Another incorrectly named Detective Conan Collection on Netflix.

It should be named The Vermouth Arc because it's real purpose is finally filling in what they skipped in the first collection. I wish they could have just added these to that.

My nitpicking the presentation aside, they are all episodes I'm glad to see Dubbed finally and as usual this Cast Dubs them all excellently. It's also nice to finally have one with no extra long episodes and thus an episode count that doesn't look deceptively underwhelming

This was half episodes that barely if at all feature FBI characters, and for the ones that do it's a kind of a spoiler to be advertising them as FBI episodes, these are all from before that was supposed to be known. When they announced the new collection will be FBI themed I expected a few of these but mostly episodes continuing after 425. But this is for the best, those post 425 episodes should be part of a future Collection branded as The Clash of Red and Black.

I'm glad the Nano voice for Sonoko of finally got to do a Deduction show. And I'm pleasantly surprised Higo's introduction got to make a collection at all.

The case this batch ended on is the first case in this Dub that I hadn't already seen in it's entirety before.  It's a good case, some unique non standard tension that makes it stand out. 

After ending where it did, I'm now expecting the second Cour of this collection to open on Contact with The Black Organization and then include both Four Porsches and The Connivence Store Trap, and I'm hoping at least also the Hidden Bathroom Secret. After that it could go either way on just being the other 2003 Vermouth Arc episodes or including some episode following it's finale.  Episode 346-347 is easy to dismiss as a mere aftermath episode but it is the episode that properly reveals certain things. And Aftermath episodes are fun.

Based on the pattern of how the last collection was released, I'm expecting July 1st to be one the second half drops.  But I do hope it can happen sooner after having to wait so long for the 3rd Collection.

And then there is the matter of the Watch order.  I may add a more refined update on this later, or link to someone laying it out well if I find one. But the gist is...

The first case of this collection should be watched before The Desperate Revival.

The second case in it between where the Rivals Collection ends and The Mysterious Passenger.

The next 3 cases between The Mysterious Passenger and The New York Case.

And the last case after the New York Case.

Update: The Director of the Dub has updated her Chronological order list. I should just always link to that instead of trying to explain it myself. 

https://matchaandmayhem.tumblr.com/post/799001080524570624/detco-dub-order

How to Watch Evangelion

 Don't.

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

Watch Sumphogear

Symphogear

Symphogear G

Symphogear GX

Symphogear AXZ

Symphogear XV

Game of Thrones Universe Watch Order Post.

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

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

Of course this would become less useful in this example as the shows tend to depart from the books more as they go on, even in how the story is structured.

So here's the release order of The Books

A Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones Season 1)

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

A Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones Season 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Detective Conan Netflix Dub Watch Order Post.

Why am I making another when there aren't even any new episodes up yet?

It's occurred the order the episodes originally came out in isn't the only alternative to the Order Netflix has them in.  That order I of course already discussed.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2026/01/and-one-more-thing-new-detective-conan.html

Because Detective Conan is an easy show to get into where the continuity of where we currently are in the overall timeline only occasionally matters.

An argument can made that, besides maybe the first two episodes, watching the entire Rivals collection before the Black Organization collection could work. Those episodes give a better idea of what the Average Detective Conan episode is like even while also including notable events and important character moments.

But one simple change that could make the jumping around between collections a bit easier would be to watch Locked Room in The Sky Shinichi Kudo's First Case before the episode that introduces Haibara, Girl from The Black Organization. Since Haibara isn't in that episode, not even the framing device, and the bulk of it is a flashback. 

Indeed the Desperate Revival six parter is the only part of the Rivals Collection that feels like it really matters where you watch it relative to the Black Organization stuff, beside Hiabara being there it also directly references events from the Reunion with The Black Organization three parter. And for reasons that could be spoilers to explain it can be deemed important to watch before the Vermouth storyline, which begins proper with The Mysterious Passenger.

So maybe watch the first two episodes in Black Organization, then watch Rivals up till you finish Locked Room, then return to Black Organization collection for 5 episode (one of them being feature length), then finish the Rivals collection and then finish Black Organization. 

And one more thing: new Detective Conan episodes on Netflix

I'm pretty happy with what we got, all episodes not Dubbed before.

First to the updated original watch order for people only using Netflix.

Watch the first two episodes of the Black Organization Collection.

Then watch the first 11 episodes of the Rivals collection.

Then watch the next two episodes of the Black Organization Collection.

Then watched Locked Room in The Sky, Shinichi Kudo's First Case in the Rivals Collection.

Then watch the Reunion with The Black Organization 3 parter.

Then finish the Rivals Collection.

Then finish the Black Organization Collection.

[Update: The director of the Dub has also posted what the Watch order is.

https://matchaandmayhem.tumblr.com/post/799001080524570624/detco-dub-order]

The Detectives Gathered Together is an episode that will turn 25 years old on the same day the Pilot episode turns 30, January 8th.  The Mysterious Passenger is also from 2001.

I have to say the Rivals of The Great Detective Collection feels very misnamed.  Only some episodes involve any character who could be called a Rival to Conan, but there are few that don't feel important to the ShinRan Romance storyline. It's almost like they wanted to hide that Romance was the real focus.

This is perhaps the best this Dub has seen of Sonoko so far, still none of the episode where the case is solved using her voice, but it captures the point of her character better then the small roles she had in Kid's Debut or the Vermouth Arc's finale.

