. I was lucky I caught Gundam 00 randomly in the middle of season 1 on the SciFi channel.  (The Witch From Mercury finally avoided this problem by just making its Pilot a remake of Utena’s pilot).

Heck I’m gonna leave Anime for a second to mention how I see a lot of thematic similarities between Tolkien and the works of 19th Century French Novelist Paul Feval.  They are most apparent in The Companions of The Treasure the 6th and in my headcanon last Volume of The Blackcoats saga, a Tolkien fan reading it will be reminded of a number of things.  Part of it might be how Feval was also a Roman Catholic seemingly specifically to be contrarian (it wasn’t rare in his nation like it was Tolkien but was among those writing serialized novels for newspapers).

Anime that remind me of Paul Feval are also something I’ve already talked about on this blog.  But which ones do so in specifically a way that speaks to why I compare Feval to Tolkien?  Well I suspect Princess Principal may exist at exactly the right crossroads for that.

Since Tolkien was a Linguist first and foremost he might have been amused by some of those Detective Conan episodes that play on language for a key clue.  Like episode 651 which used differences between the Kansai and Kanto dialects of Japanese.  Or that subplot from the latter part of the Clash and Red and Black where Conan used a sort of reverse Shiboleth.  

Thing is I have no idea if Tolkien ever had any interest in Detective Fiction as a genre.  Lewis did make a Sherlock Holmes reference once and I will definitely recommend Detective Conan aka Case Closed to any Holmes fan, it’s a way better modern reimagining then what the BBC and Hollywood have given us in the last 20 years.

Given the interest Tolkien seemed to have in the idea of Cursed objects that kind of Doom their possessor I’m almost inclined to wonder if even Death Note would have an appeal.

Update February 10th: I recently learned about both Tolkien and Lewis being fans of Voyage to Arcturus thanks to the Media Death Cult youtube channel.  I'm sure there are a number of Anime you could compare to Arcturus but they aren't on the tip of my tong right now.

Valarin could be based on Hebrew

Valarin is arguably the most mysterious of the languages that help define the world of Tolkien’s Legendarium. We don’t know nearly as much about it as we do the main Elvish Languages.  And the first question often is was some real world Language the inspiration? Quenya’s starting point was Finnish, Sindarin’s was Welsh and the Language of the Rohirrim is meant to be imaginable as an ancestor of Old English.  With Valarin however no one is certain which, if any, real world language we should look to.

Valarin is the native tongue of the Ainur, a group further subdivided between Valar and Maiar, beings that are essentially what Judeo-Christian religions call Angels.  Angel comes from the Greek Angelos used to translate the Hebrew Malak both words mean Messenger because serving as God’s messengers to humans is the function they are usually serving when they show up in The Bible but it's perhaps not what these beings would call themselves, nor is it the only term they’re ever called in The Bible.  Likewise Vala and Maia are Quenya names given to these beings by the Elves.

The assumption has long existed among many theologians that the Language of the Angels would have to be Hebrew or something very similar, after all the only two named Angels in Scripture have Hebrew names even when mentioned in the Greek books.  Today it may mainly be certain fringe sects of American Evangelical Fundamentalism most likely to make a big deal out of if that is the case or not, but it is historically not unique to them.  John Dee devised Enochian as a hypothetical Angelic Language basing it on Hebrew.  And I’m sure there have been Catholics (Tolkien’s denomination) who have agreed.

What little we know about Valarin in Tolkien’s Legendarium is in-universe filtered through the perspective of the Elves.  I imagine that even in Valinor communication between the Elves and Ainur usually involved the Ainur speaking Elvish rather than the other way around.  Nonetheless the Elves were exposed to some Valarin words and some Quenya words are said to be Valarin loan words.  However I really think we should not rule out that the Elves may have often misheard, mispronounced and misunderstood the meanings of the Valarin words that entered their vocabulary.  Plus some of it comes in-universe from people no longer in Valinor speculating ages later.

Consider how the known real world history of Hebrew names being transliterated into European languages by Christians includes such end results as Moshe becoming Moses, Slomoh becoming Solomon, Yeshua became Jesus and the four letter name YHWH having such varied interpretations as Yahweh and Jehovah (I personally view Yahuah as the correct pronunciation).

The first Valarin word I want to discuss is the name of Orome’s horse Nahar, now the Roman spelling of the Valarin original form is presented as Næχærra (the apparent X there is actually Chi a symbol for the -ch sound) but presenting the casual form as Nahar makes a possible Hebrew basis obvious.  Nahar resembles two Hebrew words due to there being two Hebrew letters that can become an H in English.  One is the Hebrew word for River but the other means the KJV translated "Nostrils: or "Snorting" and in it the letter used for H letter that is also the Hebrew letter for -ch, and in both Job 39:19-20 and Jeremiah 8:16 it is associated with the sound a Horse makes.

The next Valarin word I want to discuss is machanaz (machanumaz being the plural) which is said to mean Authorities and is the root of a term for the Aratar the Eight highest ranked of the Valar.  The Hebrew word I think this could come from is machaneh which means company or camp or host and is used in Genesis 32:2 to refer to “God’s host”.  Also look at the -um being added to make it plural, that could come from Elves missing -im which is the most common Hebrew suffix to convey plurality.

Aman the Blessed Land the name of the Continent on which Valinor resides is a name Tolkien originally presented as coming from a Quenya name meaning Good but he later decided it was Valarin in origin.  Aman is also a Hebrew word that in the KJV is translated things like Assurance, Believed, Faithful, Nursed, Steadfast, Trusted and Trusty.

Ainu comes from the Valarin word Ayanuz. As a Quenya word Ainu means Holy One but that could be a meaning the Elves gave the name because they viewed the Aniur as Holy, or they named the concept of Holiness after these semi divine beings they interacted with.  Ayanuz could come from the Hebrew word Ayin meaning Eye (and it’s the name of the Hebrew letter this word begins with) or ayam which means Mighty and began with the same letter.   There is a good real world Proto Indo-European etymology for Aina the Quenya word for Holy, it might be the Elves connected this name to a phonetically similar word.

Honeyed Wine is the meaning of mirubhoze.  One Hebrew word for Wine is tiryowsh and the Hebrew word for Honey is dbash. Now this is more of a stretch then my prior examples but I still consider it plausible, perhaps as a Mondogreen form listening to a Valarin song.

Even the name of Arda is said to be Valarin in origin.  That name is related to many Indo-European words for Earth including Earth itself but and the Afrikaans Aarde.  But plenty of Semitic words for Earth happen to seem phonetically similar like the Hebrew Erets and the Arabic ‘ard.  However the stated Valarin name for Arda is Aþāraphelūn which is supposed to mean “appointed dwelling”.  Palon/Pelon is a Hebrew word from the root Palah meaning separate.  The Athara part could come from atar/atarah which means compass or crown conveying the idea of a circle.

Before I discuss any more confirmed Valarin words or names, I want to speculate on a few names designated Quenya but that could have involved Valarin loanwords that Tolkien never explicitly told us were.

Melkor is the name that is often referred to as the original name of the Legendarium’s Satan figure before he was given the obviously derogatory name Morgoth.  But Melkor is presented as a Quenya name that even it may not have been his original name, Melkor is said to mean “he who rises in might”.  In some Tolkien YouTube videos I’ve noticed when people quote older abandoned versions of the tales Melkor is often more simply Melko.  On Tolkien Gateway other early forms of the name are listed as Belcha, Melegor and Meleko and the meaning is simply “The Mighty One”. I can’t help but see a connection to the Hebrew word for King which is Melek and how the first King in The Bible is Nimrod the Mighty Hunter.

The word Melek is associated with Satan first and foremost in Ezekiel 29 starting in verse 11 where the Melek of Tyre is a Cherub in contrast to the mere human Nagyim of Tyre in the prior verses.  I believe this passage is in part identifying Satan with Melqart/Melkart the Patron deity of Tyre who’s name is interpreted as meaning “King of the City”.  He’s also the “King of Babylon” in Isaiah 14 who desires to place his throne above the Most High, to “Rise in Might”. 

