Anime that are more Christian then Frieren.

Christian Anime fans are becoming more visible on Antitube and other places online, but I can't help but find it odd how many are leading with Frieren as the natural Anime to lead with.  

I like Frieren, it's a good show, I gave season 1 a 9 out of 10 and season 2 an 8 out of 10, I'm expecting to like season 3 more. But when it comes to Anime I would recommend to watch for a Christian reason it's not where near the top of my list. 

There is a certain type of Christian who still sees the Platonic Ideal of what Christendom should be as Medieval Western Europe. It doesn't surprise me that some Catholics and Episcopalians are like that, but what's become more visible in online Christianity are people denominationally Low Church who are like that. So these type for purely Aesthetic reasons want their ideal Christian Anime to be a Medieval European style Fantasy story, and Frieren is even by its secular fans praised as the contemporary Fantasy Anime most true to the Tolkienesque roots of the genre and free of modern Isekai and Gamer trends. 

But even for that appeal there are better choices then Frieren in my opinion. Maquia, Grimoire of Zero and it's Spin off Dawn of the Witch, various Tales of Anime (sometimes the Fantays Anime the feel like the least Gamey are the direct adaptations of Specific Games). Or watch a real classic like Record of Lodoss War. And for something pretty recent The Witch and The Beast.

Frieren's most actually contentious element has also garnered it Christian apologists for misguided reasons.  Set aside what the Demons in Frieren are called.  Demons in Freiren are not analogous to any theory about what Demons are Biblically.  They aren't fallen Angels or disembodied spirits of   "Nephilim" who died in the Flood. They are a species who seem to be the way they are for biologically determined reasons, but regardless of capable of human levels of intelligence. They have Souls based on what that word (both the Greek Psyche and Hebrew Nephesh) objectively means, I don't care if the inuniverse world building ever says they don't. 

I like others believe Frieren is eventually going to subvert what it's been doing with the Demons and that's why I'm not letting it bother me for now..

Of all the Fantasy Tropes associated with Tolkien, what the Orcs wound up being is something he regrated, he was himself uncomfortable with the implication, and I can sympathize with someone writing themselves into the corner as they basically help invent a genre. But those following in Tolkien's footsteps should learn from his mistakes.  From a Christian perspective, nothing capable of Human intelligence should ever be considered ontologically irreversibly evil from birth, Christians can have different on the theoretical possibility of an individual becoming irredeemable based on their choices. 

Now when a story does call a species Demons but depicts them unlike Biblical Demons in similar ways to Frieren's Demons and then does depict them as redeemable or even Good actually, that will be called Anti-Christian at least on the grounds that they shouldn't have labeled these beings Demons.  But it makes sense to me that an intelligent species viewed as Evil by their Enemies would be called Demons and maybe even internalize that label over time. There is in my view something very Christian in exploring that, certainly more Christian then just having evil things you can kill without consequence.

The Title of this post promises recommendations, so that's what comes next. 

Talking about by why I like these shows as a Christian while trying to be a broadly appealing as possible is a bit tricky. I believe these Anime can have Christian appeal even to Christians who disagree with me on certain things I disagree with other Christians on. In fact a lot of what makes a Christian lens more applicable to them then Frieren is specifically my affinity for a very Evangelical understanding of The Gospel rather then Catholic. But they do also speak to me in ways that connect to those disagreements too.  But to be clear none of my disagreements with the majority of American Christians are on anything any major denomination considers an essential doctrine of the faith, I'm Nicene and Trinitarian with a High View of Biblical Inerrancy. Soteriology is my main point of contention with other Christians, especially the ones I'm trying to recommend these Anime too.  But I have held other soteriologies in the past, I'm intimately familiar with what should speak to Christians who don't currently agree with me. 

Rather then listing these in any order that ranks them on how good they are or now Christian they are, I'm going to try and list them in an order that helps me lay out my logic, almsot a narrative itself. 

This should be obvious, but again I'm not suggesting any of these intended be intentionally Christian.

SSSS.Gridman

The reason Gridman works will also be applicable to other shows on the list, but might be more of a spoiler for them. One thing that really helps a Gospel reading of something to me is if one of the Villains is also the person our Heroes specifically want to Save. The Good Shepherd came specifically to find the Lost Sheep. And Gridman is one of the purest examples of that. This isn't applicable to every time villains are redeemed (though that never hurts), it's about when Saving someone in-spite of what a bad person they've become is an explicit part of the heroes' goal.

Robotics;Notes

This show is one of the best expressions of Collectivism in Anime. A Collectivism you don't have to agree with any particular ideology to appreciate.  The Robot Research Club is a Body and each member could be considered a different body part.  Add to that it's strong sense of optimism and themes it shares with other on this list, and it's one of the shows I most strongly recommend in general, to Christians or Secularists.

The Magical Girl Warrior genre in general has a lot of themes I see as very Christlike.  

But some in particular that I have thought along these lines include Peartear which would be one I'd list here if I limited myself to only one, I consider it in general the most underrated and overlooked classic entry in the genre.  Wedding Peach for something that more often has a coincidentally Christian Aesthetic going on, certain stand out episodes of Sailor Moon, and Blue Reflection Ray for something more recent then most I've been talking about.   

Higurashi When They Cry

Mos specifically the original 2006 Studio Deen Anime adaptation and it's 2007 sequel Kai. It's lore is ultimately built around something I think makes a good analogy for Original Sin.

Steins;Gate

This who works for it's particular approach to the theme of self sacrifice, in ways that are Spoiler but no the potential Spoiler i was talking about with Gridman. It's probably the most uncontroversial Visual Novel adaptation to consider good, I happen to like a lot of them though.

Re:Creators

This forgotten classic of 2017 has a lot going for it. 

I should try to mention something more contemporary, that is a major factor in why Frieren gets to be in so many thumbnails, it's the current in thing. 

My all time favorite Anime, Noir, I connect to me Faith in ways I don't think I can adequately explain.

Zenshu shows classic Fantasy Vibes can still prevail in when something officially qualifies as Isekai.

Tower of God as a lot going for it.

Shy is a show I've praised mainly in it's context as a Superhero Anime, but it also shares themes with these Anime. 

For another show from the same season as Frieren, I'd also recommend Pluto.

A few that are specific episodes more so then the show as whole.

Detective Conan, The Mysterious Passenger, among the episodes currently on Netflix, mainly for one specific plot point.

Detective Conan's 12th movie The Full Score of Fear for it's use of Amazing Grace.

Sailor Moon R episode 24 Battle of The Flames of Love Mars Vs Koan, episode 70 of the show as starting from the original series, and episode 64 of the DiC Dub where it was named Enemies No More. 

Sailor Moon episode 26, 22 in the DiC Dub, is also neat.

The first six episodes of Sailor Moon SailorStars also some good material. 

Episode 18 of Corrector Yui. 

Below shall be examples I recommend in-spite of how they also contain content many Conservative Christians might have trouble tolerating.

If Anime were Mainstream then Anime that are adaptations would be allowed to stand on their own.

I guess this is part 5 of my “no Anime isn’t mainstream” series.  But each prior part I genuinely felt like now I’ve made the most important point and these should be read backwards. But in this case I'm not sure this point is actually more important than the last two, but it is more of a coherent point then the first two. 

Stephen Spielberg's Jurassic Park is a bad adaptation of Michael Crichton's book, it only even tried to adapt the last half of it and changes everything, who lives and who dies isn't even the same, the very moral of the story is arguably changed somewhat.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is a bad adaptation of Stephen King’s book that King has vocally expressed his intense undying hatred for. 

James Whale’s Frankenstein movie is pretty much in name only (when it isn’t changing even the names). 

Each of these movies is near universally considered a Cinematic Masterpiece, why? Because Cinema is respected as an artform, if the movie is undeniably a good movie then how it's not like the source is fun academic trivia at best. Only if the movie is seen as a bad movie all on its own will its infidelity to the source material be then added on as another offense it committed. 

But when it comes to Anime that are adapted from a source material, especially Visual Novels, you will see a refusal to accept this, I've even literally seen people argue an Anime that seems good on it’s own is worse then one that is simply Bad because it gives people the wrong idea of what the source material is. 

This proves Anime isn’t mainstream, or to be consistent with this post’s predecessor is not currently any more mainstream than it was 20 years ago. What has increased in being at least more well known in those 20 years is the very existence of Visual Novels to western fans. So now fans who do care about the Visual Novel at least in concept (even if they aren't actually going to read it) are a large enough percentage of those watching the Anime, especially the ones invested enough to make YouTube videos about them, that their perspective gets to dominate the discourse.

Visual Novels are themselves a not very mainstream artform, especially here in the west where they are inarguably more niche then Anime is. And so their grudge against Anime they feel misrepresents certain VNs comes from that place of resentment. 

