Frieren is not the Best Anime of 2023

I realize the Anime most prominently featured in the Thumbnail of a Best of ____ YouTube video is usually not given the number 1 slot because they want that to be a bit of a surprise.  But giving Frieren this role in your Thumbnails still endorses that it's the easy pick to be at least near the top and I really would not put Frieren even in 2nd or 3rd place.

First of all, Frieren in 2023 specifically is fundamentally incomplete. I realize some may find it unfair to rule out from AOTY contention any multi-cour shows that straddle the Gregorian New Year change over. But in the case of Freiren the way the final episode to air in 2023 doesn’t even finish the Arc it’s a part of is just really on the nose with it.

Now obviously a popular show from Fall having this role is partly a result of recency bias but ya know what as someone who’s actively tried to avoid that I feel like Fall 2023 may genuinely deserve it’s current dominance over the year as a whole simply because there aren’t a lot of Seasons that I’ve already completed this many shows from within a month of it ending, 9 TV Anime and two ONAs of comparable size to a TV Anime with more I likely will complete later (that's not counting how I've seen all of the 2023 episodes of Freiren).  There are older seasons I still haven’t watched close to that much of.

I do like Freiren, I’ve been recommending it as one of the best, not even vaguely Isekai like Fantasy Anime we’ve gotten in recent years. I recommend it to old fashioned Tolkien and Lewis style Fantasy nerds who have no tolerance for Anime BS.  But the thing is I am an Otaku, for my actual Anime rankings Anime BS is a feature not a bug and that’s just one reason Frieren isn’t in my top three even of Fall 2023 specifically.

First I’m gonna mention Spy x Family season 2, if you're gonna make a contender a show that is incomplete within the year in question I’d rather have an Arc that was built up to rather than an introduction.

But I think the actual best shows of Fall 2023 are two Netflix ONAs we got in October.  Good Night World and Pluto both get 10/10s from me, Frieren I doubt will get that even for the entire first season much less what is in 2023 on its own.  Pluto will likely be the subject of its own post on this Blog in the future.  Good Night World is a show I found fun and interesting from the start yet still managed to emotionally hit me way more than I expected.

But even comparing Freiren to other first cours of something still incomplete, SHY and I’m In Love With The Villainess both justified themselves as somewhat stand alone first seasons way more then the 2023 content for Freiren did even though Frieren had a few extra episodes to work with.  But I won’t put Freiren at the bottom of this sub sub category either, as much as I am still a fan of 100 Girlfriends I think it’s season 1 struggled with pacing slightly that form what I’ve heard about the Manga future seasons will at some point not have anymore.

There are at least  two TV Anime of Fall 2023 that stand on their own completely whether or not a season 2 of some sort ever happens and those are Tearmoon Empire and 16bit Sensation. 

All that is just Fall, shows from earlier seasons include second seasons for Jobless Reincarnation, Eminence in Shadow, Vinland Saga and The With From Mercury each of which I’d personally rank higher than Freiren.  Zom100 which was phenomenal.  Maybe some of you think I’m biased against Freiren for not being Actiony enough, well I also place Rant-a-Girlfriend season 3 above Frieren, and maybe also My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999.

Winter 2023 does compete with Fall 2023 in terms of how much of it I’ve completed.  But only 3 I’d call AOTY contenders, The Magical Revolution of The Reincarnated Princess and The Genius Young Lady, Onimai and Buddy Daddies each of them is better than Freiren.

Actually maybe a 4th if we count Eminence in Shadow Season 1, I would generally rather count a MAL entry that started the prior year rather than ended in the next one.  But in this case only 7 episodes of season 1 aired in 2023.  If we just counted all of Eminence as one candidate ignoring the MAL divisions it would be top 10 for certain.

So basically no Freiren as great as it is can’t even make my top 10 of 2023.

Even if your agenda is specifically to bias a Normie accessible show, Vinland Saga season 2 has even less Otaku elements then Frieren and Pluto is designed to be a new modern entry point to Anime's oldest franchise.

No movies are not worse now then they used to be.