However the deity name Moloch is also just Melek with different vowel indicators and some scholars think those different vowel indicators came later and originally every reference to Moloch/Milcom was just the Hebrew word for King/Kings.  Moloch references include most of the Human Sacrifice documented in the Hebrew Bible which is why he’s sometimes viewed as the most Evil pagan god The Scripture reference even more so than Baal.  But it’s also possible if Moloch was a distinct deity name at all it was just the Ammonite name for Hadad who the Canaanites called Baal and the Moabites called Chemosh.

The conception of Satan that Morgoth is based on isn’t actually Biblical, it’s founded upon layers of Extra-Biblical Fan Fiction culminating in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  Now many today don’t know this but John Milton was actually a political radical of his time who argued in his nonfiction writings that the very concept of having a King other than God Himself is Idolatry.  Satan in Paradise Lost is a manifestation of that idea, the first and ultimate False King.  So a post Milton depiction of Satan being basically named King kind of fits.

The characterization of Melkor/Morgoth in the various First Age stories is that he begins mostly motivated by a desire to Dominate to Control to Rule.  In other words to be the God-King of Arda.

Of the two main names used for The Monotheistic God of Tolkien’s Legendarium, Iluvatar is the most straightforward having its real world etymology firmly in Quenya’s Finnish roots.  Eru however is very mysterious and I was indeed shocked to learn it’s NOT one of the names officially confirmed to be Valarin, it sure doesn’t seem even close to Finnish, Yksi is the Finnish word for One.  Speaking of Eru meaning The One, I personally want that to actually be an Elvish mistake.  In my opinion it is bad form for a Trinitarian to give God a name that mean The One and flat out heretical to name Him “He that is Alone”, calling your theological First Principal by such titles is an influence of Pythagoreanism and Platonism calling it The Monad.  The New Testament and Early Christians preferred Eis Theos and Mia Theos to Mono Theos.  Eis and Mias like the Hebrew Eched means one as United or Unified not an Absolute Only One.

The phenomena of the sound represented by the letter L being mispronounced as an R is NOT in fact unique to Japanese or other East Asian Languages.  Back in my youth long before I got into any of the Weeb stuff I’m into now I always misheard the L in the middle of the word Colonel as an R, consistently no matter who said it, at first I was unable to recognize it in print because I’d heard it that way so consistently.

I’m bringing this up because coincidentally El the Hebrew word for God is one of a few Gaijin words that the Japanese tend to pronounce Eru, others include the Spanish definite article and the English name of the letter L.  Most times I’ve seen or heard Eru in Japanese media it’s been the Spanish reference like the title of the Anime El Cazador de la Bruja (The Hunter of The Witch) the first part of which gets pronounced Eru Kazado.  However there is a Visual Novel called You and Me and Her: A Love Story where a Cat is named Eru and the credits say Eru has the same voice actor as God.

So what I’m getting at is maybe Eru came from some Elf mishearing or mispronouncing El under the right circumstances.  Or a shortening of a mishearing or mispronouncing of Elah or Eloah or Elohim.

Yavanna seems to be the first of the Valar (going through them in Valaquenta order) whose name isn’t said to be Valarin in origin.  Yet I can’t help but notice how much it looks like a feminine form of Yavan, the Hebrew name for Greece.  The Strongs says the name is related to Yayin, another Hebrew word for Wine which fits the Fruit connection of Yavanna’s name.  I’m trying to think of reasons that it would culturally or religiously make sense to fan theorize that Primitive Greece descended from particular followers of Yavanna, I suppose the standard practices of Interpretatio graeca would identify Yavanna with Gaia, Cybele or Magna Mater, but even that feels like a bit of a stretch. [Update February 9th: I've looked into some theories about Dione and Dodona and now think she may work.]

There are other names that look instantly Hebrew when I look at them even though I can’t imagine how the name could be Valarin in origin, like how Gilgalad reminds me of Gilgal and Beor is the name of the father of the first King of the Edomites in Genesis 36.  Any other writer of European style Fantasy I’d just chalk it up to Biblical Names entered our vocabulary and this writer didn’t think about where they came from.  But Tolkien was specifically a Linguist first and foremost.  If he knowingly put Hebrew names in there he did so for a reason.

I’m going to cover some more confirmed Valarin in origin words now, but I’m growing less certain how to make them fit my Valarin=Hebrew hypothesis, everything above is the foundation of it.

The name of Varda comes from the Quenya root Barada which means Subline, Exalted or Lofty and is said to be a Valarin loan word.  Baalath is a Hebrew name derived from Baalah meaning Mistress or Lady.

Manawenuz as the Valarin name of Manwe I can’t help but jump to connecting to Manehem a Hebrew name that means Comforter and thus possibly the Hebrew concept behind the Paraclete of John and 1 John and is also a name a number of Jewish traditions have given to Messiah Ben David.  Now fully identifying Manwe with either Jesus or The Holy Spirit would be a type of Arianism which I don’t believe Tolkien was going for, the Finrod ap Andreth established that Eru himself will incarnate as a Human to bring about the final healing of Arda.  But you can still argue Manwe is typologically stewarding the Seat of Authority destined for the future Incarnate Eru.

Ulluboz as the proposed root of Ulmo I speculate could come from Alluwph a Hebrew word that is sometimes translated Captain.

Aule’s name is said to come from Valarin Aȝūlēz.  Ayal is a Hebrew word meaning strength.  

Nessa’s name is suggested to be Valarin according to Pengolodh.  There are two Hebrew words I considered since Hebrew has two letters for S.  The shin one would be Nasa which means to carry or bear something, and the Samek one would be Nacah which means Adventure, Prove or Try.

Aromez as the origin of Orome could be related to Arumah a Hebrew name derived from the root rumah which means height.  Or form ‘orem which means craftiness.

Atharaigas as a name for The Sun could have its roots first in again atar/atarah meaning compass/crown/circle and Ygiya meaning Labor or Work. 

Osse’s name could be related to Hosea, a Hebrew name that means deliverer.

Ezellochar could come from Ezel meaning departure and achar meaning next.  How that’s a fitting name for the location of the two trees I’m unsure.

Machananaskad likely begins with machaneh again since it is a name for the meeting place of the Aratar. The next part could be nashaq which means armed. 

Jobless Reincarnation not Mushoku Tensei is the Anime I started liking.

Or rather Mushoku Tensei is an Anime I only like Dubbed.

I was late to trying this show in the first place, when I finally watched it even the second cour of season 1 had already been Dubbed for awhile though season 2 was still in the future.  What turned me off from watching for so long even though I actually like Isekai being an overplayed trend right now is the way it was talked about by many of it's fans.  How it was painted as almost a "Deconstruction" of the Isekai genre know it all Anitubers were getting tired of, (or "Unbuilt Trope" for those selling that "Grandfather of Isekai" narrative).  That it was about how Rudy is a bad person because he's a degenerate Otaku and the show is about his redemption arc.

When I finally watched it however I concluded it was another show that the Anti-Otaku types were trying to impose that moralizing narrative on.  That whatever criticisms the show does have of Rudeus's character none of it is because he was an Otaku.  And a large part of what lead me to that conclusion is in Episode 5 in the kidnapping incident after thinking in his head about the lessons he learned from Dating Sims accidently says out loud "Money can't buy Waifus".  And that moment instantly assured me this wasn't an Anti-Otaku show,, it was an Otaku affirming show.

Thing is recently as I watched a Mushoku Tensei youtuber talking about a very different issue she said something about the Kidnapping Incident that made me start to think there was a fundamental change in meaning in the Dub of this scene.  So I went to Hulu found the subbed version of this scene and indeed it's different.