If any of the artforms related to Otaku Media is mainstream at least in Japan it’s Manga.  Not all Manga, not Doujinshi by definition, but the ones serialized in popular weekly Magazines by the biggest publishers. So no surprise the rare Anime that are somewhat normal to be praised as equal to or even better than their source are Manga Adaptations, not all or even most of them, but enough to be notable. It kinda bugs me how often this happens to be Shoujo Manga made by Women adapted to Anime primarily by Men.  But I will highlight an example of the opposite, the Manga for  K-On was made by a dude, but the Anime was written and directed mainly by two women and a studio largely founded by women and that Anime has been proclaimed by one highly respected Anime Scholar, The Ultimate Adaptation.  

I led with Jurassic Park because it’s the least contentious. Stephen King has his fanboys willing to defend his perspective on the film. And Frankenstein’s Novel has fans who keep wanting each new Frankenstein film to be the perfect adaptation and then complain when it isn’t. 

In the case of Jurassic Park however I find it telling that the film version’s popularity overshadows knowledge of the book’s very existence to such a degree that half of what people say when hating on the Jurassic Park sequels are unknowingly them becoming more like the books. Chief example being every time someone gets so offended at the very concept of allowing a human to be able to kill a dinosaur, that happened multiple times in the original novel.  

Back when most western didn’t even know what Visual Novels were, Higurashi When They Cry’s Studio Deen Anime was very popular and universally praised as the best Horror Anime.  It is in terms of the basic sequence of events less different from the source material than any of the three movies I mentioned up top. But now popular opinion is turning on it because of the influence of VN fans. 

A lot of times people critiquing an adaptation will accuse it of lacking an important theme or subtext that I absolutely got from the adaptation simply for not being conveyed in the exact same way. With Visual Novel adaptation that is especially potent. As someone who defends Voice Over and Inner Monologues in Anime in general, I’m baffled at how convinced VN fans are to think the pages of inner monologue cut from the Anime are the only way to convey a certain character has a certain psychological issue when simply watching how they act makes it incredibly obvious. My post anti Show don’t Tell rants were about defending the artistic value of telling not denigrating the value of showing, but VN fans really do seem to think telling is the only way to convey information. 

Maybe it seems like I’ve rambled off topic.  The point is if most Anime were in fact being watched just as widely as Disney movies. There would neo shortage of people just enjoying the Anime as Anime and hopefully respecting the VN when they hear of it but not letting any complaints change how they feel about it. 

No one thinks Visual Novels are mainstream now, certainly not the ones actually made in Japan. What this observation proves is that Anime, especially Anime based on Visual Novels are more mainstream then Visual Novels but only barely. 

The Best Year in the History of Anime?

This is a follow up to a post I made at the start of 2026 where I made the case for 2006 being the best year of Anime History while doing my usual, “look back on Anime that turn 20 this year” thing I started doing in 2024.

The thing about years in Japan however is that in every way but nominally Japanese society really functions as if years begin with Spring and end with Winter, the first month being April and the last being March. 

So the thought entered my mind that maybe an even better year could be created by swapping out Winter 2026 for Winter 2027? 

It so happens that would correspond to exactly the year that Nana was airing.  So we could call it the Year of Nana, or Nana Year or Year Nana. 

I already said in that first post that the Spring season is where the argument for 2006 really kicked off. Some of what was airing in Winter 2006 were multiple cour shows still airing in Spring. 

So the full shows we lose from dropping Winter 2006 are mainly Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl and Neirma Kaidun Brothers. Both shows I like a lot but wouldn't call either the best of its genre, Kashimashi is closer to being an essential viewing of its genre(s) but is also arguably surpassed by later 2006 shows. 

On the subject of Detective Conan we do lose what I consider perhaps the single best episode of that show in 425. But the trade off is getting Shadow of The Black Organization and The Unsmashable Snowman. We also switch out the 6th OVA for the 7th, they are all about equal in quality. 

What we gain by adding Winter 2007 includes Shattered Angels which I consider a very underrated Jem, Hidamari Sketch which is a show I haven’t seen yet but know is considered important to the Slice of Life/CGDCT genre, and Venus Versus Virus which I haven't finished and haven’t seen what I did see for awhile.  Plus the start of Yes! PreCure 5, a show that proved important to setting the tone for Pretty Cure going forward. 

Looking more at stuff I haven't seen there is a Shuffle sequel called Shuffle Memories I didn’t know about till recently. And the start of that Les Miserables Anime.  

And then there’s Loving Angel Angelique which I should look into as an early Otome Game Anime, and it was a sequel whose first part aired in Summer 2006 so is a show I should have known about back when making the first 2006 Anime post, it looks like it was the first TV Anime based on an Otome Game adding more to the argument for this being a particularly important year for VN Anime.

And for Shounen fans the start of Naruto Shippoden (it occurs to me that means the closing arc of the original Naruto Anime must have aired during this year). I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to care about standard Battle Shonen enough to find out what was going on in the other two of the “big three”.  Maybe someone else trying to follow up my thesis could do that. 

The other major Four Cour show connected to 2006 was Blood+, it changes from three fourths airing during the year in question to just the second half, but that’s still enough to matter. 

And we also gain the second cours of a lot of Fall 2006 shows like Kanon and Le Chevalier D’Eon. There must have been some delays in the original broadcast of Code Geass because I expected it to end in late March but it was actually in late April, same with Death Note, I expected episode 26 to air in the first week of April at the latest but it didn’t.  Still for both those shows adding Winter 2007 adds a lot of why they are considered great. Same with early Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, episode 25 aired in Japan on March 29th

In the OVA department Winter 2007 had the Burst Angel OVA and the first episode of Murder Princess. And some Maria-Sama OVAs.

Something I should have mentioned in the original 2006 post is Summer Days from June.  It’s not on the Anime Database websites due to how it’s released being a Visual Novel but like School Days the prior year it was Animated, seemingly even more so. I, like many Americans, have only been able to play the censored version of its later remake titled Shiny Days, but it seems a lot of what I like was already there in the original, but there is a lot of Shiny Days content that wasn't there originally.  It’s the Anime where my favorite Anime character gets to be the lead, so it’s important to me. 

The annual Lupin III TV Special during this year was Seven Days Rhapsody in September.  But I haven’t seen it or most 00s Lupin specials since they aren’t among those Dubbed, so I can’t say if it was even above average for the time. 

I considered looking at what source materials for future Anime came during this year, but there wasn't much.  2004 might be the better year for that, containing a number of source materials for what got animated during this year as well as some that came even later.  But I didn’t think to look into that in 2024.

Four of what I’m currently listing as my top 23 Anime on Anilist are from this year, no other single year is that overrepresented. Those are three shows I consider the best of their genre, Nana, Kanon and Higurashi, and one that in the past I’d labeled my second favorite of all time, Code Geass.  Add to that the importance shows like Haruhi, Death Note and Gintama have, and a few other best or most important of their genre candidates like Strawberry Panic, and the case for this being the best year is pretty easy to make.  [Update: Black Lagoon is another pretty popular Anime from Fall 2006 I forgot to mentioned before.]

Talking about all the hidden gems adds some nice flavor to the argument but every year has those so they aren’t the crux of it. 

Of the 2006 shows I consider the best of their genre, Kanon is probably the most controversial. Yes they’re all gonna be disputed by someone, Strawberry Panic is hated by people with very different priorities for what they want in a Yuri Anime (some of them might like Simoun the best) and Higurhshi is hated by VN purists who don’t like it being classified as Horror in the first place and others who think no Anime has ever been good at Horror. But with Kanon it tends to be nearly universally viewed as surpassed by its own spiritual successor Clannad and Clannad After Story. 

I do love Clannad and place it just below Kanon.  Some of why I prefer Kanon is more my personal tastes then anything remotely objective, but I also think getting the entire story in one single Anime instead of across two counts for something. Clannad fans I’m sure at least respect the fact that Kanon made Clannad possible both as a VN and an Anime. And with Kanon it has been argued the KyoAni Anime is an improvement over the source material while Clannad is still viewed as falling short of the VN. Since as an Anime specifically is the point of comparison here, I think you can even argue Knaon is better animated. 

Haruhi, Death Note and Code Geass are important to Anime culture as a whole in a way that transcends whether or not they are the best of their genre. Haruhi created her genre, making her important regardless of if you think something like Bunny Girl Senpai has surpassed her. Code Geass and Death Note can’t be considered the best of any Genre simply because they aren’t pure manifestations of any Genre you could slap onto them since they are Genre Mixes ultimately, they are compared to each other more often then they are the rest of their genres. If any Anime is as important to the 00s as Eva was to the 90s it’s one of these three.  Clearandsweet has a video on how Haruhi is singularly important to redefining what most Anime looks like.

The Vermouth Arc was the best Era of the Detective Conan Anime.

Interestingly I could almost argue that this Arc’s Kishotenketsu structure correlates to its episodes that aired in Gregorian Calendar years 2001-2004. 

Of course 2000 can be argued to already be part of the Vermouth era.  The character of Vermouth is technically introduced in episodes 176-178 Reunion with The Black Organization in January of 2000. And then 188-193 The Desperate Rival can be considered connected to it. But that's all stage setting, you could follow the storyline of the Vermouth Arc proper without really having seen them. Heck a 1999 episode is arguably more relevant to the plot 170-171 The Blind Spot in the Darkness. 