People have always somewhat felt like the present quality of Cinema is the worst it's ever been, exactly how prominent that discourse is does have it's spikes and we seem to be in one right now.  "Justified" by how financially poorly the film industry did in 2023.  People are going to theaters less because of the lingering impact of the pandemic and normalization of streaming, I don't think it'll be permanent, I think it's gonna go up and down, but it definitely does not speak to the quality of 2023 films.

I even saw the title of a YouTube video I didn't watch explicitly saying "No you aren't just nostalgia blinded", I refused to even dignify such a claim with views.  I guarantee you in 20 years people will be Nostalgic for Phase 4 MCU and DCEU films and Live Action Disney remakes.

The current Golden Age people look back on is the 90s and early 2000s, but I unlike most my age don't just remember the movies from that time, I also remember the internet discourse around them, and it was essentially no different then now, only the details of the theories on why things got worse might have changed.

To an extent what percentage of movies are considered to be good or bad isn't actually viewed as being any different.  It's just that the "forgettable" movies of the past are forgotten and the old "bad" movies still considered bad people talk about in ways that emphasize their charm, how they're a product of their time made in ways you won't see today, or from a respected director who's fanboys refuse to see no value in even their "worst" films.  While everything today is just "soulless" focus tested corporate mandated garbage. 

And people who insist on maintaining that the reevaluated films shouldn't be reevaluated blame it on Meme Culture, on people watching bad movies ironically and Memeing themselves into liking them.  And that issue may tie into a potentially entirely different thesis, I may write something about the concept of "So Bad it's good".  With movies like the Star Wars Prequels it is well documented that the people who like them always existed, the GenX haters just lost their control of internet discourse.

However an interesting case study here is The Mummy film from 1999, the people hyping it up as an unironically great example of the kind of 90s/early 2000s film they don't make them like anymore seemingly don't even know there ever was an Internet Echo chamber that considered it a very bad movie and an example of how 90s and early 2000s attempts to "rip off" Indiana Jones pale in comparison to the real thing.  My memory of the era is that people who liked the movies existed but GenXers who hated it for not being a pure Horror Movie also largely dominated Internet Group think.

There are plenty of films, even Hollywood Genre films in 2023 that are not all that controversial to consider good, the Super Mario Bros movie, Across The Spiderverse, Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves, each considered perfectly fun movies that at the very least succeeded at what they were going for.

Now as far as the movies that I liked just fine but that enough Internet Group think makes them be perceived as failures, no thesis about why current movies are so bad fits.  Peter Coffin's "Wookieepeditis" thesis doesn't explain The Flash which made Canon more flexible then ever.  And culture war stuff influencing both films and internet discourse about them isn't new either, it's just the exact terminology that has changed.  

On the subject of Indiana Jones anyone who thinks Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is worth redeeming but not Dial of Destiny has no consistent logic, both are exactly parallel in how much they either follow or break from the formulae of the 80s Indiana Jones movies.

I'm also going to just assume Anime films aren't being considered in this Normie discourse since it's technically a completely different Industry.  But at any rate we got the best Detective Conan film in a decade, Maboroshi which I was not expecting but was awesome, a new Psycho-Pass movie that was great though I had issues with it's message which stem from those I always had even of the original show.  And a new Miyazaki film which I haven't seen and probably won't but most people seem to think lived up to the expectations.  I will see the Sailor Moon Cosmos films when they are Dubbed and I'm fairly confident they will be great.

There is a common claim some people make that children will enjoy everything they see and thus potentially be Nostalgic for it as Adults so the existence of very young people who liked something can never be a vindication.  Well I hated Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory as a kid, I have Anti-Nostalgia for that movie.  And it's not just that, even at my youngest there is plenty of stuff meant for my age demographic I saw and didn't enjoy.

My firm position is that if anyone liked something no matter how much I don't like it that vindicates it as being Good in some way, even children, especially children if they were even partially the target audience.  

The problem with Nostalgia, the thing that can make it Toxic, isn't the positive feelings it provides you for your happy memories of the past, that is objectively what's good about it.  It's when it causes you to irrationally hate the present by seeing every difference as only for the worse.  So what bugs me now is people ironically using their critiques of Nostalgia to justify saying movies are worse now because Hollywood can't make anything that isn't pandering to some generation's Nostalgia.