1. The Inner Monologue talks instead about how he regretted wasting so much of his old life playing VNs and video games.

2. The key line is instead "Money can't buy Dere".

Number 2 is a difference that doesn't matter, Western Otaku don't use "Dere" on it's own like that so it's a Dub decision I'd defend but wouldn't see as an improvement inherently.

Number 1 is the issue.  Leaning about number one makes me fear the show is what I feared it was all along.  No it's still not blaming VNs/Dating Sims themselves for anything per se, but I want more then that from my Otaku Hero's Journies, I want Otaku values and Otaku Media to be explicitly affirmed not merely tolerated at best.  I want them to be the reason for our protagonists' virtues not in any way related to their vices.

And this isn't the only Dub vs Sub difference along these lines.  As I learned from Explanation's Point's horrible video on the show after Rudeus's first almsot night with Eris in the Sub the ideas he learned from Dating Sims are blamed for what happened while in the Dub he blames himself for failing to learn from them.  And so I start wondering how many other times the Dub changes are being more approving of Otakudom.

Now if this Blog has any Normie readers you're probably baffled at the prospect of saying a show should teach the Dating Sims/VNs are a good place to learn about how to treat women.  Well they may not be the absolute best place, but the thing is there are plenty of good thoughtful Dating Sims that are trying to educate their male players on exactly the gender issues these cynical Anti-Otaku think the medium as whole merely uncritically encourages.  Especially among the classic 90s Bishojo Games that the 16bit Sensation was appealing to nostalgia for.  Amilee Doree is a YouTuber who's a woman who's talked about those kinds of VNs fighting to give them the credit they deserve.  

But this is also a localization change worth talking about for how it's the opposite of what most of these modern Anti-Dub reactionary Anime fans think is driving the makers of modern Funimation/Crunchyroll Dubs.  They think these Texans are hyper Woke scolds trying to appeal to the Noralities types even though it's them who made the Ghost Stories Dub.  A Dub that is explicitly more Pro-Otaku then the Sub should absolutely destroy their entire world view, but instead no one's talking about it.

Now there are a lot of good reason to mock Explanation Points in his bad Rudeus video, but the fact that he said he was unsure which was more accurate to the Japanese is not one.  That Subs can make translations mistakes as well. There is good reason many assume they'd be smaller and that a reinterpretation of the text that virtually reverses the meaning could only be made by a Dub.  But as someone constantly going back and editing really embarrassing typos on this very Blog I know full well how easily forgetting to include one word can completely reverse the meaning of what I meant to say.  The fact is the simple fact that the Sub was made day of broadcast while the Dub had at least a couple weeks means it had for better or for worse more thought put into it.

Now that LN readers seem to affirm the accuracy of the Sub here is the main reason I think the Sub is probably accurate.  They of course are reading those LNs via translations and this Anime has not always been faithful to the LNs  But still I will concede that in all likelyhood the Sub is what's accurate.

But I don't actually care about Accuracy, the Dub versions of these two scenes is what I prefer for ideological reasons that don't even relate to why I generally only watch Dubs in the first place.

Nintendo was right to stick with Cartridges for the Fifth Generation

So many YouTube videos on gaming history still repeat the old conventional wisdom that Nintendo’s refusal to jump to CDs right away was one of the greatest blunders of all time.  And I’m tired of it.

No one denies that Nintendo 64 Games like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were the key groundbreaking developments of true fully 3D Gaming.  The original PlayStation and Sega Saturn never made a fully 3D game like those.  And what is more well known to non industry insiders now than it used to be is that if Nintendo had jumped to CDs that console Generation they would not have been able to make those games for it.  So many 3rd Parties wanted the CDs because they wanted FMVs and less limited audio options, but there was a trade off for that which players didn’t understand at the time.  Nintendo then like now prioritized actual innovation in how Games are played over flashy cosmetic things that look cool in a trailer.  

And the thing about Final Fantasy VII is that the FMVs are exactly the part of the game that visually hasn’t aged well.  Most of the time I find these failed attempts at “cinematic” animation ugly and would much rather have watched those scenes play out with the charming 32 bit models.  The only one that works is the opening Cinematic, but it’s so minimalist compared to the others that when I look at CutScenes in N64 Games like Jet Force Gemini and Majora’s Mask I see no reason the same scene couldn’t have been done on it.

And another thing, the Sony PlayStation launched in 1994, it was on North American store shelves in September of 95.  Yet the great Iconic PlayStation games didn't start coming out till 1997.  It took seeing Nintendo break 3D ground in the spring of 96 for them to even start tapping their own inferior console’s full potential.

Yet still so many of those 97 PlayStation do nothing in the actual game play that couldn’t be done on the N64, in fact I see few that couldn’t be done on the SNES.

And it’s not like only Nintendo themselves could make great games for the N64.  Rare had a slew of Classics.  And then look at what Star Wars did on the Console, Shadows of The Empire and Pod Racer.  George Lucas had a similar innovation over superficiality spirit to Nintendo so it makes sense his IPs were among the few licensed games on the N64.

The FFVII we got was a great game, but it could have been so much better on the N64.

By the next gen things had advanced enough so using CDs wouldn't hold Nintendo back mechanically anymore. 

Environmentalist Allegories in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have a common recurring problem

From Final Fantasy VII in 1997 to Darling in The Franxx in 2018, but also in between many interpretations of how and why Krypton blew up.  The common tactic is to allegorize it so it’s that Humanity or the Evil Corporations are killing the Earth via what they take out of it, essentially being Parasites who are Vampirizing The Earth.  

That is a problem because the actual issue with real life Climate Change is the opposite, the Fossil Fuels themselves are just Ancient Prehistoric Garbage in and of itself removing them from the earth isn’t a problem.  The problem is how the Atmosphere is poisoned by the byproduct of burning those fuels.  The primary issue is what we’re putting in, not what we're taking out.

Now I don’t think a good Allegory needs to be a perfect 1 to 1 allegory, my opinion on allegory in general is similar to Tolkien’s.  For example in a JRPG type setting having the energy source also be a source of Magic makes perfect sense.

So you may wonder what the problem even is?  The problem is getting the nature of how we are harming the planet reversed makes it a lot harder to propose any useful solutions, since both scenarios also have it so we need to do more than just stop, we also need to fix the damage already done somehow.

The truth is something like The Lifestream to me would make a better allegory for the renewable energies we want to encourage. On a Metaphysical level I have trouble believing something like that could ever be depleted.

It’s not a coincidence that this mistake is made so many times however.  It’s a product of the desire to tie environmentalism to mysticism, making The Earth itself a Deity we are taking from and not giving back to.  But also way back in the day the issue of CO2 emissions caused by Fossil Fuels wasn’t even the original main concern of the Environmentalist movement, it first grew out of Conservationism, concerns about things like Deforestation.  The thing is as bad as Deforestation can be, it's not the irreversible damage that CO2 emissions are becoming.

The Irony about how these tropes pop up even in Japanese media is that I feel it would actually fit Japanese Mysticism more.to make it a matter of poisoning the Life Force of The Planet rather than Vampirising it.  Shinto mysticism includes a concept called Kagere, direct references to which in Anime often get translated as Sullied.  The concept of a spiritual pollution tied to immoral or even merely taboo acts or sometimes just negative emotions.  Plenty of Anime and Video Games have concepts that definitely feel to me like a fantastical adaptation of that concept given a new name, Miasma gets used a lot, the recent Zelda Games have Malice/Gloom, Tales of Zestiria has Maleficence.  Now I consider this concept an unhealthy and toxic way to look at morality, but as a Fantastical allegory for CO2 emissions I think it would be much better.  Make it the source of your Dark Magic and the Planet’s Life Force the source of the regular Magic.

