The many John Carters of Anime.

John Carter is the name of a 2012 film adapted from a 1912 Pulp Sci-Fi series originally titled A Princess of Mars but it and it's sequels are often called the Barsoom series. 

The way this movie was seen as so generic despite how it's source material predates everything it was seen as derivative of has made it a euphemism in my mind for all similar scenarios, something highly influential that later fell into obscurity and become overshadowed by it's literary children which got high profile mainstream adaptations way sooner.

For Otaku Media the comparable situations on my mind are mainly source material from the 90s or early 00s that didn't get a full TV Anime adaption till the 2010s or 2020s. 

The big one I've already talked about is YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. It's 2019 Anime was dismissed by casuals as just another Isekai but with a drawn out Steins;Gate/Re:Zero set up thrown in.  There were not zero Isekai prior to the 1996 release of the YU-NO game, but it still long predates the main formative texts of modern Seinen LN Isekai. 

But those kinds of Anime aren't the only ones I feel YU-NO influenced in some way. When I was watching it not even knowing how old the source material was yet, the talk about being "outside the four great Ancient Civilizations" reminded me of exposition from Madlax a now largely forgotten 2004 Anime. Mio Shimazu I feel is a very formative early Tsundere and Kanna Hatano likewise is an early formative Kuudere. I also feel like Shimazu was a very direct inspiration for the main girl of the third episode of the 2002 Hentai OVA series titled Unbalance directed by Akiyuki Shibo. 

John Carter the film you can argue doesn't do itself any favors in avoiding the generic accusations in how it presented itself.  And YU-NO is similar, as much I love the 2019 Anime I do lament that it used the modern character design revamps of the game's then recent remake. In 2026 we have Anime like Red River showing us a modern Anime can still feel faithful to it's source's original 90s Character Designs. 

Red River can indeed be added to this list, as a classic Shoujo Time Isekai it's Manga predates Inyuasha. 

But another big Visual Novel example is Muv-Luv.  It's original release was 2003 and the first version adding Alternative to the title was 2006. There was no proper adaptation of a version of it's main story till 2021-2022, but it has spin off Anime in 2021 and 2016. 

The pilot of the 2021 Anime is one that I'm sure people watching with out knowing the history of Muv-Luv would have been comparing to the pilot of Attack on Titan, but AoT's Manga didn't start till 2009. It also shares a lot of vibes with many modern Gacha game based Anime. 

There are of course some major important early Visual Novels that still have no TV Anime. Shizuka, Kizuato, Silver, Cross Channel, Tsui no Sora. 

The best year of future Anime.

I have a couple posts on this blog made this year arguing the best year in Anime history is either Gregorian 2006 or April 2006-March 2007. 

So I decided ask the question, what about other Mediums of Otaku Entertainment from that timeframe?

I already talked about one 2006 Visual Novel in those posts, but that's because Summer Days also counts as an Anime. And in my Yandere post I talked about how the Future Diary Manga started in January 2006.

Thing is I've come to think the best era of Visual Novels, and the broader Bishoujo Game category into which they are a part, as being 1991-2005.  Summer Days may be one 2006 VN I prefer to the most comparable VN from 2005, it's predecessor School Days, but that has a lot to do with my personal biases where that franchise is concerned, School Days is more fleshed out and coherent in what it's trying to say. 

And that Yandere post is also about how Future Diary's most defining character is an archetype built by prior works. And to some extent so are the other core features of Future Diary. 

2004 may be for the source materials of future Anime what 2006 is for Anime. Death Note started at the tail end of 2003 and continued into early 2006, similar with Higurashi and Pluto and Baccano! and Lucky Star and Nana.  Fate/Stay Night and Clannad both dropped in 2004 as did the first LNs for A Certain Magical Index and Durarara!! and The Familiar of Zero.  And then the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya LN as well as Endless Eight. 

When you add to that how 2004 was perhaps a better year for Original Anime then 2006, and it could be considered a pretty peak year for Otaku Culture. 

I don't have a problem with Anime LARPers.

I can absolutely relate to being conceptually a fan of something I can't engage with directly whether it's Video Game franchises with an interesting Lore but the actual Gameplay is unplayable for me personally like Mega Man and many RPGs and most Visual Novels.  Or foreign media that still lacks any kind of English Language localization like some Paul Feval novels, most adaptations of Feval Novels and similar French Pulpy Novels, La Seine no Hoshi or the Pre-School Days Overflow Games. 

However beyond that strict definition of a Fandom LARPer (someone literally presenting as a fan of media they haven't engaged with directly), LARPer as an insult in the Anime community is also becoming functionally synonymous with terms like Tourist. It's about what it means to say you like Anime as a concept. 

I should be clear that on the subject of terminology to me Anime Fan and Otaku and Weeb are not perfect synonyms. Though in the context of specifically Western Fandom discourse for the purpose of this discussion the nuanced distinction between Otaku and Weeb doesn't matter. An Anime Fan is anyone who is a fan of at least 5 distinctly different Anime and identifies as liking Anime. However an Otaku is someone who even when they don't like certain trends of Anime will never view them as things that should be gotten rid of, there is no room for Antishippers in Otakudom. 

I want new Anime Fans, or even long time ones who've remained very limited in what they've seen, to watch more and expand their horizons. But in my opinion talking down to those people, calling them culturally illiterate or tourists or LARPers is counterproductive, you're just making them hate the culture and pushing them away.  Politely recommend them shows similar to what they already like, or from the same creators, and/or what your personal favorites are, but let them take their time. 

I've currently completed over a thousand Anime and partially watched nearly 300 more. But there was a long time, from like 2005 to 2014, when I'd seen less then 50 and still referred to myself as liking Anime, not using the words Otaku or Weeb only because I hadn't heard them yet. Looking back on that now I know there is a lot I used to be wrong about, but I do not view that younger version of myself as lying about liking Anime. 

What's changed about Tourist discourse in the last like year is a massive increase in even the perceived Left Wing of the Anime Fandom doing it.  What's interesting there is how it's the Left Wing who is truly putting it's emphasis on wanting more people to watch more older Anime, while the shows the Neo-Reactionaries are mad at you for not watching are recent seasonals. Like definitionally you would expect the opposite. 

