Anime has always been Mainstream Actually

I've been struggling to explain why NO Anime isn't Mainstream now without unintentionally sounding like I'm saying Battle Shonen and Ghibli films don't count as Anime.  

But as I was watching a recent video from a YouTube channel called RoyaltyIsHere I had an epiphany.

If all the examples of unambiguously Mainstream Anime you can cite are still 90% Battle Shonen and Ghibli films or stuff like that, then you aren't referring to anything that's changed from 15 years ago.  Dragon Ball was Mainstream in America already 15 years ago, it was 16 years ago that they made a Hollywood Live Action film out of it.  

It was over 25 years ago I was in Middle School during DBZ’s original Toonami Broadcast and guess what, liking DBZ was cool and hip at the Middle School I went to, no one was bullied because they liked DBZ or Pokémon.  I was weird because I also liked Sailor Moon while being at the time Male, I didn’t get bullied for it because I wasn’t brave enough to be open about that back then, I was bullied simply for looking like a stereotypical Nerd.  But for Girls Sailor Moon was just as mainstream, and plenty of guys who weren't cowards like I was.

The only thing that's different now is that the amount of Battle Shonen that exists with official English Localizations has increased.  We now get all the big currently airing Battle Shonen soon after they air in Japan.  Imagine if when we got DBZ in the 90s we also got every other Battle Shonen DBZ was competing with as it aired in Japan at the same time?

So the people who think Anime is mainstream in a way it wasn't before are misremembering the past by cramming everything together.  They’re pretending there was a past when DBZ and Naruto were uncool so they can pretend how cool they are now represents some kind of progress, but it doesn’t.

If Battle Shonen seems even more mainstream now it’s an increase in popularity that has been perfectly parallel to Superhero Comics and Star Wars.  To some extent they have been Mainstream as long as they have been part of American Culture at all.  But you will get called a Nerd for being particularly obsessed, both back then and now.

Same with Ghibli films, they've been getting American Theatrical Releases distributed by friggin Disney since 2000.  Stephen Spielberg cited Castle of Cagliostro as an influence on the Indiana Jones films. Oh that’s right, how could I forget one of the biggest Hollywood film franchises of the 1999-2003 era was openly inspired by Anime, The Matrix.  Akira also gets refenced all the time.

And even more genuinely Niche Anime making somewhat of an impact on Pop Culture is nothing new, remember Kite inspired a Gwen Stefani Music Video.

However, the extent to which liking “Moe” Anime will get you suspected of being a potential Pedophile has if anything only gotten worse as Pedojacketing people for clout has only become even more trendy.

As I said before VTubers and Luce only represent an increased vague familiarity with the Anime style but not what it truly represents. The only VTubers who at all seem to me like they actually like Anime beyond the most surface level are the ones at Phase Connect and a handful of Independent VTubers like Shondo.  The least Mainstream VTubers. 

I’ve talked before about the distinction between how NTR and Western Cuckolding Erotica usually goes.  Well that exposes why so many Erotic ASMRs with Anime Style Images are still driven by western Porn Logic, their takes on Cuckolding are purely western.   And I don’t particularly mind since as a Femdom fan that is more to my general preferences.  But since no NTR Hentai has ever gotten an English Dub I would like to hear English VAs perform a true NTR scenario for a change. 

But Femdom itself is different in Doujinshi than it is in Western Porn.  Western Femdom feels dominated by what I call Pseudo-Femdom, they’re about “Weak” men being emasculated by High School Mean Girls in a world who’s internal logic is still solidly Misogynist.  If you want Femdom stories that actually feel like an ideological threat to the Patriarchy, I advise checking out Doujins like Eaten Up By The Bookworm Girl, Invited to The Girl’s Dormitory, Sweet and Sour, and IMAIZUMI BRINGS ALL THE GYARUS TO HIS HOUSE. And that’s without even getting into the wholesome Feminization stories that I’m unsure whether to classify as Het or Yuri.  So I also wish English Language ASMR VAs would try drawing inspiration from stories like those instead of just putting an Anime Style avatar over Audios that sound like they could have been on any normie Femdom site 20 years ago. 

The ASMR community is good at recreating the Yandere appeal, I give them credit there. But that’s about it. 

The point of this post is, Mainstream Anime has always been Mainstream, but true Otaku Culture is not and never will be. 

My Recent/Current Anime watching.

I watched Shirobako very recently, that's something I should have watched a lot sooner, it's very good, a 10/10 but I haven't seen the movie yet since it hasn't been Dubbed and seems oddly like won't be.

Demon Lord 2099 finished a few weeks ago I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I decided to drop  100 Girlfriends.  It's sense of Humor just doesn't gel with me, and it's gonna be awhile before it's pacing improves.

With both Arifureta season 3 and Re:Zero season 3 I'm waiting till all the remaining episodes are Dubbed to then Binge them.

The most recent addition to what current shows I'm watching is Zenshu, it's a very fun show and I think may prove to have a compelling message as well.