Another thing both FFVII and Franxx have in common is that in the backstory actual Fossil Fuels had been the dominant form of energy production before the villains of the story succeeded in imposing their system on the world.   And that is where the concerns I’m talking about here are parallel to the main point of my blog post titled Dystopian Science Fiction only Reinforces the Real World Status Quo.  Making your allegory for fossil fuels something that replaced what it's an allegory for makes it so many won’t see it as the allegory for that at all.  Fears that what we might replace Fossil Fuels with could turn out to be worse have long been a vital tactic of how Fossil Fuel Energy companies suppress alternatives, Nuclear Energy never took off in the United States because shows like The Simpsons present it as cartoonishly toxic.

I imagine critics of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII who come at it from a Leftist perspective see all the stuff about rebuilding the Oil Industry in stories set after the original game as Recuperation, but that an Oil Industry being suppressed by ShinRa helped cause the crisis was part of the Lore already in the original game, that wasn’t something added later.

Both these stories I actually like overall, I defended the later part of Franxx in 2018 when doing so was not very popular, and FFVII’s lore intrigues me for how it can intentionally or not be read as Stoic and how I think it’s thematically more like Tolkien then any Medieval setting JRPG.  This is just one critique I felt had to be made.

Popeye and Betty Boop are among the next icons to enter the Public Domain

I think it ironically shows the victory of Copyright Holders that the characters we keep talking about looking forward to entering the Public Domain soon every January are the ones who are currently being constantly milked by their IP holders.

Popeye The Sailor and Buck Rogers from 1929 should enter the Public Domain next year (though some of their core supporting cast will take a few more years with Bluto not appearing till 1932), and then 2026 Betty Poop and Bimbo from 1930 as well as Pulp Hero The Shadow, and then in 2027 Dick Tracey from 1931.  

These are characters who are just as important to the Early History of Comics and Animation as any Disney and WB owned characters and at the time just a much household names.  But because the owners of their Copyrights have been for various reasons unable or unwilling to do much if anything with them for several decades their Stars have diminished.

Popeye, Betty Boop and Bimbo should be important to Otaku like me because they were the initial main stars of Fleischer Studios.  Anime as I've said before has it's origins in various ways in how Japan was westernized during the Early to Mid 20th Centuries.  And part of what set dominant animation trends in Japan apart from what could have been was how people like Osamu Tezuka were more inspired by the work of Fliescher Studios then Disney or Warner.  If Tezuka is the Grandfather of Anime then they are Great Grandparents.

Anime is a diverse industry with countless distinct styles within it.  But when you break down the timeline and observe how indeed most of the dominant ones evolved at least in part from the style of Osamu Tezuka, you can also go back further and equally see his debt to the Flieschers, and see how in a lot of ways Betty Boop is the first Anime Girl (even an Idol given how she's often specifically a musical entertainer) and Popeye the first Battle Shonen.

Once the ability to use these characters is no longer limited I would really like to see Anime Fans and Creators on both sides of the Pacific take advantage of the opportunity.  I want to see a Mahou Shoujo Betty Boop with Bimbo as her animal mascot.  And I wanna see Popeye entered into some Tournament Arcs.

Thing is the falling into obscurity caused by what I've talked about causes a lack of awareness that prevents their Public Domain Status from being taken advantage of as rapidly and speedily as we saw these last few weeks with Steamboat Willy.  Another character Fliescher Studios used a lot was Koko The Clown from 1919 and I haven't seen anything done with him yet.

Likewise Charlie Chan from 1925 should be in the Public Domain now.  Charlie Chan is a prominent example on the "Mexicans love Speedy Gonzales" TVTropes page making him a complicated relic of 20as and 30s American Pop Culture.  But in my view he could easily be fully reclaimed if it was Asian Americans themselves who reimagined the character for the 21st Century.  I would also hope there is an Asian Trans Woman among them to help prevent them from repeating the common Transphobic mistakes of the Detective Genre.

So let's start thinking about these important yet semi-obscure characters more when we think about taking advantage of the Public Domain.

Rudeus Greyrat is not a Bad Person

Rudeus is not a bad Person, and the kind of people who think he is are who I actually consider bad people. Rudeus is flawed, chiefly he is way more perverted then Americans are used to tolerating from a Protagonist. 

But he is absolutely at his Core a Good Person and very likable. In one episode specifically we see how incredibly disturbed he is anytime someone dies, even a non-human he just met who was being an @$$hole to him. He has a strict opposition to killing people, even bad people, exactly what everyone on the post 2016 Internet has been wanting Batman and Superman to be written like again. This is a way of thinking this show only the American Audience could have. 

I call these American Values Puritan not because I intend a direct comparison to the morality of 17th Century English Dissenters but because of the basic etymology of what Puritan means. Because it's a very Idealist Understanding of Morality to think someone is a Bad Person simply because they've committed some specific moral offenses (whether or not it's right to view as immoral) that they haven't specifically atoned for. 

Oh I guess there is some Japanese precedent for thinking of Morality that way, the Kagere concept. But Otaku Media has a long history of being critical of that Purity fixation. And I believe that includes this very show. 

Rudeus is a net positive influence on the world he is currently living in, that's what a good Materialist Understanding of Morality should care about. 

Some people even throw their being disgusted by Cousincest into their condemnations of Rudeus, the fact is disgust at Incest is a social construct and the alleged genetic risks caused by it are nothing when it's merely first cousins. So I cannot take seriously anyone who treats that as an objective moral standard.  Cousins relationships being Taboo is also completely alien to Japan, it's legal to this day and was historically often downright encouraged.  So this more then anything else is absolute a modern western value being imposed onto this show by western viewers that no one in Japan would care about.

Rudeus has no interest in Brother-Sister incest having explicitly rejected his half sister's mother's intentions to make her daughter his lover in the future.

I also notice all this moral judgment or condemning of Rudeus has a lot to do with refusing to acknowledge that he is a child because of their simplistic understanding of how this kind of Reincarnation works. There is more to maturity than how many memories you have in your brain. Rudeus all through season 1 is still under even this world's age of consent which is itself younger than ours being 15. He still does not truly have Adult Maturity which his behavior shows constantly.   It is a scientific fact that the Brain isn't fully developed till 25, no amount excess memories change that.

If the show wanted us to look at Rudeus as an adult it would be different since it is all supposed to be done by Magic,, but contrary to casual assumptions it does not.

The only counter arguments one could make is how often his internal Monologue says he thinks of himself as 40ish. But children often want to think of themselves as more mature than they actually are, Rudeus simply has an excuse to do so. And that isn't even the only way his internal Monologue is an Unreliable Narrator. Often it's more what Rudeus is trying to convince himself of, not his actual true feelings. I don't know whether a Freudian would call that his Ego or Superego or Id but it's something along those lines. 

And on the subject of his emotional age, the tells that show us he is fundamentally still a child despite all his desire to pretend is not are abundant.

I didn't even develop this position on Physical Age vs "Accumulated Life Experience" for defending this Anime, it started with my takes on Vampire Fiction.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2022/10/teenage-vampires-can-never-be-guilty-of.html

And all that is leaving aside how this 30ish Adult Japanese Man was an emotionally stunted NEET who'd basically stopped Maturing in High School. The whole point of his Reincarnation is to be a do over of growing up, that's the sense in which it is a Second Chance not a Moral One. Yet all these Westerners who love any excuse to call an Otaku protagonist a Pedophile ignore that and treat him as an Adult even though the Text clearly does not want us to. 

And no I'm not making this point just to defend his Sexual Attraction to girls older than his physical age. When the narrative gets to his confrontation with Paul in the second cour I've seen people argue they are equally at fault when that is absurd. The show entirely frames this as Paul being a shitty Dad for expecting his 10 year old son to intuitively know what he thinks he should have done. The only character in the story who ever concludes Rudeus is also at fault is Rudeus himself in the end which just shows how forgiving and responsibility minded he is.

In terms of number of year Roxy is older then Rudeus no matter which of his potential birthdates you start with.  Because Roxy is a species that ages different the audience has no trouble seeing her as still a Teenager.  If amount of time doesn't trump biology for her then it can't for Rudeus either.

