Ages of Video Games

After making my post on The Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of Anime I started thinking about the same thing in regards to Video Games.  But my thoughts here aren't as deep though.

Video Games are an even younger medium then Anime and so frankly I think we're still in the Bronze Age.  Gaming still hasn't even reached a true Modern Age.

I'm going to go ahead and say the Golden Age began with the release of Pac-Man.  The Action Button YouTube Channel has a good video on Pac-Man breaking it down and documenting it's importance in Gaming History.  All I can add is that I'm a lifelong Nintendo Brand Loyalist and so me being willing to give the honor of being the Action Comics No.1 of Video Games to something that isn't a Nintendo First Party should really prove how strong the argument for it is.  But don't worry Donkey Kong can still be the Detective Comics No.27.

I'm next going to say that the Silver Age began in 1996.  For those of us who are card carrying Evangelists of The Church of Nintendo the importance of that year as ushering in a new era of Gaming is established first by Pokémon Red and Green then by Super Mario RPG and finally by the launch of the Nintendo 64 including Super Mario 64.  Meanwhile Kirby Superstar and Donkey Kong Country 3 were good swan songs for the side scrolling Golden Age.

But I'm also an Otaku, and in the world of Bishoujo Games 1996 saw in January the first Visual Novel Shizuku, then later the second Visual Novel Kizuato and the dating sim Welcome to Pia Carrot were released the same day.  It also had another important dating sim in Kakyuusei. Sakura Wars also left a big impact.  And then at the end of the year on the Feast of Stephen Elf dropped YU-NO A Girl who Chants Love at The Bound of This World a game who's impact on the culture can't be understated and the west's ignorance of it explains a lot of what we get wrong.

96 also had the first Persona Game.

For PlayStation fans however 1997 is the year that console finally made a name for itself with Symphony of Night, Mega Man X4, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics and SaGa Frontier all coming out in one year.

For Bishoujo games it was an ultimately less important year then 96 but does put a few important developments on what 96 started with To Heart completing the original Visual Novel trilogy, then Dosei being the first non Leaf Visual Novel and Moon being the first game from the team that would go on to create Key, and the launch of the Age studio.

Finally the current/Bronze Age of Video Games started with the Wii-U,/PlayStation 4/Xbox ONE generation.

The Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of Anime.

I notice a lot of online Anime Discourse, at least back in 2016-2017, talking about what was the Golden Age of Anime treating that term as just meaning whatever is the best when that's not actually what the concept of a Golden Age means.

The Golden Age of something is it's first era of greatness, some stuff can have came before but they're basically Pre-History in the grand scheme of things.  No fan of Western Superhero Comics actually thinks the Golden Age had a higher baseline level of quality then fully developed modern comics, or that most of the absolute best Comics ever made were made then, but they call it the Golden Age anyway.

Likewise I am going to say the Golden Age of Anime began with the premier of Astor Boy in 1963 and ended with the final episode of Lupin III Part II (Red Jacket) in 1980 even though I am personally into very little from that era.  

I will then define the Silver Age as spanning 1981 through 1994 and maybe even the first season of 95.  

The Bronze Age is then 1995-2010 (or maybe it wouldn't be completely wrong to include the Fall of 94) while the current Modern Age began with 2011 and is still going on as I write this. 

Significantly over 50% of all the Anime I've completed on MAL is Modern in this definition.  Partly because how much Anime gets made each year keeps increasing, but also because it was a few years into the Modern Era that Anime became a full time interest of mine.

However I would have to say the Bronze Age is probably the age I currently like the most, it contains most of the few Anime I actually do have Childhood or YA Nostalgia for.  And there are so many interesting kinds of Anime I feel were only made then.

Now my definition for the Golden Age is perhaps the most self explanatory.  That it ends right before Millennials begin being born makes it easy for us to see it as the Antiquity of Anime History.  

The Silver Age is then contemporary with the earliest Millennials growing from Babies to starting High School.  But I'd also say the key 1981 milestone to kick off this age was Urusei Yatsura while the swan song of the Silver Age was Sailor Moon S the last season of that Anime with Tomita, Yanagikawa and Sumisawa on the writing staff.