New IPs are being created for future generations to be nostalgic for, it just may less often be movies and Triple A Video Games.  And the truth is I think these people are massively underestimating how much of what they're Nostalgic for was also in part made to appeal to the Nostalgia of their Parents or Grandparents or even older siblings.  Millennials have Nostalgia for Tiny Toons and Muppet Babies and Adult Swim Cartoons which were made by GenXers to parody cartoons they were Nostalgic for, and Degrassi's reboot which seems to have overshadowed the original.  Hell I have a lot of Nostalgia for watching Nick at Night reruns of Happy Days.

Anime Recommendations for Inklings.

Anime is such a vast and diverse medium that I truly believe it has something for everyone even though a lot of it will struggle to appeal outside the specific subculture that created it.  So one recurring theme of this Blog is me as a person who was once a more normal western Nerd with a wide range of interests for a long time before Anime took over my brain appointing myself as an expert recommender.  And of course one of my top Western Nerdy interests is J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Now if any long time followers of this blog exist you may think I’ve already covered Tolkien and Lewis like Anime in various ways, but the truth is the prior examples of one or both of them and Anime coming up in the same post were more the other way around if anything.  In this post I want to focus on Anime that I think could have appealed to Tolkien and Lewis themselves if they were still around, not merely fans who like their work but also a lot of stuff very unlike them.

So for example while I’ve made a few posts on why Fantasy Anime even at its most Generic and Gamerfied would appeal to someone whose tastes in the Genre were shaped by them more then the slew of GOT wannabes that western “Prestige” television spewed out in the 2010s.  I am still not insane enough to think either of them would like a show that’s basically literally about being in a Video Game.

Maquia and Frieren are the top two Fantasy Anime I would truly call Tolkienesque.  Maybe Grimoire of Zero and Dawn of The Witch could fit in.  Something that actually qualifies as Isekai would have a better shot with Lewis then Tolkien but not most modern Isekai.  Lewis and Tolkien’s different views on Allegory would have me recommending something like Princess Tutu or an Ikuhara show to Lewis way before Tolkien.  The third Pokémon movie Spell of The Unown might be able to appeal to both.

Also Tolkien's anxieties about Technology and Nature make him a bit of a kindred spirit with Miyazaki but that's not something people needed me to learn about, there's already a YouTube Video Essay on it.  I have also already stated that the ending of Nausicaa counts as a Eucatastrophe, also an observation I didn't make on my own.

However I want to remind people that Tolkien was capable of enjoying more kinds of fiction than just the genre he's most well known for writing.  

For example I was intrigued when I learned that Tolkien was a fan of Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Now the first Anime that I would recommend to any Clarke fan is the Gundam franchise, the Childhood’s End influence is there right form the original Mobile Suit Gundam, I often feel like I’m the only western fan who notices that the term Newtype itself is basically a Childhood’s End reference.  However I feel the best Gundam in many ways including as a Clarke homage is Gundam 00, now 00 like a lot of non UC Gundam Anime in my opinion struggles in its early episodes. I was lucky I caught Gundam 00 randomly in the middle of season 1 on the SciFi channel.  (The Witch From Mercury finally avoided this problem by just making its Pilot a remake of Utena’s pilot).

Heck I’m gonna leave Anime for a second to mention how I see a lot of thematic similarities between Tolkien and the works of 19th Century French Novelist Paul Feval.  They are most apparent in The Companions of The Treasure the 6th and in my headcanon last Volume of The Blackcoats saga, a Tolkien fan reading it will be reminded of a number of things.  Part of it might be how Feval was also a Roman Catholic seemingly specifically to be contrarian (it wasn’t rare in his nation like it was Tolkien but was among those writing serialized novels for newspapers).

Anime that reminds me of Paul Feval are also something I’ve already talked about on this blog.  But which ones do so in specifically a way that speaks to why I compare Feval to Tolkien?  Well I suspect Princess Principal may exist at exactly the right crossroads for that.

Since Tolkien was a Linguist first and foremost he might have been amused by some of those Detective Conan episodes that play on language for a key clue.  Like episode 651 which used differences between the Kansai and Kanto dialects of Japanese.  Or that subplot from the latter part of the Clash and Red and Black where Conan used a sort of reverse Shiboleth.  

