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 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 shows 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 shows not registering that this was an Anime Fandom 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. 

Another post about Anime Screenwriters

There's a Pokémon YouTube Channel I discovered recently called Funyarinpa Foundation that has some good videos talking about various writers of the Pokémon Anime.  I highly recommend their videos on Aya Matsui, Hideaki Sonoda and the 44 minute Serena video talks about a writer associated with her episodes.  He's also discussed Takeshi Shudo in a number of videos, YouTubers talking about Shudo is far from uncommon but his perspective is still a unique one.

Reiko Yoshida is a writer I've talked about on this blog before and I keep discovering more about just how uniquely prolific she is. She's not the only writer to have written for both Dragon Ball Z and some classic Mahou Shoujo. But add to that her importance to the Digimon Anime, and that she wrote a Studio Ghibli film The Cat Returns, and the Anime adaptation of classic Shoujo Yuri Maria-sama ga Miteru, and unique 00s hidden Jem Romero x Juliette and multiple 2010s "Moe" shows like Girls Und Panzer and High School Fleet and most of what Naoko Yamada directed for Kyoto Animation.   And I find it hard to imagine anyone else who has such a wide variety of Anime in thier resume.  But there are many who know a lot more then I do.

And that's just stuff I'm familiar with that I consider her one of the main writers for. There are so many other shows she wrote a smaller percentage of episodes for, from Angelic Layer to Pokémon Journeys.  And then even more I still haven't watched any of.  

Her role in the history of the Magical Girl Warrior sub-genre is interesting for how it helps build a genealogy. She wrote for Cutey Honey Flash alongside veterans of both Sailor Moon and Wedding Peach. After that she then wrote the Tokyo Mew Mew Manga from 2000 through early 2003.  This seems to be the only Manga she ever wrote, she is mainly an Anime writer. Tokyo Mew Mew I view as kind of a key transitional point in the history of Magical Girl Manga and Anime, as someone who took way to long to even learn of the show's existence I quickly noticed ways in which it anticipated aspects of Pretty Cure. 

I just learned while writing this that she wrote a third of Shirobako. 

As the most popular and highly regarded Anime about making Anime I do appreciate the role the writing part plays in the show. The show starts with an Anime already currently airing so it's lead writer's job is presented as mostly done till he's called back in when the director wants to change the ending at the last minute.  The second cour follows an Anime from the start of it's production and so we see more of what the writers do with the guy we meet only briefly in the first cour serving as a mentor to the young aspiring writer who's a friend of the protagonist. 

The lead writer of Shirobako was Michiko Yotoke.  She also has ties to the Magical Girl genre having written 3 episodes of the Pretty Sammy TV Anime and 11 episodes of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and the Scenario for Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, and a number of shows that others might be more inclined to count as part of the genre then I would, most notably Princess Tutu which I do count more then I do say Utena.  Besides that she's written for a lot of stuff I've seen but not many I'd consider favorites.  Though normies might be interested in that she wrote 8 episodes of Cowboy Bebop. 

Shonen and Battle Shonen

Shonen is a Manga Demographic term that sometimes gets mistaken for a Genre term in the west.  What people typically mean when they mistakenly use Shonen as a genre term is Battle Shonen.  But even what that means can be itself a bit arguable and I suspect another case where that’s not what they call these kinds of Manga in Japan.

I tend to refer to Battle Shonen as a genre I’m not very into with Dragonball Z being the only Battle Shonen Anime I’ve watched to any significant degree.  The shows I’m intending to tell people I haven’t watched when I say that are Fist of the NorthStar, Yu Yu Hakushu, Hunter x Hunter, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, One Punch Man, My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Demon Slayer and JJK.  Interestingly I know that at least one of those isn’t even technically Shonen but Seinen. 

Most of the Shonen Manga based Anime I’ve completed are shows I didn’t even originally think were Shonen but rather Seinen.  Death Note and Future Diary are in particular the shows that forced me to rethink what I assumed Shonen meant when I learned their Manga were officially Shonen.  I was associating the term Shonen exclusively with kids shows, that’s not why I’m not into Battle Shonen, I absolutely love watching some kids' shows like Classic Mahou Shoujo and Pokémon. If there is a show other than DBZ I’ve watched that can be considered a Battle Shonen it’s probably one of these “I can’t believe it’s not Seinen” shows. 

And there are a few Shonen with enough female perspective and Melodrama to make some at first think they're Shoujo like Karin aka Chibi Vampire and Shattered Angels.

Pokémon not being considered Battle Shonen isn’t because of the Shonen part, it may not be a Manga original franchise but it has Manga and they are Shonen and there is no dispute the target age demographics of the Pokémon Games and Anime originally was principally Shonen.  It’s not a Battle Shonen because even though Battles are a part of Pokémon's appeal it’s not the structural foundation the same way it is in a Battle Shonen. 

The other important Shonen I’m into is Detective Conan and the kinda same universe series Magic Kaito. In order to call them Battle Shonen you’d have to get pretty abstract about what it means to battle someone. 

Maybe some of you think Detective Conan should be part of the could pass for Seinen category, and I’m not saying it can’t pass for Seinen. But I do not see it as difficult to pass for a kids show.  For all the desire some have to deny that it’s a kids show it really doesn't do much worse with it's murder and violence than Batman The Animated Series did. 

There is also Full Metal Alchemist.  If there is something I don't consider a Battle Shonen that others do, it's probably that franchise.

Pokémon and Nintendo Fandom

One thing I feel is missing from how many people reminisce about the early days of the Pokémon fandom is how the Pokémon Fandom and the wider Nintendo fandom related to each other. 

Pokémon is the only franchise represented in the original Super Smash Bros. that wasn't old enough to even have an SNES game, a few others had no NES games but only Pokémon had no SNES games.

The way Pokémon so quickly jumped to being arguably the most mainstream popular of all of them and certainly bigger than every franchise but Mario and Zelda did garner some degree of subtle resentment from the more long-time Nintendo fans.  Not me though, I was a Nintendo loyalist for years already before I heard of Pokémon but once I discovered Pokémon I quickly thought of it as part of the family.  But I noticed that for example early Sprite Comics predicated on being epic Nintendo crossover fics never included Pokémon.  And when there were Pokémon references it sometimes felt kinda mocking.

Today Pokémon isn’t different from other Nintendo first party franchises because it’s seen as too new, Pokémon is older now then Mario and Donkey Kong were when the first Smash came out (in fact so is Smash itself) and some even younger franchises are firmly part of the Nintendo pantheon now.  But Pokémon does feel a little different still in some hard to explain way.

Nintendo loves dropping Easter Eggs to their other first party franchises in various games, but Pokémon does feel a bit left out of that tradition, both in terms of being referenced and making references. Smash seems to be the only place Pokémon coexists with the other Nintendo franchises and it’s not first party only anymore. 

It might be because Pokémon is by many thought of as a Multimedia franchise rather than a Video Game franchise first.  The whole Pokémon saying only their own names trope is an Anime invention that proper Pokémon games rarely incorporate and when they do only really for Pikachu. Except Smash of all places where Jiggleypuff also still does this (I do appreciate how Rachel Lillis name is immortalized as part of the Smash Ultimate credits).

In which case it does go both ways.  Comic Party is an Anime from OLM the same studio as the Pokémon Anime that I refer to as the Lucky Star of the early 00s, more specifically it is for OLM what Lucky Star is for KytoAnimation on a meta level. And yet Pokémon is the one OLM Anime left out of all that referencing even though it was by far their biggest franchise.  Perhaps because Nintendo didn’t want their new Crown Jewel being so directly linked to Otaku Culture. 

Pokémon is by money earned the largest IP franchise of all time, beating out even Star Wars and Batman.  So it’s perhaps the one franchise Nintendo feels they don't need to cross promote. 

On a Fandom level Pokémon’s long term ubiquity has made it now the opposite of what I observed in the early days.  Pokémon references inevitably show up in fan content related to other Nintendo and other Anime franchises.  But a Pokémon specific YouTube channel is not likely to bring up Metroid.