ExplanationPoint's main attempt to refute this whole line of reasoning is to say "you know who can't take advantage of children, a child", but that's a self defeating augment here because Rudeus never does succeed in making any progress with Eris when he tried to be aggressive.  If Rudeus actually had an adult sexual predator's ablity to manipulate children, and was willing to use it, he would have handled those situations very differently.

Compare those first half of season 1 scenes to how season 1 ends.  When Eris sleeps with Rudeus while she is an Adult by this world's legal definition but he still is not, she withholds from him the fact that she's planning to leave right after and that is the source of his season 2 trauma.  The only character in the show actually harmed by sexual contact with an older person is Rudeus.

Fandom Wiki Network sucks

I'm definitely a supporter of the growing Anti-Fandom movement in the Fan Wiki Community. 

mossbag and Connorsseur both have YouTube videos on the subject I highly recommend.

Some of franchises I often need to use wikis for don't have their Fandom alternative even as the second option to come up on a search, partly because of their not so straight forward names.  So I want to share some here real quick.

DetectiveConanWorld.Com has a Wiki that is a great resource for Case Closed.

TolkienGateway.Net is great for Arda Lore.

WikiMoon.Org is a non Fandom Sailor Moon Wiki.

FinalFantasyWiki.Com, Dragon-Quest.Org and SaGaWiki.Org don't seem to be as comprehensive as they need to be to compete with Fandom yet, but they can be made better simply with the help of new contributors.

I was also already a user of some of the more well known ones mentioned in those YT videos.

However there are some I'm still frustrated to see have no Fanodm alternative, at least not one I've found searching.  Wookipedia is still the only option for Star Wars, DC Database is still the best option for DC and the others are also on Fandom.  PDSH is also a Wiki I like to use and wish would migrate.

And getting back to my Weeb stuff, ToAru, and the Nasuverse and Code Geass and Overflow still only have their Fandom options.  For Overflow there's a lot of information on the broader School Days Universe only available in English on that wiki, I wish that would change.

I also have occasional interest in the DereTypes Wiki so wish it would migrate, as well as the Dubbing Wiki and Audio Drama Wiki.

Update February 1st: I felt like mentioning this Megaman Wiki I stumbled upon.

https://megaman.miraheze.org/wiki/Mega_Man_Knowledge_Base

Here's a page where Miraheze attempts to comprehensively list their Wikis.

https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Gazetteer_of_wikis

Update February 19th: There is a non Fandom Song of Ice and Fire Wiki.

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Main_Page

Dark Elves in Anime are nothing like The Drow

I find it interesting how whenever the Moriquendi come up in something I'm reading or watching about Arda Lore and the author needs to stop and explain how “Dark Elves” in Tolkien have nothing to do with the almost Demonic Qualities Dark Elves have in modern Fantasy.  Because it’s really mainly DnD Dark Elves they have in mind, perhaps also the second Thor movie.

I watch a lot of Anime, and while on the one hand the influence of Tolkien is way less direct on Fantasy Anime that feature Elves and Dwarves and Goblins then he is in The West, so is DnD, in Japan other Tabletop Role Playing Games were always more popular than DnD.  And I can’t help but wonder if almost by sheer coincidence the Dark Elves you see in Anime are not too dissimilar to the Avari?

These Anime definitely still use the term differently.  Moriquendi in Tolkien’s writings refers neither to a moral assessment or anything about how they looked, it simply meant neither they or their ancestors ever saw the Light of the Trees.  I think most casual film only Tolkien fans would be most shocked to learn that Legolas and the other Mirkwood Elves are Moriquendi not Calaquendi.  So I feel like mentioning here that the standard Elves you see in Anime and JRPGs even if they are called “Light Elves” or their home is called Alfheim are if I compared them to any of Tolkien’s Elves really Wood Elves, perhaps even more specifically the Sylvan Elves before the Sindar royal families took them over.  The thing that might most disappoint a Tolkien fan watching Fantasy is that there are no High Elves, no one who seems at all like the Vanyar, Noldor or even the Teleri of Beleriand.  The Anime or JRPG races that do give off Calaquendi vibes to me are not actually called Elves at all but rather are the Cetra of Final Fantasy VII and the Iorph of Maquia.

Tolkien devotes surprisingly little time to describing what any of his Elves looked like, especially in terms of Skin, Eye or Hair color.  The Sylvan Elves are often assumed to all be Golden haired because only one of them ever had their hair color described at all.  It is possible those Avari tribes who stayed in the East or South even into the Third Age may have developed dark skin tones just like the humans living in those parts of the world, but either way that’s not why they’re called Dark Elves.

There is a lot of talk about how Dragon Quest is the key Ur Text of a lot of aspects of modern “Generic” Fantasy Anime (like how Orcs in Isekai are usually Humanoid Pig creatures rather than another word for Goblin as it is in Tolkien).  However it seems the Anime Dark Elf trend is an exception to this, I have never played any Dragon Quest game but from skimming the Wiki they seem to have no Dark Elves.

So the archetypal basis for the Anime Dark Elves I’m talking about seems to come from Record of Lodoss War, principally the character of Pirotess who’s also important to the spin off Legend of Crystania.  Likewise the Blond Haired Green Clad Archer Elf Maidens of modern Anime largely descend from Deedlit.  Record of Lodoss began literally as a Tabletop Roleplaying Game campaign, but again whenever someone talking about it says it simply was DnD they are assuming, it seems they mostly made their own rules that drew more on Tunnels & Trolls and RuneQuest.  And I’d say the greatest evidence of that is how Pirotess is nothing like the Drow of DnD.  Modern Anime Dark Elves clearly based on her in part include Aura Shurifon in War On Geminar and Yao Ha Ducy in Gate.

The look of these Dark Elves tends to be Silver Hair and a fairly Dark Skin tone but not like you see in Africa.  The Japanese have a fairly decent variety of Skin Complexions among themselves, there are a number of darker skinned Anime characters in shows set in Japan who the western audience tends to at first assume must be some type of Gaijin but usually no it really just represents coming from certain regions of Japan.  And I think that may be largely what they are going for with these Dark Elves, because they are at the end of the day not all that fundamentally different from the Vanilla Elves.

If you brought back the old Norse terminology you could have both types of Dark Elves in the same story, with Drow style Elves as the Svartalfar and these RoLW style Anime Dark Elves as the Dokkalfar.

Ten year anniversaries to 2014 Anime

 Perhaps it’s odd that these weren’t the first 2024 anniversaries I thought of talking about since 2014 is when I started this blog, and using Blogspot in general.

I don’t think 2014 can be considered a turning point or pivotal year for Anime the way 2004 and 2017 can.  But what it is important to is my personal history with Anime.

That I still consider 2014 in some sense the beginning of my Anime journey is difficult to explain, I was definitely already familiar with a number of Anime, even some niche ones you wouldn’t expect to be among the few a Western Comic Book Nerd has seen, educated enough on Yuri specifically to recognize the Class S allusion in Mariko/Yukio in The Wolverine in 2013.  Yet it wasn’t till 2016 that it truly took over and I became willing to call myself an Otaku.

Sailor Moon Crystal and the 90s Anime going up on Hulu got my attention as I’d always had some interest in Sailor Moon but had not truly completed any series of it yet.  And then from that Hulu recommendations at the time lead me to Madoka Magica and then Utena and then Rose of Versallies.

SMC was the first time I even kinda watched something as it originally aired in Japan.  But there were at least 2 other 2014 shows I had seen before 2015 was over, Engaged to The Unidentified and Yuki Yuna Is A Hero.

YuYuYu and Wixoss together make 2014 perhaps the year that “Madoka Clones”, became cemented as its own Sub Genre.  Season 2 of Chunibyo airing that year is an interesting coincidence.  As well as the second season of Prisma Illya.

No Game No Life was a show I watched early on in my taking an interest in Isekai.