The Case from the last two episodes of The Desperate Revival is a Columbo episode though I forgot to note it as such when making my personal list of Columbo episodes, Kudo even has a "one more thing" moment, though probably for lipflap reasons the Dub didn't translate it using that exact phrase.

It's amusing how in less then two months a number of Magic Kaito supporting character went from having no English VAs to having 2 each.

The detective wearing Green in Detectives Gathered I'm pretty sure has the same VA as "Santos" from the Funimation Dubs of the first 6 movies.  A voice actor who I remember uniquely because of the Audio Commentary for the final episode of Robotics;Notes, I think it was the last episode I'm thinking of.

Detective Conan and Magic Kaito 1412 Watch order post.

Since I’m pretty sure only two new episodes are going up on the 19th it’s time to update the Chronological Order of the Detective Conan episodes on Netflix in preparation. If a surprise happens I’ll update this post. 

Watch the first two episodes of Conan Vs The Black Organization.

Then watch the Rivals of the Great Detective Collection up through The Case of The Blackmailed Pro Soccer Player.

Then watch the Karaoke Box Murder Case in the Winter Episode Showcase.

Then watch The Conan Edogawa Abduction Case in the Rivals Collection.

Then watch Alpine Hunt in the Snow Mountain Murder Case in the Winter Showcase.

Then finish what’s currently in the Rivals collection, which at this time still ends with Conan vs. Kid the Phantom Thief. 

Then finish Conan vs The Black Organization. 

The movie currently on TMS's YouTube Channel, Captured In Her Eyes, originally came out between Reunion with The Black Organization and The Mysterious Passenger.  The movie going up this Saturday, Strategy Above The Depths, came out between the last two episodes of The Black Organization Collection.

[Update: There was a surprise, and it's that these won't be on Netlfix and won't be Dubbed, they're on YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIGYpfXP3Uw

So as far as watching just what's on Netflix goes the prior Chronological Order works till January 1st.] 

We’ve also learned that an English Dub for Magic Kaito 1412 is now on Amasian TV. And I’ve noticed that Anime has it's episodes in a different order then the original Manga, which is most notable when observing the Detective Conan crossovers.

So here is a Manga accurate Watch Order for that show (some Manga chapters still aren’t covered by this Anime at all though).

Episode 1: The Revived Phantom Thief Kid

Episode 15:The Princess and The Thief's Improve

Episode 7: Kaito Kuroba’s Busy Day

Episode 5: A Temptation in Scarlet

Episode 13:Stay Away From Him

Episode 8: The Adult’s Charm

Episode 3: Hustler vs Magician

Episode 12:Christmas Eve - Two Kaitou Kids

Episode 4: The Great Detective Steps Into the Light

Episode 2: Blue Birthday

Episode 17:Green Dream

Episode 14:Crystal Mother

Episode 22:Red Tear

Episode 6: Black Star 

Episode 16:Kid Vs Conan, Miraculous Midair Walk

Episode 18:Golden Eye (Part 1)

Episode 19:Golden Eye (Part 2)

Episode 20:Dark Knight

Episode 21:Kid Vs Conan: Teleportation Under The Moonlight

Episode 9: The Phantom Lady Appears 

Episode 10:The Phantom Lady and Ryoma’s Treasure

Episode 11:Kid and Conan’s Ryoma Treasure Illusion

Episode 23:Midnight Crow (Part 1): The Name is Corbeau The Phantom Thief!

Episode 24:Midnight Crow (Part 2) Clash! White or Black!?

The Detective Conan episode Conan vs. Kid the Phantom Thief happens right after Black Star.  Miraculous Midair Walk takes place between the last two episodes in the Black Organization Collection and before Strategy Above The Depths.

More Detective Conan episodes are up on Netflix now.

 With it being a new themed collection, it becomes necessary to start explaining to new comers what the chorological order of episodes is.  

So far it's pretty simple, the first two episodes of the show start the Black Organization collection, then watch all 11 currently in the allies and rivals collection then return to the Black Organization collection.

Part of me is a little disappointed this drop was all episodes already part of the Funimation Dub.  yeah that Dub isn't legally streaming right now but I have them DVD.  It is interesting to compare though.  Now that we have all these very early episodes part of the new Dub the moonlight Sonata Murder Case being missing stick out, it may not be important to understanding any recurring guest start but it's arguably the most important to Conan's character development, and it will be called back to in the next Heiji case.

The second Cour of this selection will almost certainly start out still in the firs 123 as well.  The first 2 hour episode is bound to be included since it's the second Ran suspecting Conan episode and second featuring his parents and introduces he Gunam Inspector.  And then there are some more Heiji episodes including the introduction of Kazuha.

Once it does leave the first 123 I wonder if they'll include the case that immediately followers Haibara's introduction, it's important to cementing her as a main cast member and is the first appearance of Officer Sato though she doesn't do a lot in it.

Update: They went the Boston rather then Southern option for the Kansei accent, the first time I've seen that in awhile.

Episodes 5 and 10 are the ones I'm most surprised to see included, I didn't think they'd be in any collection.  Episode 10 is now an episode I've seen with 3 different English casts since for random reasons it's the only episode I've seen of the original Singapore Dub.

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 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 the nuances and subtext 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 to 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.

Maybe Fate/Stay Night is supposed to be a little confusing?

I’ve come to an epiphany lately about the nature of Fate/ Watch Order disputes (and perhaps the same applies to other franchises), a lot of it is about which Fate/ project to start with will leave a newcomer the least confused for the shortest amount of time.  Which Anime is quickest to get to some kind of accessible explanation of what the Holy Grail War is and how the Nasuverses’s Magic System works. 