It’s a shame because I think there is a lot of fun you could have with fan theories based on connecting Pokémon to the rest of the Nintendo multiverse, like the parallelism I see between the Lake Guardians and the Golden Goddesses. Or how Kirby could be a Pokémon anatomically related to Clefairy and Jiggleypuff.  Heck one could go beyond just Nintendo and speculate on a relationship between Deoxys and Jenova.

And if Link isn’t out of place in Mario Kart then Pikachu certainly wouldn’t be.  If a Side Stepper can somehow drive a Go Kart so can a Krabby.

The distinction between Best and Favorite.

Is something I believe I've talked about on this blog before.  What I actually consider the best of a series is not always the same as my personal favorite. That's not a denial that what I consider the best is still itself an ultimately subjective opinion, but often what I personally enjoy rewatching the most isn't what I consider the most flawless.

When it comes to long running Anime franchises with a lot of movies like Lupin III, Detective Conan aka Case Closed or Pokémon, what I consider the Best is a more consistent opinion as my personal favorite may fluctuate. 

And a third distinction I like to make with those is what movie makes the most ideal entry point to the franchise.  For each of these (almost) every movie can be a perfectly fine entry point, none of them are bogged down by continuity (the most recent Conan films kind of are, but not too much). But I'm still able to consider some better at that specifically then others. There is a bad entry for Lupin III actually, never under any circumstances let your first impression of Lupin III be Castle of Cagliostro, it is antithetical to everything Lupin stands for.

With Lupin The Third the Best and the most ideal entry point are the same, the film known as both The Secret of Mamo and The Mystery of Mamo. But my personal favorites tend to be among the TV Movies.  Missed by A Dollar is the one I've been calling my favorite lately. Blood Seal of The Eternal Mermaid is of those Lupin III stories where he's going after something we're told the original Arsene Lupin also went after the one with the best understanding of the original Arsene's character.  But The Secret of The Twilight Gemini is the best at drawing on a specific classic Arsene Lupin story (Teeth of The Tiger).  The Columbus Files is one I'm maybe biased for because it happens to be the first one I ever watched early in my Anime fandom, but it did hold up on my recent rewatch.  

For Detective Conan the ideal entry point is the first movie, The Time Bombed Skyscraper.  The best is the third The Last Wizard of The Century, and in this case the best may also be my favorite.  However three other candidates for my personal favorite do exist, movie 4 Captured In Her Eyes, movie 5 Countdown to Heaven and movie 11 Jolly Roger in The Deep Azure.

With Pokémon I am hard pressed to consider any a better entry point then the others.  The best is definitely the third movie Spell of The Unown. But I often feel most compelled to rewatch either Pokémon Heroes Latios and Latias or Mewtwo Returns. 

Time Bokan and the Skeletons of Cartoon VIllainy.

The Time Skeletons of the 1975 TV Anime Time Bokan are in Japan among the most Iconic villains in all of Animation.  This year will be their Fiftieth Anniversary.

But we Western Weebs haven’t had a lot of direct experience with them.

I’m among many who the first time I heard about them was in an AniTube video about how they were a big part of the inspiration for Team Rocket (Jesse, James and Meowth to be precise) in the Pokémon Anime.  The 2018 Anime Last Period had a group of villains I was comparing to Team Rocket as it aired and then when I learned about the Time Skeletons I immediately made that connection.

More recently we also learned how Waluigi was based on Glocky and the discarded Wapeach was based on Marjo which retroactively makes Wario into a Walther, or maybe he always was? 

There are no doubt many more.  When considering how similar to the Time Skeletons a group of villains are, there are many factors to consider.  Are they just functioning in the plot/story the same way or are there more specific parallels?  Are they only similar as a group or can each member be compared to a specific Time Skeleton?  Do they visually look similar?

Team Rocket are among the most distinct from the originals of confirmed admitted Time Skeleton descendants by pretty much all of those metrics.

For as much as the Time Skeletons are the Ur Text of so many Anime villains they are themselves also a product of trends and archetypes that came before them.   Who their predecessors within Anime are is something someone who knows way more than I do about very old Anime will have to look into.  But I happen to know a bit about what prior American Cartoon villains have some similar qualities.

Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle are among the first to come to mind.

I had long thought of Waluigi as looking a lot like Dick Dastardly, so after learning about this I’m thinking maybe Glocky is the missing link.

Marjo’s Iconic Costume actually reminds me a lot of a costume that Catwoman wore during much of the 70s in DC Comics.  But this Costume didn’t appear in Animation till Batman The Brave and The Bold in the 21st Century and I have no idea if any actual Batman Comics made it overseas to Japan during the 70s, so that similarity could be a coincidence.

This is one of many posts on my Blog where I don’t have a final thesis or anything, I just like thinking about these kinds of things.

Update March 2nd 2025: So in turns out what I said about the relationship between the Time Skeletons and Waluigi/Wapeach was actually me misremembering references to the similar villains in Yatterman an Anime that started airing two years later in 1977.  And my comparison of Marjo's Costume to that 70s Catwoman costume is also much more true of Doronjo.

But again these characters are also very Time Skeletons inspired, in fact the show literally took over Time Bokan's timeslot. But they were famous enough on their own that Miyamoto thought of them before the Time Skeletons when shooting down Wapeach.

Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town?

Is the name of a Winter 2021 Fantasy Anime I haven’t watched.  I recall trying to but didn’t finish even the first episode.

However I can’t stop thinking about the title.  The implication of that title is that ‘Starter Town” is functionally synonymous with being a bustling Urban Metropolis and what I recall of the first episode confirms that.

So it confuses me because these LN based Fantasy Anime are operating on a very Meta level, the title implies that because its audience would expect it to be the norm.

But my general experience with the Fantasy Genre is the opposite, the Hero’s Journey usually starts in the Boonies, from The Hobbit and LOTR starting in The Shire to Luke Skywalker growing up on a farm far from the big city on an outer rim planet to Pokémon starting in Pallet Town (which in the Games and Anime seems smaller then it’s real world inspiration) to even Zelda usually starting Link off in some obscure settlement like Kokori Forest, Outset Island or Ordon Village.

But only one of those fits all the requirements for counting as a JRPG and even it is an edge case. 

In Japan the by far most popular JRPG franchise is Dragon Quest with Dragon Quest III specifically being the main blueprint for what most of these Japanese Gamers would think of as a standard RPG formula.  And indeed that adventure does start in the Castle Town where the King lives.

Even the original Final Fantasy also has the first city you visit be the Royal Capital of a Kingdom.  And VII starts in Midgar.

In the Mairo RPGs Mario’s house seems not to be in any town but located very close to Toad Town where Peach’s Castle is located.  The Thousand Year Door starts in Rogueport, a Mos Eisley style port city.

I also notice in Anime about playing MMORPGs you usually spawn in what seems like an Urban Center so that meeting up with other players can be done conveniently.  

And I think that is why RPGs so often depart from the Tolkien set precedent.  RPGs are a kind of game where the Multiplayer form is the original and the Single Player form came later.  The Quest needs to start in a place where players from diverse backgrounds can believably happen to meet up and form a party, like the opening premise of the Anime Ningen Fushin.

The association of the Last Dungeon with the Boonies I still don't get though.

Update December 22nd 2024: Well I have watched it now.

It doesn't really confirm or deny the thesis I originally made this post for. 

The central Meta Gamer Logic Joke is that this MC comes form a late game area and so is overpowered in this early game area without realizing it because in these "boonies" the the most common monsters are stronger then early game bosses.

In a typical RPG you will reach a point where even the lowest Mooks you do battle with technically now have higher states then Bosses you fought early on.  For example in Super Mario RPG the Gu Goombas of Bowser's Keep are stronger then the Hammer Bros of Mushroom Way.  But because the player has leveled up along the way they feel just as easy to one hit KO as regular Goombas.

Update October 2025: I think I do fully get what the title is going for now. 

