Shoujo Vibes

D.N. Angel is an Anime adapted from a Shoujo Manga in-spite of the fact that it's a story with a male Protagonist with Hair that looks out of Shonen Jump and more then one female love interest.  

I however could tell it was Shoujo off it's first episode from it's hard to describe Vibes even though I know full well there are Shonen Manga based Anime with a high emphasis on Romance or even Romance being the main genre.  Shows like Rent-a-Girlfriend I like but I would not ever confuse with Shoujo.

Maybe you think I was prepared for this be Shoujo because of how it's like a Male Counterpart to Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Saint Tail, but I'm also well aware of how this High School double life Phantom Thief genre started in the 80s Manga like Magic Kaito which was Shonen.

Thing is I have detected these Shoujo Vibes in Anime that turn out to not be Shoujo or even Jose Manga or Otome Games for that matter.

Shonen Manga based Anime like Blood+ and Karin have enough Shoujo vibes to make impossible that a Shonen Phantom Thief Manga could be this Shoujo.

But it is Shattered Angels that most surprises me when I see it classified as Shonen.  I've long memorized that it isn't officially Shoujo but I keep misremembering it as a Seinen.

Often the most Intense Shoujo Vibes are in Otaku Visual Novel adaptations like Rumbling Hearts and White Album, these are actually the Anime I'm inclined to recommend to people who loved Nana and want something with similarly great Melodrama.

Assassins Pride is a fall 2029 Light Novel adaptation that defies the usual Otaku Seinen vibes of that ecosystem to feel very very Shoujo.  It's so Shoujo that Mother's Basement hated on it.

And that's without even touching the messy debate of which Yuri are and are not legitimately Shoujo.

The Pseudo-Mainstreaming of Anime

So I’ve done a series of posts on this blog trying to debunk the notion that Anime is Mainstream now, and this recent hype over “The Vatican has Embraced Anime” has helped me realize part of the problem is how a vague understanding of the Anime Style is somewhat Mainstream.

Luce is not proof that anyone in the Vatican has seen any Anime just as someone throwing around the term “Big Brother” isn’t proof they’ve read 1984.  It’s just proof that everyone now knows how to draw the basic concept of an Anime Girl.

I realize this kind of distinction sounds to some like it’s related to the rhetoric of GateKeepers.  I don’t think you need to have seen all the Anime I’ve seen to at all qualify as being into Anime, I haven’t seen a lot of things others consider essential viewing like Gurren Lagan or any Satoshi Kon stuff.  I considered myself into Anime when I’d only seen a fraction of what I’ve seen now.  But my point has never been about how well versed in Anime culture any individual is.

In order for Anime as a whole to truly be mainstream the pool of specific shows and movies that are well known even to people who aren’t particularly into Anime needs to be much wider.

Feral Historian is a YouTube channel I stumbled upon recently, they are fairly conservative and so someone I disagree with a lot, but unlike a lot of Conservative who talk about Nerdy stuff on YouTube he has actually insightful and interesting things to say rather than raving about Wokeness every time a protagonist isn’t a White Male.  He largely talks about Sci-Fi and some Fantasy stories often with a focus on War, Dystopia and Alternate History.  He’s covered some very mainstream well known franchises and some fairly niche books and forgotten movies and tv shows.

So anyone who is very into Anime reading all that can probably quickly come with a long list of Anime right up his alley, but in fact the only Anime he’s covered is Cowboy Bebop a very mainstream show that feels barely relevant to the general themes of his channel.  For me 86 pops into my mind as the first thing I’m curious to hear his take on, but I’m sure others more quickly jumped to Gundam, Macross, Gunbuster, Evangelion, Code Geass, Psycho Pass, Attack on Titan maybe Darling in The FranXX.  But other niche even within the world of Anime options would include Muv-Luv/Schwarzesmarken, Rahxephon, Aldnoah Zero, Kado the Right Answer,Babylon and the Sekaikei trilogy.

If Anime actually had the mainstream pervasiveness of Star Wars or Star Trek or Marvel and DC Superheroes there’s no way none of those Anime would have been covered by now especially since Bebop proves he doesn’t have an innate bias against Anime.

Update: Feral Historian's interest in Bebop stems form an interest in Western tropes translated to a fantastical setting.  And I have a prior post on the other Anime that cna appeal to that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/04/anime-neo-westerns.html

Anime with Messy Characters

There are a number of Anime I’ve watched where a lot of the appeal is how all the characters are very flawed making very human mistakes but ultimately no one is truly a Bad Person, (or very few at least).

But then watch the YouTube videos about them and their takeaway is that they are shows where no one is a good person.  Clearly we are mostly seeing the same thing but they simply have a much more cynical outlook than I do.

Take for example Shoji in Nana, I think one of the most compelling things about this show was their willingness to depict him so sympathetically even as he cheats on the main character in a Shoujo Manga adaptation.  But nope all the Antiubers feel they have to boil it down to simply him being a Jerk.  

Nana is a show where the only character I wouldn’t object to calling a bad person is Takumi (well there’s also Takeshi but I barely count him as a character) and even he has nuance.

Now maybe some will think my sympathy for Shoji is simply a biased result of my being an AMAB who identified as Male for most of my life.  But I feel the same watching Rumbling Hearts where Mitsuki cheats on the male protagonist in this Anime who’s source material is a male targeted demographic, anyone calling her a bad person I would also object.

Heck I’ll go further than that.  I think I find most unrelatable about the comments section under most NTR Hentai is how harsh they are the female lead even though she’s usually being Raped.  I’m the opposite, even in the rare one where it’s completely Consensual I still sympathize with her.  Even if she’s literally cheating for no reason other than the other guy is bigger I still can’t consider that entirely invalid.

And it’s the same with Nana which kind of is a prolonged NTR in its latter half.

Both White Albums are also similarly messy relationship Melodramas that I quite enjoy.

I think someone is only a Bad Person if their behavior is consistently harmful and unrepentant.

Woke Leftists like to claim they have a purely Harm based understanding of Morality, but then try very hard to define Harm so abstractly that they wind up becoming pretty Puritanical.