Other fun shows of 2014 include D-Frag which could have been the new School Rumble if it’d gotten more seasons, Aldnoah Zero and Terror in Resonance are both shows I consider underrated.  Akuma No Riddle and Is The Order A Rabbit were also notable.  The Coffin Princess is a show I have On Hold.  Akame Ga Kill and SAO II are also from 2014.  Amagi Brilliant Park, Psycho-Pass 2, Unlimited Blade Works and Magic Kaito 1412 ended the year strong.

Sakura Trick is a show I was surprised to see was that recent, it is perhaps the last show that could be mistaken for a Bronze Age show.

The Detective Conan movie of that year was The Dimensional Sniper the last film written by the guy who wrote most of the prior ones and first to feature Sera Masumi or the FBI characters.  It's one of the better movies, probably the best of it's decade.

Anime Terms need to be defined based on Vibes rather than Technicalities

For most Anime terms the idea is to explain the appeal of a certain genre or trope or character archetype.  That way of defining something can be more subjective so I will agree the line is not always easy to spot.  But it will steer us wrong far less often than a strictly technical definition.

More often than not the technical definitions I'm referring to wind up being more broad rather than more strict, but there are notable exceptions to that.

Yuri is the one where I have the least problem with the more broad technical definition.  Using the word casually for all wlw content in Anime/Manga/LNs/VNs and Bishoujo Games is something I do myself and it’s become far too pervasive for anyone to stop it even if they wanted to. That said, few would deny there are certain Vibes associated with the term that make a more specific explanation necessary.

Erica Friednam also uses the word of all wlw content in Anime but also has a more specific definition she likes to use being “Lesbian content without Lesbian identity”.  My problem with that definition is the kind of judgmental vibe it has in the context of how she often talks about what character she does and doesn’t consider a “Real Lesbian”.  It feels intentionally or not related to concepts like Political Lesbianism and other relics of Second Wave Feminism. 

Yuri Scholars like Erica Freidman will also talk about the concept in Japanese Culture of Class S, the notion that adolescent girls are expected to have quasi romantic friendships that they will grow out of when they become adults.  And my contention is that Yuri as a Genre is the Class S set up, a given work may play it completely straight, it may explicitly reject the notion that they will grow out of it, or it may refuse to address that final question, either way the initial Class S set up is the core of what Yuri is.

And because parallel ideas to Class S did exist in Western Society in the past, I consider it appropriate to let our use of Yuri language drift into how we talk about Western Media only where a Class S parallel is arguably present.  So for example many of those old Lesbian Pulp Fiction novels of the 50s and 60s can fit in with the Yuri genre, as can Nancy Garden novels like Annie On My Mind and Good Moon Rising, as well Emily Fields’s complicated love life on Pretty Little Liars.  However, using it to describe Harley/Ivy feels wrong.

Bifauxnen is a term that can easily at face value seem like just an Anime word for Butch, but I feel it’s definitely more specific than that.  Butch can refer to women to have no aesthetic femininity left in them at all, Bifauxnen definitely does not.  When you look at some of the standard Archetypal Bifauxnen from Haruka Tennoh/Sailor Uranus to Amane in Strawberry Panic to most recently Manaria Sousse from I’m In Love With The Villainess it’s clear that the concept is in fact a particular blend of Masculine and Feminine, (I’d love to see a Bifauxnen character who was Assigned Male At Birth but I’m not holding my breath for it).  They are Masculine in a Princely or Knightly way but not in a muscular hairy barbarian warrior way.

The Fire Witch in the Boogiepop LNs is described as Bifauxnen but in adaptations I feel only the 2000 Live Action Movie where she’s played by Maya Kurosu succeeds in conveying that, however I may just have a bias against seeing it in any long haired character design.  Similarly in the recent Willow TV Series Kit Tanthalos played by Ruby Cruz proves a Western Character can qualify, it really pisses me off that Disney buried that show.  

Returning to 2D characters Cure Sword/Spade in Doki Doki PreCure/Glitter Force is a good example, one of my favorite Yuri Doujins involved her and the Blue called Jealous Jealousy 238622. So short hair tends to help but it’s not all there is to it, Ami Mizuno for example has short hair but doesn’t at all come off as androgynous because of it.

The Yandere is where my takes on things may start getting controversial.  First is that you will sometimes see a Male character described as a Yandere and this to me misses the point.  A Male being obsessive and overprotective and controlling and unwilling to take no for an answer is unfortunately in real life far from uncommon, it’s a real concern Girls have to worry about every time one even looks at them.  The Yandere is supposed to be Absurd, it’s supposed to be the unlikely Absurdity of a Girl taking on those conventionally Masculine characteristics but still being Hyper Feminine in every other way.  Treating it like a Gender Neutral term that just happens to be associated with Cute Anime Girls because that’s all Otaku care about ignores the deeper commentary at the heart of it all.  At best a Femboy/Otokonoko could be a Yandere but in that situation I’d immediately be afraid of the potentially Transphobic implications.

A second tendency I’ve noticed among Yandere that is not in the textbook definition is that they tend to be pretty conservative sexually, almost like that’s another comedic duality, being so nonchalant about killing but then incredibly Chaste.  It’s not just because they like to call the girls they see as a romantic threat to them Sluts, lots of female characters might do that in the heat of the moment regardless of their actual feelings on sex.  It’s that they’ll hold the object of their affection captive for days or weeks and never try anything, and they’ll get all shy about their Bra coming off in the Pool like any other Anime Girl.  Kotonoha in School Days is willing to have Sex with Makoto but only once she feels that’s her only option.

The big possible exceptions to that are people who are controversial to classify as a Yandere for more reasons than just this.  Sekai in School Days I refuse to classify as a Yandere first and foremost because in the original version of the VN she only gets homicidal under very specific circumstances that include her being pregnant and feeling abandoned and she only kills Makoto not the other woman. Shion Sonozaki in Higurashi arguably predates the formation of the Yandere and her mental breakdown happens when she thinks Satoshi is long dead, and it also wouldn't have happened without the virus.

The closest thing to a Western Analogue for the Yandere are the Female Stalker characters you see in a lot of Lifetime Movies.  However they are the opposite on the conservative sexuality point, they are usually a Femme Fatale at the same time.  Because their target audience are traditional stay at home housewives who regardless of how they vote can be assumed to be at least a little socially conservative, so they are made to appeal to the anxieties such women have about the kinds of Girls they fear might steal their Sons or Husbands from them.  The Anime Yandere is designed to appeal to Otaku who have a complicated relationship with Japan’s Purity Culture.

Netorare is a term that has multiple disputable aspects to how to define it.  But to start with the problem with simply treating it as an Anime term for Cuckolding is that Cuckolding in western live action Porn is almost exclusively a subgenre of Femdom, they involve women who never intended to be faithful.  

In an NTR Hentai or Doujin, even in the rare cases where it is even remotely reasonable to argue the girl consented, it still wasn’t premeditated on her part, she was Seduced or Tricked or Manipulated.  Hentai that rather does the above will get mistakenly tagged as NTR but they clearly have a different vibe.

There are other mistakes in how English Language websites apply the Tag.  If the Protagonist is the one taking someone else’s Girl or Boyfriend that’s Netori which some sites fail to recognize as a separate thing. And if the Girl is technically cheating but her husband or boyfriend isn’t a character in the story then he doesn’t actually matter.

However Netorare is a broad term in that it’s about the Emotional Feeling it creates and has nothing to do with there being a formal relationship, it can be about the protagonist’s Crush they never confessed to, or a close relative.  The VN You and Me and Her literally uses the word in reference to the prospect of your love interest dating someone else and not you.

Last but not least is in fact the term Anime itself.  

The common assertion that in Japan that word is used of all Animation is in fact an oversimplification of its complex history, Cynic Clinic and STEVEM and Carbioo-kun have done videos on that nuance.  It begins with how Osamu Tezuka himself in one conversation at least distinguished Anime from Animation.  In that context however it treats as innate to the definition certain tendencies of TV Anime that some Western Anime fans see as a Bug rather than a Feature, and excluding Ghibli from qualifying as Anime is something few would be happy with.  So that isn’t a debate I want to settle here.