I will be mentioning some episodes I like from this era that aren't part of the Arc, but I still haven’t seen every episode even in this area so my knowledge is incomplete. 

2001 contains the Ki of the arc.

The year opens with Episode 219 The Gathering of the Detectives! Shinichi Kudo vs Vaitou Kid. It's not part of the Arc at hand but is important for other reasons. 

226-227 The Battle Game Trap is perhaps still just stage setting like the 2000 episodes, but the character it introduces is very important. 

Not relevant to the arc but 228-229 The Murderous Pottery Class is one of the show’s best Columbo episodes. 

2001’s film was the first and for a while only movie featuring the Black Organization, Countdown to Heaven.  Neither Vermouth or any other distinctly Vermouth arc characters are in it, but it’s also the best Haibara movie and does a good job at setting up where she is as a character when we enter this saga.  

230-231 The Mysterious Passenger is the episode that properly initiates the storyline, it establishes a key aspect of how Vermouth operates we didn’t know about before so it can then introduce three suspects for who among those the main cast interacts with she could be. It’s also one of only three Cases from this arc included in Netflix’s Black Organization Collection and thus with an official Dub.

253-254 Metropolitan Police Love Story 4 is the only chapter in that ongoing storyline also tied into the arc since two of the suspects appear in it. 

258-259 The Man from Chicago introduces another relevant character. Putting all the pieces finally on the board. 

The 2002 episodes are the Sho, further developing what the Ki introduced. 

271-271 The Secret Rushed Omission.

275-275 Truth of the Haunted House features characters but is perhaps not too relevant. 

277-278 English Teacher vs Great Western Detective.

279-280 Hooligan’s Labyrinth is an often overlooked important episode to Hiabara’s character development. 

284-285 Chinatown Deja Vu in the Rain sets the stage for the following episode. 

286-287 Shinichi Kudo’s New York Murder Case is the second case of this Arc included on Netflix. 

That’s all the key Vermouth Arc episodes of 2002.  301-302 near the end of the year is a neat informal continuation of the Sato and Takagi storyline. Episode 303 is a TV Original but I like it as a stand out Mitsuhiko episode. 

The movie for 2002 was The Phantom of Baker Street which I have mixed feelings on. I ultimately rank it among the lowest but there is stuff I like in its first half. It’s interesting in how it was the last film to be Cel Animated and is an early example of a trapped in VR Video Game from the same year as .hack and the original SAO web novel.

2002’s OVA was the second one, 16 Suspects. Which is a neat relic of how Shiratori was characterized early on that I think has maybe been forgotten. 

I began writing this just as an argument for 2003 being the best year of the Detective Conan Anime. The year began with episode 304 The Trembling Police Headquarters: The 12 Million Hostages, which was a special two hour long episode. During this era Detective Conan began most years with a 2 hour special so that isn’t unique and this isn’t the best of them, but it’s also far from the least which is impressive since none are bad. 

Remember those rants I did on how much of the Vermouth Arc was skipped by the Netflix collection?  Well it turns out a lot of the most important stuff that should have been included aired in 2003. The important plot developments here are the Ten. 

To list them again those episodes are.

307-308 On The Trail of a Silent Witness.

307-311 Contact with The Black Organization. 

329-330 A Friendship can’t be Bought. 

335-336 Secret of the Tohto Film Development Studio

338-339 The Four Porches. 

340-341 Hidden Bathroom Secret. 

343-344 The Convenience Store Trap. Which were also the last episodes to air in 2003. 

So basically Netflix skipped an entire Act of the storyline.

I haven’t even seen every episode from 2003. It looks like there were some Heiji cases, and an Eri appearance and some other fun filler episodes. 

331-332 The Suspicious Spicy Curry is on my probably still incomplete list of Columbo episodes. 

The movie for 2003 was the 7th Crossroad of The Ancient Capital. It was the first to be Digitally Animated and the last directed by Kenji Kodama who did all of them before this. It’s the first movie where Heiji and Kazuha are co-leads for the entire film. It’s pretty good. 

The Annual OVA for 2003 was also a Heiji and Kazuha one. 

And then the two and a half hour finale of the arc that opened 2004 is the Ketsu.  Episode 345 Head-to-Head Match with the Black Organization: Dual Mystery on a Full Moon Night. This episode is dubbed on Netflix, and it’s Dub is great, you should watch everything that’s on netflix. 

The next case 346-347 Find The Buttock's Mark served as a bit of an epilogue to the arc in how it opens at least. 

361-362 Teitan High School’s Ghost Story also serves as a bit of an epilogue. 

2004’s late Winter-Early Spring had a lot of Kaitou Kid material. 

The 4th OVA in March was Conan, Kid and the Crystal Mother which adapts a chapter of the Magic Kaitou Manga but writes Conan into it as he wasn’t there originally. 

A TV Special to promote the next few examples titled Time Travel of the Silver Sky. It’s kind of a Kid focused Recap episode with a framing device starring Agasa. 

His fourth appearance in the TV Anime, but arguably second proper Kid episode, 356 Kaitou Kid’s Miraculous Midair Walk. 

And his second movie, Magician of the Silver Sky, which I rank as an A tier film. 

There is also more epiloguing of the Vermouth Arc in Kid’s 2005 appearance 394-396 Big Adventure in The Electric Mansion. 

Which is in turn followed up on in 398-399 The Strange Family’s Request. 

2005 wad the 9th movie, Strategy Above The Depths which consider the last good movie, i think most are still good but I would agree there was a decrease in average quality after this. 

I wish BangZoom would Dub more of the old Lupin III TV Specials.

Now that the Koike Petnology is all Dubbed and no new Lupin projects seem to be in development. 

Most of my personal favorite Lupin III adventures were among these specials.  But there are many I still haven’t seen because I’ve chosen to remain strictly Dub only with Lupin. 

First priority should perhaps go to the Dezaki directed specials not yet dubbed, the first and last of them are Dubbed but not the ones in between. Hemingway Papers sounds like the most interesting premise to me personally. 

According to an old article by Ben Ettinger which I know about thanks to Caribou-kun, Dezaki was only nominally involved in Napoleon’s Dictionary. That one tends to be considered by those who have seen it one of the worst.  I often like what others don’t but for franchises like Lupin on how things rank at least my opinions often line up mostly with common opinion. So yeah this one can remain at the bottom of the priority list.

From Siberia With Love should be a solid outing though. Dezaki plays an important role in how I define Anime. 

Next the 2001 Special Alcatraz Connection was the first Lupin Anime to be Animated Digitally, the transition from Cel to Digital is an interesting topic to Anime historians so this landmark in one of Anime’s oldest and most consistent franchises is important.  And it turns 25 years old this August. 

But the special that turns 20 this year is Seven Days Rhapsody in September.  I’m developing a thesis that April 2006-March 2007 was the best year in Anime. So it’d be nice to see if that year’s Lupin special can live up to the hype. 

The Last Job from February 2010 is famous for how it was the send off of 3 long time members of the Japanese voice cast.  You can’t really translate that meta significance into a Dub unless maybe you saved it for when the current BangZoom cast eventually retires?  I doubt they’re thinking that far ahead though. 

Anime from 2001 turns 25 this year.

Given the 2000s are my favorite Decade of Anime, we’re entering a period when what turns 25 a given year might start interesting me more then what turns 20. But of course I might become more nostalgic for the late 00s and early 2010s as they turn 20.

For these 25 year anniversary posts I want to start including some discussion of material in other mediums that became source material for future Anime, or haven’t yet but should. But my knowledge on those subjects is not as deep as my knowledge of Anime, which is itself far from comprehensive or complete. 

Type-Moon’s first Visual Novel Tsukihime was initially released at Comiket at the very end of 2000 but I feel it’s safe to say 2001 when it really spread. The proper founding of Type-Moon as a company is considered to be in 2001. And January 21st 2001 was the release of Tsukihime Plus-Disc which included the first four chapters of the Kara no Kyoukai LN series. 

For Detective Conan this year opens with an episode that was at the time celebrating the show’s 5th anniversary and is now one of the Episodes with a new English Dub on Netflix, the last episode of the Rivals collection. Episode 219 The Gathering of the Detectives! Shinichi Kudo vs Vaitou Kid.  The show during winter went on to have some Heiji appearance I might have seen, 226-227 The Battle Game Trap which introduced an important recurring character and 228-229 The Murderous Pottery Class which is one of the show’s Columbo Episodes and perhaps among the best of them.  

There is no TV Anime to start in Winter 2001 I’ve watched to completion yet. Arjuna I’ve seen a few episodes of and keep considering watching more of, my feelings on it are mixed. For notable stuff I haven’t seen there’s Tales of Eterinia The Animation which I should check out since I’ve liked other Tales Of series Anime but there seems to be no Dub. And Ojamajo Doreme, a notable Nakayoshii/Toei Magical Girl series airing in the future PreCure timeslot, switched from its 2nd to 3rd series. 

The Manga being serialized in the Nakyoshi magazine during 2001 were Mink, Ojamajo Doreme, Little Cute, Tokyo Mew Mew, Zodiac PI, Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts and Musume Monogatari.  Elsewhere the Manga for Nana was also running this year. 