It's taking the common cultural perception that people who grow up in rural areas are probably tougher then city folk because they grew up in a harsher environment living a more labor intensive lifestyle.   And mapping that neatly onto those RPG conventions I talked about above. 

It's easy to be mistaken for a Contrarian when you like more stuff then you dislike.

Because unfortunately much of Internet Culture has been built around considering negative opinions far more indisputable then any positive opinion.  We are a society where Good Art can only be good in contrast to what is popularly considered Bad.

I like the overwhelming vast majority of any piece of Entertainment media I watched to completion.  And even among those I didn't finish it's very rare for me to actively dislike any.  And nothing that I do dislike I consider objectively indisputably Bad, there is nothing that I am offended by the existence of people liking it.  That third point has not always been true, younger more immature versions of me have gotten invested in hating things, but that's all in the past.

There are times when there is something popular I don't like as much as others do, and so that contrasted with all the popular to hate on things I love gets taken out of context to present me as a contrarian.  The most recent example may be Frieren, as a few times I'd talked about it can be mistaken for hating it but all that really bothers me is how so much Frieren praise has to be in contrast to all other contemporary Fantasy Anime, I like Frieren and Isekai.  I haven't given Frieren a definitive rating yet because I want too rewatch it first, but I currently expect to give it a 10, but certainly no lower then a 9.

I've also sounded harsh on Matt Reeves' The Batman by virtue of liking every other Batman movie more, but the movie is mostly fine, and I'm really enjoying The Penguin so far.

The fact is most really popular things I've seen I like, and if I haven't seen it then I don't have an opinion at all.

The closest I come to being a contrarian is sometimes how I rank certain instalments of a saga or seasons of a series may look partially inverted compared to popular opinion.  But that's always in the context of seeing value in even what I rank at the bottom, or if there are some I actively dislike in any even mild capacity it's only 3 tops out of more then 20. 

But even that isn't universal, how I rank the different seasons of the 90s Sailor Moon Anime is pretty conventional actually.

Once I was in the Chat for a Trixie The Golden Witch livestream and mentioned the fact that I like The Godfather Part III the best of The Godfather movies, and she called me the Ultimate Contrarian, even more contrarian then she is.  The Contrarian opinion on The Godfather movies would be say that only Part III was good, I like all three movies, if I have any criticism of anything in the first two movies it's that I don't think Part II works as a cohesive whole all that well, but every single piece of it is great and still to this day somewhat influential on my tastes.

Trixie's opinions on the Pokémon movies are more contrarian then my opinions on The Godfather movies.  Trixie and her Ex are the only people I've ever seen dislike the 3rd Pokémon movie, most Pokémon fans consider it the best of the movies, if the first two do better on mainstream review aggregate websites it's only because they've been seen by more normie critics.  Suede and Linkara liked it the best and they are pretty reflective of general opinion.  And Uniquenameosarus also had a Video Essay praising it.  And I recently discovered Gingy Dave. [Update: Funyanipa Foundation also likes the 3rd film the best and to their well researched knowledge that is the popular opinion, mentioning it chiefly in the Hideaki Sonoda video.] [Update December 16th 2025: Harbo Wholmes now has a new video arguing it's the best movie.]

When it comes to the Pokémon movies the closest thing I have to a contrarian opinion is that I rank 2000 near the bottom, there are only two theatrical movies I rank below it (Lucario and Jiirachi) and one TV Movie I rank as the absolute least, the Mirage one.  However I have enough Nostalgic fondness for 2000 that the gap between it and those below it is pretty significant.  Mostly my issue with it is just it being overdone, I never needed a Pokémon movie to be that epic, so it's a similar issue to the most recent Detective Conan films, which I still very much enjoy.

Pokémon XY and Z

Is currently the era of Pokémon in the awkward place of being too old by Current but to recent to be Retro.

For my personally the Diamond and Pearl generation is the last one I feel any Nostalgia for, and them being still the last Gen to get remade I could cite to back me up on that, but I tell the Fandom in general sees Black and White as classic already, it's games were after all on the same Console as the the Diamond and Pearl games.

Sun and Moon for the Anime definitely began the era of the original format being largely abandoned and the movies being their separate continuity. I personally essentially stopped caring about the Mainline Anime because I couldn't stand the new Art style.

This is reflected in XYZ now being the most recent era not easily accessible on legal streaming sites since it's been taken off Hulu and about to leave Prime in 10 days.  Their Games are not the most recent Games not playable on the Switch however.

I have a persona Fondness for this Generation.  I basically skipped Black and White when it was current so it was my first time watching current Pokémon with something resembling my current mindset towards media in general.  Also my first time watching a spot Brock series and I still think it's supporting cast dynamic works better then what little I've seen of the Best Wishes Anime.  And I think the Mega Evolution Specials are some of the most underrated Pokémon Anime content, I still get a kick out of how Lysander reminds me of Alexander Luther Jr of 90s DC Comics.

I did and still do have mixed feelings about Mega Evolution as a concept.  I think I'm glad it didn't become a permanent stable of the franchise, but how heavily it was being pushed in all Media at the time makes it awkward for the company to keep around now that this prominent feature isn't in the current Games.

Update October 9th 2024: Turns out this Gen of the Anime is currently on a Free App called Happy Kids, it's not as easy to navigate as Tubi is though.

The 3 Episode Rule…. again

I feel conflicted about doing another 3 episode rule post, I often repeat myself on this subject and yet still feel I haven’t fully made my point. I even talked about it as recently as my Miyu from Prisma Illya post.

To start with, let me clarify that it’s not an absolute.  You don’t have enough time to watch at least three episodes of every Anime that exists because you don’t even have enough time to watch at least one.  I don’t even watch one episode of something unless I expect it to potentially interest me in some way.

And I’m hesitant to tell people absolutely to watch at least 3 episodes once you decide to try something.  For one thing if what makes the first unwatchable to you is its visuals, if you think it’s badly animated and/or the art style you find unpleasant to look at, well those things are likely to only get worse, lots of Anime front load their Animation Budget to the first episode in order to get people’s attention.

However I already did a post on how a lot of shows front load their Fanservice into the first episode the same way they do their Sakuga.  And frankly with some shows it’s the same for their Edgy Shock Value quota.  90% of Goblin Slayer discourse is still just about what happens in its first episode. I didn’t finish that show and don’t think of myself as one of its fans, but I saw enough to say its overall tone is not like that at all.  A show I am somewhat of a fan of is Skeleton Knight in Another World which likewise had a gratuitous rape scene at the start the likes of which won’t happen again in future episodes.

And also if you just don’t understand what’s going on, some shows have specifically in the third episode some key exposition that maybe should have been provided up front, like Engage Kiss from 2022.

Even shows that are highly episodic with a Monster of the Week or Case of the Week structure will still have only 1 of the first 3 episodes actually follow the structure of most episodes because they also need to provide an origin story for our protagonist, or how the team got together.  That will often be the third episode for more chronological shows like Detective Conan aka Case Closed or Pokémon, but others like Princess Principal will have the first be a flash forward so it can start with an episode like what most will be like, however with that show you need the context of the chronological first two episodes to appreciate the dynamic seen in those one offs.

Part of the reason for this structure is frankly economic.  The Anime Industry doesn’t make most of its money off the Anime itself, and back before the streaming era part of that was the Home Video releases being more important than the actual TV broadcast.  And back in the 90s the standard operating procedure for VHS releases in both Japan and the US was 3 episodes per tape. So a lot of Anime was written so that its entire first tape could serve as an extended pilot.  And as one of many who still fondly remembers renting Pokémon VHS tapes I recall distinctly how well Pokémon's first three episodes worked together that way.  Once they got in the habit of writing shows that way it was hard to break out of.

One bad take on the three episode rule I saw in a YouTube video once was that it’s called the 3 episode rule because most Anime have 12 episodes and that a longer show should obviously take even more, 6 episodes for a 2 cour show and so on.  That logic would lead to thinking you need to see 20 episodes of Kanto Era Pokémon before you know if it’ll appeal to you or not, that’s obviously absurd.  