But I do want to express that if Country of Origin is going to be treated as an important part of how we classify something as Anime or not, it’s kind of Racist to count Chinese and Korean Cartoons but not sufficiently Anime Inspired Western Cartoons.  It is an inherently White perspective of the world that assumes other East Asian countries are probably more similar to Japan than anyone else.  Japan lived in massive isolation from even the rest of East Asia for Centuries until contact with the West broke it.  Modern Japan is heavily Westernized and the origins of its approach to Animation are a part of that with some being influenced by Disney but Tezuka more by the Fleischers. So China and Korea and everyone else in the Far East’s Animation industries may be very adjacent to all of that in their origin stories, but they are still not the same thing.

Retro Rewatching of 2004 Anime

My stated intention to devote a lot of 2023 to helping start the Nostalgia Boom early 2000s Anime was not as successful as I’d have liked it to be.  But some fruit was borne.

One thing I noticed is a lot of what I devoted time to wound up being specifically from 2004, shows that will be having their 20th Anniversary this year.

2004 was an important year for the Magical Girl Genre with the original Futari wa Pretty Cure, much of PGSM airing that year, and the first season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.  But also Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch and its sequel Pure which I still have On Hold even though I think about it a lot.  Tweeny Witches is another obscure show from 2004 I may return to.

Madlax is an enjoyable Hot Mess of a show that I like to consider a good example of the kind of Anime you can only find in the 2000s, along with Burst Angel which was a fun Anime NeoWestern.

Monster also started in 2004. I still haven’t finished that one but what I’ve seen I agree is good television.  And it’s not an Otaku show at all, Normies can get into it.

Most controversially of course was my passionate defense of Elfen Lied.

My preferring the original Fullmetal Alchemist to Brotherhood is also moderately controversial.

Specifically the Winter of 2004 had another show I still haven’t finished called Gilgamesh, that show has a lot going for its premise but its vibes don’t gel with me as much as I want them to.

From late in the year Mai Hime and To Heart Remember My Memories are two other shows I have On Hold I’ve been meaning to return to.  While Gankutsou and School Rumble are two more Classics of 2000s Anime.

I also enjoyed Rozen Maiden and Howl’s Moving Castle.  But we don’t talk about Kanazuki no Miko.

On the subject of Detective Conan aka Case Closed the first episode of 2004 was 345 the climax of the Vermouth Arc, and the very next episode opens with some aftermath to all that, but then it's two years before the main storyline picks up again.  In Spring was 356 the Kaito Kid episode of the year and the same month also had the 8th Movie Magician of The Silver Sky which I still rank among the best.  Episodes 371-372 I’ve noted as being one of the Columbo Style cases which I always have a fondness for.  Then 2004 ended with 383 a two hour special Heiji episode about Baseball that I wound up enjoying.  I still haven’t seen most 2004 episodes so I’m sure there are other Gems.

On the subject of Pokémon, some of the Pokémon Chronicles Episodes aired this year in Japan, while the main series was still in the Advanced generation.  And the movie for this year was Destiny Deoxys which I rank up in the upper tier generally preferring the Odd Number movies during the early Gens.

So I want to devote some time this year to revisiting some of the above and maybe watching more, but I won't be limiting myself to 2004.  Some 2002 and 2003 or even earlier stuff will be having the 20th anniversary of their English Localizations this year, but it’s not always easy to find out exactly when such localizations were made.

Septimal Anniversaries of 2017 Anime (Winter Focus)

I'm pretty sure I've still seen more Anime from 2017 then any other single year.  It was in late 2016 I started following Seasonal Anime.  So even 2017 shows I actually didn't watch till last year I still usually did in part because of the impact 2017 left on my memory.

The various Anime of 2017 will be having their Seventh Anniversaries this year which makes this a good time to revisit stuff from that year.  Both what objectively stood the test of time and what seemingly only I still think about.

You don't need at least a full Decade to start becoming Nostalgic for something, I started feeling oddly Nostalgic for 2017 during 2020.  And in 2022 we started getting unexpected sequels to seemingly forgotten 2017 shows suggesting it wasn't just me.

The first time I devoted a post on this blog to talking about how I'd seen so much of 2017 was in 2019 where I talked about ranking Anime from that year with presumably less of a recency bias then the usually trend of talking the immediate prior year.  In hindsight that year still had a bit of a recency bias at least in my mind.  Now we are truly in a time when 2017 can be considered too old to be current but not old enough to be Retro.

But I've also realized I don't like ranking things, most things I like I like about the same and/or for different reasons which makes me not like comparing them.  I'm also way to easy to please for my assessment on whether something is worth watching or not to be considered all that credible to anyone who even slightly agrees with the sentiment that most seasonal Anime is forgettable mediocrity at best.  There is rarely anything I Completed I will not consider wroth recommending in some way, or even much of anything I dropped I can't see redeeming qualities in.

So instead I want to comment on shows from 2017 I watched with more of a focus on what kind of appeal they have so readers can try to guess if it'd appeal to them or not.

I'm also torn between trying to cover all of 2017 in this post or just focusing on the Winter Season and saving the rest for future posts.  I decided to compromise, the last section of this post will try to cover everything from Winter 2017 I've seen, but first I'll comment on a couple from later seasons at the top of my mind right now, with the option to revisit them in a post more properly about their season later.

Unless said otherwise everything should be on Crunchyroll (except the movie they're rarely streaming anywhere).  Also there is probably an English Dub unless I say there isn't or it's a PreCure.

First of all the last post I made in 2023 included a comment on the second season of In Another World With My Smartphone, which I found mildly disappointing for perhaps unfair reasons, but I still stand by season 1 as a perfectly fun show that doesn't deserve how often it gets dismissed as the posterchild for generic disposable Isekai.  If you're one of those people who've become more tolerant of Isekai over the last few years rather then less you should maybe give it a second chance.  Land of Leadale had the same director so if you enjoyed it you'll probably have some fun with Smartphone.  If in general you like more Slice of Life Isekai that are not even pretending to be about some Epic adventure then Smartphone might be for you.  And it was the first Isekai to openly take a Poly resolution to it's Harem long before even that became a trend.

Re:Creators has been on my mind a lot since I finally watched it.  It's most remembered among followers of AniTube for Mother's Basement declaring it an "Instant Classic", and I now agree that it should have been.  I blame the fact that it was behind Amazon's double Pay Wall at the time and also how it still doesn't have a Dub, the later is the reason I didn't watch it till last year.  I've already talked about it on this Blog in the context of Kuudere being Stoics and Auteur Theory, and I added it to one older post where it's be a spoiler for me even say it was relevant to that.  If you are at all into Meta Anime, Anime about Anime, it's one of the best of the last Decade.  If you are a fan of the Magical Girl Genre is has a character who should definitely check out.  I as a DC Nerd also compare it to Crisis on Infinite Earths in a few ways.  It's still only legally on Amazon PrimeVideo but fortunately now it's included in the standard subscription, same one that gives you free shipping and a bunch of other shows.

Classroom of The Elite is perhaps worth commenting on now since it's season 3 is airing this season, I mentioned that show already in my first post of 2024.  I plan on waiting to Binge season 3 till all of it is Dubbed and may rewatch seasons 1 and 2 right before then.   If you like shows that more revolve around characters trying to outsmart each other then action it's a decent entry in that genre, I think it holds up better then say Talentless Nana.

And now to breaking down the Winter of 2017.

There is one carry over from Fall 2016, Trickster, which I Dropped after 16 episodes, so I saw at least some from 2017, but yeah the middle of the show bugged me.  But I clearly enjoyed something if I got that far.  It's a Detective Show with some ambiguous Yaoi and at least one supernatural element.