Thing is as a Leftist Anime fan who has seen more older Anime then most of these Reactionary Vlogers. Most of the Anime I like are part of Genres and Trends that took off in the 90s and 2000s so only a very small percentage of stuff from the 60s and 70s or even 80s feels significantly relevant to my tastes. 

There are two Genres of Anime in particular whose fandoms have a tendency to get really angry about anyone saying anything about them if what they've seen is still only a few of the most well known shows.  Mecha and Magical Girls. As someone who is an enjoyer of both genres, with more then mere entry level familiarity with both, I also find this troubling.

Yes it's annoying when people talk like experts on something they have a small sample size of. But being factually mistaken on on the history of a genre of fiction is not the worst thing in the world.

And some of the opinions these people think can only exist among people who've seen very little I think they are massively underestimating the validity of.

On the subject Mecha, I only feel more vindicated in calling Evangelion a Deconstruction the more of the genre I watch, not less. A lot of disagreement on what Anime can and cannot qualify as a Deconstruction is more predicated on disagreement on what a Deconstruction is then a given Genre's history. 

I still hold the view that no Magical Girl show qualifies as a Deconstruction. However not every Video on Madoka's role in the history of the genre that makes fans mad is at all appealing to that term specifically. 

I would agree that Pretty Cure monopolizing the market has more to do with the lack of Shoujo Manga based Magical Girl shows in the last 15-20 years then Madoka. But the basic opinion that Madoka disrespected the prior history of the genre is not going to go away simply from knowing the prior precedent for darker takes exist. 

I also disagree with the claim that Anime is more mainstream now then it used to be.  But that's another string of topics. 

I'm gonna link to two nuanced yet opposing YouTube Videos.

Carbio-kun's I Have no Taste and I must Larp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ9ynYK7qTI

It's Blythe's Gatekept Fandoms ar ethe Worst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Fx0rM2GDU&t

Update: Here's a 3rd one.

Framing The Narrative The Truth about Anime Tourists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5mHu3UsFwY

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.  It does still stand on it's own however.  This post's thesis does also stand on it's own of course. 

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 some of 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 and maybe by some book fans treated as if those changes are the reason it's bad. 

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 at least their existence being known to Westerners in those 20 years are Visual Novels. 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 can dominate the discourse.

Visual Novels are themselves not a very mainstream artform, especially here in the west where they are inarguably even more niche then Anime is. And so the grudge fans have against Anime they feel misrepresents certain VNs comes in part 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 material are Manga Adaptations, not all or even most of them, but enough to be notable. It does kinda bug 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 with a woman as the character designer 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 (I'm one of them sometimes honestly). 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 (the 2004 version is the closest I think a dramatized adaptation theoretically can be). 

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 original book. Chief example being every time someone gets so offended at the very concept of allowing a human to be able to kill or even momentarily harm a Dinosaur, that happened multiple times in the original novel.  

Back when most westerners 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, and certainly can't be accused of inverting the moral or the themes the way they do. But now popular opinion has been turning on it because of the influence of VN fans. 

Higurashi being the Anime I'm focusing on defending the most in this post is also a factor in why I choose the three Book to Film adaptations at the start that I did. Each of them is a story that is arguably a Horror story but also arguably not. But more specifically here the adaptation is arguably leaning into the Horror aspect more then the source material did, the percentage of the whole that is focused on being "scary" is larger in the film then it is in the book. And that is also the case with Higurashi, an Anime that is or was considered the best execution of the Horror Genre in it's medium, but the VN fans often seem to hate Higurashi even being classified as Horror in the first place even though Ryukishi07 said a major part of the goal was to make layers feel Terror the same way the Key VNs made people feel Sad. 

A lot of the time 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 adaptations that is especially potent. As someone who defends Voice Over Narration and Inner Monologues in Anime in general, I’m baffled at how determined 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 in the Anime makes it incredibly obvious. My past 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 be no 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 the Anime that got them into it in the first place. 

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 also 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 (not just the Inori routes).  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 back 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 mention 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 with a better art style. 

Haruhi, Death Note and Code Geass are important to Anime culture as a whole in ways that transcend whether or not they are the best of their "genre" or not. 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 modern Anime looks like.

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 is 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 or other adaptations 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 currently streaming for 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 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 the following 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 when making these kinds of posts.  Pokémon 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 from 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.

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 Manga 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 database 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 some of 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 are episodes that aired in 96.  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 Subbed on Crunchyroll, and they do have old 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 as 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. And 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 early Sunday morning 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 or dislike 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 because they are the viewers who have lives.  

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 dead set 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/Stay Night the VN 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 for them and appreciate how they’re responsible for such Anime I love. 

Visual Novel adaptations

Visual Novels are a medium of entertainment I’m unable to consume myself for reasons related to my ADD and perhaps other undiagnosed disabilities I may have, it’s not that I’m unwilling or too lazy it’s that I’m literally unable.

But they are an artform I greatly appreciate because they have been the direct source material of several of my favorite Anime while even more are parts of franchises that started as VNs. So I want to advocate for them as much as I can as an outsider.

However a lot of Visual Novel fans have decided to resent their Anime adaptations, even the best of them, instead of appreciating them in return.  

And to some extent I feel it shows the immaturity of the western VN fandom that they are like this.  Could you imagine if the film adaptations of Jurassic Park and The Godfather and the many highly regarded Dracula and Frankenstein films were constantly being called garbage because people who read the books were defining them solely based on how much content in the books aren’t in the films?  

The Umineko Anime made my cry in it's penultimate episode first time I watched it at a time when I hadn't done that often yet. Maybe celebrate what it says about Umineko that a highly abridged adaptation of only it's first half can move someone so deeply instead of treating people who enjoy the adaptation like they are disrespecting the source material. 

I’m going to put the various Visual Novel based Anime I'm a fan of into different categories. 

First are VN Anime I consider absolute masterpieces, as stand alone works of art these should be considered top tier no matter how unlike their source material they are.

