Pokémon XY and Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death is NOT Good Actually

I have in the last decade become a huge Anime fan, now most of the Entertainment media I’m particularly into is Anime or Anime related.  And in my praise of the many things I love about Anime I sometimes go a little too far in making Anime sound morally superior to Western Media.  But there are some common philosophical themes in a lot of Anime I don’t like.  

And chief among them is one I noticed being a thing when I watched Manmode’s video on Darling in The FranXX.  Now I am also a bit of an apologist for that show, the common criticisms of it I don’t agree with.  But Manmode correctly observed that one of the morals in this show’s worldbuilding was that Humanity would lose what makes us “Human” if we actually stopped dying.  He also sees this as a common theme in many Trigger/Gainax style shows with it even being awkwardly shoehorned into SSSS.Gridman in one scene in the last episode.

And even beyond those two studios it comes up a lot, though often just in making one villain's individual refusal to accept their own death a root cause of much of their villainy.  And yeah no one disagrees that Zouken Matou in Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel II: Lost Butterfly saying that he would gladly kill everyone else on earth if it would prevent himself from Dying is very Evil. 

But this broader philosophical notion that Humankind needs Mortality to motivate itself isn’t limited to Japanese media of course, it's a theme in the “Christian” world building of Tolkien and Lewis as well, The Elves view Mortality as a Gift that they are envious of..  I put Christian in Quotes there not to deny that those two were Christians, they were, but this aspect of their worldview is Anti-Christian, it is the very heart of Paganism going all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

What separates the New Testament 1 Corinthians 15 Gospel of The Resurrection from the many “dying and rising gods” that Mythiscists obsess over is that for Paul the Resurrection is NOT mere Symbolism, it is other things that are made mere symbols of The Resurrection.  The Gospel is the promise that Death is Temporary, that one day it will not exist any longer.

And the reason I’m still a Young Earth Creationist even though I have no interest in telling anyone they are required to be one to be a “True Christian” is because tied into that is a Belief that Death was not originally a natural part of Life, it’s existence is a consequence of Adam’s Sin, it is a Curse that the Last Adam is liberating us from.

Returning to Anime this is why I am glad there is a counter example.  The Black Moon saga of Sailor Moon (as it was in the Manga and second cour of Sailor Moon Crystal but not the 90s Anime which removed this element of the plot) involves a future where Death has ceased and everyone is now immortal, and the people who think that is a bad thing for exactly the reason Trigger thinks it would be are the villains, and the narrative has no sympathy for their perspective at all, not even the slightest nominal consideration that maybe they have a point.  Part of the reason this is one of the awkwardly worst Arcs of the 90s Anime is that it tried to make these villains more sympathetic while dropping their motivation.  But in Crystal I love it, I love finally seeing an Anime say FU to this popular Pagan idea.

Update: I've now seen Baccano! and it's also proven an interesting sort of subversion to this.

HIDIVE is really Frustrating

I’ve tolerated a lot of BS from HIDIVE I wouldn’t if it weren’t still the cheapest paid streaming service.  If CR was suddenly dropping one of the main shows I count on them having this often I would have stopped paying them over a year ago.

There was a time on this Blog when I was HIDIVE’s biggest Evangelist.  Part of why was them having the best Horror Anime line up to recommend every October.  But now Higurashi is gone and the two Zombie Anime aren’t consistent.

What has inspired my most recent frustration however is Princess Principal now being off the site.  HIDIVE Dubbing that show after it was trapped in AmazonStrike Jail was a blessing I was very grateful for.

Another show I loved using HIDIVE to watch that was removed and never came back was Angelic Layer.  I also miss the TV Anime version of Penguindrum being there.

So even with how Cheap HIDIVE is I’m at my limit, if something like this happens again I'm likely to just cancel my subscription.

The Luca Brasi Effect

So I’ve decided to propose a Trope concept that is distinct from The Worf Effect though I suspect many at TVTropes might be seeing it as the same when it occurs.

This post will contain Spoilers for both The Godfather Trilogy and the Anime School-Live!, aka Gakkō Gurashi!

The story began when I was listening to the Audio Commentary for The Godfather on its old DVD release and Francis Ford Coppola talks about the character of Luca Brasi but more particularly when Luca Brasi is killed.  Saying that after establishing Luca Brasi as this tough, reliable bodyguard for Vito Colreone his suddenly being taken out is meant to be a sign of impending danger for the Don.