I already have a Post on this Blog about Anime in 1995 showing what a game changing year it was. But the argument for starting the Bronze Age in Fall of 94 would be Macross 7 & Magic Knight Rayearth and how DNA seems ahead of it's time as an absurd Harem premise. And I also already have a post on 2011 Anime showing how it launched many of the trends that define modern Anime Culture.  And even in that post I had not yet accounted for Psycho-Pass or some other shows I watched more recently, or how for Detective Conan the Holmes' Revelation Case can definitely be considered the start of the Modern Era for that show and Movie 15 the first movie to truly feel like modern Detective Conan movies.

But 2010 as the end of an Era is also interesting to break down.  War on Geminar was the last real OVA saga, since then OVAs have almost only been for bonus episodes of TV shows and Hentai.  Oreimo season 1 was the last real Otaku Rights show before Otaku culture became too tolerated for such a premise to feel relevant anymore (with that element being downplayed even in future Oreimo Anime).  White Album and Yosuga no Sora were the last Anime adaptations of retro Visual Novels made before modern Anime styles got in the way of such adaptations feeling Retro (I love YU-NO's 2019 Anime but I do wish it could looked more like a 90s Anime).  For Pokémon Diamond and Pearl is the last generation I personally feel can be considered a classic gen.  Legend of The Legendary Heroes was the last major Fantasy Anime before the influence of SAO and LN Isekai took over (a few shows and movies with the vibes of these kind of Fantasy still get made but they get drowned out).

For both Superhero Comics and Anime the change from Golden to Silver is shockingly clean, with if anything a brief gap that feels like neither rather then a transitional period that feels like both.  With Anime it's only the change from Silver to Bronze I consider debatable at all, Fall of 94 and Winter of 95 can each go either way.  I similarly do consider the transition from Silver to Bronze for Comics the most stylistically complex (other transitions are only debated more by DC nerds because this is the only one where the continuity didn't change).  None of the shows airing in both Fall 2010 and Winter 2011 I consider defining shows of either era.

What to call the era that follows the Bronze Age after it's no longer Modern is what isn't so standardized.  For DC Comics it's the Post-Crisis era, I'm of the generation of DC fans who grew up with the Post-Crisis era being the current Modern Era.  But when did the Post Crisis era end?  During the early-mid 2000s we felt like it was still the Post-Crisis era but in hindsight a lot of what was special about the Post-Crisis era to many who consider it their favorite era of DC comics was already being eroded by 2002, I consider the reviving of Oliver Queen in the Quiver arc from 2001 a key turning point.

So with about 15 years seeming to be the average, we Anime fans may well be near the end of our current era, which is perhaps what a lot of people tired of certain current Anime trends are hoping for.  But we probably won't notice the change as it happens just as DC fans didn't and just as I don't think we noticed the huge shifts happening in 2010-2013.  Madoka Magica was a big deal immediately, but how soon did people realize just how much it had changed the game for it's Genre?  Maybe the upcoming Madoka movie will help end the very same era the original show helped start?

But what will we call this era?  DC fans were lucky being given a convenient name early on, though it was originally used to denote continuity changes more so then an era.  We have been using some terms to describe the modern state of Anime, but they tend to refer to specific subgenres of what's going on now rather then all of it.  What do Dark Magical Girls, Isekai, VRMMOs, Magic Academies, endless Fate/ Spin Offs, and Battle Royal/Death Games all have in common?

I know sometimes the Post Crisis era is also called the Dark Age of Comics because of Watchmen/DKR influence.  And indeed some of those Anime trends are Dark but not all of them, Isekai is usually the opposite and plenty of classic style Mahou Shoujo have coexisted with the Madoka Clones.

Maybe "The Light Novel era" works.  LNs were a thing during prior eras and they portably will still be in future eras just as the Edgy Anti-Heroes of 90s Comics didn't just disappear.  But it does feel like this is an era where even some things that aren't LN based often seem like they are because of how pervasive their influence is.

Update: One could just continue the Greek Mythological inspiration and call the 4th age the Iron Age.

Occultic;Nine subverts the Flat Earth Atheist trope

First of all this post is going to spoil some of the central twists of the Anime Occultic-Nine, if you haven't seen it already I suggest you do so quickly, it's very underrated and is only 12 episodes and it's both subbed and dubbed on Crunchyroll, and it's a fitting show for Halloween month in my opinion.

Flat Earth Atheist is the TVtrope term for when a character is written like a strict hyper rationalist materialist even when in a setting where denying the Supernatural is a lot less rational then it is in our world.  Occultic;Nine is a show that at first one might think is going to feature that trope but actually doesn't.