Robotics:Notes

Steins:Gate

Chaos;Child

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (the TV Anime by UFO Table)

Higurashi When They Cry (The original 2006 Studio Deen Anime and it’s 2007 sequel Kai)

Kanon (2006-2007 Two Cour Kyoto Animation version)

Clannad + Clannad After Story

Rumbling Hearts

White Album

Comic Party

Next are ones I like about as much as those, but I do in a sense feel they could be done better.  

YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World (2019 Tv Anime)

Fate/Stay Night Haven’s Feel (UFO Table Film Trilogy)

Air (Kyoto Animation TV Anime)

Shuffle 

To Heart

White Album 2

Yosuga no Sora

Next are Anime I do consider notably flawed in some way, but still also see immense artistic value in.

Umineko

School Days

Steins;Gate 0

Chaos;HEad

Fate/Stay Night (2006 Studio Deen Version)

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (Studio Deen Film version)

Tsukihime

If there’s a VN Anime you like I didn’t mention it might be because I haven’t it yet, I’m still holding out hope for Muv-Luv getting a Dub.  Or I may not think of the source material as sufficiently qualifying as a VN like Neptunia or all those Gacha Game Anime.  If I have seen it and it definitely qualifies but I didn't mention, I may not dislike it so much as haven't thought about it as much.

I also for the sake of simplicity excluded ones that are Hentai OVAs, plenty of them I do have thoughts on, but now isn’t the time for that.

All that also excludes that Anime that are spin offs rather than direct adaptations.

Update March 2026: Ever time I rewatch the Heaven's Feel Trilogy I feel like I should move it up to the first category.  And my obsession with advocating for Deen this season has me wanting to move Deen/Stay Night up to the middle category.  

But I want to keep the main body of this post an accurate time capsule of how I was thinking in November of 2025.  There is a paragraph I recently added that wasn't in the post originally but it's a rant I was already starting to say in YT Comments back then and felt like it was a mistake not to include here. 

Higurashi still holds up as the best Horror Anime

The Studio Deen adaptation from 2006-2007 primarily but most Higurashi content has some value.  I rewatched it in October of 2025 for the first time in a few years and it more than holds up.

This post will contain spoilers for the entire franchise and maybe even also other When They Cry stuff.  

There is no single central thesis here, I want to talk about a number of Higurashi related thoughts I’ve been having lately.

Higurashi is at the forefront of VN Anime being irrationally hated by VN purists.  In a way it’s the most actually contentious as shows like Steins;Gate and KyoAni’s Key adaptations are the ones even the strictest VN purists have trouble denying are good Anime.  Shows like Tsukihime, Chaos;HEad and Umineko have a seeming lack of defenders other than me because only hardcore fans of the VNs watched them at all.  Then there are the truly niche VN based Anime that it feels like only I care about one way or the other like Robotics;Notes and YU-NO. 

Higurashi meanwhile is an Anime that when most of the casual Western Anime Fandom didn’t even know what VNs were was un-controversially deemed the Greatest Horror Anime, if there is any one Anime general Horror Fans should start seeing as required viewing for the Genre it is Higurashi. 

Now wider VN awareness has made people more aware of the critiques of it as an adaptation which combined with a generation of Zoomer Weebs who think 00s Studio Deen Anime hasn’t “aged well” in the visual presentation department, has weakened its legacy. 

I have a playlist on YouTube called Anime Defined.  

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wepj2gZet-357KQT3bgJjLErC

None of the videos in it are my own but they together help educate people on how Limited Animation is a Feature not a Bug. Over the course of the 2010s it became increasingly more common for some TV Anime to be able to seem like they aren't limited Animation.  Which has bred an increasingly common generation of Fans who refuse to see the Artistic strength of TV Anime of older eras.  Studio Deen in particular having their entire legacy denigrated like this I think is because in the late 00s and 20tweens they were making arguably the last truly Tezuka/Dezaki style Anime.

When it comes to Fate/ there was a time when I myself shamefully agreed with people who thought Deen’s versions looked bad. But I’ve come to appreciate how aesthetically they suit the original vision of the Nasuverse far better.  I still prefer UFOTable Anime for their overall handling of the story itself and their Animation/Arstyle is far from bad either in general or for the Nasuverse specially, the Nasuverse is flexible enough to modernize while still maintaining its true spirit. 

With the history of Higurashi Anime however the more modern they get the less they feel like Higurashi to me.  The Kira OVAs were already a downgrade visually but still essentially true in spirit.  The Last Period guest appearance was fun but I’d hate an entire Anime of them looking like that. And the very Goopy approach to Gou and Sotsu is very off putting, conveniently enough though I found it most tolerable for the very characters that those shows ultimately focused on the most. 

There is more to what makes an Anime work visually then just Animation, Artstyle and Character Designs.  There are also all the things a Live Action Director also needs to consider, the staging and framing of scenes, which in this case the source material gave the Anime little to work with. Deen’s Higurashi adaptations also excelled in this department and again comparing Gou and Sotsu really makes that clear. 

It is particularly the revisiting of scenes during Satokowashi that I find Gou’s staging objectively inferior in every possible way.  This is ironic because narratively Satokowashi is the part of Gou I actually like (well the first 5 episodes of it at least).  

Its revisit of the final confrontation between Takano and the Game Club is just a completely flat staging with the Club members all standing next to each other like they’re posing for a picture.  In Kai I because of how it's framed frequently misremember this as being on a slope with the victorious protagonists looking down on the defeated antagonist, and by the time that Shot is fired Hanyuu is standing in front of Mion who’s standing in front of the rest.  It is so incredibly Cinematic yet Gou just lazily has them standing around.

That’s the most egregious example but I feel essentially the same about all of them, from when Keiichi first remembers Onikakushi to Okunogi giving Takano the gun. It is so comparatively uninspired. Maybe the only reason I’m not similarly critiquing these elements of this Arc’s original scenes is because there is nothing to compare them to.. But it’s equally possible they were just lazier with the scenes that had been done before, or worse yet afraid of being accused of plagiarizing Deen.