The Three Episode rule exists because of what it takes 3 episodes to do, especially when you only have 20ish minutes per episode, not being a fourth of the total.  A lot of my favorite potential case studies in how the 3rd episode specifically completes the set up are shows longer than a single cour. From Revolutionary Girl Utena where episode three is the first Nanami episode, to Code Geass where the third episode more fully explains who Leleouch is.  Detective Conan has over a Thousand episode and I still think the 3 episode test applies to it well.

Critics of the 3 episode rule often frame it as just an attempt to defend bad shows by slandering the pilots of good ones.  But I don’t find the first episodes “bad” for most of the shows I mentioned above, just incomplete in communicating what to expect.  It’s more like I want greater appreciation for what specifically the 3rd episode does, or how the first three work together to set the stage.  And I don't need to find a first episode bad to be unsure the show will be one I want to complete, I find few works of Art truly Bad but even with Anime am only interested in watching certain kinds that personally appeal to me.

If I do dislike the 1st and/or 2nd episode of a show I have no hesitation recommending people skip them entirely. For the 90s Sailor Moon Anime I absolutely advise just starting with the 3rd episode (which was the second in the DiC Dub where it was titled Talk Radio).  For A Certain Scientific Railgun I advise skipping episode 2 but 1 and 3 are both great introductory episodes.  

I’ve also personally experienced a sort of inversion of the presumed general purpose of the 3 episode rule.  Times when I really liked the first episode of a show but once episodes 2 and 3 made clear what the show is more generally like my interest is actually killed off.  Examples of that include Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk and Dance in The Vampire Bund, I still recommend both of their first episodes as stand alone shorts but the shows overall couldn’t appeal to me.

Sometimes the Second Episode is the Problem that the Three Episode Rule protects against.

Some attempts to deconstruct the Three Episode rule focus mostly on defending the first episodes.

But a main reason I consider it important is how often I consider the exact second episode of a show to be one of it's worst.  Maybe some of you are thinking "well you don't need a Rule to not give up that quickly".  The thing is it's very easy for me to imagine finding a story's initial set up to be the only part of it that's good.   With American LA TV shows it's definitely happened a few times where I found a first episode pretty fun but as soon as they settled into their regular weekly routine I got bored of it.

Now when it comes to Anime where the second episode can give a potentially harmful early impression.  There are fortunately some that are episodic enough where I'm very willing to just recommend skipping the second episode entirely, at least on your first watch.

That is most heavily the case with A Certain Scientific Railgun.  What is so frustrating about the second episode isn't exactly something never in other episodes, but that's the only one where it's the main plot of the episode, and goes further with it then the show ever will again.  And it's not even filler in the Monster of the Week sense, but it fortunately has no actual connection to the Level Upper Arc.

The second episode of the 90s Sailor Moon Anime actually was skipped by the original DiC localization, so we have documented proof that it wasn't actually needed (thing is other episodes DiC skipped were among my favorites).  With Sailor Moon I'm kinda willing to tell people to just watch the 3rd episode first.

But in less episodic shows this goes back to the structural reasons the three episode rule exists.  The firs 3 episodes are often like an extended first act of a movie.  The first and 3rd episodes contain the most vital things that establish the world and initiate the plot.  The second episode can often be mostly necessary but less engaging connective tissue between them.

I also want to acknowledge the early Pokémon Anime here. In that case I really like the second episode but I know not everyone considers it great because of Suede's Pokémon Journey's review of it.  The second episode is to me filled with lots of fun stuff and it's certainly important set up and world building.  But it is indeed not as "tightly" written as episodes 1 and 3.

Pokémon: Path To The Peak is officially not an Anime.

It doesn't have a MAL page, each episode was released in the US before it was in Japan, the main Writer and Storyboarder both have non Japanese names, none of the characters have alternate Japanese names listed on Bulbapedia, and it looks artstyle wise a lot like a late 2010s Cartoon Network show.

Given the somewhat harsh opinions I've had on allegedly Anime Inspired Western Cartoons on this blog in the past, the last thing I expected was that the first one to get it right would be an actually officially licensed installment of an established franchise.  I thought the key would be an indie project like those pretty decent Western VNs that went viral in the 2010s.

But once again Nintendo understands the appeal of it's iconic IPs better then any other soulless corporation.  Pokémon is the one Nintendo brand that is as much of an Anime franchise as it is a Video Game franchise and they clearly get that.  For Mario it worked to let Illumination do their usual thing while playing into the 80s Nostalgia.  But Pokémon is first and foremost a 90s Nostalgia franchise and part of the infancy of Millennial Weeb Culture.

One of the things I said in one of those past posts is that a lot of my favorite Anime are Anime about Anime Fan Culture and so.one of the things I'd like to see is an "Anime" like that but which can make references innate to the Western Anime Fandom.  And that part of the appeal of this show, it isn't set in the actual Pokémon world but in a world like the real world.  

But it's also the Structure of a Sports Anime applied to the Pokémon Card Game.  Of course the trope about having a Parent who had a history with the same sport but left it for some reason does feel like more of a Western Sports Drama trope then a Spirts Anime Trope.  But how often does Western Media apply Sports Drama Tropes to a Nerdy Card Game? The very idea of applying the tropes of Sports Drama to Competitive Gaming is inherently an Otaku tradition, the closet normal Western Media comes to doing a Sports Drama for an unconventional Sport is Battle Rap and even that was only done twice and both had to have Eminem attached.

I also said before I would want such a Western Otaku Anime to reference more then just Weeb stuff, because most of us Weebs are combining our Japanese Media Interests with various other Interests we have.  So yes the way this show seamlessly melds some Western Ideas into the structure of a specific Anime Genre also fits.

I love how it reflects the way the first Generation of Pokémon fans now often have kids of their own.  Likewise I suspect Celestine's parents were Bronies.  

Celestine gives Non-Binary Vibes.  She has a very Tumblr Core Aesthetic which happens to fit her Rivals to Yuri role perfectly.

JRPGs as a concept are an American Misconception.

Years ago I watched an Extra Credits video on YouTube about JRPGs and Western RPGS and I always considered it a fairly bad video but now that I know so much more about the history of RPGs I realize their first mistake was conceding the very idea of JRPGs as being a thing in the first place.

I'm not arguing there are no differences between RPGs in the West and RPGs made in Japan caused by distinct cultural differences.  But they are the same as how every genre and medium of story telling seems different in Japan.  The only other one where the Japanese version is virtually treated as a completely different thing is Animation aka Anime.  In that case though it is increasingly well understood now that what we think of when we hear the word "Anime" is principally certain kinds of Anime that even in Japan are actually a niche interest.

When you look at the history of Japanese RPG Video Games that either never got localized, or even if they were were never as popular over here as they were in Japan, or if they did get popular over here were popular in a way that kind of compartmentalized them from other RPGs in how pop culture thinks about them.  You'll realize that what American Gamers first think of when we think of JRPGs is really much more specifically Squarsoft Games of the SNES and PS1 (and not even all of them really), Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, the SaGa series, Super Mario RPG ect.  Just look at that old College Humor Video parodying JRPGs, every specific game it will make you think of is Square, it's story is mostly a Parody of FF7's plot with visuals taken from Final Fantasy Tactics and Mario RPG.

The main example for that third situation is Pokémon.  I saw a Twitter argument sometime last year where some people were getting annoyed at other people not counting Pokémon as a JRPG.  And yeah Pokémon officially is one, but it's just as different from our standard perception of a JRPG as any Western RPG is.  When you compare the first Gen Pokémon games to prior Game Boy RPGs mechanically and visually it kind of is a natural development, but Game Boy RPGs were never the foundation of how JRPGs were defined, even series that started there gained their true notoriety when promoted to home consoles.