February 2001 had the Light Novel Boogiepop Paradox: Heartless Red.  None of the Boogiepop Anime have gotten this far, I have no idea what happens in it. Later in December was Boogiepop Unbalance: Holy & Ghost. 

In the OVA department March had the last episode of FLCL which is probably my “I don’t care for The Godfather” Anime opinion. But also the first episode of Puni Puni Poemii which wasn’t as funny as I was hoping it’d be, it’s 2nd and last episode was in December. 

Spring 2001 has a number of great shows, starting with Noir, my absolute favorite Anime of all Time.  Also Pretear, which I consider one of the most underrated classic Magical Girl shows, it was directed by Junichi Sato who was the Series Director for the best era of Sailor Moon. Angelic Layer might be my favorite of every proper Clamp Anime I’ve seen.  Comic Party which I consider the Lucky Star of the early 00s.  Sister Princess is a great forgotten Gem and Galaxy Angel was also a fun comedy. For shows I haven’t completed, SoulTaker is a notable Akiyuki Shinbo Anime which looks neat.  And SuperGals is an underrated Shoujo Anime I intend to watch more of, it’s free on Nozomi Entertainment's YouTube Channel.  

The 5th Detective Conan movie, Countdown to Heaven, came out in April. I still consider it one of the 4 best movies, and I know some consider it the absolute best.  Metropolis came out in May, it’s a movie I have mixed feelings on but ultimately recommend people check out. 

Back to the Detective Conan TV Anime.  April has 230-231 The Mysterious Passenger which is the formal start of the Vermouth Arc and among the episodes you can watch both Dubbed and Subbed on Netflix. This is what I still consider the best era of the show, so much of 2001 has I'm confident pretty good episodes even though I haven’t seen most yet. Metropolitan Police Love Story 4 and The Man From Chicago are also from 2001. 

In June was the annual Lupin III: Alcatraz Connection this year’s annual TV Special.  I haven’t seen this one since it doesn’t have a Dub and I’ve chosen to be strictly Dub only with Lupin. But I know from asking about the topic once that it’s the first of the specials to be Digital Animation rather than Cell Animation. So it’s an important artifact of this transitional period that people researching should check out.  The same studio, Toho, wouldn't fully switch to digital for Detective Conan till next year. 

For Pokémon this year was deep into the Johto Era, which for the TV Show I don’t have as much nostalgia for as other eras.  But it was the US release of the 3rd movie Spell of the Unown which I still consider the best  Pokémon movie, as well as Mewtwo Returns which is a personal favorite of mine..  In Japan this year’s movie was the Celebi movie known to the West as 4Ever which is flawed but still good, and the Legend of Thunder special which was neat. 

What was different for the Western Fandom is something I need to keep reminding myself to get into more.  Pokemon was usually a year behind, but some shows we didn't get till five years later.  It was in 2001 that Toonami finished Dragonball Z and started Dragonball.  Sailor Moon was also still broadcasting its Cloverway Dub era material S and SuperS. Gundam fans got both the 08th MS Team and 0080 War in The Pocket. Also The Big O and more Tenchi Muyo. 

I literally haven’t even started any TV Anime since Summer 2001.  Something like this seems to happen most often with Winter and Summer.  I think back when multiple Cour shows were still more standard those were the seasons getting fewer new Shows because so many slots were filled by second cours. But one of those Spring shows I talked about was single Cour. It looks like the most popular Anime from Summer 2001 was Fruits Basket which is a Shoujo. 

In the VN department July had the full release of Air, the second Key Visual Novel. And in August Age’s Rumbling Hearts was released. Both produced some very good Anime later, but Rumbling Hearts I’d recommend more strongly though.

In the OVA realm August had the preview episode of the upcoming TV Anime version of Clamp’s X which was interesting but I don’t think necessary. 

Also the first episode of the non Hentai OVA series for One Kagayaku Kisetsu e.  I found this 4 episode series garbled and confusing, the Hentai version is legitimately a better presentation of the story. It’s based on a 90s Visual Novel the Key founders made before they started Key. 

Another OVA from August was Jikuu Ihougin Kyoko: Chocola ni Omakase! (it has no official localization but that seems to translate to Time Stranger Kyoko: Leave it to Chocola).  It’s interesting, I checked it out once because it's the only other Anime based on a Mangka from the same author as Kamikase Kaitou Jeanne. 

The two episodes of the Pure Mail Hentai OVA that I talked about before came out in September and December of 2001. They are in the same universe as School Days. 

And Fall 2001 has the TV Anime version of Clamp's X which I recall really liking but I can’t describe it right now. The original Hellsing Anime which I still prefer to Ultimate aesthetically.  Mahoromatic and Najica Blitz Tactics. I’m also just now realizing as I write this that I had neglected to add Kirby Right Bat At Ya to any of the watabase websites even though I have watched a few episodes of it. 

One of the last things to come out this year was the Overflow Bishoujo Game Snow Radish Vacation!  It’s the chronologically first game of the universe that School Days and Pure Mail take place in. 

Video Games and Anime that turn 30 this year

I’ve kind of already talked about the importance of 1996 to Video Games when I argued it’s the start of the Silver Age of Gaming.  

But to sum it up the original Pokémon Games in Japan, the Launch of the N64, Super Mario RPG, DKC3 and Kirby Superstar as a trio of swan songs for the SNES and in the world of Japanese Bishoujo Games the birth of the Visual Novel with Shizuka and Kizuato from Leaf alongside Welcome to Pia Carrot and Kakyusei and to end of the year Otaku Culture’s Princess of Mars turned John Carter in YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World. 

Remember that Commercial for Super Mario RPG about the Elderly man rambling about the plot of the game to his Grandchildren? I was 10 for most of 96 and I consider myself possibly on the younger end of people Nostalgic for this game.  So we’re now halfway to the point of that commercial becoming real.

For Anime that turns 30 this year, due to what my focus has been lately Detective Conan is what I’ve been hearing about and talking about the most. Netflix has the earliest important episodes streaming both Dubbed and Subbed, the two part pilot at the start of the Black Organization collection and then the first five episodes of the Rivals Collection.  But there are still many important 96 episodes not there like the Moonlite Sonotata Murder Case, Kogoro’s Class Reunion Murder Case, and the Mountain Bandaged Man Murder Case. They can all be watched on Crunchyroll, and they do have English Dubs for those who know where to look. Episode 42 or 43 of the international count was the last to air in 96. 

It looks like that’s the only TV Anime to start in Winter 1996 I’ve even partially watched. Looking at what shows have their second or last cour during Winter of 96 could cement an argument for viewing Spring 95 as the start of the year that begins the Bronze Age of Anime. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing and Wedding Peach. 

For Sailor Moon this year ends SuperS in March and then airs most of SailorStars. 

For OVAs we have Mobile Suit Gundam 08th MS Team, the Sonic The Hedgehog OVAs which became localized as Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie, Fire Emblem which I don’t remember the details of right now, it stars Marth and I think is the first time he was voiced by who still his voices him in Smash, but that’s the Japanese VA in the English Dub he’s Spike Spencer.

I like Inma Youjo enough to break my usual resistance to mentioning Hentai in these kinds of posts.  Its second and 3rd episodes came out in 96 and the 2nd in January is possibly the one I like most,  I have a sneaking suspicion Maya’s character design from the first two episodes influenced Utena. 

In Spring we got Escaflowne, Kodocha and Slayers Next and the first Shamanic Princess OVA on a date that’s technically Summer already, the birthday of John The Baptist, I can’t find dates for its other episodes.  That exact same day is also the release date of the 2nd of the Magical Girl Pretty Sammy OVAs which is the wildest one with its early Internet plot.

For movies we have Tenchi Muyo In Love which was good and Lupin III Dead or Alive which is probably fun but I don’t remember it all that well as other lupin movies I’ve seen, Lupin’s TV Movies were better during the 90s, which we see in August with Lupin III: The Legend of The Twilight Gemini which I consider a personal favorite. The film version of Clamp’s X/1999 came out this year, but I’ve only seen the TV Anime version. 

Summer’s OVAs include the Maze OVA which is another fun hidden Gem of 90s Isekai.  But I’ve seen no TV Anime that started in Summer of 96, just continuations of prior shows. 

Fall had the Mahou Shoujo Pretty Sammy TV Anime once localized as Magical Project S which I do highly recommend. Another anime from Fall that’s notable but I haven’t seen yet is Martian Successor Nadesico. Those who Hunt Elves also aired out this season. 

In the OVA department the year ends with Galaxy Fraulein Yuna and Wedding Peach DX and 08th MS Team reaching its halfway point.

For Western Weebs, this year is I’m pretty sure when Sailor Moon first aired in America after the DiC Dub initially broadcast in Canada in late 95. I’m pretty sure catching broadcasts of Sailor Moon in 96 was my very first exposure to any Japanese Animation. 

Shirou Emiya is characterized just fine in the UFO Table Anime

Before I talk about anything else, I realize the main thing that vindicates the narrative that the Anime adaptations have butchered Shirou’s character are all the Anime only people who hate the character and make fun of him. 