For the VN Purists the core critiques of the Deen Anime is what it left out. Since I originally watched the show blind and followed everything just fine and understood all the nuances and subtext people claim are lost and didn’t feel anything was missing you aren’t going to convince me anything left out was absolutely necessary. And honestly the more I’ve come to know about what was left out, there are indeed some scenes I do wish could be animated some day, but there are others I honestly prefer being dropped.  

In the core story of Higurashi Frederica Bernkastel is an unnecessary complication, the Lore fact that Rika is kinda technically a different character when she speaks with the deeper voice is something I’d honestly rather not be the case, I prefer it to just be a matter of Rika showing a hidden side of herself. When Bern showed up in the Umineko Anime I knew she was a form of Rika somehow just from seeing her character design, I didn’t need the name itself to have already been in Higurashi. 

I’m also not a big fan of the cliche twist of revealing two twins had been permanently switched at some point in their childhood. We can debate endlessly whether or not this adds anything to Mion and Shion’s story but to suggest that it’s necessary to understand why Shion goes down the path she does in Eye Opening is absurd to me, what the Anime gave us was sufficient for me to understand her descent into madness when I watched it blind and it’s still sufficient now. At any rate it’s also not contradicted in the Anime, it just isn't brought up. 

Because of the nature of what kind of story Higurashi is, there is a fan theory that when it comes to the smaller detail differences every adaptation of Higurashi can be equally Canon because we know some of these Arcs played out more then once but with small differences. 

This works mainly for the Question Arcs.  The last two Answer Arcs are the last two fragments in a way that makes it so even their basic sequence of events right from the beginning can only happen once each. They are the Ten and Ketsu of the Higurashi Kishotenketsu. The ambiguity is the first two Answer Arcs.  

The Atonement Chapter in its entire final act is equally unique.  But the gist of everything up to the moment that Keiichi fully remembers the ending of Onikakushi could have played out more than once and then led to worse endings. 

Eye Opening on the one hand definitely is a variation of Cottondrifting, However it’s very final moment, everything Shion is thinking as she falls to her death in the VN and Manga is meant to Metaphysically mark her Soul and ensure she won't go down this path again. But interestingly enough that’s one of the things the Anime left out, there is a brief moment of her wishing she could do it again, but it’s nowhere near the same. So perhaps Anime Eye Opening simply is a different Fragment and is perhaps what Shion’s death usually looks like in Cottondrifting Fragments.  The implication of this metatextually is that perhaps Shion’s spiritual salvation is dependent on that fan briefly breaking her fall, which is the kind of random arbitrary Deus Ex Machina I like actually.

Another way in which what the Anime leaves out could play into this Fan Theory is that at the start of Onikakushi Keiichi in the VN is implied to be subconsciously remembering a prior version of these events because of the “I’m Sorry” bit.  This being left out of the Anime could mean that Anime Onikakushi is that earlier Fragment. 

With both Rei and Kira I don’t care much for their heavily fanservice opening episodes but I enjoy the rest of them.  Outbreak is my least favorite Higurashi Anime by far. Gou and Sotsu I have incredibly mixed feelings on. 

When Gou was first airing I was not into it for the first Cour and a Half and oddly felt alone in that looking at the online discourse I was exposed to.  Then in Episodes 18-22 I did find a genuinely compelling story and felt maybe this could all prove worth it.  I was then mostly bored by the last two episodes of Gou.  For Sotsu I was right back to feeling how I first felt about Gou for 13 episodes.  But I then really enjoyed the last two episodes only to find out that they were what the broader fandom hated, turning on what came before only because they now think it ends badly. 

I then spent 4 years mostly ignoring the existence of Gou and Sotsu except to clarify their exclusion from what I meant by calling Higurashi my favorite Horror Anime.  Which was exasperated when the Deen Higurashi Anime were dropped from HIDIVE and Gou-Sotsu became the only legally streaming Higurashi Anime.

This October I rewatched much of Gou and Sotsu including what I had failed to watch Dubbed before and it softened my overall opinion somewhat.  I have come to accept this new English Cast for Higurashi but I’ll always prefer the original Dub cast.  Then after letting that rewatch sit for a few days while watching a lot of Higurashi YT content, both Video Essays and Abridged Parodies, I decided to sit down and do a rewatch that was of just specifically Gou 18-22 and Sotsu 14-15. And it turns out I enjoyed that experience with no notes, those 7 episodes work great as a 2 and a half hour movie. They tell the core story of Gou-Sotsu, everything else was needless at best, skipping over the specifics of what Satoko did during these loops makes it much easier to digest her temporary villainy here. 

I think for five episodes Satokowashi did a good job of building up this conflict between Satoko and Rika.  And I relate to Satoko now more than ever before. Others before me had said she can be read as having ADD or ADHD in this story and as someone with ADD myself (a factor in why I prefer Dubs and can’t read Visual Novels) I very much see it.   And that’s why all the Fandom mocking of how much emphasis is put on the Studying bugs me, Satoko is undiagnosed so doesn't have the actual medical terminology to explain her problem, but even if she had many Neurotypicals would still fail to understand how much more difficult this can be for someone with a learning disability. And I don’t know if any schools in the 80s knew how to help someone like Satako but it certainly wasn’t a rigidly authoritarian meritocracy obsessed conservative one like St Lucia.

The last two episodes of Sotsu are where others turned on it mainly because they hated the very Genre of this story suddenly changing, and that’s exactly where I’m the opposite, I never needed a Higurashi sequel to be another Mystery or to be Horror.  The most highly regarded Higurashi OVAs are the ones that were just Slice of Life fun with maybe a little drama sometimes. I don’t want the franchises I like to have Genre consistency, I want them to have Character consistency. The actual core story of Gou and Sotsu does justice to these characters while taking two of them in a new direction. It’s the rest of it that hurts the characterization for the sake of forcing a new mystery.

It’s easy to dismiss enjoyment of the last two episodes of Sotsu as purely superficial, yes it’s objectively a “well animated” fight, but if that was all it had I wouldn't have kept loving it so much even on the 3rd time watching it. 