No one is willing to consider that maybe being confused is a deliberate artistic choice, that maybe part of the fun of this entire genre is being thrown into a world you at first don’t understand. People have gotten so invested in hating on J.J. Abrams style Mystery Box story telling that they are overcorrecting into rejecting any kind of story telling that doesn’t spell out as much as possible right away. 

In my last Fate/ Watch order post I’d already softened my past advocacy for starting with Fate/Zero.  What I did say was that even if you want to start with the Studio Deen Anime because it’s the only adaptation we have of the first Route, you still should start with Episode 0 and Episode 1 of UFOTable's Unlimited Blade Works because they are the most faithful adaptation of how the VN starts regardless of Route, then you can start Deen/Stay night with episode 3.

A recent video about Fate/ Watch Orders I stumbled upon, (that I think may be AI at least in it’s Voice Over), specifically said Episode 0 was too confusing, it was a bad place to start because it seemingly expected them to already know all this stuff.  But the original VN also began by being from Rin’s pov over that exact same period of time but probably taking even longer to get to the end of it. That is always how we were meant to be introduced to this world. And I think that was a very bold choice that fans need to start having more artistic respect for. 

Maybe the people who can’t handle being out of the loop for that long simply aren’t this Franchise’s target audience?

Episode 0 of Unlimited Blade Works shouldn't have branded as specifically Unlimited Blade Works, it's 100% before the point of divergence between the routes, and then so is the first 99% of episode 1. 

And honestly thinking about all this has made me care less about Watch Order correctness in the first place.  Maybe recommend your friend to start with whatever Fate/ Anime you think they would like the most. If they’re a Magical Girl fan who doesn’t mind the lewder takes on that genre then have them start with Prisma Illya, it actually was the first Fate/ Thing I watched and I was not confused in any way that made it hard to follow. 

Maybe there is even a kind of person for whom Fate/Apocrypha would be the Fate/ Anime they’d enjoy the most even if they jumped into it with no prior Nasuverse context. 

There are certainly people for whom Lord El Meloi’s Case Files would be the best Genre for them to enter the Nasuverse through. Recommend it to Detective Conan/Magic Kaito fans.

My past advocacy for starting with Fate/Zero was never simply because it was Chronologically first but because as a story bout Adults rather then High Schoolers it will be more accessible for many potential viewers.  And that theory has been vindicated by the vast majority who have watched it first.  The only thing that's come to bother me is when Video Essayists come to conclusions about what the show has to say about Saber's character and ideals when they haven't seen how her story is meant to conclude. 

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. 

Nonlinear Storytelling can be a Cheat Code with Critics

I enjoy a lot of nonlinear storytelling.  You may have gotten the impression I'm biased against it because of how many of my recommended watch orders are more chronological then the release order, but that’s not always the case, and I’m not talking about franchises here. When a single movie or episode of a series is being told nonlinearly I am inclined to trust the writers that this is an effective way to tell their story.

But I have noticed from watching YouTube Video Essays that some stories told nonlinearly will get a lot of credit simply for that, there is a desire to always praise nonlinear storytelling as braver and more “creative”.  But sometimes the reason events are not being shown in chronological order is a matter of convenience rather than artistry.

Take for example the Anime titled Baccano!

I love Baccano! It's fun and cool and a lot of the time it’s fun and cool because of how nonlinear it is.  But it isn’t that Deep, it didn’t need to be Deep, I wasn’t watching it expecting depth but a fun Anime homage to classic Gangster films and Pulp.  If any Narita saga has something Deep to say it’s Durarara!!

It’s nonlinear the way it is because like many Light Novel adaptations they decided to make a full cour out of 4 novels.  However Baccano! as a LN series follows a mostly different core cast each volume, how they connect to each is mostly broad worldbuilding.  These three different stories were not written to parallel each other Cloud Atlas style.  They are edited together only to prevent this 13 episode show from feeling like its narrative stops and starts again repeatedly.

But some Baccano! Video Essays don’t know that and insist on pretending this timeline jumping has some deep artistic symbolism like it does in Once Upon A Time in America, it doesn’t.

What is somewhat deep in Baccano! doesn't exist because of the nonlinearity, they exist within how each specific story is told.

Fate/ Watch Order again

My past absolute advocacy of watching Fate/Zero first has been diminished, but not for the reasons most people say you shouldn't watch it first.  It doesn't "Spoil" nearly as much as people make it sound like, and what it does Spoil is what everyone already knows anyway, the cat is out of the bag.

No as I already talked about once I've come to be concerned by what happens when an AniTube Video Essayist decides to "analyze" Fate/Zero on it's own with no regard for the fact that it's a Prequel.

But I'm not even making this post mainly for the Fate/Zero question.  

If you have been convinced or are trying to convince people to watch the Studio Deen TV Anime before any UFOTable stuff because it's the closest thing we have to a Fate/Route Anime, my advice is to at least watch Episode 0 and 1 of UFOtable's Unlimited Blade Works first.  

Episode 0 takes place entirely before the point of divergence between the routes, and in episode 1 the divergence happens right at the end.  

At least get the more properly structured and fleshed out adaptation of how the VN begins.  Then you can start Deen/Stay Night with episode 3 which rewinds slightly to show you how the end of UBW episode 1 plays out differently in the Fate Route.  