You are giving those haters too much credit by charitably assuming they’d like or even get Shirou more if they read the VN.  The Anime community simply is filled with people who are going to hate that kind of character no matter what, they think the standard Anime Protagonist is boring and dumb, they are the Anime community counterpart to thinking Superman is unrelatable.  No amount of Fantranslated Inner Monologue Nasu Prose is going to change their minds.

But I’m not gonna say there are zero people for whom this would make a difference, because I already know that this minority of people are over-represented among the kinds of people who make Fate youtube videos, they keep saying they didn’t like Shirou in the Anime but got him when they played the VN. And that makes sense, that is exactly the kind of experience with Fate that would most motivate one to want to dedicate their lives to trying to advocate for the VN to Anime Onlies. 

But I’m pretty sure those people never hated Shirou as much as the people I was mainly referring to before. 

There is an impression to many that even the majority of people who like the UBW Anime as Anime onlies hate Shirou, but I feel this is just another product of the actual majority opinion among casual Anime watchers having no representation in online discourse. Clearly lots of people unironically enjoy Solo Leveling and Rent-A-Girlfriend, but they aren’t interested in trying to push back against the hate those shows receive on YT and Twitter and Bsky.  

I watched the UFO Table TV Anime version of Unlimited Blade Works first of any Fate/Stay Night adaptation as well of any UFO Table Anime, I had no spoilers. But everything these VN fans keep saying the Anime failed to convey about Shirou’s character I got just fine.  I always liked the character.

I recently saw someone on Reddit say, and I’m paraphrasing, “Anime onlies think Shriou has some Batman level no kill rule which is clearly not in the VN” and I”m like, the Anime clearly showed Shirou being mad when Archer didn’t kill Caster.  Anyone who thinks Shirou is deadset against killing bad guys simply wasn’t engaging properly with the Anime.

The main thing however is Shirou’s survivor’s guilt, everyone insists this is something completely absent from the Anime versions of the character. To me this was an incredibly obvious aspect of his character in the Anime, it’s the last thing I even think of as even remotely benefiting from further elaboration. 

However, what I’ve noticed time and time again is that people who critique something only as an adaptation and not as a stand alone piece of art within its own medium/artform, they will repeatedly confuse not conveying something in the exact same way as the source material with not conveying it at all. They aren't even considering the ways this new medium has to convey information that the source material didn’t.

The main reason I consume mediums like Anime over mediums like Manga, LNs, and most VNs and even more so generally prefer Dubs to Subs, is because I appreciate Acting as a skill and a talent and an art. VNs sometimes have voice acting but I’m pretty sure Fate didn’t originally and has still never had an English Voice Over track. It’s not impossible for me to get immersed in a performance done in a language I don't understand, but it is more difficult and with my ADD I prefer not to have to try. 

The difference between Voice Acting in a standard VN and Voice Acting in an Anime is that in an Anime the non vocal parts of an acting performance are provided by the animating of the character the voice is being projected onto. So what Anime specifically can add to Fate/Stay Night in place of all the lost prose is not just flashy Sakuga heavy fight scenes but actual Acting. It’s because of that acting that this artform can convey with how one line is delivered as much meaning as a page of prose.

So to me to claim that Shriou’s Survivor’s Guilt is flat out not in the UBW Anime is to disrespect and insult all the work done by those artists and animators and by Bryce Papenbroke, and I’m going to optimistically assume Sugiyama Noriaki did a good job as well. 

I don’t make these videos defending Anime Adaptations of Visual Novels because I don’t respect what Visual Novels are uniquely capable of as an artform.  But because of things like my ADD they are an artform I simply can’t engage in and appreciate as intended. But I do have endless respect and appreciate how they’re responsible for such Anime I love. 

Decade Anniversary of 2016 Anime

2016 happens to be an important year in my personal history with Anime. Even though I’d had some interest in some Anime for 20 years previously, and at the end of the year still had only seen a fraction of the Anime I’ve seen now (maybe even specially a minority of what had existed up that point), it was during this year I feel I truly became an Otaku, became someone whose interest in Anime and related media took priority over all the older Nerdy interests I do still have. 

For Winter 2016. 

Grimgar of Ashes and Illusions is an Anime I didn’t finish but it’s notable to some as what a lost potential of what Isekai could have become if it’d been Darker or more Realistic and or just generally taken itself more seriously. 

Knosuba is the opposite yet also a show I never finished even the first season of as the ultimate Isekai parody.  This season also had the second cour of Gate which I’ve talked about before.

Erased is a show I’ve watched twice and I like it, yes even its ending. 

And it had the last season of Durarara!! Which was excellent. And also the last cour of Lupin III Part IV which was also good. 

Aokana is a show I’ve seen and consider pretty okay. Also the last part of Code Geass: Akito of the Exiled and the Selector Destructed Wixoss movie. 

Spring 2016 had Re:Zero, Netoge, season 3 of Sailor Moon Crystal, High School Fleet, Flying Witch and the second part of Concrete Revolutio an Anime I only very recently became a fan of. That's six very solid shows right there. It also had the 20th Detective Conan film Darkest Nightmare which was good and the movie version of Gundam Thunderbolt December Sky which was very good. And the third Gundam The Origin OVA, the fourth would come out in December. 

Summer 2016 had the second half of Re:Zero season 1 but also the first half of Tales of Zestria which is a great example of how the Fantasy Anime adapted from specific Video Games often feel the least Gamey. 

New Game! was great, Prisma Illya 3wei is as well. 

The separate Anime listed on the database Websites as different Danganronpa 3s should not be watched separately but in the episode order they are placed in on Crunchyroll.  In that form they are The Godfather Part II of Anime and in my opinion even better, a true masterpiece.

For movies Summer 2016 has two of the biggest of all, Your Name and A Silent Voice, both of which are great movies. It also has the Accel World movie which I enjoyed and Pokémon: Volcanion and The Mechanical Marvel which was okay. 

For Pokémon this year was the end of the X and Y Generation which I really like, probably the last Generation of Pokémon I really got into. That also means it’s the start of Sun and Moon which I’ve always found the art style of off putting.  But the Pokémon Generations ONAs were pretty good. 

Fall 2016 is a fascinating season, one of it’s biggest I’ve still never watched but conceptually do respect and want to give props to, Yuri On Ice. Another show from that season I know of but haven’t seen is Keijo. Of the six shows from this season I have watched to completion, all are shows I like.  I also recall that the second season of Sound Euphonium aired this season.

What’s special about this season is it’s my first time really following Seasonal Anime as they aired. Earlier in the year I had heard of both Re;Zero and Konosuba and maybe also Erased but didn’t follow them. I had watched Crystal season 3 on Hulu (which was Free with Ads back then) as it aired where I was also following the finishing of SailorStars being uploaded there, but I’ve always compartmentalized Sailor Moon from general seasonal Anime. 

Those six Fall 2016 shows are Izetta The Last Witch, Flip Flappers, ViVid Strike!, Lostorage Incited Wixoss, Occultic;Nine and Magical Girl Raising Project which is the only one I’ll qualify, as a defender of so called “Dark Magical Girl shows’ in general this isn’t one of the best of them but I like some of what it does.  The first two of those are the ones I actively followed at the time.

When talking about 2017's importance I have sometimes mistakenly referred to that Winter as my first time following seasonal Anime.  This is because of three things.  I didn't watch much of Fall 2016 at the time.  I kinda just happened to be following these currently airing show not registering that this was an Anime Fan practice I was doing for the first time. And 2017 was my first full Gregorian calendar year following Seasonal Anime. 

This year was the 20th Anniversary of Detective Conan’s Anime just as current year is the show’s 30th. Which is why this year had the Episode One OVA which was an okay way to get the gist of how it started with more modern Animation, but I’d more recommend just watching the early episodes which are currently on Netflix.  

For the show proper 2016 began with two 1 hour TV Original special episodes (804-805) written by the same guy who wrote movie 11 and was pretty fun. The Darkness of the Prefectural Police (810-812) was a fun episode that introduced a new character important to the Rum saga. The Shadow Chasing Amuro (813) was a tie in episode to the movie I mentioned before. The Actress Blogger’s locked room (814-815) is the next appearance of that new character. The suspects are a Passionate Couple (822-823) is a fun episode, one of the rare modern DC episodes I’ve watched 3 times already. Ramen so Good it’s to Die For 2 (827-828) is another fun episode, it has Sera in it. The Unfriendly Girls Band (836-837) is another fun episode I’ve seen 3 times, it’s a K-On reference and builds on some important lore and has one of the most memorable EDs which I suspect Yuki Yuna is A Hero fans will get a kick out of.  If I’ve seen more from 2016 I don’t remember for certain, but those are already more interesting episodes then I was expecting a single year from the Rum era to have when I started writing this. 

And the year ended with the Fate/Grand Order: First Order OVA which was fun. 

Going back to an observation I made at the start, even most Anime from 2016 I hadn’t seen at the time.  Most stuff from the first three seasons I didn’t even know of at the time, for the movies and some shows their Dubs didn’t exist yet, and even for that last season there’s still many I didn't watch till later. 