There is a moment in Lindsay Ellis’s video on Guardians of The Galaxy 2 where while showing the fight between Gamora and Nebula she says “maybe you haven’t been in a literal fight like this with a family member…. but you’ve probably been in a fight that felt like this”.  And that is why this fight between Satoko and Rika works, especially when watched soon after watching the first 5 episodes of Satakowashi, for all the timeline-universe jumping fantastical Dragonball Z madness the underlying core emotion behind it feels real and raw and relatable.  That’s exactly what I come to Anime for.  It’s what actual Battle Shonen Anime I feel fails to live up to, but when their visual language is borrowed in these more Emotionally driven kinds of Anime it works perfectly. 

However, Gou when viewed in its intended watch order is a crappy sequel.  Why isn’t Rika’s first move to try and recreate the last Fragment? or at least make a move against Takano? Instead the focus for three arcs is on recreating a classic Arc but SHOCK it ends differently this time. Cat-Deceiving chapter hints at actually new scenarios only to rush through them to end on the big reveal.  Sotsu spends 13 episodes revisiting those events from different POVs with the only things close to actually new ideas being ones I never wanted.  And the answer to the question of why so many things happened differently is basically just someone pushed a magically make you insane button on a different character each time.

I don’t see the value in a “what if Mion went full Level 5” scenario to begin with.  But having her mostly just do again everything Shion did only sometimes slightly differently is the most unimaginative way you could do that. It did make me laugh how she even repeated the blunder of accidentally killing Oryo with the Taser before she could question her. 

A Mion scenario as the second fragment of this new Loop could have fit into the real story at hand if Rika had ever actually gotten to react to it.  Instead Mion kills her instantly and given the preconceptions Rika entered this with she probably assumed that was Shion the entire time she was being choked out.  Maybe the fact that Mion went Level 5 could have been the thing that truly revealed to Rika how different this new game board is, certainly a more emotionally impactful character to do that with then Oishi.  Instead it happened solely because Satako was morbidly curious. 

A lot of my issues with Gou scenarios are that they should have had Rika be the primary POV character from the start for the Question Arcs.  That would be a true inversion of the original structure where we don’t get her perspective till the Answer Arcs. But that wouldn’t have lent itself to the marketing gimmick of being able to allegedly be both Remake and Sequel at the same time. 

I’m really not qualified to explain in depth why it was so problematic to revisit the Teppei abusing Satoko storyline this way. As a Universalist Christian I do not have a problem with the basic concept of redeeming Teppei, in fact I like how his new Dub actor plays this more cheerful version of the character at the end. But creating this scenario where Satako fakes the abuse this time really sours the legacy of what once was one of the most powerful and effective depictions of this issue in Anime.

So yeah, I don’t think there’s any Anime I have more truly conflicted feelings towards then Higurashi Gou and Sotsu.

Large Pon Pon is perhaps the most accessible Overflow Game

In addition to also being their first.  

And what I mean by accessible here is it could have a wide appeal if it was available in English.  It not being translated makes it less materially accessible then School Days or Shiny Days or even Cross Days which seems to have an unofficial translation floating around out there somewhere.

Large Pon Pon is a Visual Novel where the main cast seems to be mostly in their 20s.  Ayumu Inou the main protagonist is 24 if what I’ve read is correct.  One girl in the game is in High School and I presume that route is avoidable or at least it’s H Scenes are if there are any.  There are absolutely no Lolis.

Its content seems to include plenty of Depravity, but there are lots of people who are okay with Anime depravity so long as it’s between adults.

This is all stuff I know from reading about Large Pon Pon as I can’t play untranslated Japanese Games. 

So when trying to get Overflow Games on the radar of those English speaking YouTubers who can play Japanese Video Games that have never been translated, we really should start with Large Pon Pon not the Radish Vacation series.  Something I wish I myself had thought to consider earlier. 

Since the madness that is the Overflow Family Tree was mostly built by a game series that was a prequel to this, its relationship to all that is at face value more direct than say PureMail yet possibly still 100% Retcons. So most of the questions I’d want answered by seeing someone else give a deep analysis relate to that.

The infamous Overflow Family Tree makes some of the relationships Ayumu can have in this game Incestous, but I’m highly skeptical that any of that was in the minds of the developers when they first made this game, and if so it shouldn't be relevant to this game as a stand alone piece of Art. 

On the Overflow Wiki the biography of Ayumu Inou prior to the events of Large Pon Pon is already a very insane one.  But it seems to be all offscreen even in those Prequel games, Ayumu himself does not appear to be an onscreen character in any of them. 

Part of my brain is highly skeptical that any of that was mentioned or even hinted at in Large Pon Pon itself.  But I hope I’m wrong, I think the premise of Large Pon Pon would be a more compelling story if Ayumu’s sexually traumatized backstory is relevant to the present story. But it’s certainly by no means boring if it’s not. 

For those who don’t know, that history includes being sexually enslaved by his Aunt Asagi for years, a complicated history with his older sister Kagura, sireing multiple Bastard children who he may not know about, many of them with biological relatives, and being the possibly acknowledged son of the most vile fictional character ever written.

Tomaru Sawagoe is not an onscreen character in this game, but I really am curious to what extent he is mentioned. Because onscreen characters in this game do include the woman he’s actually married to and his son by her and that son’s wife, in release order the Sawagoe surname first belonged to those characters. And even in the canon established by those prequels Tomoe seems to have already had that surname before she married Tomaru. The Wiki presumes her to be Tomaru’s Aunt but I think that’s a mistake since Aunt-Nephew marriages aren't legal in Japan but Cousin marriages are.  And in Snow Radish Vacation they are either the same age or Tomoe is younger, so a possible but not typical Aunt-Nephew age gap.  

Also, is the Hospital that Tomaru is said to own in Shiny Days the same one much of this game takes place in?

But I’m even more curious if Kagura is mentioned in any capacity. To me the Radish games have made her the most important protagonist of this Epic Saga of Depravity, so it’d be nice if there was at least some hint of her existence where it all started. Even if it’s unnamed, if it's just an offhand statement that Ayumu has an older sister.  Kagura and Ayumu are siblings who share both parents and have the same last name and were raised together, so it’s a sibling status that has no asterix attached to it, unlike almost everyone else the family tree chart says is a sibling to them. 