Even following these days from Rin's POV first is faithful to the VN, something I didn't expect to be the case originally, much of that being missing is a big part of what's wrong with the first two episodes of Deen/Stay Night.

Unlike a lot of people the reason I consider UFOtable's Anime the better adaptation of Fate/ is entirely how the Story and Plot is presented.  It's visual presentation and animation and music are all great, but maybe kind of over done.  From what I've seen of what early Type Moon Visual novels look like I kind of feel like the Deen Anime are actually more faithful to their vibes (same with the Tsukihime Anime that allegedly doesn't exist).

I even went ahead and recently watched Deen's movie version of Unlimited Blade Works, and if it were still the only Animated version of that story we had I'd definitely critique how it needed to be fleshed out more.  But since I do have the full story I can appreciate it's different visual style for being what it is.

However the Witch of The Holy Night VN and the Tsukihime remake seem to imply Nasu himself wants his worlds to look like the UFO Table Animes now, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

A Certain Raildex Watch Order Post

My recommended watch order is a version of the "simplified chronological order" which is the term other people use for an order like this.

Unlike past posts where I've given my watch order for this franchise I want to really break down and explain my logic more. 

A Certain Scientific Railgun (Season 1)

A Certain Magical Index (Season 1)

A Certain Scientific Railgun S

A Certain Magical Index II

A Certain Scientific Railgun T

A Certain Magical Index III

I have chosen not to include A Certain Scientific Accelerator because I kind of don't recommend it at all.  It's not horrible, a true franchise completionist will probably be able to get something out of it.  But it doesn't appeal to me much.  It's chronological placement is between Index I and II but it aired between Index III and Railgun T.

I also didn't give the movie a placement simply because it's not really canon at all.  I do like the movie a fair bit, but I wouldn't prioritize when to watch it.  Index season 1 has everything you really need to know for it.

In the spirit of this watch order not being strictly chronological, I won't make my arguments in their chronological order either.  I'll start with why each season of Railgun should be watched before it's numerically corresponding season of Index.

Railgun Season 1 simply is a better entry point to this world.  I do recommend skipping episode 2 on your first watch since it's both filler is gives an unfortunate first impression of a certain character.  But other then that season 1 of Railgun is a fantastic fun little SciFi show that only ever seems under whelming in the context of the major heights achieved by it's sequels.

One YouTube video I watched defending the Broadcast order as ideal insinuated that Railgun leaves some things unexplained because it assumes you already watched Index.  But especially as far as their respective season 1s go I really don't see what they're talking about.  Railgun is far better at organically explaining how the Esper stuff and Academy City's technology works, and the Magic stuff isn't relevant to Railgun, not in any need to know way.  

Sometimes I think we Nerds assume anything that can be read as a reference to something you've already seen in the release order can only work that way when the truth is they can often work either way.  

Railgun also simply is the better show by a significant margin, so much so that I can imagine the existence of people who'd like Railgun a lot but not Index at all while I can't imagine the opposite.  The way less Fanservice (by my definition Railgun has no Fanservice but I know some might disagree) the better pacing, the usually more intelligent fight scenes, the fact that it could almost pass as a Shoujo, all give it a broader appeal.  

So while there are reasons the order I listed above is best if you do watch both, if you aren't able to get into Index don't worry, nothing in the Railgun sequels absolutely depends on having seen any of Index, it can all stand on it's own.

But the reason why Railgun S should be watched before Index II even beyond all those above reasons is mainly episodes 6 and 7 (or episodes 30 and 31 of Index as a whole as some sites might number them).  This two parter is Kuroko focused and it will hit harder if you have the increased knowledge of her perspective on the Sisters Arc that Railgun S provides.

The particular reason why it's better to watch Railgun T before Index III isn't even much because of either show's main cast.  Episodes 4-6 of Index III is The Battle Royal arc which in the release order (and even more so for Index onlies) introduces a lot of new characters a good deal of whom die in this same arc.  Now the Anime should have given this arc more then 3 episodes to begin with but even if it had I'd still say it works best with the prior investment in Item, Member and School that Railgun T provides.  (Scavenger isn't in Battle Royal however so you could say you've seen everything relevant by the end of episode 20 of T).

Now some will tell you you the later part of Railgun T requires having seen Accelerator first because of Scavenger but here's the thing, I had seen Accelerator first as it aired and I'd forgotten about Scavenger by the time their Railgun T episodes aired.  Railgun T on it's own makes a perfectly fine introduction to them and for me is entirely what endeared me to them, it refers to them having had a bad experience with Accelerator but it's not difficult to guess what that entailed, we don't need to have seen it just like we never needed to see the Kessel Run.

Now as I said if you do watch both there are benefits to watching at least some of Index before the second and third seasons of Railgun.

The reason Index season 1 should be watched before Railgun S is The Sisters Arc.  This arc is to a large extent the same story told from different POVs.  But it is Touma's POV that presumes the audience will be as uninformed as Touma is, while the S version does have some dramatic irony going on, not so much it can't be followed at all on it's own, but enough that it adds to the experience to have already seen the other version.

The reason to watch Index II before Railgun T is mainly again episodes 6 and 7 since they explain one key aspect of what's going on with Kuroko during the Daihasei Festival.    In fact if you are someone who generally hates Index and is a Railgun fan only these are the only two episodes of Index I'd remotely suggest a Railgun fan can't simply ignore.

There are also a few things that reference the events of Index's Daihasei Festival arc while the reverse never happens.

Thing is the Railgun T Daihasei Festival also via one character references a Railgun story still not animated at all, so there is no avoiding an Anime only feeling like they missed something.  

Daihasei Festival chronological watch order

I have constructed what I think is the closest thing possible to a Chronological viewing order of the Daihasei Festival episodes of A Certain Magical Index II and A Certain Scientific Railgun T.

For Index II ,two numbers each are listed since some websites number them by number of Index II specifically but others by of Index as a whole.

Railgun T Episode 1

Index II Episode 8/32

Railgun T Episodes 2&3

Index II Episodes 9-13/33-37

Railgun T Episodes 4-15

The consistency of the Raildex Anime are pretty amazing, almsot exactly a decade separates when these two Daihasei Festival Arcs were animated and yet jumping back and forth between them doesn't feel jarring at all.

It makes all the more jarring how much not like the other shows the Accelerator Anime looks.  I wonder if that show will have it's own Daihasei Festival Arc if it lasts long enough?

[Update: It didn't take me long to regret this order, lots of things won't line up.  Strict Chronological viewing isn't my actual recommended watch order for Raildex anyway.]

I've been thinking about my French Pulp Fiction interests again.

I did a post recently on how Anime still isn't Mainstream, but the thing is Anime isn't even the most Niche thing I'm into.  Anime at least has enough of an active online fandom presence that I can Tweet about it and find lots of interesting YouTube videos and Tumblr posts and Fan Fiction.

What I'm talking about in this post I'm not even sure what to call it, it's way more specific then what most people who'd call themselves a Francophile mean.  I often use Shadowmen as a short hand after the anthology series Tales of The Shadowmen or the nonfiction book Shadowmen: Heroes and Villains of French Pulp Fiction.  

The main fan-site is CoolFrenchComics.com and the main modern publisher of relevant content is Black Coat Press.  They publish lots of English Translations of 19th and early 20th Century Pulp Fiction, but also some books that contain new stories using these characters or related themes.  The Editors who run BCP are Jean-Marc & Randy Loffcier and some of the books they Translate themselves.  However a lot of their flagship books are translated by Brian Stableford.  A number of them, including some that may benefit from a Female perspective were translated by Nina Cooper.  It seems everything that's a Stage Play rather then Prose is translated by Frank Morlock.  Another notable contributor is Rick Lai who I'll talk more about later.

BlackCoatPress has made some marketing decisions I consider unfortunate.  Starting with their decision to say "Adapted by" rather then "Translated by" on the covers of all their translations. Now they have an explanation for this on their website on a page called Adapted vs Translated, where it's basically because they're trying to distinguish themselves from old Public Domain translations that are little better then what we in the Anime Community would call Machine Generated Translations, they want to give their translators credit for the skill they provide in making their translations actually pleasing to read, it's not because they are actually changing or rewriting anything.

The problem is that explanation isn't on the back of the every book.  And so for example when I'm trying to convince fellow Anime fans to try one of them out, a Translation openly branding itself as an "Adaptation" is going to make them think of 90s Hack Dubs where the names are all Americanized, and Croissants are called Jelly Donuts, and Death is euphemized as "leaving this world", and Eugenie Danglars & Louis d'Armilly are referred to as "cousins".

Rest assured BCP's Translations are the opposite of that, preserving the French cultural characteristics in ways modern Anime Dubs and even Subs still struggle with, like keeping rather then translating French nicknames and Honorifics.  I watched a YouTube video once where someone talking more about Manga translations actually said that Honorifics should be translated or dropped entirely, that they simply don't work in English and only pretentious Weaboos want to keep them.  And I've come to realize that's just plain Racist, only when talking about East Asian media is it at all controversial to preserve their Honorifics, no modern respectable translation of Les Misérables for example would dare change Monsieur to Mister or Mademoiselle to Miss, some of those old PD translation that BCP wants to distinguish themselves from so badly did, but everyone today agrees that's stupid.  No one considers it jarring in the Musical when these French honorifics are spoken by the Cockney accented Thenardiers, it actually works just fine.  Japanese honorifics are way more different from English honorifics then French ones are, what they communicate about the culture is even more important to preserve and any attempted 1 to 1 equivocation of them to English words will be way less accurate in their connotations.

Another marketing mistake is that a few books will on their back cover blurbs describe aspects of what happens in ways that might feel a bit like a bait and switch once you've read them.  So for example don't read The Wandering Jew's Daughter expecting The Wandering Jew to be Superman.  The Wandering Jew's Daughter is itself not one of the best of Paul Feval's novels, but the BCP translation is worth buying just for the information Stableford provides in the Introduction for cultural context, so much history of how the Wandering Jew legend was used in French literature and melodrama that you won't find on Wikipedia.

Stableford's translations always have very in-depth educational Introductions, extensive Footnotes, and more often then not an insightful Afterward as well.  With both John Devil and The Vampire and The Devil's Son I definitely agree with Stableford's Afterward provided interpretations of what actually happened in the story. Companions of The Treasure is another one where Stbaleford's interpretation is basically Canon to me.

The Phantom of The Opera is such a classic of literature and pop culture in general not just in France that you would probably think surely a good faithful and complete English Translation existed before Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier published theirs in the 2000s, but you'd be wrong.  Multiple reviews of their translation affirm that no one before even kept the basic format of how the story is told.  But because theirs came so late and most people assume that "certainly a Penguin Classics edition can be trusted" their English version remains rarely read even by younger readers.  Half the Phantom of The Opera content on YouTube is from Lindsay Elis, and one thing you learn in those is how pervasive is the opinion that Andrew Lyod Webber's musical is better then the original novel, and I can't help but blame the fact that most of these Musical Theater Kids have never read the real novel.