I May Be A Guild Receptionist, but I'm Solo Any Boss to Clock Out On Time is at it's best when it's going for situation that should be relatable to anyone who works in Customer Service in-spite of being in a Fantasy Setting about a Fantasy Concept.

Ameuku M.D. I've already talked about.

Magic Maker is a neat premise, the idea of exploring how to discover and figure out Magic in the first place.  

Other current shows/Simuldubs I'm thinking of picking up but haven't fully decided yet include Loner Life In Another World, Headhunted to Another World, I Left My A Rank Party and maybe possibly Blue Exorcist.

Death Note’s Near & Mello Arc is important

Tolkien’s distinction between applicability and allegory is a conventional topic on the Internet because in modern usage what he means by applicability also counts as allegory.  But I tend to agree with Tolkien on this because of how calling something an Allegory leads to obsession with making things very 1 to 1. In a way that both oversimplifies and overcomplicates.

And this is reflected in Anime discourse in the narrative that Bakuman is allegorical about the author's prior experience making Death Note.  That inference is definitely applicable to a lot of it I'm sure.  But many other things clearly don’t line up, the Manga being made in Bakuman is a much more conventional Battle Shonen.

The big problem is people then citing what happens in Bakuman as proof that they never wanted to write the Near Arc but were forced to artificially drag out the story so the Manga can still be published alongside the Anime adaptation airing.  Which is refuted by the simple fact that the Death Note Manga including the Near Arc wasn’t still ongoing when the Anime started, the Manga ended on May 15th 2006 and the Anime started on October 4th 2006 over 4 and a half months later, and entire season of Anime started and ended in between.

Anime Onliers have a low view of the Near largely because it was adapted differently, in the Manga L’s death is the halfway point not two thirds, so the Near Arc in the Anime is much rushed and less fleshed out.  

That said I enjoyed it even in the Anime just as much, and the first 25 episodes were not exactly flawless either, I’ve never liked Death Note because I thought it was brilliantly written.

However the principal logic behind rejecting the Near Arc is that a lot of people mistakenly got the Vibe during the first half that the story was about L equally as much as it was Light and therefore the point of the story is gone without L.  But if that were true then L would have been in the first episode.  The story is about Light/Kira and everyone else exists because of how they relate to Light, that’s why it’s a rare Anime that doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test.

Light is not a morally ambiguous character, he is pure Evil, there is no Slow Descent into Madness, he went full God Complex during the first episode’s time jump between his second kill and meeting Ryuk.

There is no point to having him win the struggle with L if we don’t see what he does with that victory, and morally would feel off to not see him face consequences eventually.  

But even if L wins it would still be incomplete to not progress the story to that point, that’s the problem with the first Live Action Death Note Adaptation.

It suits the values I like to see in Anime in general that what truly defeats Light is a team effort not simply a rival Great Man.

How many VRMMO Anime are actually about VR?

In shows like Sword Art Online and Quality Assurance in Another World the being literally unable to log out plot devices is enabled by it not being Virtual Reality but rather your Brain is literally plugged into the Game.

Then there are shows like And You Though There Is Never A Girl Online and My Love Story With Yamada-Kun where the Games being played are just regular contemporary MMOs, the way the In Game world is Animated is an artistic liberty for the benefit of the audience, it’s not meant to be taken literally.

The various Isekai about a Game Becoming real in some form presumably were actual VR MMOs but that’s not what they’re experiencing anymore.

At the end of last year when I finally started watching some old .Hack Anime it kinda hit me how different it is because it is in fact actual Virtual Reality.  The ability of whatever the given plot is to trap people in the game or harm people in real life is presented as seemingly Supernatural and I don’t think is fully explained in any of what I’ve watched yet.

It’s mostly very small things, but they become in hindsight quite notable, like the references to someone using Graph Paper to help them navigate.

It’s not just an Anime thing, SciFi is often skipping the Virtual Reality phase for some more truly Transhumanist plug-in, like in 2009’s Caprica.

It might have to do with Virtual Reality being technology that does already exist, and has since the early 90s at least, it’s just not widespread and normalized and cheap enough yet to be the standard way Video Games are made to be played, and perhaps it never will be.

Or maybe Virtual Reality is a broader term then I’m treating it and does technically apply to some of the things I’m talking about.  But you know what I mean.  These “Full Dive” things are not something I think I’d ever want to do, but standard VR might be fun to try some day.

Ameku M.D. so far

House M.D. was a show I was somewhat of a fan of, I never actively tried to watch every single episode but I saw a lot and usually enjoyed them.  The currently airing Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective has been hyped by more than just me as House but an Anime Girl and that hook worked in getting me to watch it. 

Of the episodes I’ve watched so far (those Dubbed already as usual) episode 3 is the one most comparable to a typical House episode.  It seems like the creators in Japan are more independently doing the Sherlock Holmes as a Doctor idea. And like most Anime mystery shows Detective Conan comparisons are inevitable.

As a Sherlock Holmes Homage it’s more like it’s source material then House in more ways than just involving actual Murder Cases more often.  