Makoto Itou's lack of Free Will

One mechanic that separates School Days and its sequels from many other Visual Novels is how making no choice serves as a sort of secret third choice further complicating the branching path system.

The Philosophical and Metatextual implications of that are further layered by how the player isn’t in control of every choice Makoto makes, or indeed even every important choice.  It reality it's more like we are merely being consulted on choices he can’t immediately make on his own.  For all my interest in apologizing for this guy, yes some of his decisions I can’t directly influence do frustrate me. He is sometimes a dumb horny teenager, but unlike seemingly most Anime fans I don’t think that’s a capital offense. 

Thing is, some of the results of choosing nothing do not look in universe like Makoto not making a choice, some do, sometimes it is as simple as him not answering a question he was asked.  But sometimes it seems almost functionally indistinguishable from what one of the offered choices were.  In fact the first choice of episode 2 is one of those, making no choice results in Makoto asking about the kiss, clearly that’s what he wants to do but his hesitation gives the player the chance to prevent him from asking. 

But there are also times when we’re only given one option, that is secretly two.  As I talked about when discussing Makoto as a Rape Victim in one situation the options for him are to say no or nothing to what Kotonoha is asking to do.  Remember the casual fanbase memes on him being a horny idiot who never doesn't want to have sex.  So the fact that in this case the player does not have the option of making him consent is a very huge oversight in the popular perception of him. 

I feel all of this adds up to making it a valid reading of the text that the Route which comes from the player making no choices is the most Canonical baseline for who Makoto is.  And that the player made choices are not quite equally valid representations of his personality but the player being an outside influence on him. 

Maybe you think that’s a reading one can only come to in a post Doki Doki Literature Club world, or before that in Japan You and Me and Her: A Love Story.  But the thing about a good metatextual commentary or “Deconstruction” is that it’s drawing attention to what was already there, making explicit a subtext that is in fact nothing new. 

A lot of my defense of Makoto is based on how in the VN everything that happens in the TV Anime can’t happen on one timeline and there are timelines where he does very little wrong. If you still think that every version of him should be judged based on the sins of the worst versions of him, that says a lot about you and how you view questions like Human nature and Free Will. 

One of the reasons why Calvinism and Arminianism are functionally the same to me is that if you have an absolute belief in human Free Will then inevitably you can conclude what choices a person makes reveals who they always were.  So Calvinism and Arminianism both result in simply believing Bad people just are innately Bad people. And as I’ve said before Existentialism is just Secular Arminianism.

I am a Materialist with an Optimistic view of Human Nature. I believe when people are at their Best they are being the closest to who they truly are, and that when people are bad they are succumbing to their material conditions and proving their lack of Free Will. But even that is not entirely the point of what I’m saying about Makoto in School Days. 

What I’m pointing out today is that who Makoto turns out to be when the Player doesn’t interfere is far from the worst version of him and may very well be one of the best.  

The ending that results from the player making no choices is With Honesty.  Making no choices isn't the only way to get that ending, the Overflow wiki at the top of it’s page says it’s a moderately hard ending to get,, which tells me one editor got it through a more convoluted means.  To be more specific the no choices route results in episode 2 being The Distance Between Us, episode 3 being Conflicting Desires, episode 4 being With Great Reluctance, and episode 5 being A Christmas Invitation.  I’ve affectionately nicknamed this The Luigi Route.

This ending is a Sekai ending, which feels very vindicating since I concluded Sekai is who Makoto should be with well before I learned this little fact about the game. But most importantly he never cheats at any point. The stuff that’s uncomfortable to watch in this route is mainly Taisuke’s behavior. 

Which does lead to the one thing in this route people are hard on Makoto for, his lack of intervention when he sees Taisuke’s lack of respect for Sekai’s consent. Makoto is clearly bothered by what he saw, unfortunately the way Japanese culture is about these kinds of things it is pretty expected that he’d conclude it’s not his business. And other cultures are like that too, including our own sometimes. This is not me saying it’s fine, but it is me saying its a product of society, of Material Conditions. 

Maybe you think it’s bad game design that what happens if the player does nothing is still a good ending, isn’t the point of a Video Game that the player saves this world from some bad fate it’s heading towards?  Of course a lot of RPGs and Zelda Games have a major element of McGuffin Delivery Service to how their plots are written, the player making things worse first is far from unprecedented. And even for players who want Makoto to get with Sekai, other Sekai endings probably feel more emotionally satisfying even when the route to get there involves more ethical misdeeds. 

The infamous Bad endings of the Game are themselves fairly difficult to get.  I can’t say they aren’t at all potential results of trying for a good end and failing, you can definitely be on a certain route long enough and wind up with a bad ending being what you’re most likely headed towards. There is a degree of High Risk High Reward where one Bad ending is closely tied to the route for the Threesome ending. But they are not from the start what you are most likely winding up on from simply playing the game badly. 

The most common endings one winds up with on a blind playthrough seem to be Christmas Eve if going for Kotnonoha or Setsuna’s Feelings if going for Sekai. Christmas Eve is in fact the Kotonoha counterpart of With Honesty in terms of the scenario leading up to it so it’s one where how much Makoto does wrong is about the same as that route, maybe even less.  Setsuna’s Feelings is one of many routes that involves Makoto cheating on Kotonoha with Sekai, but at least he doesn’t swing back later, once he realizes he’s happier with Sekai he sticks by that with a lot of the failure to break it to Kotonoha sooner coming down to equal hesitation from both him and Sekai.  It’s not good but hardly worth labeling him an irredeemable womanizer.

As I argued in other posts, going off just School Days I don’t think Makoto is ever as bad as people make him out to be.

It’s definitely unfair to hold against any Makoto of School Days the crimes he committed in different games, normally that’d be a given, School Days was clearly not written as something that needed a sequel, it’s a stand alone work of art.  But since vilifying Makoto as much as possible is everyone’s favorite pastime, the morally worst route of Summer Days has to be referred to as a revelation not an addition. I was at first gonna include a parallel analysis of Summer Days/Shiny Days but it looks like that may have to be a separate post some time in the future.