I got into to Anime during this year watching stuff that wasn't new at the time, or at least wasn't brand new, like Yuru Yuri, Lucky Star, Haruhi, Future Diary, Selector Infected Wixoss and Selector Spread Wixoss, Fate/Zero and Stay Night, and then Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and it’s sequel A’s on Thanksgiving, and possibly some more that I’ve forgotten exactly when I first watched them. And also revisiting some of the Anime I’d already been a fan of (including being the year I watched my favorite Anime Noir Subbed for the first and still only time). I didn’t realize at the time how for some of those Anime this year was their 10th anniversary and are thus turning 20 now. 

So perhaps it’s a little silly to celebrate the Anime that actually aired this year alongside it being the anniversary of my becoming an Otaku. But every time I find out something I watched more recently is from 2016 my brain goes “that makes sense” it’s like this was meant to be the year that got me to go full Weeb. 

There is none Anime stuff from 2016 I like in a similar way. I’m still a Suicide Squad apologist with mixed feelings on both BvS and Rouge One and all the American TV shows I was watching at that time. I may have even still been reading BlackCoatPress books. But Anime became my priority and it’s stuck. 

Sub Eras of The Isekai Era

I feel like I have a unique perspective on understanding this timeline of events. 

First I’m aware there is a long history of Anime that can be described as Isekai before this era.  This is about the distinctly modern trend of Isekai as we currently know it being one of the most prolific and defining genres of the current state of Anime. 

Winter 2013 through Spring 2017 is a time when there is already a visible increase in Anime that can be described as Isekai, as well as non-Isekai Fantasy Anime becoming increasingly more beholden to JRPG Gamer logic. 

But from what I recall the English speaking fandom wasn’t using the word “Isekai” all that often yet, all the AniTube videos talking about shows we now call Isekai that I’ve seen did not use the word, it wasn’t in videos on relevant shows from TrixieTheGoldenWitch, Mother's Basement or Gigguk.

This was also an era when there not only were still Fantasy Anime without this Gamer Vibe but they weren't inherently less common either. Spring 2017 has two highly underrated Fantasy shows I would not even remotely classify as even Quasi-Isekai, Grimoire of Zero and WoldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?. It’s not that those kinds of Anime ever stopped, some like them still get made, but I do think this was the last time we got two in one season.

And almost every proper Isekai from this era is among those that most who’ve seen them consider among the good ones, whether it’s the highly popular instant classics like, Log Horizon, No Game No Life, Overlord, Konosuba, Re:Zero, and Tanya The Evil, or very distinct hidden Gems like Problem Children, Outbreak Company and Grimgar: Ashes and Illusions.  The most disliked Isekai from this era is Gate, which was not for being seen as “generic” but for its politics, and even then Gate was still a very popular show. 

Summer 2017 was the beginning of the Isekai era in full force, In Another World With My Smartphone is the first Anime to truly have all of the vibes of a "generic Isekai” which I say as someone who unconditionally loves it. And it was while it and Restaurant to Another World and Knights and Magic were airing that I recall the English Speaking fandom first really started using the word Isekai. And that is when the state of discourse about Isekai entered the form we now know it.  

And I find it fascinating how quickly during that season the narrative became that Isekai is an overused premise people are sick of even though earlier the same year no one was complaining about it. 

I started writing this thinking Fall 2017 was the last season without an Isekai, nor did it have anything I’d call a Quasi-Isekai.  So for that reason you could argue this was still a transitional period and Deathmarch to a Parallel World Rhapsody in Winter 2018 was the start of the full non-stop Isekai bombardment. But the early part of an era can have some stumble in getting off the ground so I was still willing to start this era in Summer 2017 regardless of that.  

However I’d forgotten about Ancient Magus Bride, that show is an Isekai but is like the pre 2017 shows in how pretty highly regarded it is, though I still haven’t watched it. It’s also a Shounen Manga adaptation rather than starting as a Light Novel, so it does still feel like part of the modern Isekai discussion purely by technicality.  There was also Recovery of an MMO Junkie which is part of the undeniably connected yet distinct trend of Anime about playing an MMORPG.

And then double checking myself saw that there wasn’t an Isekai in Spring 2018, at least not among what I watched, just the somewhat JRPG like Fantasy show Last Period. 

Either way Summer 2017 was still the turning point in my opinion.

And I’d say this era continued into the start of the Pandemic.

About 2021 is when the discourse mutated into a state where some were hoping the trend must be finally almost over while others entered resigned acceptance that this being a consistent part of each season is here to stay.  It’s also in this era that Isekai’s own Sub Genres started being defined in common use even if some of the roots of them were already there. 

Ancient World Fantasy

The most common default setting for a secondary world Fantasy is a Medieval Europe inspired setting, some Fantasy Anime might have a Medieval East Asia aesthetic. 

But settings besides the Middle Ages do exist. We have Space Fantasy or Futuristic Fantasy, the kinds of Fantasy that get confused for Sci-Fi. We have Gaslamp Fantasy which is the Fantasy counterpart to SteamPunk. And Urban Fantasy refers to stories set kind of in the modern world.  And of course the settings inspired by the Ancient World also exist. 

But what I wanna talk about here is how Ancient World Fantasy so often defaults to the Bronze Age, at least in the Vibe they give off, they might be using Iron weapons but the Vibe is Bronze Age. From old Italian Sword and Sandal films, to the 90s Sam Raimi Hercules and Xena shows, the obscure 1991 OVA Majuu Senshi Luna Varga, the 2018 Isekai Anime The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar. And then the Fate/Grand Order Babylonia Anime also fits into this lineage. 

The Bronze Age is the largest age of Antiquity, it is about Two Thousand years from over 3300 to 1184 BC, Biblically that’s The Tower of Babel (or you could argue Tubal-Cain in Genesis 4) down to the end of Judges. The thing is the sub ages that can obviously be divided into are not all that distinguished by these kinds of Fantasy Stories. Those Sword and Sandal films will mix and match the Heroic Age of Greek Mythology with Sumeria and Egypt’’s Old Kingdom will look the same as the New Kingdom. 

Exceptions exist, I own some of them, but none of those have made huge impacts on Pop Culture.  At most we could have Classical Antiquity references being meshed into an otherwise Bronze Age aesthetic like 300 or all the Rome stuff in Xena, Xena’s timeline will not ever make real world sense and that’s what’s fun about it. 

One of the key early Trope Codifiers of Ancient Secondary World Fantasy was Conan The Barbarian and other works of Robert E Howard.  Howard was to Ancient World Fantasy what Tolkien is to medieval Europe Fantasy. And that includes how both were not strictly secondary worlds originally, they both technically set their stories in a prehistoric distant past of this world.  But they make a transition into modern Secondary World Fantasy because of how the detailed world building made their world seem distinct in ways prior stories doing technically the same thing more vaguely like William Morris stories could not. 

Fantasy Stories were originally drawing inspiration from the less well documented periods of human history (that’s what the term “Dark Age” originally meant, a period we don’t know much about), and the Bronze age was once even less well documented then it is now. Only once the transition to full Secondary Worlds was complete did writers of Medieval Fantasy realize they could start moving upward into the High Middle Ages and Renaissance for inspiration. But why didn’t Ancient World fantasy do the same?  

Each type of Fantasy Setting began with writers who were to some extent romanticizing the period they are drawing inspiration from, the Fantasy stories with more cynical takes on those time periods came later in response to the stories that first popularized it. 

And in the modern world the kinds of people who romanticize Classical Antiquity do so in a way that is functionally mutually exclusive with telling stories where real Supernatural stuff happens. Classic Antiquity is romanticized by principally New Atheists/Reddit Atheists who pretend the values of rationalism and empiricism were more popular in ancient Greece and Rome then they actually were, that it was a Golden Age of Science and Reason destroyed by the rise of Abrahamic Religion.

Now you may think “Christianity was born during Classical Antiquity so wouldn't Christians romanticize it?” but you'd be wrong. The world view of modern Right Wing especially High Church Christians is that Christianity was born into a broken world that needed fixing and the Medieval World was the product of Christianity fixing it.   Liberal Christians (especially Low Church Protestants) believe Christianity was born into a broken world and modern Liberal Democracy is the result of Christianity eventually slowly fixing it.  And a Leftist Christian believes Christianity was born into a Broken world and still hasn’t fixed it yet.  The point is that the context of The Gospel demands that Jesus wasn’t born into the best period of time to be alive Civilizationally speaking. The option I’ve been more willing to consider then most Christians is that there was value in the Hellenistic Civilization that was lost when it fell to the Romans, and the fall of the Hasmonean Kingdom was certainly lamentable, after all Jesus observed Hanukkah in John 10. Ultimately though I am a Leftist with Liberal characteristics.

Atheists however, not all Atheist but the really devout ones who build their personality on being Atheists, have a world view built on inverting the Catholic view and appropriating the Puritan view.

And The Bronze Age is more popular than the Iron Age because it has the quality of being what was Ancient History already to the people of Classical Antiquity.