One aspect of Watson’s role in the original stories is sometimes being the Muscle due to his Boer War combat experience. My remembering this is why I’m the only Detective Conan watcher who sees Ran Mouri as the Watson., but it’s something this show includes as well.  Only in Anime would the male character being the Bodyguard ever feel like a Gender Subversion.

However what really bugs me about modern takes on Sherlock Holmes is the desire to assume he must also be a cynical Atheist and hyper Materialist and House was perhaps the most extreme manifestation of that.  Holmes as written by Doyle explicitly believes in God and in Hound of The Baskervilles does not out of hand rule out the possibility that a Supernatural explanation could be real.  So seeing Ameku be outright excited at the possibility of encountering some kind of Curse is a refreshing change of pace.

But let’s return to the matter of episode 3.  For being the one episode that does follow the structure of a House episode I actually found myself lamenting its shorter runtime, feeling like the Case was solved when it was just getting started.

That doesn’t usually happen, I watch Anime desiring to enjoy them as much or more then their double length Western TV counterparts all the time and am usually satisfied.  Whether it’s comparing Conan to Detective Shows, Witch Hunter Robin to both Nikitas, Magical Girl Anime to Buffy, Teen Dramas, SciFi, Fantasy ect.  Why is the less runtime per episode only a handicap here?

House episodes were usually equal parts actually investigating the case at hand and relationship drama involving the cast and so it feels like that’s the issue, with less runtime there's less character stuff.  But the same can in theory apply to all those others?

With Detective Conan a very large percentage of episodes are at least two parters, but nowhere near all of them, and that’s usually not the case in Magical Girl shows and wasn’t for most of Witch Hunter Robin.

Maybe in my head I was simply making a more 1 to 1 comparison than usual, I kinda was just wanting more House but Animated?

Or maybe it is something in the execution that they will hopefully get better at in future episodes.

Update a Week later: I should also note that when interacting with the Cops this show has both a Gregson and a Lestrade which is rare even for Holmes adaptations.

It's funny that I made that "only in anime' comment and the next episode does reveal the other female Doctor in the cast to have Combat usefulness as well.

And it seems episode 5 of the second episode of at least a 3 parter.  I have to remember that Manga is so often written in Arcs that a single cour mystery show may give us only 2 or 3 casses.  If this was an older show I'd be starting to suspect episode 3 was an Anime Original Filler episode.

Twelve Unintentionally Christian Anime

This post is about a select group of Anime I uniquely view as being unintentionally Christian, in terms of what The Gospel means to me personally.  But I suspect even people who disagree with me on certain controversial doctrines still could see similar Christian meanings in these stories if they gave them a chance so for once I’m not gonna lead with my most controversial disagreements with mainstream Christianity.

I do not brute force such an intense Christian reading onto every Anime I like, in fact my long time absolute favorite isn’t among these, nor is the show with the character I use as my Avatar. There are plenty of other shows where I have more partial and specific Christian readings of specific parts or aspects of them, but these are Anime where The Gospel is there, unintentionally.  And also the show as a whole, it's main plot, I could in the future talk about individual episodes of highly episodic shows but I'm not sure I have enough of those yet.

Key emphasis on the “unintentionally” part, this is not me speculating about the religious affiliation of anyone involved in making these shows or the Source Material they were adapted from.  I’m the kind of Christian who believes the gist of The Gospel simply has spread all over the world now and so can be stumbled upon by even the most Heathen of Pagans, like the Altar of the Unknown God.  The secular Media Analysis precedent for this is Death of The Author, Art can have meaning the Artist didn’t intend.

I’m doing this in part because on YouTube lately Christians talking about Anime and Anime YouTubers hinting at being Christian have become more common.  But what shows they lead with as Anime that a Christian can enjoy are not the same ones I would.

I’m not going to elaborate much on most of them here.  I'm hoping they will be self explanatory to others who are already Biblically literate Christians and then someone more analytically skilled than me can break them down in a Video Essay or Sermon (Peter Hiett likes referencing movies in his Sermons).  

I have talked about aspects of my Christian readings of a number of them before, on this Blog and on others, and maybe will more in the future.  For now I simply want to list them.

I will try to lead with the most Normie Accessible and save the most densely Otaku works for the bottom.

Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind.  Yeah I'm starting with one who’s creator has openly expressed dislike for the existence of Christian readings.  The way Mizayaki went on in the Manga to strongly emphasize the permanence of Death demonstrates the point I often make that how you view Death as a concept is the key difference between Paganism and The Gospel.  But it’s not just The Title Character’s resurrection from apparent death at the end that makes her Christlike, it’s her Self Sacrifice and her Pacifist ideology and how unrelentingly Empathetic she is.

Pretear.  The Magical Girl Genre as a whole has an extra good chance of having these qualities, but of Classic Shoujo Magical Girl shows I think it’s most potent in Pretear.

Robotics;Notes.

Steins;Gate

Blue Reflection Ray

Yuki Yuna Is A Hero

SSSS.Gridman.

Re:Creators 

Chaos;Child

Higurashi When They Cry (The original 2006 Studio Deen Anime and its sequel Kai not anything newer).

Mawaru Penguindrum

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz