Sequels have an advantage in MAL ratings.

Why is because most of the people who really disliked season 1 and gave it very low rating or even a mid rating probably didn’t bother with any further seasons.  So a sequel would have to really drop the ball pretty hard for anyone who overall liked season 1 to give it a very low rating.

We see this with In Another World With My Smartphone, where even its season 2 has a higher rating than season 1. I have interacted with other Smartphone fans on Reddit and the disappointment with season 2 isn’t just me, most everyone agrees it rushed through too much too quickly and thus is a downgrade as both an adaptation and an Anime compared to season 1.  So season 1 having a lower rating is all because of the haters of “generic’ Isekai who watched it just to clown on it and then forgot about it.

However, Smartphone season 2 only has a slightly higher rating.  For sequels who have more substantial leads over earlier installments you really shouldn't dismiss that as just this phenomenon at play.

The beauty of Anime lies in part in how many sagas produce their best content 3 or 4 or even 5 seasons in, or 100s of episodes in if it’s all still one MAL entry like Detective Conan. This is not an artform where the popular perception that everything is only good early on then it runs out of ideas fast applies.  The shows that I do feel have a central gimmick that got stale fast couldn't keep me for even a single season.

Rent-a-Girlfriend is a show I enjoyed even in season 1, but season 3 was a massive elevation, and a lot of the most hated qualities of the series are muted drastically during that season.

And even with Smartphone it’s an adaptation issue, fans who know the source material better then I do are confident that if the content of season 2 had been fleshed out to fill 2 or 3 seasons it could have equaled the quality of season 1 or even surpassed it.

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.

Time Bokan and the Skeletons of Cartoon VIllainy.

The Time Skeletons of the 1975 TV Anime Time Bokan are in Japan among the most Iconic villains in all of Animation.  This year will be their Fiftieth Anniversary.

But we Western Weebs haven’t had a lot of direct experience with them.

I’m among many who the first time I heard about them was in an AniTube video about how they were a big part of the inspiration for Team Rocket (Jesse, James and Meowth to be precise) in the Pokémon Anime.  The 2018 Anime Last Period had a group of villains I was comparing to Team Rocket as it aired and then when I learned about the Time Skeletons I immediately made that connection.

More recently we also learned how Waluigi was based on Glocky and the discarded Wapeach was based on Marjo which retroactively makes Wario into a Walther, or maybe he always was? 

There are no doubt many more.  When considering how similar to the Time Skeletons a group of villains are, there are many factors to consider.  Are they just functioning in the plot/story the same way or are there more specific parallels?  Are they only similar as a group or can each member be compared to a specific Time Skeleton?  Do they visually look similar?

Team Rocket are among the most distinct from the originals of confirmed admitted Time Skeleton descendants by pretty much all of those metrics.

For as much as the Time Skeletons are the Ur Text of so many Anime villains they are themselves also a product of trends and archetypes that came before them.   Who their predecessors within Anime are is something someone who knows way more than I do about very old Anime will have to look into.  But I happen to know a bit about what prior American Cartoon villains have some similar qualities.

Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle are among the first to come to mind.

I had long thought of Waluigi as looking a lot like Dick Dastardly, so after learning about this I’m thinking maybe Glocky is the missing link.

Marjo’s Iconic Costume actually reminds me a lot of a costume that Catwoman wore during much of the 70s in DC Comics.  But this Costume didn’t appear in Animation till Batman The Brave and The Bold in the 21st Century and I have no idea if any actual Batman Comics made it overseas to Japan during the 70s, so that similarity could be a coincidence.

This is one of many posts on my Blog where I don’t have a final thesis or anything, I just like thinking about these kinds of things.

Update March 2nd 2025: So in turns out what I said about the relationship between the Time Skeletons and Waluigi/Wapeach was actually me misremembering references to the similar villains in Yatterman an Anime that started airing two years later in 1977.  And my comparison of Marjo's Costume to that 70s Catwoman costume is also much more true of Doronjo.

But again these characters are also very Time Skeletons inspired, in fact the show literally took over Time Bokan's timeslot. But they were famous enough on their own that Miyamoto thought of them before the Time Skeletons when shooting down Wapeach.

Public Domain Expansion continues.

This is a follow up to a post I made in January of last year, make sure to read it first.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/01/popeye-and-betty-boop-should-be-next.html

Popeye is in the Public Domain now, but many aspects of his lore are not yet, most notable some key supporting characters like Bluto.

Some have made a thing out of the Spinach connection technically being added years later, but that lame Horror movie felt safe including it.  Since Spinach itself is a real vegetable that can't be Copyrighted there's a good chance including it in ways other then as a Power Up is probably fine.

Poopdeck Pappy will be one of the last major Popeye characters to enter the PD.  But on some level now that Popeye's in the PD can you really copyright the idea of having a character who looks like him but older and saying that's his Dad?  It's really just a matter of specific names, and 2000s Nolan style Popey adaptation wouldn't have included a name like that anyway.  (For years my ideal fan casting for Popeye's dad has been Michael Hogan most known for playing Colonel Tight in BSG 2004, but due to his recent Medical Concerns he may not be acting again in the future.)

Maybe you can try to argue the same thing about Bluto?  A Character who's at his core just Bigger Badder Popeye?  But I think that'd be a harder case to argue, and that no fans of the character would be happy with a version changed and renamed to avoid Copyright.

I want to return to the topic of the biggest next year entrant, Betty Boop.  I've recently learned she was originally an Anthropomorphic Dog and that the Character Design we usually think of when we hear the name isn't introduced till 1932.   Now I wouldn't be opposed to Mahou Shoujo Betty Boop also being a Dog Girl Furry.   But still what people really want to see won't be available till 2028.

Anime 2005 Twenty Years later.

I’m not going to go as in depth as my equivalent 2004 post last year.

A lot of Anime in 2005 were continuations of 2004 shows, or sequels to 2004 shows, or spiritual follow ups in some fashion.  From getting more Pretty Cure and Nanoha to Mai Otome.

But it was also a year where new trends were started and new groundwork laid.  Air and Shuffle ushered in a Golden Era of Visual Novel adaptations. And in the Hentai world the start of PoRo as a studio and NTR as a genre with True Blue.

Blood+ and Karin are both neat Vampire shows to remember when October rolls around.

In the world of what was getting Localized in the West, I don’t have any specifics on me right now but I suspect most stuff from 2000-2002 that got Localized at all had the localization started at least by the end of 2005.

In the world of source material that got Animated later we had School Days, the second Durarara!! LN, and more of both Index and Higurashi. 

For Detective Conan, nothing really big happened in the TV Anime main plot wise, I don’t know how many 2005 episodes I have seen but 394-396 was that year’s Kaito Kid appearance.  It’s possible the big Anime events of 2006 happened in the Manga in 2005 including episode 425 but I'm unsure. That year's movie was the 9th which some consider the last good one. I consider it pretty good. 

Superman fans need to stop bickering and act like Superman

I’m tired of seeing discourse around the new Superman Trailer be all about fighting between Snyder fans and James Gunn fans, from both sides.

Going off this trailer I personally expect Gunn’s movie to be my favorite Superman movie so far, the closest any Live Action film has come to what I personally would make or want to see.

But I'm not a hater of Snyder’s Superman, go through the history of this Blog and you’ll see what a long time Snyder apologist I’ve been.  Yes there was a time after Batman V Superman first came out when I was sometimes down on that film but the more I rewatched it the more I came to appreciate it.

The Snyder haters keep accusing those being negative about this trailer of being “stuck in the past” but so are you that can’t praise something you like without dwelling on some decade old films you still have a grudge against.  Calling “Cultists” anyone who liked Snyder’s take and wanted more of it is absurd.  

There is one Live Action Superman movie I have no fondness for (and a couple Animated ones) and would even at one time have said I Hated, and there was a time when I was young and immature and in my 20s when I wouldn't shut about it. But then I grew up, now I prefer to just pretend that movie doesn't exist.  I don’t feel the need to complain about the takes on Superman I don't like every time I express excitement for the many I do.

But to Snyder fans, every time you hate on every little detail of this movie that isn’t out yet you are being the same as the 2013 people who hated everything about Man of Steel simply for not being exactly like Richard Donner’s Superman or STAS or whatever Comics they were Nostalgic for.  

Snyder got a full Trilogy which is more than many MCU directors got, he’s happily moved on to his Rebel Moon project which I have very much enjoyed.

And if you honestly are genuinely upset at this new movie not having the Darker Depressing tone of Snyder’s movies, congratulations you are everything I was trying to convince people Snyder fans were not.

War of The Rohirrim isn't on MyAnimeList

I watched this movie on the 27th and I liked it, it was very good. 

But there was a part of me wanting to talk about how it still doesn't quite feel like Anime to me, how the way characters move feels more like the Ralph Bakshi film and how the Anime I would draw on aesthetically for a Rohan centric film is Vinland Saga given how vaguely Proto-Anglo-Saxon the Rohirrim are supposed to be.

But I feel the need to bite my Tong on that since I totally disagree with MAL not including it, I don't see how it fails to fit the technical standards that MAL uses.  And it definitely feels more like Anime to me then any of the Chinese garbage MAL does count, or that obscure CGI Superhero cartoon they count.  Or even Batman Ninja for that matter.

The fact is I am pretty self aware of how the reasons this and Castlevania and The Last Airbender and the 2003 Teen Titans Cartoons don't feel Anime to me are because of the specific tastes in Anime I personally hold.  So for me Pantheon does feel Anime enough even though most people don't include that in their Anime Inspired Western Cartoons conversations.

Regardless of how much War of the Rohirrim does or does not Look like what I wanted an Anime Lord of The Rings to look like, it is directed by Kenji Kamiyama, that makes it an Anime by Default.

I can't even dig into the weeds of who the specific Animators and Artists were because websites like MAL are how I usually begin that investigation.

Update: It has an Anime New Network page, where indeed lots of staff positions are held by Japanese names.