Thing is I have no idea if Tolkien ever had any interest in Detective Fiction as a genre.  Lewis did make a Sherlock Holmes reference once and I will definitely recommend Detective Conan aka Case Closed to any Holmes fan, it’s a way better modern reimagining then what the BBC and Hollywood have given us in the last 20 years.

Given the interest Tolkien seemed to have in the idea of Cursed objects that kind of Doom their possessor I’m almost inclined to wonder if even Death Note would have an appeal.

Update February 10th: I recently learned about both Tolkien and Lewis being fans of Voyage to Arcturus thanks to the Media Death Cult youtube channel.  I'm sure there are a number of Anime you could compare to Arcturus but they aren't on the tip of my tong right now.

Update November 18th 2025: Narnia is the obvious C.W. Lewis reference for discussing Isekai, but  when I watch one of the rare Isekai that actually at first tries to have the protagonist communicate with the residents of the new world through a language barrier instead of immediately ignoring or handwaving that issue, I immediately think of Out of The Silent Planet when Ransom first meets Hyoi and begins learning the Hross language.   I wish I could remember which Isekai those were off the top of my head, it kinda happen in YU-NO which doesn't become an Isekai till episode 18.

I remember reading once about how the climax of Peralandra is compared to The Lord of The Rings because they both involved a confrontation in a subterranean cavern where the villain winds up falling into lava.  And today as I rewatched my favorite Anime Noir I realized how it's final confrontation can also be described the same way.

Update March 2024: And ya know what that also applies to the ending of Fate/Stay Night Heaven's Feel too.

Update August 9th 2026: I feel like adding that The Ribbon Hero has scenes that feel like what an Anime adaptation of The Fall of Gondolin could look like.

Valarin could be based on Hebrew

Valarin is arguably the most mysterious of the languages that help define the world of Tolkien’s Legendarium. We don’t know nearly as much about it as we do the main Elvish Languages.  And the first question often is was some real world Language the inspiration? Quenya’s starting point was Finnish, Sindarin’s was Welsh and the Language of the Rohirrim is meant to be imaginable as an ancestor of Old English.  With Valarin however no one is certain which, if any, real world language we should look to.

Valarin is the native tongue of the Ainur, a group further subdivided between Valar and Maiar, beings that are essentially what Abrahamic religions call Angels.  Angel comes from the Greek Angelos used to translate the Hebrew Malak both words mean Messenger because serving as God’s messengers to humans is the function they are usually serving when they show up in The Bible but it's perhaps not what these beings would call themselves, nor is it the only term they’re ever called in The Bible.  Likewise Vala and Maia are Quenya names given to these beings by the Elves.

The assumption has long existed among many theologians that the Language of the Angels would have to be Hebrew or something very similar, after all the only two named Angels in Scripture have Hebrew names even when mentioned in the Greek New Testament books.  Today it may mainly be certain fringe sects of American Evangelical Fundamentalism most likely to make a big deal out of if that is the case or not, but it is historically not unique to them.  John Dee devised Enochian as a hypothetical Angelic Language basing it on Hebrew.  And I’m sure there have been Catholics (Tolkien’s denomination) who have agreed.

What little we know about Valarin in Tolkien’s Legendarium is in-universe filtered through the perspective of the Elves.  I imagine that even in Valinor communication between the Elves and Ainur usually involved the Ainur speaking Elvish rather than the other way around.  Nonetheless the Elves were exposed to some Valarin words and some Quenya words are said to be Valarin loan words.  However I really think we should not rule out that the Elves may have often misheard, mispronounced and misunderstood the meanings of the Valarin words that entered their vocabulary.  Plus some of it comes in-universe from people no longer in Valinor speculating ages later.

Consider how the known real world history of Hebrew names being transliterated into European languages by Christians includes such end results as Moshe becoming Moses, Slomoh becoming Solomon, Yeshua became Jesus and the four letter name YHWH having such varied interpretations as Yahweh and Jehovah (I personally view Yahuah as the correct form).

The first Valarin word I want to discuss is the name of Orome’s horse Nahar, now the Roman spelling of the Valarin original form is presented as Næχærra (the apparent X there is actually Chi a symbol for the -ch sound) but presenting the casual form as Nahar makes a possible Hebrew basis obvious.  Nahar resembles two Hebrew words due to there being two Hebrew letters that can become an H in English.  One is the Hebrew word for River but the other the KJV translated "Nostrils": or "Snorting" and in it the letter used for H is the letter that is also the Hebrew letter for -ch, and in both Job 39:19-20 and Jeremiah 8:16 it is associated with the sound a Horse makes.

The next Valarin word I want to discuss is machanaz (machanumaz being the plural) which is said to mean Authorities and is the root of a term for the Aratar the Eight highest ranked of the Valar.  The Hebrew word I think this could come from is machaneh which means company or camp or host and is used in Genesis 32:2 to refer to “God’s host”.  Also look at the -um being added to make it plural, that could come from Elves mishearing -im which is the most common Hebrew suffix to convey plurality.

Aman the Blessed Land the name of the Continent on which Valinor resides is a name Tolkien originally presented as coming from a Quenya name meaning Good but he later decided it was Valarin in origin.  Aman is also a Hebrew word that in the KJV is translated things like Assurance, Believed, Faithful, Nursed, Steadfast, Trusted and Trusty.

Ainu comes from the Valarin word Ayanuz. As a Quenya word Ainu means Holy One but that could be a meaning the Elves gave the name because they viewed the Aniur as Holy, or they named the concept of Holiness after these semi divine beings they interacted with.  Ayanuz could come from the Hebrew word Ayin meaning Eye (and it’s the name of the Hebrew letter this word begins with) or ayam which means Mighty and began with the same letter.   There is a good real world Proto Indo-European etymology for Aina the Quenya word for Holy, it might be the Elves connected this name to a phonetically similar word.

Honeyed Wine is the meaning of mirubhoze.  One Hebrew word for Wine is tiryowsh and the Hebrew word for Honey is dbash. Now this is more of a stretch then my prior examples but I still consider it plausible, perhaps as a Mondogreen form listening to a Valarin song.

Even the name of Arda is said to be Valarin in origin.  That name is related to many Germanic words for Earth including Earth itself but the Afrikaans Aarde is the closest.  But plenty of Semitic words for Earth happen to seem phonetically similar like the Hebrew Erets and the Arabic ‘ard.  However the stated Valarin name for Arda is Aþāraphelūn which is supposed to mean “appointed dwelling”.  Palon/Pelon is a Hebrew word from the root Palah meaning separate.  The Athara part could come from atar/atarah which means compass or crown conveying the idea of a circle.

Before I discuss any more confirmed Valarin words or names, I want to speculate on a few names designated Quenya but that could have involved Valarin loanwords that Tolkien never explicitly told us were.

Melkor is the name that is often referred to as the original name of the Legendarium’s Satan figure before he was given the obviously derogatory name Morgoth.  But Melkor is presented as a Quenya name that even it may not have been his original name, Melkor is said to mean “he who rises in might”.  In some Tolkien YouTube videos I’ve noticed when people quote older abandoned versions of the tales Melkor is often more simply Melko.  On Tolkien Gateway other early forms of the name are listed as Belcha, Melegor and Meleko and the meaning is simply “The Mighty One”. 

I can’t help but see a connection to the Hebrew word for King which is Melek and how the first King in The Bible is Nimrod the Mighty Hunter.  Examples in real world history of named derived in whole or in part from this word include Melchi and Melchior. 

The word Melek is associated with Satan first and foremost in Ezekiel 29 starting in verse 11 where the Melek of Tyre is a Cherub in contrast to the mere human Nagyim of Tyre in the prior verses.  I believe this passage is in part identifying Satan with Melqart/Melkart the Patron deity of Tyre who’s name is interpreted as meaning “King of the City”.  He’s also the “King of Babylon” in Isaiah 14 who desires to place his throne above the Most High, to “Rise in Might”. 

However the deity name Moloch is also just Melek with different vowel indicators and some scholars think those different vowel indicators came later and originally every reference to Moloch/Milcom was just the Hebrew word for King/Kings.  Moloch references include most of the Human Sacrifices documented in the Hebrew Bible which is why he’s sometimes viewed as the most Evil pagan god The Scripture references even more so than Baal.  But it’s also possible if Moloch was a distinct deity name at all it was just the Ammonite name for Hadad who the Canaanites called Baal and the Moabites called Chemosh.

