Shoujo Vibes

D.N. Angel is an Anime adapted from a Shoujo Manga in-spite of the fact that it's a story with a male Protagonist with Hair that looks right out of Shonen Jump and more then one female love interest.  

I however could tell it was Shoujo off it's first episode from it's hard to describe Vibes even though I know full well there are Shonen Manga based Anime with a high emphasis on Romance or even Romance being the main genre.  Shows like Rent-a-Girlfriend I like but I would not ever confuse with Shoujo.

Maybe you think I was prepared for this to be Shoujo because of how it's like a Male Counterpart to Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Saint Tail, but I'm also well aware of how this High School double life Phantom Thief genre started in the 80s with Manga like Magic Kaito which was Shonen.

Thing is I have detected these Shoujo Vibes in Anime that turn out to not officially be Shoujo or even Jose Manga or Otome Games for that matter.

Shonen Manga based Anime like Blood+ and Karin have enough Shoujo vibes to make it not impossible that a Shonen Phantom Thief Manga could be this Shoujo.

But it is Shattered Angels that most surprises me when I see it classified as Shonen.  I've long memorized that it isn't officially Shoujo but I keep misremembering it as a Seinen.

Often the most Intense Shoujo Vibes are in Otaku Visual Novel adaptations like Rumbling Hearts and White Album, these are actually the Anime I'm inclined to recommend to people who loved Nana and want something with similarly great Melodrama.

Assassins Pride is a fall 2019 Light Novel adaptation that defies the usual Otaku Seinen vibes of that ecosystem to feel very very Shoujo.  It's so Shoujo that Mother's Basement hated on it.

And that's without even touching the messy debate of which Yuri are and are not legitimately Shoujo.

The Pseudo-Mainstreaming of Anime

So I’ve done a series of posts on this blog trying to debunk the notion that Anime is Mainstream now, and this recent hype over “The Vatican has Embraced Anime” has helped me realize part of the problem is how a vague understanding of the Anime Style is somewhat Mainstream.

Luce is not proof that anyone in the Vatican has seen any Anime just as someone throwing around the term “Big Brother” isn’t proof they’ve read 1984.  It’s just proof that everyone now knows how to draw the basic concept of an Anime Girl.

Just because people have heard of it doesn't mean it's mainstream.  People have always known who the Insane Clown Posse were, that didn't make them mainstream.

I realize this kind of distinction sounds to some like it’s related to the rhetoric of GateKeepers.  I don’t think you need to have seen all the Anime I’ve seen to at all qualify as being into Anime, I haven’t seen a lot of Anime others consider essential viewing like Gurren Lagan or any Satoshi Kon stuff.  I considered myself into Anime when I’d only seen a fraction of what I’ve seen now.  But my point has never been about how well versed in Anime culture any individual is.

In order for Anime as a whole to truly be mainstream the pool of specific shows and movies that are well known even to people who aren’t particularly into Anime needs to be much wider.

Feral Historian is a YouTube channel I stumbled upon recently, they are fairly conservative and so someone I disagree with a lot, but unlike a lot of Conservatives who talk about Nerdy stuff on YouTube he has actually insightful and interesting things to say rather than raving about Wokeness every time a protagonist isn’t a White Male.  He largely talks about Sci-Fi and some Fantasy stories usually with a focus on War, Dystopia and Alternate History.  He’s covered some very mainstream well known franchises and some fairly niche books and forgotten movies and tv shows.

So anyone who is very into Anime reading all that can probably quickly come with a long list of Anime right up his alley, but in fact the only Anime he’s covered is Cowboy Bebop a very mainstream show that feels barely relevant to the general themes of his channel.  For me 86 pops into my mind as the first thing I’m curious to hear his take on, but I’m sure others would more quickly jump to Gundam, Macross, Gunbuster, Evangelion, Code Geass, Psycho Pass, Attack on Titan maybe Darling in The FranXX.  But other niche even within the world of Anime options would include Muv-Luv/Schwarzesmarken, Rahxephon, Aldnoah Zero, Str.A.In, Kado the Right Answer, Babylon and the Sekaikei trilogy.

If Anime actually had the mainstream pervasiveness of Star Wars or Star Trek or Marvel and DC Superheroes there’s no way none of those Anime would have been covered by now especially since Bebop proves he doesn’t have an innate bias against Anime.

Update: Feral Historian's interest in Bebop stems form an interest in Western tropes translated to a fantastical setting.  And I have a prior post on the other Anime that can appeal to that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/04/anime-neo-westerns.html

Update December 19th 2024: I realize I really need to explain better why I think this Random YouTuber not talking about Anime much proves anything.

It shows how much trouble the vast majority of Anime has leaving the existing subculture of people already particularly into Anime that there is so much Anime that is exactly the kind of SciFi this guy is into that he seemingly hasn't even heard of even though he does know plenty of Niche stuff.

Update March 2026: A similar point could be made about how I've seen two videos about the Symbolism of White Hair in fiction which included few Anime examples, to someone who's actually into Anime it's obvious there should an entire sub section for this topic on White Hair in Anime being associated with characters who are in some way artificially created. 

Anime with Messy Characters

There are a number of Anime I’ve watched where a lot of the appeal is how all the characters are very flawed making very human mistakes but ultimately no one is truly a Bad Person, (or very few at least).

But then I watch the YouTube videos about them and their takeaway is that they are shows where no one is a Good Person.  Clearly we are mostly seeing the same thing but they simply have a much more cynical baseline outlook than I do.