Speaking of Lindsay Ellis she did a video on The Persian, lamenting the constant either White Washing or Demonizing of that character.  So it's a shame she never read Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera, in that series The Persian is not exactly a main character but they are from what I recall faithfully preserved as both a Persian and a good person.

Speaking of which, now is a good time to mention that there is some relevant material published by other publishers.  A number of Frank Molock's stage play translations were published by Borgo Press, and the first volume of Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera was from Wild Cat Books, but BlackCoatPress took over for the follow ups.  BCP hasn't published any Rocmabole stuff besides two Stage Plays in one volume, Basil Balian has made a very abridged translation of the entire Rocambole saga, and Jean De Ponson du Terrail has made complete translations of the first two volumes.

I did mention above my desire to sell this stuff specifically to fellow Anime fans.  Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera and Sisters of The Shadows series is a good place to start.  It began with Rick Lai making a female version of The Shadow, and then things get increasingly implausible with how nearly all the major players in this epic saga are female.  It's a series waiting to be made into an Anime. 

But as interesting as I find Rick Lai's work, some of the characters he uses I really don't want his takes on to be people's introductions to them.  Chiefly Paul Feval's The Blackcoats saga and Maurice Leblanc's The Countess Cagliostro, both have been translated by BlackCoatPress.

The Countess Cagliostro is however the Prequel of the Arsene Lupin saga, and not the only book of that saga to take place before some books already published when it was written.  So is the Lupin Saga one where it's appropriate to read in Chronological rather then Publication order?  Well I still haven't read all of them, but for the essentials of what I have I'd say go ahead.  Basically the essential Arsene Lupin works are the ones translated by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier and the original short stories included in Arsene Lupin: Gentleman Burglar which basically all take place between Countess Cagliostro and The Blond Lady aka The Blond Phantom.

Paul Feval's works are the most interesting to me.  My introduction to him began as part of my prior Vampire phase, it was The Vampire Countess and Vampire City which caught my attention first and which I read in that order.  Both are great and so are Knightshade and Revanants.  Countess and Revanants are from an earlier phase of Feval's career when he hadn't gotten as ultra Meta yet.  

There is something said in a few reviews of Vampire City I consider misguided, and that's making it sound like Polly Bird is in any way Trans representation, she was simply the subject of supernatural gender bending and it isn't even emphasized all that much, and in the end it would certainly be problematic to read her as Trans representation.

John Devil is the best of Feval's novels, but also the longest at least of what BCP has translated.  I think the best entry point to The Blackcoats saga would be either Salem Street or The Invisible Weapon, but 6 out of 7 of them are worth reading and fairly capable of standing on their own, The Cadet Gang is the one that he clearly was forcing himself to write after losing all passion for the topic so I'd say don't bother with it.  

Thing is while a good deal of the Prose content relevant to this interest is available in English now (there are some still untranslated I want to see get translated), most of the French Movies and TV shows about these characters have no English Subtitled release I can watch.  It's in this area where fans of Japanese entertainment media are lucky, even the most obscure stuff can usually be found Subbed in some capacity.  But for French stuff I wanna watch, the 60s Fantomas trilogy, the 63 Judex, the 96/97 film version of Paul Feval's Le Bossu titled on Amazon as On Gaurd, and the 2004 Arsene Lupin have Subs I can watch, but that's it.  However I also wanna see some of the films based on Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris, or Rocambole, or all of the other Le Bossu adaptations (it seems one gets made about once a decade), or the TV adaptations of Les Habits Noirs and Le Loup Blanc.

Update: I forgot to talk about something important.

If I have piqued anyone's interest in buying stuff from BlackCoarPress, I know from talking with them that buying the book using their website directly gives a larger percentage of what you spend to the Author or Translator then they would get when using a site like Amazon as the middle man.  However that also costs the consumer more on shipping and handling.  And more often then not I get the book faster when I use Amazon, but that's because of the same circumstances that force their delivery drivers to piss in bottles.

It's another unfortunate symptom of Capitalism that what's more affordable for the consumer results in less of the money spent going to who actually deserves that money.  I am in a financially difficult situation right now.  But anyone who is in a fairly comfortable situation financially I would ask to be willing to spend the extra money necessary to support BlackCoatPress directly.

Raildex Watch Order Again

I feel like giving another Update on my recommended Raildex watch order, which is strictly neither the chorological order or the broadcast order.

But first I've talked about how I like Railgun the most, I do enjoy Index and even Accelerator, but I can imagine there being some people who'll only be able to find Railgun watchable.  I've also said that I recommend newcomers on your first watch of Railgun to skip episode 2.

But it has occurred to me to recommend to people who might give up on Index early on, that between watching Railgun S (the Second season) and Railgun T (the third season) there are two episodes of Index season 2 that are very specifically about Railgun stuff that did not get an equivalent depiction on Railgun proper.  Those are episodes 6 and 7 of Index II (30 and 31 of the series as a whole), the Tree Remnant Arc.

Alright so here is my new updated recommended watch order.

A Certain Scientific Railgun (season 1)

A Certain Magical Index (season 1)

A Certain Scientific Railgun S

A Certain Scientific Accelerator (season 1)

A Certain Magical Index The Movie: The Miracle of The Endymion

A Certain Magical Index II

A Certain Scientific Railgun T

A Certain Magical Index III

Haruhi Suzumiya watch order controversy

I forgot to cover Haruhi in my last post on watch orders.  (I also need to again update my Raildex watch order.)