But another factor is the Western Bias, every time I said Classical Antiquity both you and I were first and foremost thinking of the Greeks and Romans more than the Persians or Carthaginians or Parthians or Late Period Egypt or Kushites or East Asia or Mesoamerica and certainly not the “Barbarians” of Western and Northern Europe.  And when we do we kind of think of them as being aesthetically still in the Bronze Age. 

The plot twist I've been building to is that perhaps a different style of Ancient World Fantasy has been hiding in plain sight this whole time.  That Tolkien’s legendarium was actually more Ancient than Medieval all along but pop culture perception has just run with faulty assumptions. 

When early Rings of Power images started coming out I saw one person on Twitter not at all inclined to say nice things about Rings of Power say that at least its costume design is more inline with Tolkien’s actual intent then the Peter Jackson films. Peter Jackson’s costume design went all in the High Middle Ages when the Third Age of Middle Earth really was Early Middle Ages at the latest. Literally the Norman Conquest is when Tolkien felt everything went wrong.  Eomer shares a name with a 5th century king of the Angles for a reason, the Rohirrim and Rhovanion are meant to be ancestors of the pre-migration Anglo-Saxons. 

Even if the Third Age is Medieval, it’s not just Western Europe, Gondor is kind of Byzantium, the rump in South Eastern Europe of the fallen Empire of the West.

The First and Second Ages however are definitely Ancient, they are basically imagining that the Celts had a “Civilization” before the Greeks and Romans. And in so doing it results in Numenor feeling very Roman and Eregion feeling a little Athenian, and I would even call Mordor kind of Sparta how Anti-Spartan Athenians saw them. The Fall of Golodin was partly based on Troy as many have written about before. 

And capturing all of that is part of why I love Rings of Power, especially season 2. 

Biblical Israelite Fate/ Servants

There is in my view only one real Biblical Israelite Servant in Canonical Fate/ material still, that being David.

Solomon and Martha are nominally Biblical Characters but everything about who they are in Fate/ lore is defined by Extra Biblical traditions about them.  

There is nothing in The Bible to support Solomon being any kind of Mage nor does he perform any miracles. The only Biblical basis for Solomon potentially being a Caster would be the same logic by which Shakesphere and Alexandre Dumas are Casters, apparently just being a sufficiently influential writer can make you a type of Caster and Solomon is the traditional author of some of The Bible, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and two of the Psalms. Yet even that is far from what he's mainly known for.

And Martha in Fate/ is even more divorced from who she is Biblically, she’s basically a French Hero given the role she plays in FGO. I have to admit what defined her character in her Gospel appearances is essentially being a House Wife, hard to see how taming an Ankylosaurus/Euoplocephalus naturally extends from that. But also since she’s New Testament she’s someone Jewish players of the game would feel hesitant to say represents them.

So the thought has entered my head of what if we made an effort to give the Ancient Israelites a true Servant for each Class like so many other cultures have? 

The Archer Class is the one already filled, and Archer is the correct classification for David. A slingshot being the same class of weapon as a Bow and Arrow has been burned into my thinking since Ocarina of Time. 

I would have Joshua be the Lancer.  Joshua 8:18-26 tells us he had a Spear, and one popular Christian Card Game has a Joshua’s Spear card so people besides me have considered it notable. His Noble Phantasm could be called Wall Breaker.

For the Saber I am going to stretch the definition of Biblical a bit and say Judas Maccabeus.  The books of Maccabees are considered Canonical by only some Christians and no Jews, but most Jews celebrate Hanukkah so his accomplishments are revered in Judaism more than in Christianity.  1 Maccabees 3:12 refers to Judas taking the Sword of Apollonius and fighting with it for the rest of his life. And 2 Maccabees 15:15-16 refers to Maccabeus being given a Golden Sword.  

Also Judas Maccabeus is the person mentioned in this post I’d be most fine with Fate/ doing their typical Gender Bend thing with. Because I have my own theory about this Judas already being made a Judith as the title character of another Deutercanonical book based on his relationship with Nicanor/Holofernes. 

Since the Berserker Class is associated with being more brawn then brains the natural choice for that one is Samson the main character of Judges 13-16. 

For the Assassin Class my first instinct was Jael from Judges 4:17-22 and 5:24.  But she’s called a Kenite meaning she might not actually count as an Israelite???  She’s clearly considered part of the Israelite tradition by most readers so she’ll work fine.

The Caster class could be given to any of the Prophets, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, the title characters of the Prophetic books. Moses is the most important obviously. 

The Rider Class is actually the most difficult. The Ancient Israelites were not known for their Calvary, that’s part of the reason they conquered the mountainous regions first while the Canaanites held out longest in the plains according to Judges 1:19, it was the Canaanites who had Horses and Chariots. It was during the Kingdom period that changed, both Solomon and Rehoboam had Chariots but that isn’t central to what they are known for. 

There is a famous Chariot linked to Elijah, but he’d be a caster first and since he never died I would argue maybe shouldn’t be in the Throne of Heroes. Jehu rides a Chariot in 2 Kings 9:16. 

That’s the seven main classes, but there are also the non standard ones to think about. 

For the Ruler Class I’d easily pick Deborah of Judges 4-5 since the initial precedent for what kind of person would be a ruler is Jeanne d’Arc.

Shielder seems to be the least well defined class besides what you can guess from the name. I’m kinda thinking of Nehemiah, who rebuilt the Walls of Jerusalem. 

Avenger feels like the most controversial class to apply to anyone. I could see the Character Arc needed to become an Avenger fitting chiefly Saul but perhaps also Jeroboam. Saul definitely feels more over all important. 

Years should begin and end around the Spring Equinox rather than the Winter Solstice.

This is as many know The Biblical Reckoning, the year begins with the month Aviv later named Nissan and ends with Adar. All the traditions about alternate New Years including the popular Tishrei New Year are Extra-Biblical, the only Biblically ordained reckoning for the year is the one that starts with Aviv. 

Weebs also eventually learn that while Japan nominally uses the Gregorian Calendar a lot about how they do things is clearly built around years that begin with April and end with March. Including their School Year. 

As a former fan of Wrestling I miss the days when the WWE’s calendar truly revolved around WrestleMania, that event in late March or early April was a culmination of many months of build up and then the Raw the day after felt like a new beginning. 

I feel like everyone intuitively, subconsciously, knows this way of thinking about years is what actually makes the most sense. 

Spring feels like a time of birth, of beginnings, of fertility. 

While Winter is poetically a time of Death, it clearly feels like the nighttime of the year.  Only the start of Winter is ever a time we feel like celebrating, after that it’s three months of waiting for Spring to arrive.  

For the last few years I’ve been using Calendars built around screen shots from classic Video Game.  And I keep noticing that the ability to make the Levels associated with each month match the vibe of that month is hindered by the natural impulse to start with World 1-1. 

Video Games usually open with Levels that feel like the embodiment of Spring, Grass Land, Green Hill Zone, Green Greens.  Even when they aren’t named something like that just look at them, Bob-Omb’s Battlefield is a very Green stage. 

Meanwhile Ice worlds are usually saved till late game, yes technically mainly because they are so difficult.  But it winds up creating a theme. 

This observation about Video Game design won’t pan out when applied to everything, clearly they aren’t usually consciously thinking of building the game around going through a Biblical or Japanese Year.  And not all popular Level themes are as easy to pin to a time of year. I could say Desert Levels are summer because deserts are hot but also winter because they’re barren. 

The point however is that it feels natural to begin in a setting that looks like Spring.

How to Watch Evangelion

 Don't.

Don't watch Evangelion, it's overrated and countless newer shows have done what it did better.

Watch Sumphogear

Symphogear

Symphogear G

Symphogear GX

Symphogear AXZ

Symphogear XV

I finally watched Majuu Senshi Luna Varga and it was pretty good.

This is the OVA that Trixie The Golden Witch once described as revolving around the protagonist's Vagina transforming into Godzilla.

I initially suspected that she might have been exaggerating how much the creature actually looks like Godzilla.  Then the first time I looked at clips from it I went "yeah Toho could probably have sued them".

Now finally watching the OVA proper I'm back to thinking maybe he isn't quite that identical to Godzilla.  In episode 4 another Kaiju shows up, they are called Varuga, and it in some ways looks more like Godzilla and in some ways less.

All that was just the matter of if these Varugas look like Godzilla.  I was not expecting episode 4 to also possibly imply some Lore that makes the Godzilla resemblance perhaps thematically relevant.

Game of Thrones Universe Watch Order Post.

When it comes to adaptations there are more potential watch orders then just Release Order vs Chronological order (or purely individual preference made up order), there's also the idea of watching the Adaptation in the Release Order of the source material which may not be the same.

I only recently learned as it was airing that The Hedge Knight, the first book of the Tales of Dunk and Egg series, was first published between the first two A Song of Ice and Fire books.  Meaning for future reference when it's done season one of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms would perhaps by be watched right after season 1 of Game of Thrones and before season 2.

Of course this would become less useful in this example as the shows tend to depart from the books more as they go on.