In the opening episodes both Gamon and Sarai are skeptical of the supernatural, the rest of the main cast are all pretty ready to believe in the paranormal so those two are the Skeptics' representation.  While both are skeptics it's only Sarai who gives off that smug Reddit Atheist energy, he's the character who a genre savy viewer will expect to act like Fred in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Gamon's skepticism is a lot less central to his identity.

So that's why it's interesting how in episode 7 following the reveal that they've all been Ghosts for 3 episodes it's Sarai who's mostly accepted that the evidence is pointing to that being the case even before it's made truly indisputable.  While it's Gamon who's in denial, but his denial is framed as Emotional coping not a product of whatever his ideology was.

So it's an Anime where the true Rationalist accepts the facts even when they go agaisnt his prior world view and the "Flat Earth Atheist" was never actually that much of an Atheist.

Halloween Anime recommendations by Streaming App

It’s time for me to do another Halloween Anime Recommendations post. This time the structure shall be by what legal streaming sites (if any) you can watch them on, cause I think in my prior versions of this the need to say it for each entry separately and then add edits when changes happen later made them difficult to read.  But it does mean some shows may get mentioned more than once if they’re on more than one website/app.

I’m starting to write this many months in advance with the plan to post it on October 1st 2023, I intend to double check and make sure everything I say here is on a given website/app still is, but if anything slips through the cracks I apologize.  Also knowing my luck something could be taken down the day after I post this.

I’ll start with the Freest Anime Streaming Site, RetroCrush, because getting people to access what's most accessible is one of my main goals.

The Vampire Princess Miyu OVAs from the 80s are still there, and last I checked, still only Dubbed which is sad because it’s one of the few things where I don’t particularly recommend the Dub, the Dub is adequate, it certainly could have been worse, but sounds stiff at times.  But besides occasionally awkward Dub voice acting they hold up really well, with a nice mood and atmosphere amplified by really distinct sound effects.

Boogiepop Phantom is is there which I wasn’t expecting.

They also have Go Nagai’s The Devil Lady which I recently watched and is pretty good.

The movie Hells is pretty fun as well.

Honestly there’s probably a lot more on Retrocrush I’m just not familiar with yet, my tastes in Anime are pretty modern, fortunately they have a Halloween Collection of their own featuring the shows I just listed.  And maybe if I’m lucky before October is over they’ll add some of the stuff I plan to talk about at the bottom of this post.

A number of Anime on Retrocrush are sometimes also on similar Free apps like Tubi, MidnightPulp and Filmrise, but I don’t feel like keeping track of which.  Since almost all Anime on any of those is also on Retrocrush with the most notable exception being Case Closed/Detective Conan which isn’t a Horror show but has the occasional Hallween episode.

Of the 50 episodes on Tubi none work as a Halloween episode. Of the original 123 on Filmrise Episode 20 A Haunted Mansion Murder Case would probably be the first.  Season 2 Episodes 6-7 Mountain Villa Bandaged Man Murder Case also works, episode 24 qualifies but it’s not one of my favorites.  Season 3 Episodes 7-8 have Ghost in the name.  Season 4 Episodes 2-3 is another Mountain Villa set up, however I feel episodes 6-7 is the most traditional Halloween episode among them since it’s Dracula themed.  Season 5 episode 6 is also worth mentioning.

I recently learned that Cowboy Bebop The Movie is essentially the Die Hard of Halloween movies and it’s only on Tubi.TV.

Pokemon has its own Free Streaming App PokemonTV, not all of the Anime is on there and much of what is often changes, but the earliest Seasons usually are as well as most spin off series not part of the main Anime.  The Early seasons have a few Spooky focused on the Ghost Pokemon, and the Generations Miniseries has one for one its Gen4 entries.

On Adult Swim’s App and Adult Swim On Demand should still be Housing Complex C which last year very quickly earned its status as an essential Halloween recommendation, it finally cracked the code of how to make Lovecraftian Horror work in a visual medium. 

HIDIVE still has some of the best Halloween Anime, but it now lacks a couple key Anime that it used to have.

On the subject of Zombie Anime, as I’ve said before, if you want something that feels like a Moe Anime take on George a Romero watch School Live!.  But if you want one that feels more like a Zack Snyder Zombie Movie go for High School of The Dead.

One of last year’s recent additions to the Halloween Anime Canon is Call of The Night which isn’t actually scary at all but is still pretty watchable and has the right vibes.

Monster Princess is a fun and trashy Halloween Anime.