Recently I was watching YouTube videos about NES and SNES Video Games that were officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons games.  And in one the person making the video talked about not liking pseudo 3D first person Dungeon Crawlers but referred to that as being specifically a characteristic of Western RPGs in contrast to "what they do in Japan", but I'm well aware that there are plenty of Japanese RPGs that also do that.  I also dislike that kind of dungeon gameplay, but since I have such a unique history with how I learned about RPGs I never thought of it as something you'd go to Japan to get away from because my first experience with being annoyed by it was Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System, and then learning the Megami Tensei games also did that is why I never tried to play any of them.

In Japan DragonQuest is the most popular RPG franchise, it doesn't just edge out Final Fantasy it dwarfs Final Fantasy.  And there is one Trope we Americans associate with JRPGs that DragonQuest has pretty much been the exact opposite on.  The Killing God or God being Evil trope is mostly a Square and Atlus thing, in DragonQuest God is usually The Goddess and pretty benevolent.  And that is a more accurate reflection of general Japanese Spirituality where Amaterasu is arguably the centerpiece of the Shinto Pantheon.  However back in the 2000s when edgy Atheism was still the trendy thing in Online Culture the Megami Tensei and FF Tactics approach was what American internet Nerds latched onto.  The subject of Goddess Worship in Japanese Media is something I may have to go deeper into someday.

DragonQuest so thoroughly dwarfs everything else in Japan that every Manga or Light Novel or Anime set in a "generic RPG setting" is very clearly using specifically DragonQuest III as the model.  And secretly I think that's the key to why so many American Weebs be hating on these shows.  The reasons they say they don't like them I think are a little disingenuous, the truth is these American Gamers would much rather be Isekaied to a discount Final Fantasy.  Hell I personally would love an Anime set in a world modeled after SaGa Frontier.

But as is the Anime I would recommend to Final Fantasy fans are more Anime that were an influence on Final Fantasy rather then the other way around.  These include Ghibli films like Nausica of The Valley of The Wind and Castle in The Sky.  And I feel like I'm the only person who notices that Sephiroth's character design was clearly inspired by Kunzite from Sailor Moon.

But going back to that Extra Credits video, their main thesis was that JRPGs are not really the same genre but some coincidental independent development.  And that ignores how Western RPGs were and still are played in Japan, specifically the Ultima Series was a very well documented influence on early DragonQuest and early Final Fantasy as was Wizardry.  The RPG is a Western concept in origin including the Role Playing Video Game specifically, that Japanese Gaming Culture made several different distinctly Japanese variations on, but only one of those was ever popular enough in America during the formative years of Gamer Culture to really define how American Gamers stereotype Japanese RPGs.

Update: On Mastadon this interesting conversation was brought to my attention.

https://beehaw.org/post/664403

On Second Thought The Eminence in Shadow might qualify as a more Final Fantasy Esque Isekai.  It's resemblance to "Magic Academy" Anime breeds a similarity to Final Fantasy VIII, and then there's the very concept of a prominent background character named Cid.

Party like it's Ninteen Ninty Nine

The previous post on this blog was about early 2000s Anime, but I technically mentioned a couple that are really from 1999, To Heart, Steel Angel Kurumi and the starts of Johto Era Pokemon and One Peice.  When you take stuff back to it's source material even more of what I mentioned there has it's roots in 1999, Comic Party's original Video Game and a lot of stuff based on weekly Shonen Manga that got animated in 2000.

At face value To Heart seems difficult to justify as relevant to the early 2000s at all, it's a single cour show that was done halfway through 99 and based on source material from 97, the others at least had active continuations.  But first of all it's directly relevant to Comic Party, I'd dare say it's almsot required viewing for Comic Party in the same way Haruhi is required viewing for Lucky Star.  But it's also simply that when I look at To Heart I kind of still see 90s style Animation but I more see how much of 2000s and even still 20tens and 2020s Anime is built on foundation that To Heart laid.  And it getting sequels in the mid 2000s proves it was at least in Japan consistently still popular all through the time in-between.

But those shows aren't the only examples of how much Anime in 1999 feels like the 2000s started early, Excel Saga, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Corrector Yui, Ojimajo Doremi, Hunter x Hunter, Digimon Adventure, The Big O, and Turn A Gundam are all interesting examples of shows that started airing in 99 and ended in 2000.  And then for Detecive Conan January of 1999 was the Anime introduction of Ai Hiabara in episode 129 (136-139 of the international numbering).  And on the subject of Source Material for future Anime, Kanon came out in 99 launching Key and adding the next layer to the foundations laid by To Heart.

For the sake of organizing our memories we like to try to define drastic changes in culture as correlating to decades of the Gregorian Calendar, but 1999 sticks out to me as an interesting case study in how culture isn't actually paying attention to calendars when it changes.

As someone who used to be more interested in following Music then I am now, I've always noticed how 1999 was the year Eminem, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson all became stars, all of them are now mostly more famous for stuff they did in the 2000s not to mention how much people who started their careers later were influenced by them.

In the world of Video Games the Sega Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure were released in late 98 but reached the U.S. in 99 thus starting the Sixth Generation of the Console wars.

Pro Wrestling at first glance doesn't seems like it fits what I'm talking but rather the opposite, the first year and a half of 2000s Wrestling feels like the end of 90s era Wrestling.  However I feel like mid 99 was a sever drop in quality for both WWF and WCW, I know I'm nearly alone in this, most pretend WCW stopped being good as soon as Sting vs Hogan was botched and the WWF stayed impeccable till the Invasion storyline was botched, but for me everything I dislike about post Attitude Era wrestling really did start happening in 99.  And of those that so amusingly both Anti Vince Russo people and Pro Vince Russo people will connect the quality drop  that happened in 99 to which company Russo worked for changing, but for me the problems on both sides started a couple months before that, it started in the Summer, October marked a noticeable change in WCW but not so much WWF.

In the world of Western Superhero Comics, the Batman No Man's Land storyline is definitely the beginning of what early 2000s Batman Comics were like, as well as The Titans run that started in 99.  And in the world of adaptations of Superhero Comics Batman Beyond and Spiderman Unlimited changed things.  Sonic Underground feels like it's of a similar zeitgeist to those shows.

When it comes to Theatrically released movies from 1999 there are three that I mainly recall, the first Star Wars Prequel, the first Stephen Sommers Mummy movie and the first Pokémon movie.  Again all three were first not lasts.

In Japan the first Pokémon movie was in 98, but in the U.S. the franchise as a whole made it's debut in late 98 and I'm pretty sure it didn't catch my attention till it was 99 already.

Early 2000s Anime is overdue for it's Nostalgia Boom.

After stumbling upon and enjoying Comic Party and it's sequel Comic Party Revolution I watched some YouTube videos discussing the franchise from 4-6 years ago.  And one of them lamented how Anime from about 2000-2004 is pretty neglected in online discussion for being both too old to be modern but not old enough to be Retro.  And I remember feeling the same way at about when those videos were made as I lamented the lack of online Fandom appreciation for shows like Noir and Witch Hunter Robin.

But now the 20 year Nostalgia cycle for that era of Anime should be in effect, yet it seems to be slow in starting.

And the thing is at that time Nostalgia for other stuff of that era was already taking off.  Maybe the Star Wars Prequels Nostalgia boom was bumped up by getting the new Disney stuff, but there was already a spiked up interest in Raimi's Spider-Man movies and other stuff.

The Internet has always been to a large extent driven by Nostalgia, and I'm fascinated by how we've entered the era where the Nostalgia the internet celebrates now includes Nostalgia for the early Internet itself.  YouTube videos documenting Internet mysteries and old Fandom Dramas, even whole channels getting most of their views from that kind of content.

Anime more then most mediums was going through particular growing pains at this time, chiefly the transition from Traditional to Digital Animation.  However with Video Games there was also once a narrative about the awkwardness of early fully 3D games but now those aesthetics have become charming and nostalgic.  I've been feeling that way about early Japanese Digital Animation for awhile and I was not actually into much of it at the time.