Is Anime a Genre?

The simple answer is No, because the definition of Genre I expect to be the first to pop into your mind is a type of Story or Setting for a Story, and Anime is not one of those.  And a number of Anime YouTubers have expressed annoyance at it being called a Genre thinking of that definition. 

But the word Genre is actually broader than that in application, it really just means a Category, it is etymologically cognate with Gender.  In the context of Video Games we don’t usually use Genre to mean Story or Setting but to categorize the way a Game is played Mechanically.   Platformer, First Person Shooter, RPG, Point and Click Adventure Game, ____ Simulator, ____ Like and so on. 

So a Medium can be a Genre, as can an Art Style or any other definition for Anime you can come up with.

The thing about Anime being mistaken for a Genre in the first sense is that I can understand why many in the Anime Fandom hate it because of a fear that it will make people think Anime has less variety than it actually does. But I also think that conflation has caused some of what I like about the Anime Community. 

Back in the 2000s and even much of the 2010s when I was still more Western in my Nerdy interests and only dabbled in a select few Anime, I’m sure I was far from the only person into DC Superheroes and Star Wars type stuff but also Teen Dramas, but as far as how people engaged in such fandoms openly online they were very segregated.  And often a perceived crossing over between them was a source of hostility, people hated Twilight for tainting their precious Masculine Vampires with Teen Girl Melodrama.

The Anime Fandom was the first Fandom I ever encountered where it was normal to appreciate those different kinds of Story Genres together.  Where the same Vloggers will give weekly coverage to both currently airing Isekai and currently airing Romantic Comedies.  That I can talk about Nana with the same people I talk about Gundam.  

Because Anime itself was a distinct Category of content to be a Nerd for, the variety of Genres within it could coexist in a way they couldn’t elsewhere.

That’s not to say there are no internal beefs within the Anime community along these lines, the Anti-Shoujo and Anti-Moe “OldTaku” were and still are a thing.  But it manifests differently precisely because Anime was always crossing over these things. Western media has its own long history of hybridizing Teen Drama and Superheroes going back to the 50s Superboy Comics.  But with Anime this has been the default form, it’s Superheroes being Adults that’s a novelty.

I created a Playlist on YouTube called Anime Defined where the true nuances of what the word Anime means is broken down and certain popular misconceptions are refuted.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wepj2gZet-357KQT3bgJjLErC 

But one topic not covered in any videos there yet is how I think the most interesting difference between how Westerners and those in Japan use the word Anime is that only we use it for a “Style” of Character Design. A Character who looks like this….

…is called an Anime Girl even though she hasn’t yet been in any Animated Media. And certain Video Games are called “Anime Games” because of the style of their Character Designs.

In Japan Anime is not given priority among the various Mediums these Styles have appeared in. The oldest Styles used in the Oldest Anime would probably be called Manga Styles if anything because they were usually adapting Manga or imitating older shows adapted from Manga.  Plus the word Manga in Japanese is more analogous to the English word Cartoon then Comic.

However the particular kind of Anime Style associated with what Westerners typically mean by “Anime Games” I’m pretty sure actually started with the Games, it was Anime adapting and/or imitating those Games that created the styles of modern Anime. 

The Puyo Puyo series started in 1991 (spinning off from something older if I remember correctly), Doukyuusei and Galaxy Fraulein Yuna then came out in 1992, Tokimeki Memorial came out in 1994 as did Panel de Pon.  Their OVAs were among the first Anime to have this style, but even in 1995 TV Anime still didn’t quite look like this yet.  1996 was the big breakout year with Shizuka and Kizuato and Kakyuusei and Welcome to Pia Carrot and YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. And then 97 had To Heart and Dosei and Moon followed in 98 by One.  Then 99 had Key’s Debut with Kanon and Overflow’s with Large Pon Pon, and the To Heart Anime being I would argue the first popular TV Anime with this style.

So yeah, it’s actually Anime that looks like those Games, not the other way around. 

Those Games however I believe were in turn influenced by Shoujo Manga trends in both subject matter and the Bishoujo/Bishounen style.

Girls of the Overflow Universe

When one first discovers the absurd Overflow Family Tree the specific character to catch people’s attention is Tomaru Sawagoe because he’s literally all over it.  And I like memeing on what an over the top villain he is too.

But I also believe plenty of the Girls on the Tree are more than just perpetual victims.  They have interesting stories to tell as well. 

For one thing I can’t help but see is a possible compelling Marxist Feminist reading of the meta narrative, where this very literal Patriarch is the owner of the Radish Trilogy’s titular restaurant Chain, but it is all girls who are actually running and staffing it.  This is why the Radish setting is so interesting in Summer Days and really makes me want to somehow experience the Radish Trilogy Games.

The common “Apple not falling far from the tree” expression being said in reference to Tomaru’s sons I find amusing given we meet even more daughters and they never turn out to be bad people.  The most Evil Women in these games are the ones who don’t descend from Tomaru. So no being Evil isn’t Biologically Determined in this universe.

I feel like proclaiming Kagura Inou the Matriarch of the Overflow Universe.  Her mother may be Ancestral to even more branches, but Kagura is the protagonist of the Chronologically first game and is mentioned in key ways in both Summer Days and Shiny Days.  

I do dislike Shiny Days revealing her to have passed away already. And it does seem like a Retcon, when Kagura is name dropped in the Summer Days route it seems like a reference to someone still alive.

Shiny Days Route Order

The most well known online walkthrough of Shiny Days, that is also used by people playing through the Game on YouTube and Lexa$! Video Essays on it, advise people to play the Inori Route branch first.

I hate this.

Shiny Days is a remake of an earlier game originally titled Summer Days.

The Inori Branch is 100% new to Shiny Days, the Setsuna Branch seems to have some new content but it all feels like it fits in with the original Summer Days material just fine.  

The Inori route may be narratively an alternate timeline but it’s metatextuality a sequel.

As someone who feels like they’re very savvy to this kind of thing, certain events and plot elements in the Inori storyline feel like specifically events Summer Days players are used to seeing play out differently.  They are Subverting Expectations.