So here's the release order of The Books

A Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones Season 1)

The Hedge Knight (A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms Season 1)

A Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones Season 2)

A Storm of Swords (Game of Thrones Seasons 3-4)

The Sworn Sword (no adaptation yet, will be season 2 of AKotSK)

A Feast of Crows (kinda seasons 5-6 of Game of Thrones)

The Mystery Knight (no adaptation yet, will be season 3 of AKotSK)

A Dance with Dragons (kinda season 5-6 of Game of Thrones)

The Princess and The Queen (House of The Dragon, but not really)

The Rogue Prince (House of The Dragon, but not really)

Sons of The Dragon (House of The Dragon, but not really)

Fire and Blood (House of The Dragon, but not really)

BookTuber reviewing classic Fantasy Novels.

The name of the YouTube Channel is The Everyman Reads.

The idea is he's going to review 500 major Fantasy Novels in the order they were written.  He's still very early in the project having just reviewed George MacDonald's Lilith.  And it's a very good video everyone should watch it. 

In this video he defines how he divides Fantasy into 6 Eras. He's probably about right in what his divisions are, but the Pedantic in me can't help but be annoyed my labels he choose, the point of naming eras after precious Metals is to repeat the Greek Mythological format, Gold then Silver then Bronze and then Iron.  His timeline goes Bronze, Silver, Classic, Golden, Modern and the current recently started not definitively named era.  Which is the other pedantic complaint, Modern is by definition current, if we aren't in the same era as 2005-2020 anymore then that era needs a new name. 

Now as I said when talking about Eras of Anime that The Golden Age is the first full era of greatness, but there cna be a proto or pre history. So I would call his Bronze Age the formative years, then his Silver Age The Golden Age, then his Classic age the Silver Age and his Golden Age the Bronze Age and his Modern Age the Iron Age.

The 500 books he's selected are naturally biased towards the English speaking canon. And that's fine actually, there is a lot to cover just there. I just want to use this framing as a jumping off point for mentioning some foreign works I feel deserve more credit and attention.  Because what foreign language country's fiction I'm interested in changes depending on the era. 

The first two eras line up well with my Froncophilic interests I hold thanks to CoolFrenchComics.com and BlackCoatPress.

Paul Feval wrote only one book I'm confident can be considered Fantasy enough to definitely count, La Ville Vampire translated into English by the late Brian Stableford as Vampire City, first serialized in the 1860s.  Stuff straddling that transitional line would include some of the works in Anne of The Isles. Some of his books set in modern Paris I would draw inspiration from when writing Urban Fantasy though they wouldn't actually count since the Supernatural element is always left ambiguous, The Vampire Countess, Revenants, Knightshade and The Blackcoats saga whose 6th volume The Companions of The Treasure is in my view the most Tolkienesque thing written before Tolkien. 

The Angel and The Sphinx from 1889 by Eduard Schure and translated by Brian Stableford.

The Enchanted City by Eugene Hennebert from 1893 including in BlackCoatPress's upcoming French Tales of Lost Worlds anthology.

In 1908 and 1909 Gustave Le Rouge wrote two novels that directly anticipate the Barsoom series, these were Translated and published together as Vampires of Mars. 

1919's L'Atlantide is like She in some ways but not in others, the author Pierre Beniot had not read She. But it has had a similar if more forgotten cultural impact, for awhile being directly adapted every decade but also in the name of it's Femme Fatale Antinea influencing even more films.

As far as arguing that 1990-2004 was the best era of Fantasy Prose Novels,  this wouldn't be the only time where what I call The Bronze is also the age I would argue is the best, that's certainly the case with Anime and kind of is for some DC characters. And that is where my Weeb interests come in.  

I haven't read these books, I haven't even seen all the Anime based on them, but I know a lot about their cultural importance.  And these are only stories that were originally Prose Novels which Light Novels count as, I won't be including anything that started as a Manga, Anime, Video Games or Visual Novels though they certainly have plenty of their own contributions to making this an exciting decade and a half for the Fantasy genre.  

The Heroic Legend of Arslan series started in 1987 but continued all through this era. 

Majuu Senshi Luna Varga is referred to as being based on a Light Novel but I can't find any publication dates for it, it's probably the most randomly obscure thing I'm going to list here.  The OVAs came out in 91 so it could turn to be too soon for this era. 

Slayers started in 1990.

The Twelve Kingdoms started in 1992 and is one of the many GRRMs of Anime in that it's still unfinished. 

On the subject of Urban Fantasy I'm unsure what does and doesn't count but 1998 started a peak era for Japanese Urban Fantasy with Boogiepop and Others in February and the first Kara No Kyoukai in October.  I also recall Trixie The Golden Witch mentioning an anthology book of Light Novels like these from this era called Faust. 

Maybe a short story shouldn't be considered eligible for this but Kinoko Nasu's Angel Notes from 99 is pretty important. 

Scrapped Princess was from 1999 to 2003.

Legend of The Legendary Heroes started in 2002. 

2002 is also the same year as the original Web Novel for Sword Art Online, which isn't a Fantasy novel but has become undeniable important to the history of Fantasy in Japanese media.

Baccano! started in 2003 as did The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya if you count either as Urban Fantasy.

The year 2004 was the start of at least three important Light Novel sagas. 

The Familiar of Zero was very popular and a website that started as a fan site for it would go on to be the main incubation chamber for modern Isekai.

And then two more where I'm unsure if they count as Urban Fantasy for now.  Durarara!! and A Certain Magical Index.

And in December of 2004 Hakubō no Dendōshi by Gen Urobuchi was published. 

All Art is Political, but not all art is Partisan.

All Art is Political in the sense that all Art will reflect the politics of the time and culture that created it in some way, especially if it’s actively trying not to. What is perceived as Apolitical says a lot about the politics of a given time or culture. 

The conservatives who object to that statement do so because they can only see art as political when it’s loudly taking a side on an actively contentious contemporary political issue.  Which is what I mean by “Partisan” here, might not be the best word to use but it's what I could think of. Because I am willing to count as "Partisan" here stuff that does condemn both sides depending on how it goes about it, or refuses to fully demonize the other. 

However Conservatives are not the only ones getting the true meaning of “All art is political” wrong. Because a lot of Breadtubers are often citing the true definition only to then justify their very Partisan political reading of something as objectively undeniably correct. 

This obsession with trying to tell all the reactionaries of the Internet that whatever they are nostalgic for was "always Woke actually" is very misguided. Because even when it is somewhat true it is so usually because of how what was Woke when the original Star Trek series was airing has become the mostly uncontested Apolitical Status Quo since. 

Most mass produced highly popular Art is pretty broadly Centrist in the grand scheme of things even when taking a few actually Partisan stances. And most Art that is made by Conservatives are not like the cartoonish virtue signaling content Breadtubers dunk on to “prove” all Conservative Art is bad, most of it is actually pretty good at drawing on where in theory Leftists agree with them.

As a Death of the Author believer, I firmly believe you can make a plausible Woke reading of just about anything. And I believe we should make those readings and keep making YT videos based on them. But those are not objectively the only correct way to read them and we shouldn't pretend they are.  

And the most actually Leftist stuff Hollywood has made like Andor can still be read by Conservatives as supporting their world view in ways that engage with the actual text just as much as our reading does.  We can’t call it denying reality when they do it but sophisticated analysis when we do it. 

I’ve even seen Breadtubers try to claim Tolkien was Woke actually, and I’m sorry but that’s absurd, being less Racist then the Nazis does not a Woke person create.  

If Ayn Rand hadn’t been so vocal about her politics in non fiction contexts I’m convinced there absolutely would be a group of Internet Leftists arguing her fictions were Woke actually.  Or at the very least if we only had The Fountainhead to go off, a Woke reading of The Fountainhead is absolutely theoretically possible. 

All the time I see people just using the fact that a given story has Nazis be the bad guys as their proof that it's Woke. And every time I feel like yelling “you know better than this”, you know that most Nazi villains in fiction are disconnected from why we Leftists consider them the ultimate Evil and are just being used as symbols of vague Authoritarianism, or purely for the aesthetic. You know full well that Conservatives are constantly calling Leftists the real Nazis. 

Sometimes just the simple fact that a Fantasy or Sci-Fi narrative is doing Rebels against an Empire is seen as an inherently Left Wing position to take  But when these same people are looking at real life history they know better, they know sometimes the Rebels are the Reactionaries, The Confederate States of America, The Beer Haul Putsch, January 6th ect.

We all know full well that nominally Left Wing Dictators have also worn military uniforms and done big showy military parades.  So let’s stop pretending we don’t and that those visuals are only ever about Fascism ™.

And there is also more to Anticapitalism than just “Rich People Bad”, as someone who has heard people all over the Political Spectrum talk about their perspectives I can assure you that most Conservatives and even most Libertarians firmly believe that the vast majority of Rich People are Evil.  The political disagreement is mainly about what policies serve their interests.  And if you think that is too absurd to be true in some cases, let me give you this very enlightening example.  

I have seen Climate Change Deniers claim that it is specifically the Big Oil Companies who created the Global Warming narrative and fund environmentalist groups opposed to Fracking and Offshore drilling because it helps them control the market and drive up Oil Prices to not be drilling for Oil domestically.