Part of the problem may be how we forget that the Western Fandom was frequently behind, sometimes not getting these shows till a whole 5 years later.  So even if today Western Otaku are always citing the Japanese airdates because that's what's on MAL and ANN and AniDB in many cases our actual memories of these shows aren't 20 years old yet, two decades ago today we were mostly still getting delayed releases of 90s stuff.  I'm pretty my first experience with Noir started in 2005.  But we did make a big deal out of 2016 being the 20th anniversary of Pokémon even though it didn't make it's American debut till late 1998.

A certain type of Western Anime fan resents this era for being when MOE was truly taking over.  A lot of the redemption arc MOE has seen began with TrixieTheGoldenWitch leading the charge in singing the praises of K-On.  So the MOE stuff that predates KyoAni's Golden Age often simply gets neglected rather then hated or defended.

I want to play a role in getting some of these classics the fresh perspective they deserve.  Rumbling Hearts and Comic Party Revolution are among some shows recently added to Crunchyroll.  Sadly the original Comic Party and To Heart and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Madlax are still lacking an official streaming option, while Noir and Pretear and Witch Hunter Robin are still only on Funimation a site that's supposedly being phased out. [Update: all three of those shows are on CR now.]

And then there is the subplot of what this era was for certain long running shows.  For Pokémon this is principally the Johto and early Advanced Generation including the Pokémon Chronicles side series and specials like Legend of Thunder and Mewtwo Returns.  

Probably the most not neglected stuff from this era are the long running Shonen that started then, Naruto, One Peice, Yugioh, Inyuasha ect which are kinds of shows I've personally never been into.

But I have this year been getting into Detective Conan, and for that show this era largely is the Vermouth Arc, from her introduction in episode 176 in January of 2000 to the big epic showdown in episode 345 in January of 2004, an arc that produced a lot of great episodes.  The movies during this era are 4 through 9 of which only movie 6 I wouldn't rank in the upper teir of Conan films.  And interestingly episode 304 a 2 hour special from January 2003 is actually connected to the most recent movie 25 the Bride of Halloween.

But thinking about a show I discovered recently reminds me that I need to watch more myself, other Anime based on Leaf or other early VNs, and Steel Angel Kurumi being another work from the same studio as To Heart and Comic Party.  And as a fan of Comedy there are more Nabeshin shows I need check out as well.  Galaxy Angel has also interested me for awhile but I keep putting it off.

A Guide to Anime Films

I'm into Anime in large part for the serialized content, however films have been both more "respectable" and more profitable for most of modern history, on both sides of the Pacific and in terms of both Live Action and Animation.  That means theatrically released Anime films frequently have more budget to work with, and less time constraints placed on their production, which allows certain technical advantages. So for many newcomers movies may be where they want to start.

Again as a consequence of my watching Anime mainly for the serieses and sagas, most of the films I have seen are in some way tied to a series.  Of Anime movies that simply are stand alone (or were until they got a sequel), I've seen a handful of Miyazaki films, two non Miyazaki Ghibili films, Akira, Barefoot Gen, Project A-Ko, Metropolis, Kara no Kyoukai, Maquia, A Silent Voice, Your Name and Weathering With You, Vampire Hunter D, a couple mostly now forgotten Fantasy films from around 2010, and one that's basically a more serious take on the premise of Chunibyo, and some more obscure ones slipping my mind right now.

However Anime films that are tied to TV shows come in many forms in terms of how accessible they potentially could be to someone not already into that series and capable of standing on their own.

A note, Anime database websites like MyAnimeList define "Movies" based on how they are released not runtime, so theatrical shorts are classified as movies but feature length OVAs and TV Specials are not.  My mind still prefers to define a movie mostly by runtime and if it wasn't in theaters just call it a TV movie or Direct to Video movie.

First you have the franchises that are largely negative continuity or flexible continuity or at least highly episodic and long running enough to begin with that I generally think the actual first TV episode is almsot the worst first impression because of the early instalment weirdness.  So for these shows one of their ambiguously canonical films probably is the best way to introduce it's cast of characters to someone new.  These are shows like Lupin The Third, Pokémon, 90s Sailor Moon, PreCure and Detective Conan aka Case Closed.  

Sailor Moon R: The Promise of The Rose is all of the core appeal of Sailor Moon concentrated into a well paced easy to follow but highly emotionally dense film.  For Pokémon the Third movie Spell of The Unown is the very best, but ironically one of the few that does something which might be a problem for a viewer who hadn't followed the show up to that point, but maybe not, I think Pokémon fans reading this can guess what I'm talking about without me needing to spoil it.  The first two Pokémon films are perhaps in different ways trying too hard to be "cinematic".  The other Pokémon movies I'd rank as above average are Heroes Latios and Latias, Destiny Deoxys, Ranger Temple of The Sea, The Power of Us and Secrets of The Jungle, but most are perfectly good at what they're meant to be.

Detective Conan/Case Closed is the franchise I have been most obsessed with recently, and so in part thinking about it's movies was what inspired me to write this.  Every movie is in part designed to work for newcomers while also doing something special for fans, that's why at the beginning there is always a brief summery of the show's premise.  But some I consider more recommended for this purpose then others.  The actual first movie The Time Bombed Skyscraper could work well enough with it's cold open basically being how an average episode ends.  The third movie The Last Wizard of The Century is probably the best of them (that seems to happen a lot with Anime, it's like the opposite of how Hollywood franchises are perceived).  Movie 4 Captured In Her Eyes is interesting in how it's cold open is actually a flashback to before what happens in the premise summery segment making it perhaps by default the most chorological movie.  Of the three movies that feature the show's Arc villains, movie 5 Countdown To Heaven is the best executed in how it utilizes them given that they're not allowed to change the status quo, and also of all the movies I've seen the best for getting to know Haibara Ai (called Vi Graythorn in the Funimation Dub). Movies 7-18 do not have Dubs yet and so I've only seen four, of those movie 8 Magician of The Silver Sky is the most interesting, it breaks from the usual formula in a way that allows it to recreate the vibes of the tv show better then any of the others, and it's simpler plot makes it easier to watch Subbed.  

Movies 19-23 are currently the only movies easy to watch legally in English, Subbed or Dubbed, with all of the BangZoom releases purchasable and rentable on Amazon Prime, while prior movies either were never officially released over here or were only via now long discontinued localizations.  These movies and some of the ones preceding them are often criticized by longtime fans for being too much like over the top modern American Superhero movies and thus allegedly less intelligently written then the first 9 or so.  I can't entirely say I disagree since I don't feel like recommending any of those as much as the early ones I just listed, but I do enjoy all of them just fine and I didn't list all of the first 9, their basic appeal is still the same in my view, they've changed similarly to how the show has changed, but the movies were always a good deal more action oriented then the show.  Zero The Enforcer is the only one I can even come close to saying I dislike.

A second type of Anime tie in movie is a kind some less episodic shows have, that may start out feeling as stand alone as the above mentioned movies, but during the last act there will be an increasing amount of plot relevant fan service only followers of the show will get.  There are two main examples that come to mind, A Certain Magical Index: The Miracle of The Endymion, and Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale.  I enjoy both movies, Endymion I give a 10/10, but watch the series first, actually for Endymion there's kind of two series you need to have followed.  However for people becoming fans of those shows know that they are like the above movies in how they won't actually effect the status quo of the show and rarely if at all be acknowledged.

The third type are movies that are sequels or continuations, or sometimes even specifically the Ending, or a Coda to the show's ending.  Type 2 films have a chance of being satisfying to a non TV show viewer because by the time the stuff they won't get factors in they might have gotten invested enough to just roll with it. But Type 3 are explicitly not stand alone works on any level. Char's Counterattack,  The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, End of Evangelion, The Conqueror of Shambala are probably the biggest examples, I also like the Gundam 00 movie and Code Geass R3 Lelouch of The Resurrection, and most recently we had the Sailor Moon Eternal movies which picked up where Sailor Moon Crystal season 3 left off.  Maybe some of these can overcome their continuity lock out issues simply by being good, but being good on it's own is not the barrier breaker some people want to think it is.