Akiba's Trip is one of the shows I didn't watch till last year, and shockingly I don't think I even recall hearing about it at the time.  It was perhaps the last time doing an Anime about being set in Akiba could work, in some ways it feels like a product of an older era.  It should NOT be considered a Vampire show though a couple weird details of the Pilot might trick some into thinking it is.  It's a fun show I think anyone who self identifies as an Otaku should watch.

Masamune-Kun's Revenge is a show I'd watched some of at the time but didn't finish till years later and still haven't watched it's recent second season.  It's a RomCom who's MAL plot description is pretty accurate.  It sticks in my memory mainly because a few scenes setting up the Female Lead in the Pilot I find actually quite Sexy in a way this genre of Anime rarely is, however if you too start to like her because of your Femdom Fetish you will be disappointed by the rest of it.

The Saga of Tanya The Evil gets grouped in with Isekai on a technicality but it's vibes and appeal are very different.  If you are into Fantasy or Sci-Fi with a WWI inspired setting you should check it out.  The main protagonist is someone a Leftist should not ideologically agree with but is fun to watch anyway.

Fuuka is definitely an underrated hidden gem of this season.  It's a good Romance Anime about characters starting a Band.  The issue is the first 2 and a half episodes contain some Fanservice the likes of which the rest of the show will not have, I ask people interested in the premise to trust me on this, most of the show will not be like that.

Little Witch Academia is one of the two 10/10s in the Winter season.  It's Harry Potter but good actually, but in truth more comparable to some of the Magic School stories that predate Harry Potter being an All Girls School.  I also recommend it to people who like My Little Pony Friendship is Magic or TumblrCore Western Animation.  I do kinda recommend seeing the OVAs first even though they are a different continuity.  This one is a Netflix Exclusive.

Gabriel Dropout doesn't have an English Dub but that's fine, it's the kind of show that is easier for me to watch Subbed then something like Re;Creators so I watched it pretty close to when it aired.  It is a comedic Slice of Life show that produced a lot of funny Memes at the time.

ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Dept. is a show a lot of people found boring at the time but I enjoyed it.  It's a show about Bureaucracy but has some interesting world building and politics.  However it will never be an action show.

ChaoS;Child is the other 10/10, it's a SciADV show that does get Dark but is also worth it.  Now on CR the first episode will look like it's hour long because they crammed into the same video file Episode 0 which is really a recap of ChaoslHEad, I've always skipped that part on the rewatch.  I've talked about Chaos; shows on this Blog before.

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was a very funny well animated Yuri show that doesn't need me to explain it's appeal.  I wasn't able to enjoy season 2 but season 1 regardless is still a classic.

Scum's Wish is a fun sexy show about people being emotionally messy, not unlike why I like Rumbling Hearts.  This one is on HIDIVE.

Monster Girl Quest doesn't have a Dub and isn't on CR since it's a Hentai, a rare Femdom Hentai which I recommend even though I found the ending disappointing.  It's not the only Hentai I've seen from the Winter of 2017 but the others aren't worth mentioning.

I've seen only a few episodes of KiraKira PreCure (I only list one on MAL since I add only what I've seen consecutively from the beginning there), it's one of the PreCures I struggle to get into even though I do like it's HaruMi inspired couple.  I did also see the Dream Stars movie but don't remember much about it besides Red Haired Haruka flirting with some Go Princess background characters.  The series is on CR now but the movies aren't.  Also not on CR is Mahoutsukai Precure which ended during this season and which I did see more of, it's gimmick was kind of Precure Harry Potter.

Speaking of movies, I enjoy SAO Ordinal Scale but wouldn't recommend it to anyone not already into SAO as a series. Lupin III Geomon Ishikawas' Blood Spray is a very cool movie just like the other films in the Koike Trilogy. 

And the Washio Sumi movies are probably the better way to watch the Washio Sumi story of the Yuki Yuna Is A Hero franchise, but they aren't Dubbed.

Napping Princess is a very good stand alone movie I watched Dubbed on Tubi.TV but it's not there anymore, it isn't on any Streaming App now but can be digitally purchased on PrimeVideo, VUDU or Apple.  I'm not sure how to describe this kind of Anime film, if you enjoyed The Girl Who Lept Through Time or the last three Makoto Shinkai films you should probably check it out.

Update January 6th: Since I first wrote this I just watched Tales of Zestiria The X the second season or cour of which aired in Winter 2017, though the last episode was in late April for some reason.  It's a pretty good show, Fantasy and not even quasi Isekai, some may complain about how it uses CGI but it's nothing compared Luminaria or Chainsawman.  My favorite character is Princess Alisha who's one of those Anime Princesses that is basically Padme Amidala but better.

The Light Novel Age of Anime

In my post about the Ages of Anime last year I suggested that 2011 was the start of our current Age and then that maybe we could call this Age of Anime the Light Novel Age because even though plenty of Anime based on LN happened before it feels like only in this era have LNs truly rivaled Manga as a Source Material for Anime.  While at the same time trends we associate with LNs have become prevalent even in shows that didn't start there, based on how it was structured I was genuinely shocked to learn that Dress Up Darling wasn't a LN.

I decided to take a slightly closer look at the Winter 2011 season on MyAnimeList referred to as MAL for short going forward.  The first show that comes up that season both when organizing by most members and when organizing by highest scored in Puella Magi Madoka Magica which was not a Light Novel adaption however it's writer Gen Urobochi was already notorious as an author of both LNs and Visual Novels. I'm not making this post to argue Madoka is in addition to everything else it's infamous for secretly a partial cause of the LN take over.  But if I didn't acknowledge the biggest show of that season someone might accuse me of deliberately ignoring it.

The second, third and fifth shows of that season ranked by most members were each LN adaptations.  (Winter 2010 did have at least as many LN Anime but not as congregated towards the top of this list.)  Those 3 are IS: Infinite Stratos, Is This A Zombie and Gossik with Gossik being the second when ranked by score.

But Infinite Stratos is perhaps the most important for my argument.  In one of my Isekai posts I suggested that In Another World With My Smartphone is no where near the first modern Isekai but is arguably the first to fully fit what we typically mean by a generic disposable Isekai.  Well Infinite Stratos I think has a similar role in the history of the Magic Academy genre.  The show Mother's Basement keeps calling the first of this genre of Anime doesn't in my view have the right Vibes to really qualify at all.  Infinite Stratos has the right visual look, basic set up and tone to clearly feel like part of this genre, only that it's technically Mecha rather then Magic is an issue, but they're all Newtypes which is basically Magic.

Spring 2011 had Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl who's Japanese title is misleading since it does not have the vibes that Visual Novel YouTubers are thinking of when they talk about Denpa.

The thing about the history of Light Novels and Anime adapted from them is that what kinds of stories we most stereotypically associate with the medium also changed.  Stuff like Slayers, Boogiepop and Others, Kara no Kyoukai, Kino's Journey, Strawberry Panic and Legend of The Legendary Heroes seem like very different beasts.  While the genres we associates with LNs today are still fairly varied, they are connected to each other by how they tend to be Otaku Media at it's most Meta Self Indulgent, and that largely started with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in 2003.

So basically among all the LN based Anime made prior to Winter 2011 only three maybe franchises I'm familiar with at all feel like the modern LN vibe.  The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, A Certain Magical Index and OreImo, the maybe is Zero no Tsukaima, and all of them got animated during the last 5 years of what I call the Bronze Age of Anime.  And there are no shows that weren't LN based I would mistake for one, rather the opposite most LN based Anime were ones that seem not much different from the Manga based ones.

Manga has by no means ceased to be important if for no other reason then that these Light Novels always get a Manga Adaption first before the Anime, I'm not currently aware of any exceptions to that.  Even Sword Art Online had a Manga as early as 2010 yet no one ever talks about it, all the discourse surrounding that franchise including changed between versions yet no one seems to even be aware of the Manga.