And then in the Audio Commentaries for Part II and Part III he talked about other characters in those films repeating the same role.

So while the Worf Effect is about a seemingly tough character losing a fight to make the new villain look dangerous, this is about a Protector of the protagonist(s) being removed from the scenario entirely to create a sense of vulnerability.

That’s what Coppola intended, but in execution Luca Brasi does seem more a Worf Effect by virtue of us never seeing him successfully protect the Corleones from anything on screen and what we’re told about him is more stories of him being an offensive muscle. And then his analogues in the sequels were never even named on screen that I can remember.

However there is an Anime that I feel did what Coppola talked about here far better, and that’s my long time favorite Zombie Anime School-Live!

Kurumi Ebisuzawa is established throughout the show as the club's Muscle both offensively and defensively, her skill in taking out Zombies with her Shovel is a vital piece of why the characters have mostly lived blissfully peaceful lives during this Zombie Apocalypse.

So when Kurumi gets bitten by a Zombie and incapacitated in Episode 10, it does very effectively signify the impending end of their Eden.

Shy and Superhero Anime

One topic I talked about on this blog a few years ago is how as someone who was an American Comic Book Nerd for ages before Anime took over my brain, the Anime that to me have a similar appeal to my favorite DC Universe stories are not the ones explicitly drawing on American Superhero aesthetics like My Hero Academia and One Punch Man but rather shows like Code Geass, the Raildex franchise, Detective Conan/Case Closed, and I’d now add Durarara! which I watched this year, twice now.

However starting with the Fall of last year a new Superhero Anime has entered the fray, Shy who’s second season is currently airing.

While HeroAca and OPM put the aesthetic trappings of American Comic Book Superheroes onto a show that is essentially a conventional Battle Shonen, with Shy it is the Magical Girl Warrior subgenre putting on Western Superhero clothing.  That actually works far better because the Magical Girl Genre has its origins in part in western Superhero influences. 

Naoko Takeuchi has admitted to being partly inspired by Wonder Woman in creating Sailor Moon, something the recently re-adapted final arc makes more obvious with the Bracelets plot point.  But there’s also the additional indirect influence from how the Transforming Tokusatsu Superhero genre was inspired by Shazam and the 60s Batman show and so forth.

So Shy kind of winds up feeling like the Genre returning to its roots in some ways.

90s Magical Girl Warriors like the Sailor Senshi and Wedding Peach wear costumes that fit in with how we typically think of American Superhero Costumes from the Golden, Silver and Bronze ages in that it would not feel inaccurate to describe them as some form of “tights”.

Today however your default parody of a standard Magical Girl is more likely to be wearing a frilly or fluffy dress of some kind and that is largely the influence of Pretty Cure which in Japan has long surpassed Sailor Moon as the most popular Magical Girl franchise, (but it's Anthology nature means no single team has had as many canonical adventures as the Senshi).

And so Shy wearing a Western Superhero style costume coincidentally looks more like a 90s Magical Girl then any new Magical Girl Anime we’ve seen in 20 years.

But Shy is not completely removed from the subsequent history of the Magical Girl, it definitely shows some influence from the Post Madoka era of the genre, with what the villains are doing reminding me of Daybreak Illusion more than anything else.

The main difference between Shy and other Magical Girl shows, in fact the main reason it’s probably not officially going to be considered one, is that there are Male Superheroes.  Of course the Nanoha franchise also had males who had essentially the same abilities.  The British Superhero keeps reminding me of the antagonist of Superman Vs The Elite for some reason.

All of this kind of makes Shy the antithesis of how I’ve been thinking about the 2008 OVA School Days: Magical heart Kokoro-Chan.

As one of the very few American Otaku who loves School Days both unironically and not because I view it as some kind of “deconstruction” I was very curious to see what it’s take on the turn the little sister character into a Magical Girl spin off trend would be.  And what I got kind of confused me.