Type four would be Recap movies, these are basically a chunk of a series, ranging anywhere from 8 episodes to 25, trimmed down and reedited into a film length, some may try to do a whole show in one but most go for 2 or a trilogy.  There may be some genuinely newly animated material in a few select scenes or as a framing device.  These almsot always fail to be satisfying movies on their own, or even give the fans interested in that concept what they want.  The only definitive exception is the Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 Trilogy which were longer then most and in a unique situation.  I have seen some people speak highly of Macross Do you Remember Love but I haven't watched that one yet.

Type 4b is when the story of a show is fully remade as a movie, or the source material re-adapted, A lot of the movies that fit this category I haven't seen yet even when they exist for a show I like, but the Rebuild of Evangelion films are the most notorious.  The Sailor Moon Eternal films actually also fit this category in relation to Sailor Moon SuperS and the first 6 episodes of Sailor Stars from the 90s Anime.  In the re-adaptation case sometimes the movie version came before the series, but usually the movie still winds up feeling like it should be the less definitive Anime version like with Clamp's X.  Detective Conan/Case Closed Episode "One" The Great Detective Turned Small is basically a remake in the show's modern style of the first episode and a half of the series, but it also starts a little earlier and then ends a bit like a Recap episode.

I wanted to say those 4 categories covered everything, however Crossovers like Lupin The Third vs Detective Conan or the PreCure Allstars films are difficult to categorize, they are often structurally similar to Type 1 but it's hard to imagine seeing any appeal to watching a Crossover movie if you aren't already a fan of any of the parties involved.

And then there is the very unique case of Adolescence of Utena.  At face value it is Type 4b, the fan theorizing that it's actually a sequel on some cosmic time loopy metanarrative level also exists for the Rebuild films but for those films that theory doesn't effect what you think they mean nearly as much.  But beyond all of that is how the Utena movie is even more abstract in it's Symbolism then the TV show titled Revolutionary Girl Utena, to the point where you really need to have seen the show to have any hope of deciphering what's going on in the movie, and even for those of us who have seen it it isn't easy.

Catching ya'll up to speed

I just watched the 8th and final episode of Pokémon Evolutions, and LEAF IS FINALLY ANIMATED!!!!!!  I was not expecting that, I had basically given up hope.  And she was Bad @$$.  They called her Green, but I'm gonna it was Blue in the Japanese, throwing back to the Manga names.

All of Pokemon Evolutions was great, what they chose to do for the Johto Generation last week I found very cool.  I recommend all of it.

I also today watched the first Fate/Grand Order Camelot movie, it was decent.  And the the first episode of Girls Und Panzer Das Finale was also quite fun.

Last Friday I finished Yuki Yuna Is a Hero The Great Mankai Chapter, it was great as well.

Soon after I made my last update I finished Legend of The Legendary Heroes, which it turns is an unfinished Anime, it was fun though.

Besides that's I've mostly been re-watching stuff.  I finished the YU-NO Re-watch I was talking about, then I did Pretear, then Serial Experiments Lain, then Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child and the first few episodes of Godzilla Singular Point.  

I'm planning soon to re-watch Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya for Christmas, then probably also Robotics;Notes and Steins;Gate, and Kanon once it starts snowing here, I want to re-watch that show in the proper seasonal mood.  I think I'm gonna wait till sometime in January to start Binge watching a bunch of Fall and Summer 2021 shows i haven't finished or in some cases even started yet.

Outside the realm of Anime, Wheel of Time I can't make a verdict on yet, my feels towards it are mixed.  The Dune movie was very good though I have some complaints, and Matrix Resurrections was great, to me it was the perfect way to epilogue to the trilogy.

Anime's Original Big Three

In our modern world post Anime being Revolutionized in the 2000s, the phrase "big three" in relation to Anime tends to mean Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, I'm probably the only Anime fan my age who has never seen a single episode of any of those three shows.

Instead I remember when the top three mainstream Anime franchises were Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z and Pokémon.  All three I have fond childhood memories of watching, but only two I am still an active fan of, DBZ and the genre it represents I can respect but they have no appeal to me personally anymore, which is probably why the 00s Big Three never interested me.

What I want to talk about today however is how for us Western fans those three all represent the same era, we got our first taste of Sailor Moon a bit sooner, but it was the late 90s and the year 2000 ruled by all three in daily syndication.

In Japan they are more or less three completely different eras.  Pokémon debuted on the 1st of April 1997 a couple weeks after Sailor Moon's finale.  Sailor Moon started in March of 1992.... so technically Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon's Japanese broadcasts overlap, but after checking various Japanese airdates for DBZ I am very willing to say it's best days were behind it when Sailor Moon started.

Ya know how we often divide Decades into thirds?  Early, Mid and Late?  Well it's almsot like for Children's Anime in Japan the Early 90s is DBZ, the Mid 90s was Sailor Moon and the Late 90s was Pokémon.

Of course people who care more about adult late night Anime would prefer to define the Late 90s as being "post Evangelion".  Well the thing you should remember is Animated shows are in production for a long time before they start airing, on average around 2 years.  Even a show the premiered exactly a full year after Eva's premier like Martian Hunter Nadesico would have had to have already been in production already before Eva became a runaway hit.  So I would be willing to say the first real "post Eva" Anime was a show the premiered the day after Pokémon did, Revolutionary Girl Utena.

What's kind of sad is how the 2010s couldn't produce it's own Big Three, not really.  Toonami and Adult Swim were merged together by Cartoon network so now on western TV Shounen shows air as part of a block their actual target audience is not supposed to be watching, and nothing else airs on TV anymore but on the same streaming apps as the Ecchi shows too raunchy even for Adult Swim to handle.  So Fairy Tail, My Hero Academia and Pretty Cure have been talking points of the established Anime community, but no actual kids are watching them in the West.

I fear this is bad news for the future of the Western Anime community, we need to get the stuff made for kids where kids can actually find them in order to keep reproducing.

Wedding Peach and Pokemon.

Two years ago I commented on this relationship in a post that now feels fairly disorganized.  Wedding Peach is in my opinion one of the most underrated Magical Girl shows, so I want to keep reminding Pokémon fans why they should check it out.

Both the Wedding Peach and Pokémon Anime were produced by a studio called OLM which stands for Oriental Light and Magic.  As far as individuals go that begins with Producers Iwata Keisuke and Shūkichi Kanda.  But the creative key player was director Kunihiko Yuyama and his right hand Norihiko Sudo (who would go on to direct Comic Party and ToHeart2).  

Takeshi Shudo and Junki Takegama, two of the top Writers on the Pokémon Anime, weren't Wedding Peach alumni, but they had worked with Yuyama previously on the Minky Momo franchise.  They are probably the most important creatives working on the early Pokémon Anime who weren't involved with Wedding Peach.

Sayuri Ichiishi was a Character Designer for Pokémon and an Animator on Wedding Peach who was promoted to co-character designer for the DX OVAs.  Other important overlap would include Art Director Katsuyoshi Kanemura, Sound Director Mima Masafumi, Photography Director Motoaki Ikegami and then Norihiro Yoshikawa & Tsuyoshi Watanabe who drew backgrounds.

In recent years my revisiting of the early Pokémon Anime has frequently gone along side my enjoyment of Suede's Pokemon Journey series on YouTube.  The main differences between my opinions on Pokémon and his are that I'm less critical in general, I'm notoriously easy to please especially where Pokémon is concerned.  The second episode is a good example of one where I can't relate to any of his criticisms, I enjoy it's chaotic structure.  However the ones he considers the best are generally also ones I consider top tier, and the ones he seems to most dislike are generally ones I would not recommend as being good first impressions, at least as far as Kanto and early Orange Islands go. In one video done looking back on the Kanto era he specially talked about what he liked about early Pokémon's backgrounds and as I said above two key background artists came from Wedding Peach.