Take for example Shoji in Nana, I think one of the most compelling things about this show was their willingness to depict him so sympathetically even as he cheats on the main character in a Shoujo Manga adaptation.  But nope all the Antiubers feel they have to boil it down to simply him being a Jerk.  

Nana is a show where the only character I wouldn’t object to calling a bad person is Takumi (well there’s also Takeshi but I barely count him as a character) and even he has nuance.

Now maybe some will think my sympathy for Shoji is simply a biased result of my being an AMAB who identified as Male for most of my life.  But I feel the same watching Rumbling Hearts where Mitsuki cheats on the male protagonist in this Anime who’s source material is a male targeted demographic, anyone calling her a bad person I would also object to.

Heck I’ll go further than that.  What I find most unrelatable about the comments sections under most NTR Hentai is how harsh they are the female lead even though she’s usually being Raped.  I’m the opposite, even in the rare one where it’s completely Consensual I still sympathize with her.  Even if she’s literally cheating for no reason other than the other guy is bigger I still can’t consider that entirely hateable if it's executed well.

And it’s the same with Nana which kind of is a prolonged NTR in its latter half.

Both White Album Anime are also similarly messy relationship Melodramas that I quite enjoy.

 

I think someone is only a Bad Person if their behavior is consistently harmful and unrepentant.

Woke Leftists like to claim they have a purely Harm based understanding of Morality, but then try very hard to define Harm so abstractly that they wind up becoming pretty Puritanical.

And yes I do also put School Days in this category. 

Mab Darogan and William The Conqueror.

I have a theory that specifically Geoffrey of Monmouth’s presentation of the Mab Darogan Prophecy in his History of the Kings of Britain was designed so one could argue it was fulfilled by William The Conqueror. 

Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon who Geoffrey in the final chapters of Book 12 presents as the last King of the Britons and from whom this prophesied Savior wild descend is nominally a real 7th Century historical figure but his biography is almost completely changed.  Others have focused on how the pilgrimage to Rome is actually based on the contemporary King of Wessex.

But what interests me is how Geoffrey ends Cadwaladr’s story with him not in Wales or even Britain. The fact that the medieval Kings of Gwynedd and Princes of Wales descended from the real Cadwaladr not only isn’t mentioned but seems to be something Geoffrey doesn’t want his readers to know.  Rather he ends Cadwaladr’s story in Brittany closely linked with a King of Brittany named Alan.   It’s likely the medieval audience would have presumed dynastic intermarriages would occur between their lines.

Which is interesting given how Alan’s line was already Prophetically significant.  He is in this narrative the direct Heir of Hoel of Brittany son of Budic II of Brittany by Anna King Arthur’s Sister.  Back in Book 8 Chapter XV the Prophecy Merlin gives about Arthur also says it would be Uther's daughter from whom the long term line of succession will descend.  Now Arthur having sisters seems to be precedented before/independent of Geoffrey, but Geoffrey alone has any sister much less his full sister by Uther marry a ruler of Brittany.  The actual Breton traditions about Budic and Hoel do not connect them to Arthur at all.  Budic II does take refuge in Britain after losing his Kingdom to invaders but it was actually in the court of Dyfed (which had a King named Arthur but a couple generations later then THE Arthur and Budic).  Meanwhile Arthur’s full sister is usually married to Loth by whom she is the mother of Gawain and Agravain and Medraut.

So Geoffrey has two different Prophecies tying the legacy of Sub-Roman Britain to Brittany rather than Wales or Cornwall or Cumbria.

William The Conqueror’s Paternal Grandmother was Judith of Brittany a descendent of Breton rulers including at least one named Alan.  And the Dukes of Normandy may have had dynastic ties to Brittany even before her via Sprotta.  And William also had Breton allies during his conquest of England.

One of Geoffrey’s patrons was Robert of Gloucester, a Bastard son of Henry I and a supporter of Matilda during the Anarchy.  So legitimizing the Norman-Plantagenet Dynasty’s rule over the Island was arguably in Geoffrey’s interests. 

Geoffrey is also seemingly the oldest source for a lot of the basis for identifying Arthur geographically with the area of Wessex (I have come to believe based on the older sources that Arthur was mainly in The North).  This fits in with the theory that a lot of Arthurian motifs originating during the Norman period were partly about attributing to Arthur accomplishments of Alfred The Great.

Going back to his sponsor’s support of Matilda, I wonder if this is part of the origin of the Cornelia daughter of King Leir legend I discussed in a prior post?  Cornelia and Matilda were both married to Kings on the Continent before ruling Britain/England.

Housing Complex C is a Great Horror Anime

I've watched it 3 times now, October of 2022, October of 2023 and October of 2024 which was Yesterday.

It's most notable strength is how I feel it has uniquely found out how to make Lovecraftian Horror work in a Visual Medium.  While also going in the opposite direction of what's politically problematic about Lovecraft with it's clear Pro-Immigration theme.

But Lovecraft stories aren't the only Horror stories it can be compared to.

In the context of Anime it definitely has some overlapping vibes with Higurashi When They Cry, if you want something like that but much shorter this is it.

I've seen people more into Junji Ito's work then me say there are some Junji Ito references, but I can't confirm or deny that myself.

The Housing Complex set up kinda reminds me of Lady in The Water one of those later M Night Shyamalan movies many hate on but that I enjoyed.

It's on both Max and Adult Swim, I highly recommend it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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