First it starts off by also having a sort of Sentai parody, which would be fine.  But then we get to this classroom scene where everyone starts talking about Superheroes.  And Makoto and Sekai started saying things that sound like J. Jonah Jamenson, in my head I was like “I dedicated one of the most overly long posts on my blog to defending you two and this is how you repay me?”.  Then Setsuna starts talking and I think “finally my Waifu will bring some sense to this” and then she starts spouting a “Superheros cause Villains” monologue.

Basically this Magical Girl Parody decided to have the metatextual commentary of a Western Superhero Comic.  In Magical Girl shows and Super Sentai the villains come first and the heroes are a reaction to them, the exact opposite of what Setsuna just said.

We need more Normie Accessible Anime on the Mainstream Streaming Sites

It bugs me that there isn't exactly a great correlation between which Anime I think are the best potential entry point Anime for people new to Anime and which Anime are on the major not primarily Anime focused Streaming Sites.

This is partly brought on by how there's about to be less Anime on these sites in general.

It was just announced that a bunch of those are leaving Hulu at the end of August.

One of those is Steins;Gate. Now I have described Steins;Gate as the most Normie friendly SciADV show so it being the only one of them on Hulu does make some sense.  But Robotics;Notes is a very close second, and to the right people it's probably the one they'd like most.  For one example I like to describe it as the most Spielbergian Anime.

Of shows on the list of ones about to leave, Rosario + Vampire is the one I definitely raise an eyebrow at for having put on a Mainstream site to begin with.  Even I struggle to get into that show though I do like some of what it does.

Fortunately Spy x Family isn't leaving, that's a show I'd recommend to any Normie who likes Mr & Mrs Smith.

But Hulu's catalog of Anime does include some random Isekai and Harem shows and not always what I consider the best of them.

School Rumble is a show I'm very fond of but is kind of right on the line of how Normie friendly it might be, perhaps it's pretty okay since the earliest episodes are lighter on the Otaku stuff.  Not only is it leaving Hulu but it's not on any other Stremaing site.

Going back to my old thesis about Levels of Normie accessibility, I'd prioritize getting both the A and B level shows on these sites if I had any influence on the decision making.  C level ones could be good to throw in. But I wouldn't remove anything already on there, last thing we need now is any show's accessibility decreasing.  But as far as getting more shows on any Streaming Sites I'd save the E and D level shows for CR, HIDIVE and RetroCrush.

But maybe I personally am overthinking this stuff too much.  Maybe a show stuffed to the brim with Fanservice and Otaku Culture meta in-jokes could still win a complete Newbie over simply by being good.  I have after all argued against the idea that Continuity Lock Out really matters.

The thing is a lot of people think Anime is only made up of 2 or 3 kinds of shows and 2 kinds of movies, TV show tie ins and Ghibli, and that OVAs are just for Edgelord violence porn and Hentai.  I want more of the shows that will subvert those assumptions to be easier to find.

Durarara is a great B Level show so I'm glad it's on Hulu.  But I want shows like Noir and Witch Hunter Robin on there too.

Update: Somehow when I first wrote this I missed that Railgun is also among those leaving Hulu at the end of August, yet Index will still be there (only season 1 though).  But that's the opposite of how it should be, as I've explained on this blog before Railgun is the far more normie friendly show of that franchise.

November Update: Code Geass and a bunch more are gone from Hulu too now. 

Update 2025: Durarara and a bunch more is gone form Hulu as well now.

Update September 2025: One thing I failed to clarify is that there is not a 1 to 1 correlation between shows that are well known enough that Normies have heard of them and ones that can be good Normie entry point shows.  

Some shows are very Niche even among Anime fans not because they are impenetrable but because they haven't been seen by everyone I feel would enjoy them.  Like Noir and Witch Hunter Robin and Rumbling Hearts. 

And some shows you are more likely to heave heard of then others because of their Infamy rather then because they make good first impressions.  I am in fact an apologist for many of the shows I'm thinking of here, they just aren't what I actively recommend as often.

Yuno Gasai and the Yandere timeline

Yuno Gasai from the Anime/Manga Mirai Nikki aka Future Diary is the single most well known Yandere, or at least she was when I fully joined the Anime Community in the mid to late 2010s, so much so that Gigguk’s Yandere video could make a Joke out of pretending she’s the only one who matters.

But unlike most characters who have become virtually synonymous with their Archetype she is not the first or even the first really popular one, or even really among the first.  I would dare say by the time of her creation the Yandere was already becoming an overplayed Cliche.