Suede particularly likes to praise Yuji Asada as a Storyboarder and Msaaki Iwane as an Animation Director, especially them as a team.  On the subject of Asada I'm envious of his ability to know enough about Animation to know specifically what to give credit to the Storyboards for, remember usually the Episode director is also who does the Storyboards.  Asada also worked on Wedding Peach, he did the Storyboards for 8 episodes the first of which was episode 3 and the last of which was the penultimate episode.  While Iwane didn't get promoted to Animation Director till somewhat deep into Pokémon, he was working as an Animator before then, and even back in Wedding Peach the episodes he worked on were usually the same ones as Yuji Asada.

Suede mostly only seems interested in naming the writer of an episode he's reviewing when it's one of the two I mentioned above who weren't from Wedding Peach (at least when covering Kanto).  However Yukiyoshi Ohashi is a former Wedding Peach writer who's Pokémon episodes tend to also be ones Suede likes, seemingly specifically for their writing.  On Wedding Peach it's not till episode 5 we get one he wrote, which is quicker then their Pokémon debut being episode 7.  Ohashi also wrote a lot of Macross 7 and three episodes of Cutey Honey Flash which is interesting.

However the other Wedding Peach writer to come over to Pokémon was Hideki Sonoda, and at least in the very early period of Pokémon his episodes tend to be ones Suede considers not well written, for reasons I consider understandable even if I'm not as hard on them.  However Sonoda must have gotten better because he co-wrote the 3rd movie, Spell of the Unown, which Suede and Linkara seem to like me consider the best movie by a significant margin, then he was the sole writer of the next several movies, some are better then others but I enjoy all to some degree, I don't currently know what Suede thinks of Heroes and up but I tend to favor the odd numbers all through that first decade.  Sonoda's pre Wedding Peach experience was mostly Shoujo stuff, so perhaps doing a Shonen like Pokémon was something he needed more time then other writers to adjust to.  His first Wedding Peach episode like his first Pokémon episode was the 4th.  Sonoda may have also just been more suited to Shoujo then Shonen, some of the shows he worked on before Wedding Peach were Mahou no Star Magical Emi, Attacker You! and Hikari no Densetsu.

Some other overlap between Wedding Peach and Pokémon creatives include Yoshitake Fujimoto and Toshiaki Suzuki as Directors/Storyboards, Izuma Shimura another Animator and Hisashi Kagawa who also worked on Sailor Moon. [Update 2026: Naohito Takahashi was a Wedding Peach Storyboarder who didn't work on early Pokémon but did work on 2010s Pokémon.  He also directed To Heart in 1999.] 

I can understand why even some Magical Girl fans have trouble getting into Wedding Peach, it certainly starts off not seeming all that unique, in fact the way it uses wedding related Tropes can at times remind me of one of my least favorite Sailor Moon episodes, you really have to give it time to find it's footing.  Episode 6 played an important role in selling me on the show, that's twice the usual 3 episode test and still a ways from when it really gets good.

I wish the show had also been Dubbed by the same people who Dubbed Pokémon, the same voice actors at least.  I know to some people "you'd prefer 4Kids" sounds like the most offensive thing ever.  But I will take cringy censorship/localization decisions with VAs I like over a more strictly faithful script with weaker VAs any day. The Wedding Peach Dub was distributed by ADV but doesn't seem to have the same Voice Actors usually associated with old ADV Dubs either.  If the Wedding Peach Dub VAs are people I've liked in other Dubs, I wasn't able to recognize them.

Update June 2022: Suede's Pokémon Journey is gone.

I'm actually way late in making this update, given it happened not long after I made this post.  It's frustrating I was planning to make this months before I did and always planning to use Suede's series as a key reference point, and then it was suddenly gone.

Good news is he's going to try starting over in a new format. it will take over a year to redo all of the Kanto episodes I had in mind writing this, and that's IF it doesn't also get taken down.

https://www.youtube.com/c/SuedesPapermonJourney/featured

Update December 2022: There is a Torrent that should contain all the episodes now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ap4HGmyiA

It's also worth reminding people how episode 26 of Seude's Pokémon journey (which fortunately has a re-upload on YT at the moment) is what informed me of the Wedding Peach and Pokémon connection in the first place, I was already a fan of this now obscure show so learning this connection inspired me to dig deeper.  

This episode was one of the Hideki Sonoda episodes which again Suede was pretty critical of and I'm inclined to agree that Celadon should have gotten a whole mini-arc.  It did make sense to use Erika's Gym as the opportunity to explicitly homage their prior show, it being the Girl Power Gym was already established in the Games and most Wedding Peach girls were named after Flowers, plus a literal Peach based Pokémon would probably also be a Grass Type.

Thinking about Suede and the Erika episode again has reminded me that I didn't discus the voice actor connections in this post.  I consider the behind the scenes talent more important to explaining why the Pokémon Anime was the way it was, especially given how Japanese Animation is done differently then in the west since the voice work is recorded after all the Animation is done.

Still the voice of Momoko, Kyoko Hikami being the voice of Erika in both her original episode and the 2017 I Choose You movie is a cool connection.  In 2017 it's safe to say few would have noticed or cared if Erika had a different voice, plus her being the only Gym leader to get a Cameo in the film was kind of random itself.  I think Kinihiko Yuyama might have been intending that film to be his swan song originally and that working with the star of Wedding Peach again may have been the whole reason Erika is even in that film.

But she's not the only Voice Actor the two shows have in common.  The two male leads of Wedding Peach are also the Japanese voices of Brock and James (Takeshi and Kojiro), and the third most prominent human male character in Wedding Peach shares a voice actor with Todd Snap (but he's perhaps most famous for being the voice of Shinichi Kudo the true form of Detective Conan).  Each of the other three Love Angels would also get to be a one off Pokémon character eventually but they took longer.  The voice of Aphrodite was eventually cast as Brock's mother Lola.  It may also interest some to know that the voice of Sailor Moon, Kotono Mitsuishi was a Wedding Peach antagonist and a few Pokémon characters.

Update March 2023: And now Suede's journey is being restored via Google Drive Links on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/m/87441/posts

https://www.patreon.com/m/87441/posts?filters[tag]=Pokemon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B-_p8MMRpg

Update April 2023: And it's finally up on the Internet Archive, this link leads to the first 34 episodes but more are uploaded as well.

https://archive.org/details/SPJ-Season1-Suede

Livewire is an unfortunate relic of the pre-Pokemon world

Livewire is an electricity based DC Comics Superman villain who debuted as part of the DCAU in an episode of Superman The Animated Series that first aired on September 13th 1997.

It is a well known scientific fact that water conducts electricity.  But apparently there didn't used to be any set expectations for what that fact would mean for an electricity based superpowered being in a game of elemental rock paper scissors.

In the episode that introduced Livewire Superman ultimately defeats her using water.  The month in which that episode aired is exactly a year before the Pokémon franchise made it's American debut.  In Pokémon's system water based attacks are ineffective against Electric Type Pokémon.

Pokémon has became I'm willing to say equal to Superman in pop cultural importance, in fact I'm very willing to say it's had a larger impact then the DCAU specifically.  Meanwhile Livewire is a somewhat niche character even within Superman and DCAU fandoms, while one of Pokémon's Electric based characters is it's Mascot.  

So Pokémon's interpretation of how electricity based super powers should relate to water has become the standard even for people who haven't consumed any Pokémon media directly.

And yet whenever Livewire is reintroduced into a new version of the DCU, they feel compelled to keep the rules of that 97 cartoon.  So even when she showed up on the Supergirl show in the fall of 2015 she's again defeated by water and thus everyone watching who didn't know the rules for this character were set before Pokémon was a phenomenon reacted with "wow they really didn't do their research".

And look popularity contests aside the science is on Pokémon's side here, Electric Eels live in the water, it's not a weakness for them.  Livewire has been depicted as having the ablity to become pure electricity which I think makes the idea of water harming her even more absurd.

Livewire became a popular enough character to be a Canon immigrant because of her personality, I don't think anyone is really nostalgic enough for that detail of her debut episode to complain if DC decided to conform her to the modern rules standardized by Pokémon.