The conception of Satan that Morgoth is based on isn’t actually Biblical, it’s founded upon layers of Extra-Biblical Fan Fiction culminating in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  Now many today don’t know this but John Milton was actually a political radical of his time who argued in his nonfiction writings that the very concept of having a King other than God Himself is Idolatry.  Satan in Paradise Lost is a manifestation of that idea, the first and ultimate False King.  So a post Milton depiction of Satan being basically named King kind of fits.

The characterization of Melkor/Morgoth in the various First Age stories is that he begins mostly motivated by a desire to Dominate to Control to Rule.  In other words to be the God-King of Arda.

Of the two main names used for The Monotheistic God of Tolkien’s Legendarium, Iluvatar is the most straightforward having its real world etymology firmly in Quenya’s Finnish roots.  Eru however is very mysterious and I was indeed shocked to learn it’s NOT one of the names officially confirmed to be Valarin, it sure doesn’t seem even close to Finnish, Yksi is the Finnish word for One.  Speaking of Eru meaning The One, I personally want that to actually be an Elvish mistake.  In my opinion it is bad form for a Trinitarian to give God a name that mean The One and flat out heretical to name Him “He that is Alone”, calling your theological First Principal by such titles is an influence of Pythagoreanism and Platonism calling it The Monad.  The New Testament and Early Christians preferred Eis Theos and Mia Theos to Mono Theos.  Eis and Mias like the Hebrew Eched means one as in United or Unified not an Absolute Only One.

The phenomena of the sound represented by the letter L being mispronounced as an R is NOT in fact unique to Japanese or other East Asian Languages.  Back in my youth long before I got into any of the Weeb stuff I’m into now I always misheard the L in the middle of the word Colonel as an R, consistently no matter who said it, at first I was unable to recognize it in print because I’d heard it that way so consistently. [Update: Name Explain now has a video on Colonel.]

I’m bringing this up because coincidentally El the Hebrew word for God is one of a few Gaijin words that the Japanese tend to pronounce Eru, others include the Spanish definite article and the English name of the letter L.  Most times I’ve seen or heard Eru in Japanese media it’s been the Spanish reference like the title of the Anime El Cazador de la Bruja (The Hunter of The Witch) the first part of which gets pronounced Eru Kazado.  However there is a Visual Novel called You and Me and Her: A Love Story where a Cat is named Eru and the credits say Eru has the same voice actor as God.

So what I’m getting at is maybe Eru came from some Elf mishearing or mispronouncing El under the right circumstances.  Or a shortening of a mishearing or mispronouncing of Elah or Eloah or Elohim.

Yavanna seems to be the first of the Valar (going through them in Valaquenta order) whose name isn’t said to be Valarin in origin.  Yet I can’t help but notice how much it looks like a feminine form of Yavan, the Hebrew name for Greece.  The Strongs says the name is related to Yayin, another Hebrew word for Wine which fits the Fruit connection of Yavanna’s name.  I’m trying to think of reasons that it would culturally or religiously make sense to fan theorize that Primitive Greece descended from particular followers of Yavanna, I suppose the standard practices of Interpretatio graeca would identify Yavanna with Gaia, Cybele or Magna Mater, but even that feels like a bit of a stretch. [Update February 9th: I've looked into some theories about Dione and Dodona and now think she may work.]

There are other names that look instantly Hebrew when I look at them even though I can’t imagine how the name could in universe be Valarin in origin, like how Gilgalad reminds me of Gilgal and Beor is the name of the father of the first King of the Edomites in Genesis 36.  Any other writer of European style Fantasy I’d just chalk it up to how Biblical Names entered our vocabulary and this writer didn’t think about where they came from.  But Tolkien was specifically a Linguist first and foremost.  If he knowingly put Hebrew names in there he did so for a reason.

I’m going to cover some more confirmed Valarin in origin words now, but I’m growing less certain how to make them fit my Valarin=Hebrew hypothesis, everything above is the foundation of it.

The name of Varda comes from the Quenya root Barada which means Subline, Exalted or Lofty and is said to be a Valarin loan word.  Baalath is a Hebrew name derived from Baalah meaning Mistress or Lady.