Lunar Legend Tsukihime’s 2003 Anime is not liked by most fans of its franchise, but I found it enjoyable and certainly fits the season.  

Rozen Maiden also has nice Halloween vibes.

Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess will start airing on October 7th six days after I plan to post this.  So I don’t know if it’ll actually be good or not but I’ll check it out.  [Update: this show isn't what I expected, it may still be good but I don't think it fits as a Halloween show.]

[Update: The Eminence in Shadow season 2 happens to begin with a Ghoul arc.]

Honestly I wouldn't recommend subscribing to Amazon Prime just for the Streaming Anime that comes with it, but between all the good non-Anime stuff on Prime (like Britannia which can be a fun show to watch for Samhain) and saving you shipping and handling on Amazon orders there isn’t much of a reason not to get it.  In which case there are a couple Anime you can watch there specifically.

Elfen Lied I dedicated a full post to back in August..  In short it gets dismissed a lot today as the ultimate substance-less edgelord Anime, but there is a real Heart to it that those critics are ignoring, I’m even willing to call it downright Wholesome at times.  But however you interpret it there are certainly many who’d find something like it fun to watch for Halloween.

Vatican Miracle Examiner is a 2017 show I didn’t finish, but I’m willing to recommend it to people who have Prime on its first 4 episode Arc alone.  It’s like the ultimate absurd B-Movie horror premise, I don’t want to spoil where it goes, just trust me.  If only it had a Dub.

Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarock seems interesting.

In addition to the Anime that comes with Prime you could also Digitally purchase some stuff if you can afford it, like Lupin III Secret of Mamo (I don’t know which Dub the Amazon purchase comes with) which has potential Halloween appeal.  The original Vampire Hunter D is also Purchasable that way.

Hulu has some options but I wouldn’t recommend subbing to Hulu for Anime alone.  Some of what is and isn't on Hulu seems to rotate a bit, it has a lot of the same stuff HIDIVE does but I’ve never noticed any of the Halloween stuff I mentioned above on it before.  It also has some CR overlap.

The original Hellsing (not Ultimate) is another Anime I consider fun for Halloween.

Seraph of The End: Vampire Reign is a show I had fun with once a few years ago but haven’t rewatched it since.

Blood-C is amazing, I was enjoying it from early on but then was totally blown away by where it went.

Wandering Witch is about a Witch but usually isn’t actually scary.

Netflix is one of the more expensive but it does have some solid options.

Vampire in The Garden is a show I enjoyed in the Summer of 2022 but forgot to talk about when October came along.  It’s the kind of show I would have had a lot more to say about if I could have seen it during the height of my Vampire fixation in 2009-2014.

Monster is a classic 00s Anime that is on there now after lacking a legal streaming option for years.

Fate/Apocrypha is a show I cautiously recommend with its unique takes on Frankenstein and Dracula and Jack The Ripper.

Zom 100 is a new show from this year that I haven't watched any of yet myself so I don’t know if i can recommend it, I may try it during this month.

And Netflix also has some Resident Evil content.

Castlevania is a show I have mixed feelings on, including being mixed about if to even count it in an Anime discussion.  And its spin off Nocturne went up just a couple days before October started.

[Update: Good Night World released on Netflix on October 12th wound up having some Halloween appeal.]

Crunchyroll, some may argue I should’ve started there since it’s used by pretty much every Anime fan willing to pay for a legal streaming App at all.  It has a greater volume of stuff then HIDIVE, I’m not sure I want to write mini reviews of everything on there potentially relevant.

The one I most actively recommend is Garden of Sinners aka Kara No Kyoukai which sadly still isn’t dubbed but is fantastic regardless.

Gankutsuou is a classic no one should miss out on.

Sankarea is very good, I could have sworn it was on Hulu when I first watched it but now it’s only on CR.

In/Spectre is another one I'll go out of my way to recommend since some prominent Canadians have been stupidly hating on it, don’t listen to them it’s awesome. 

 Ms. Vampire who lives in my Neighborhood is a fun show from recent years.  Zombieland Saga is a show I still haven’t watched myself but I’ve heard consistently good things about it from those who have.  Holy Knight is a Vampire OVA I have mixed feelings on.

Dance in The Vampire Bund is interesting.  Its pilot works as a neat short story all on its own, I think many will who won’t like the rest of the show.  It’s also a shaft show so cna visually remind one of other Shaft shows like…. Omg it just occurred to me Monogatori could be Halloween relevant but I can’t watch it, it has no dub and is already Text heavy even before Localization.