Digi has commented on this issue more then once but most notably in the How to tell a good Anime from 1 episode series.  That was supposed to be about the three episode rule thing but both Haruhi and Lucky Star are completely separate from how that usually goes. 

Digi's main argument for the original broadcast order is that if you watch them chronologically the end of season 1 doesn't have a climatic finale that feels like something built up to.  That is an issue that mattered to the network when they originally were only gonna have 14 episodes and had to air them once a week for about 3 months.

However from the standpoint of being someone new to watching these kinds of Anime when Digi made this video in 2016 as I was and thus planning to binge all 28 episodes followed by the movie in probably less then a day, that is irrelevant.

For all intents and purposes new Haruhi fans are going to be watching them as if it was a 2 cour show.  And I actually don't like when a 2 cour show's exact halfway point feels like a season finale.  I don't want 2 cour shows to feel like 2 single cour seasons airing in quick succession together.  I want them to feel like 1 season that has twice the runtime to work with.

My main reason for advocating chronological viewing is because the 6 episodes that directly adapt the original Light Novel are the best introduction to this universe.  In the source material only the first novel is called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and that's why she is only actually melancholy during those 6 episodes.  After that the rest of season 1 are basically bonus side stories where the order you watch them doesn't matter much at all.

The story of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a satisfying piece of art all on it's own, even if it had never had sequels or an expanded universe it would still be worth revisiting.  Something that isn't always the case with Light Novels that start ongoing sagas, especially the trends that blew up in Haruhi's wake.  However when Anime viewers are interrupting that narrative to watch future random one off stories some of which are set after season 2, it tricks people into thinking it doesn't stand on it's own.

My first time watching Haruhi I did follow Digi's advice and I deeply regret that.  For a brief time right after watching it I convinced myself that the weird tirppiness of binging the show in that order had some artistic value to it.  But I have never felt compelled to rewatch the show in that order, and when I did finally just watch the Melancholy episodes in succession they felt so much more cohesive.

And I really don't care that the Anime director says he prefers the broadcast order, because even if you want to apply hyper strict Auteur Theory like Rick Worley would the Auteur of Haruhi is the Light Novel author, the Anime like most Anime was originally made to be a glorified commercial for the Light Novels which is why no one cared that they teased the Sigh arc with no guarantee it'd ever get animated.  

After this point I am officially getting into Spoiler territory.

Another post on Watch Orders

Debating about unconventional watch orders has become a hot topic again lately.  Watching something in its release order is never inherently a bad order but there are plenty of cases where I feel it’s not the best.

For an example of a case where I do favor the release order even though a dispute kind of does exist, The Chronicles of Narnia books should be read in the order Lewis wrote them.  A Horse and His Boy does stand on its own in a way none of the others but the first do, so it can perhaps be read a little out of sequence and maybe if you're into stuff with a 1001 Night flavor it would benefit you to read it second, but definitely start with Wardrobe and save Last Battle for last.  In Anime terms AHaHB can perhaps be considered a Gaiden rather than part of the main saga.

For Star Wars I strongly feel Episodes I-VI should be watched in chronological order, and then the rest I really don’t care about as long as you see nothing before finishing the 6 George Lucas movies.  I actually think it would be hilarious to have someone watch the Disney Sequel Trilogy backwards and see what perspective that causes.

For the Raildex franchise I shall offer an incomplete recommended viewing order, incomplete since Railgun season 3 is still airing.  This is neither the release order or chronological order strictly speaking.

A Certain Scientific Railgun season 1 (skip episode 2 on the initial viewing but besides that all of it)
A Certain Magical Index season 1 (all of it if you can but if you don’t like it the rest of Railgun can stand on its own.)
A Certain Scientific Railgun S
A Certain Scientific Accelerator (currently has only one 12 episode season)
A Certain Magical Index II (the first 7 episodes)
A Certain Magical Index The Movie: The Miracle of The Endymion
A Certain Scientific Railgun T (First episode)
A Certain Magical Index II (episode 8)

A Certain Scientific Railgun T (Episodes 2-3)

A Certain Magical Index II (Episodes 9-13 the Daihasei festival arc)
A Certain Scientific Railgun T (episodes  4-15)

[Update: I've decided you should finish IndexII before seeing the rest of Railgun T]

The Blackcoats novels (English name of the French Les Habits Noirs) were published by BlackCoatPress in a different order then Paul Feval originally wrote them.  Nonetheless in the afterward of the last one they published both the translator and editor expressed the opinion that the books should ideally be read in Feval’s order.  I’m not sure I agree, but it’s complicated.

For the way my brain works Salem Street was the ideal first impression and The Invisible Weapon a great second.  But Salem Street has an element most modern readers will likely be put off by, (but I know of some specific people who’d love it).  They all stand on their own pretty well, but the actual first book is the longest of them and so perhaps a little overwhelming for someone new to reading 19th Century pulpy French Novels no one considered worth translating into English till over a hundred years after the author died.  The Invisible Weapon is in my opinion the absolute best of them and so I see no reason not to simply start with it.  Cadet Gang should be saved for last only because I kind of don’t recommend reading it at all.

My doing this post now was partly because of a recent Mother’s Basement video.  I have currently no direct knowledge of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, but I know Part 6 is the first female Jojo so I’ve been intending for a while to start with it when the Anime comes, I don’t care how confusing it will be.