And the only thing I’d really call a Twist in the Game is definitely treated like a shocking reveal far more when it happens in the Summer Days routes.  In the Inori storyline it’s treated with much more dramatic irony. 

So when I see people on YouTube play through the game being shocked and surprised by this reveal while watching the Inori storyline and then play Summer Days making fun of how they already know it, it definitely feels to me like they’ve gotten the intended experience inverted.

The Game’s own internal Route Map does place the Inori Branch up top and the Summer Days Branch on the bottom and I think that’s largely what caused this.  The original Japanese developers of the Game may not have considered how many people will wind up playing only this release of the Game.  But for us Westerners this is the only release we officially have in English at all.

The way unlocked H Scenes are organized on the menu for watching them on their own confirms that Summer Days does still come first.

The Inori route is also kind of overall more Wholesome and so maybe some people felt that should be a Normie’s first impression.  But no one is playing the Infamous Sequel to the Infamous School Days because they are looking for Wholesomeness.  If you don’t download the Deconseoring Patch you won’t get the most problematic content.

Which of these two branches you wind up on is decided by the first choice Makoto is given.  I’m not gonna say any other choices are more correct after that, such would defeat the point of this genre. I just want people to play Summer Days first.

So the first choice is Otome asking Makoto what he’s thinking about doing for Summer Break.  Select the top choice “I want to make lots of Memories” to get on the correct Summer Days path.

I do like the story being told in the Inori route, the only detail I dislike is the reveal that Setsuna’s grandmother Kagura is dead.  She was born in 1958 at the earliest in my needless overthinking of this insane universe’s timeline, so dying by 2005 is way too young.  And it does seem like a Retcon, when Kagura is name dropped in the Summer Days route it seems like a reference to someone still alive.

Update May 12th: While thinking about what I said in this new post I went and checked and Makoto choosing nothing for the first choice also puts you on the Summer Days Route.  So the Inori Route is meant to be actively chosen, Summer Days is where the story is heading by default. 

The 2000s is probably my favorite Decade of Anime

I’m not someone who confuses what personally appeals to me the most with what’s objectively the best, and I certainly don’t think modern Anime has fallen off completely.

And you’re probably now expecting me to express self awareness of how Nostalgia driven an opinion like this probably is.  But the thing is very little of the 2000s Anime I'm thinking of I watched at the time, I was late getting fully into Anime relatively speaking, the mid 2010s is when I became an Otaku.

Maybe you can say I saw just enough at the time that I can experience a sort of vicarious Nostalgia from shows that feel Homousian with shows I have actual Nostalgia for.  But what I did see at the time is mostly from a few Genres, a huge percentage of what defines 2000s Anime I didn’t even get a sample of.  Plus as expected by my age the 90s is the era I'm generally most Nostalgic for.

Some of the shows I’m considering most important to defining what makes the 2000s special are what I’ve gotten into the most recently, post Pandemic as a person already in their late 30s.  The DotHack Franchise, Nana, White Album, Rumbling Hearts, Comic Party, Burst Angel, Mai Hime and Mai Otome, Shattered Angels, Kanon, Shuffle, Tokyo Mew Mew, Elfen Lied, Baccano, a lot of the best Detective Conan content, and non Isekai Fantasy Shows like Scrapped Princess and Sands of Destruction.

The 2000s contain a linging influence of what people love about 90s Anime and the roots of lots of what’s dominated the 2010s and beyond.  But also plenty of shows that feel like they could only have been made in the 00s. 

The Volume of what I’ve seen is more recent, partly because how much Anime gets made increases exponentially, but also because again I started following currently airing Anime in the late 2010s so the disposable flash in the pan shows that don’t “stand the test of time” that appeal to me have been harder for me to miss, I have to seek them out for older eras. 

The thing is I'm not so sure the 00s would be all that over represented if I made a 3x3 or Top Ten list.  I think their specialness to me may be more with having a lot of shows I think about a lot regardless of how I rate them. And yet it’s not all that represented in that Twelve Unintentional Christian Anime list I made either.  Maybe what’s leading me to say this is more an appreciation for its perceived greater variety than actually thinking the shows were on average any better.

My absolute favorite of all time is from the 00s, Noir, two of the shows that have hovered around the Number 2 spot are as well, Code Geass and Lucky Star.  My Favorite Pokémon movies are mostly from the 00s as well as what I consider the best era of the TV Anime, the character who is my current Avatar is from a 00s Anime, and so are the shows that I have called the best Christmas Anime and best Horror Anime. And my favorite Gundam series 00.

Maybe I should make a Top 20 of the 2000s.  But I'm not sure I can narrow it down to even 20.

Then there is the mildly controversial question of how to define the 2000s.  Usually Decades as defining Pop Culture is always based on year 0-9 formations because the fact that there is no year 0 at the start of the AD Era is pretty irrelevant to understanding recent history.  

But in terms of the Vibe Based ways I think of Anime time periods most Anime from 2010 feels more like 00s then the 2010s.  War on Geminar, Legend of The Legendary Heroes, Heartcatch Precure, Cat Planet Cuties, the first seasons of Oreimo and Durarara, Yosuga no Sora, Angel Beats, the Gundam 00 movie, K-On!! and the conclusion of the Diamond and Pearl era of Pokémon.  Most of what defines Modern Anime started in 2011 or 2012.

But do Anime from the year 2000 feel more 90s?  The Pokémon stuff could go either way and Boogiepop Phantom is a spin off of 90s LNs in a very Lain inspired style and a lot of shows on the air that year started in at least 99. So maybe?  

If I start this decade with Winter 2001 then it’s notable that I haven’t completed any TV Anime from that season and only even started Arjuna.

Of course another ambiguity to consider is the many ways in which in the Japanese Mind years kind of actually start with April not January.  And as a Mildly Hebrew Roots Christian I’m also very sympathetic to starting the year with Aviv rather than Winter.  

But then I’d have to consider Madoka Magica spiritually a 2010 Anime and that doesn’t feel right, though perhaps Wandering Son and Is This A Zombie do?