Occultic;Nine and Chaos;Child are good recommendations if like me you’re feeling oddly Nostalgic for 2016 and 2017 this year.

Some stuff on CR may still be on Funimation if you're still subscribed to it (or if it even still exists in October), some may even still be only Dubbed there like Boogiepop Phantom.  Phantom beats the proper Boogiepop and Others Anime on pure Aesthetic, but both are worth a watch.

Witch Hunter Robin is an old personal favorite of mine that doesn’t get talked about as much as it deserves.

Of CR’s planned Fall 2023 shows starting in October, only The Family Circumstances of The Irregular Witch seems even close to relevant, but I have my doubts. [Update: turns out this is the kind of show who's one joke wears thin pretty quickly.]

[Update: Dead Mount Deathplay is a fun show with good Halloween vibes, and it's second part starts today October 10th.  Don't know if it's Dub will resume before October ends though.]

.......

Sadly there are still some Anime that can’t be legally streamed anywhere including some Halloween relevant options.  Occasionally a sufficiently old and niche one can simply be found on YouTube like Monster of Frankenstein or the Live Action Boogiepop and Others movie both of which I recommend.

I don’t want to publicly promote where I go to watch what I can’t officially watch for a number of reasons.  Otherwise I’d definitely direct people to someplace where they can watch Karin, a great early 00s hidden gem Vampire Anime.

The 90s TV Anime version of Vampire Princess Miyu is a mixed bag (especially its Dub which is indeed worse then what the OVAs got), but I do see value in some episodes so I am sad it’s not streaming anywhere.

Most of the Blood The Last Vampire franchise can’t currently be officially streamed, the original movie from 2000, Blood+, the Live Action movie and The Last Dark movie which continues the story of Blood-C, are all worth checking out. 

Detective Conan’s 25th Movie The Bride of Halloween is sadly still not officially localized for The West in any capacity.

But perhaps most tragic is the inability to legally watch Umineko When They Cry anywhere.  Like Tsukihime I'm nearly alone in considering it’s Anime good, but I consider it very good, I rank it much higher than Tsukihime. Its penultimate episode made me Cry.

And it turns out even Higurashi isn’t on HIDIVE anymore, along with Vampire Hunter D.  Two of the absolute must sees.  Night Walker is also gone.

I may add updates to this post if anything changes before October is over.

Unreleased Media shouldn't be counted as Lost Media

And yet it often is when I watch YouTube videos about Lost Media.

When you describe someone as being lost in the woods it's because that missing person is known to have gone into the woods thus it might be possible to find them there, maybe they aren't there anymore but they could be.  But if a person never left the house but was simply killed and buried in the basement and everyone knows that, you're not gonna find them in the woods.

I'm interested in Lost Media largely as a subgenre of my more general interest in obscure media that has been influential in-spite of it's obscurity.  The idea that some piece of lost media could have had at least a subconscious influence on someone who saw it before it was lost that went on to make some influential art of their own thus making that piece of lost media perhaps the missing piece of the puzzle of the history of some popular Trope is part of why the subject fascinates me.  With never released to begin with Media we know that didn't happen, it was seen only by the very people involved in making it, and whatever influence an unfinished project of theirs had on their future work is probably already well documented.

Unreleased Media absolutely can be a fascinating subject on it's own, but it's a different animal from why Lost Media is so enigmatic.

So for example as an Anime Fan if Go For A Punch aka Saki Sonobashi was real, it fascinates me not just for how it could have been a neat creepy little OVA on it's own but also for how it could have had a forgotten impact on future horror Japanese Horror Media like Moon or Euphoria.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes it's good to not start at the beginning.

One thing I lament about how Streaming is becoming the standard way all TV shows will be watched going forward is that younger generations are going to miss out on the magic of getting into a show because you stumbled upon a random episode flipping through channels.

I've talked on this blog before about how the first episode of Buffy I watched was This Year's Girl from season 4, an episode more then halfway through the show's middle season that brings back a character from the prior season.  Internet discourse about continuity lock out suggests an episode like that should be the absolute worst kind to start with, but I dug it, all the references to history I didn't actually know the context of just piqued my curiosity.

I've been thinking about this lately for a number of reasons.  I decided to watch The Devil Lady Anime Dubbed on Tubi even though I have still seen no Devilman stuff.  But that's perhaps a bad example because from what I've heard this isn't necessarily the same continuity as anything else.