I’ve saved Fate/ for last because that is the most contentious topic.  I am a firm start with Fate/Zero person.

A lot of people will claim it’s only the convoluted nature of how Fate/ has been adapted that makes there be any dispute at all and if only more people would just read the Visual Novel it’d be fine.  However I disagree, even if you are willing and able to consume each Fate/ story in it’s original medium first, I still say read Fate/Zero first.  But I mostly just recommend watching the Anime, translations of Light Novels and Visual Novels suck, but the Aniplex Dub of the UFOtable Anime is perfect.

Fate/Zero simply is by nature the most accessible.  Every person who would like Fate/Stay Night but not Fate/Zero is already into Fate/, they don’t need to be talked into giving it a chance.  There are lots of people for whom Fate/Zero is the only Fate/ they would enjoy.  And I think there are other potential Fate/Zero fans who’d enjoy Fate/Apocrypha before anything else.

My recommended viewing order for Raildex Anime.

My recommended viewing order for Raildex Anime is not identical to either the release order or the chronological order.

It's possible only one of these two shows will actually appeal to you, they are kind of barely even the same genre, and different approaches have been taken in how to adapt them.  The Railgun Anime seems to be more popular then the Index Anime, but in the source material Index definitely sells more books.  This is partly because Railgun expands on it's source material while Index tends to cut a lot (even more so for the new season it seems).  If you can only enjoy one that's fine.  Especially since I feel Railgun has a much better chance at being a good gateway Anime then Index, I think to people who were big fans of PLL Railgun is perhaps the perfect Anime to start with.

Misty Chronexia did a video breaking down what the chronological order should be if you wanna know.

I will probably need to update this once Railgun season 3 is out, Misty will likewise need to update his guide.  But I might be able to guess.

My recommended viewing order is.

A Certain Scientific Railgun, season 1
A Certain Magical Index, season 1
A Certain Scientific Railgun S
A Certian Scientific Accelerator, season 1
The first 7 episodes of Index season 2
A Certain Magical Index: The Miracle of the Endymion (The Movie)
The rest of Index season 2.
(I suspect when Railgun 3 is out I'd place it here being consistent with the above pattern.)
A Certain Magical Index season 3.

There is one issue to starting with Railgun season 1 I should mention.   Episode 2 should be skipped, it is filler, and is not a good first impression for a character I greatly like.  I prefer that episode to be treated as non Canon if possible.  There are a couple Anime tropes at play here I don't like but have more tolerance for then others.

Update October 7th 2019: I didn't need to wait for Accelerator too end to know where I'd place it.  It's relationship to the Index series is about the same place I think it falls chronologically.

Fate/Zero and the art of Prequels

This isn't the first time I've talked about Fate/Zero and the Star Wars Prequels together.  I mentioned Fate/Zero briefly in my Recommended viewing order post, where I expressed my view that Fate/Zero is the best entry point to the Fate/ franchise.  This is also a follow up to my posts advocating for Prequels in general.  

I very firmly disagree with Glass Reflection's recent video on many levels.  Fate/Zero and the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy can stand on their own regardless of how much they were written as Prequels.  That Fate/Zero is counting down to a predetermined outcome simply fits why this franchise is named Fate.

If however you insist on watching an incarnation of Fate/Stay Night first, I recommend you start with the first 4 or 5 episodes of UFOtable's Unlimited Blade Works series (not the Unlimited Blade Works movie), plus the Prologue Episode 0.  Deen's Fate/Stay Night adaptations can be tolerable to someone like me who's already into Fate/ and has a high tolerance for the weaknesses of lower budget 00s Anime (in fact I even enjoyed it's easy to mock dub).  But it's weak presentation makes it the worst foot forward to introduce someone to Fate/ with.

The first 4 or 5 episodes of Unlimited Blade Works cover what should happen the same regardless of route.  (I'm unsure where the exact point of divergence is since I haven't played the Visual Novel).  The Prologue Episode 0 is the same, though I think much of that information was originally only revealed in the UBW route.  If you want to watch Deen/Stay Night for no other reason then to see the Fate/Route first, at least watch the beginning of the UBW TV Anime to get the best presentation.  Then you could theoretically start the Deen series at episode 5, 6 or even 7.

However all things considered, I feel the Fate Route is ultimately useless.  And the way Deen preemptively spoils the key twist of UBW simply isn't wroth it.   However I don't mind what Fate/Zero spoils about Heaven's Feel anymore then I mind Star Wars Prequels spoiling the "I Am your Father" moment.  There is an equally valid advantage to knowing that going in.

In a way Deen/Stay Night spoils Heaven's Feel far more then Fate/Zero does.

I personally started with Unlimited Blade Works, then Fate/Zero, then watched the Deen anime.

Fate/Zero however is especially the better entry point for someone who's not super into Anime yet, there are a lot of reasons Fate/ could appeal to people who aren't normally into Anime, the way it incorporates different mythologies, and deconstructs the Superhero genre even better then Watchmen.  And deconstructs Chivalry better then Game of Thrones.  But to those potential fans the High School Harem aspects of Fate/Stay Night are a potential turn off.  Fate/Zero almost doesn't even seem like an Anime.

And don't watch any of the Spin Offs till you've gotten a handle on the main story.

Spoiler Warning.  This post will from here on contain spoilers for Fate/Zero, Fate/Stay Night (well I won't be able to say much on Heaven's Feel besides what's obvious going in), and the Six George Lucas Star Wars films.