Now when I started researching this thesis I was shocked how much older Mirai Nikki’s source material is, I’m not used to popular Manga taking over 5 years to get an Anime.  But it was still not old enough to destroy this premise.  It started publication on January 26th 2006.

Now I’m someone who is fairly strict in how I even define a Yandere, I talked about elements of it in a post I made earlier this year.  So for example the character from Shuffle who some call a Yandere (I’ve heard she’s more of one in the Anime then in the original VN) I’m iffy on counting.  But if we count her then Shuffle’s Anime ended on January 6th 2006.

Amelie Doree has a video on the 2003 Visual Novel Cross Channel, from it I can conclude it has a character who can be considered a Yandere.

Most of Higurashi was released by the end of 2005 including the two most Yandere relevant chapters.  Getting back to the relative strictness with how I define a Yandere, Sonozaki I consider a Yandere even if atypical in some ways, while Ryugu is not a Yandere, when she acts Crazy it has nothing to do with romance, apparently she's considered a Yangire a term I know less about.

The original School Days Visual Novel was released in 2005.  And in my opinion Kotonoha is still the best Yandere.

The first Durarara!! Light Novel came out in 2004 and the second came out in 2005.  They feature even by my strictest definition multiple Yanderes.  And if you loosen the definition it might just be possible to argue this is a saga where (almost) everyone is a Yandere.

And that’s the key to my thesis really, it is particularly the role Yanderes play in Durarara!! that even in these early novels makes it feel like it’s already a cliche, like the author is on a Meta level joking about how arguably overused this character type is.

All that and I still have a hunch none of these is where the Yandere trend began.  It’s difficult to research because characters who technically qualify have always existed, with some even suggesting the first Anime Yandere was a character from Uresei Yatsura or Ranma1/2 or something like that, or even Jojo.  And Gaijin Goomba of course wants to connect it to some pre-modern Japanese Folk Tale.

But when I ask who the first Yandere is I mean the beginning of this trend in Otaku oriented Visual Novels and Light Novels of the early 2000s which may have actually began in the mid to late 90s.  There may not be a definitive single first one, but I get the sense that even the oldest of the ones I’ve discussed above were already part of a trend.

But let’s return to the mystery of why Yuno Gasai was able to steal the spotlight from all these predecessors.  Is it because she’s the best?  I already said I consider someone else the best.  But this is one of those tropes where so many people want to argue why the one they like is the only one who was written with a complex Psychological profile that makes their insanity not truly only about the person they are romantically fixated on, but the truth is they were all written with depth.

Maybe why Yuno overshadows the rest is because of the Anime adaptation, because of how well she was performed by Tomosa Murata and later in the English Dub Brina Palencia?  

Glass Reflection I remember said in his Future Diary review that he didn’t like Brina as Yuno and that ticked me off.  One of Brina’s unique talents is to sound vocally more "normal" then most Anime characters even while still having an eccentric personality.  And for the Bipolar quality that a good Yandere is supposed to have that kind of voice is actually perfect.  

Cross Channel still doesn’t have an Anime, but besides that all those Pre-Yuno Yandere also made their Anime debut before her.  Mirai Nikki started airing in the Fall of 2011.  School Days technically was an Anime in its source material but got its TV Anime in 2007.  Higurashi had its Yandere Arcs in its first season in 2006.  And both of the first two Durarara!! LNs were covered in the first season of its Anime in the first half of 2010. And they all had good VAs who did a great job bringing their character's Insanity to life.

It honestly might be more that Yuno was the LAST notable Yandere as far as actual Japanese media goes.  The shows that copy everything else about Future Diary make their female lead very much not a Yandere. Instead for the terminally online the Yandere has been kept alive by a perpetually in-development American Indie Video Game and ASMR videos.  And maybe there's some V-Tubers who's gimmick is that they're a Yandere I wouldn't know.

So when Anitube as we currently know it started Yuno was the freshest Yandere in everyone’s memory.  And for plenty of newer Anime fans she may have been the only Yandere recent enough for them to have seen in action when she was new.

Update February 13th 2026: I recently learned of a 2000 Visual Novel called Silver that has who can perhaps be considered the first Yandere of VNs named Sasai Yuuna.