But I also thought about it when watching the first two episodes of Ahsoka.  This show is arguably really meant to be Rebels season 5, but I only watched the first two seasons of Rebels, this show has clearly mentioned a lot of stuff from the latter seasons of that show.  And here's the thing, I may wind up not liking this show but that won't be why, I am following everything just fine, some stories start with characters with history being reunited but it isn't actually a sequel to anything that's just part of the set up.  Just like how my having never seen Bo Katan in any of her animated show appearances didn't hinder my ability to enjoy her in The Mandalorian seasons 2 and 3.

It's not surprising that Star Wars can work this way, because that's what it was going for from the beginning, George Lucas always intended for the original movie to be called Episode IV because he wanted it to feel like jumping into an old Saturday Matinee Serial in the middle.  Clone Wars went even harder on that aspect.

I also recently watched yet another AniTube video about the Three Episode Rule.  And this guy's take was that it may sometimes take more then three episodes especially for a show that's more then one Cour because he doesn't understand the Why of the Three Episode rule, it's never that the 3rd is the earliest that sells the show's full potential but that it often takes three episodes for the premise to be thoroughly set up, one of my favorite examples to demonstrate it with is actually Pokémon.  But that's besides my point here.

Much of the video was him talking about the difficult situation of convincing someone to sit through maybe 20some episodes to get to the one that they feel really sells the show.  And the possibly of recommending to just skip right to that episode(s) never crosses his mind.

Even most of my earliest Anime memories involve watching something not from the beginning because I stumbled upon it on Toonami or Adult Swim or that old AniMondays SciFi Channel block or even watching random episodes of a show On Demand when it only had the most recent 2 or 3 episodes, Noir, Madlax, Code Geass, Gundam 00 ect.  

But I mainly don't try to recreate that experience today because....

1. I'm a MAL addict now and on MAL how many episodes you've seen is supposed to be from the beginning unbroken.  (And it's the same with the MAL alternatives people people who don't like MAL are promoting.)

2. The randomness was the magic of it, I didn't start Buffy with that episode because it was what someone recommended, probably no one would have ever recommended to start there, I just happened to flip by the WB a night they were airing it.  And I had similar experiences with many other shows from Xena Warrior Princess to House M.D.

However in the last 2 years I have given myself a similar experience via Detective Conan aka Case Closed.  

I first got into it watching some of it's vaguely non-Canon movies, ironically the set of movies I now consider among it's weakest but they were good enough to get me hooked.  When I started watching the actual series I did start at the beginning, and then used an online filler free guide for some of it.  But it wasn't long before I mostly decided what to watch pretty randomly.  On MAL I'm listing myself as having seen only 134 but that's only unbroken from the beginning, I've probably seen over twice that actually.  And even those first 134 I didn't watch in order.

That is a pretty episodic show most of the time so naturally it does have plenty of good places to jump in randomly.  But honestly I feel even most episodes about one of the ongoing plotlines do a good job at being accessible to new viewers.  I'm still far from seeing all the episodes and I probably never will but this experiencing older stuff almsot on a randomizer feels like what it was like watching old Procedurals via random Syndicated reruns.

Right now if I did have to recommend a jumping on point I'd say it's among the 50 episodes currently on Tubi.TV (the Subbed and Dubbed are uploaded as if they were different shows) but not quite the first of them.  It's Makoto Kyogoku The Understudy episodes 993-995, it's not filler it actually does tie into a lot of ongoing plots but strictly not the main one, yet I still think it's a great first impression of the show.

But if you're a more Retro Style Anime fan who'd rather get into a show from the 90s in it's classic 90s look then among the first 123 episodes (which are on Filmrise and Crunchyroll but not Dubbed) I'd recommend The Kamen Yaiba Murder Case or The Locked Bathroom Murder Case.

Unfortunately the many good jumping on points that exist between episodes 123 and 754 aren't available on any official streaming sites.  There is also a Dub of the first 123 (numbered as 130 via longer episodes being split up) that isn't officially streaming anywhere.

Stan Lee once said that every Comic could be someone's first, but that didn't stop him from telling stories heavily budling on earlier ones, what he did was tell readers where to go to get that context.  And now we have all kinds of Wikis and Fan websites that help catalogue all that trivia.  

So if you think episode 8 of season 2 of some show is the best episode to get someone hooked with, just tell them to start with that episode, or a few sooner if you feel some emotional set up is necessary.