Manawenuz is the Valarin name of Manwe and I can’t help but jump to connecting it to Manehem a Hebrew name that means Comforter and thus possibly the Hebrew concept behind the Paraclete of John and 1 John and is also a name a number of Jewish traditions have given to Messiah Ben David.  Now fully identifying Manwe with either Jesus or The Holy Spirit would be a type of Arianism which I don’t believe Tolkien was going for, the Finrod ap Andreth established that Eru himself will incarnate as a Human to bring about the final healing of Arda.  But you can still argue Manwe is typologically stewarding the Seat of Authority destined for the future Incarnate Eru.

Ulluboz as the proposed root of Ulmo I speculate could come from Alluwph a Hebrew word that is sometimes translated Captain.

Aule’s name is said to come from Valarin Aȝūlēz.  Ayal is a Hebrew word meaning strength.  

Nessa’s name is suggested to be Valarin according to Pengolodh.  There are two Hebrew words I considered since Hebrew has two letters for S.  The shin one would be Nasa which means to carry or bear something, and the Samek one would be Nacah which means Adventure, Prove or Try.

Aromez as the origin of Orome could be related to Arumah a Hebrew name derived from the root rumah which means height.  Or from ‘orem which means craftiness.

Atharaigas as a name for The Sun could have its roots first in again atar/atarah meaning compass/crown/circle and Ygiya meaning Labor or Work. 

Osse’s name could be related to Hosea, a Hebrew name that means deliverer.

Ezellochar could come from Ezel meaning departure and achar meaning next.  How that’s a fitting name for the location of the two trees I’m unsure.

Machananaskad likely begins with machaneh again since it is a name for the meeting place of the Aratar. The next part could be nashaq which means armed. 

Jobless Reincarnation not Mushoku Tensei is the Anime I started liking.

Or rather Mushoku Tensei is an Anime I only like Dubbed.

I was late to trying this show in the first place, when I finally watched it even the second cour of season 1 had already been Dubbed for awhile though season 2 was still in the future.  What turned me off from watching for so long even though I actually like Isekai being an overplayed trend right now is the way it was talked about by many of it's fans.  How it was painted as almost a "Deconstruction" of the Isekai genre know it all Anitubers were getting tired of, (or "Unbuilt Trope" for those selling that "Grandfather of Isekai" narrative).  That it was about how Rudy is a bad person because he's a degenerate Otaku and the show is about his redemption arc.

When I finally watched it however I concluded it was another show that the Anti-Otaku types were trying to impose that moralizing narrative on.  That whatever criticisms the show does have of Rudeus's character none of it is because he was an Otaku.  And a large part of what lead me to that conclusion is in Episode 5 in the kidnapping incident after thinking in his head about the lessons he learned from Dating Sims accidently says out loud "Money can't buy Waifus".  And that moment instantly assured me this wasn't an Anti-Otaku show,, it was an Otaku affirming show.

Thing is recently as I watched a Mushoku Tensei youtuber talking about a very different issue she said something about the Kidnapping Incident that made me start to think there was a fundamental change in meaning in the Dub of this scene.  So I went to Hulu found the subbed version of this scene and indeed it's different.

1. The Inner Monologue talks instead about how he regretted wasting so much of his old life playing VNs and video games.

2. The key line is instead "Money can't buy Dere".

Number 2 is a difference that doesn't matter, Western Otaku don't use "Dere" on it's own like that so it's a Dub decision I'd defend but wouldn't see as an improvement inherently.

Number 1 is the issue.  Leaning about number one makes me fear the show is what I feared it was all along.  No it's still not blaming VNs/Dating Sims themselves for anything per se, but I want more then that from my Otaku Hero's Journeys, I want Otaku values and Otaku Media to be explicitly affirmed not merely tolerated at best.  I want them to be the reason for our protagonists' virtues not in any way related to their vices.

And this isn't the only Dub vs Sub difference along these lines.  As I learned from Explanation's Point's horrible video on the show after Rudeus's first almsot night with Eris, in the Sub the ideas he learned from Dating Sims are blamed for what happened while in the Dub he blames himself for failing to learn from them.  And so I start wondering how many other times the Dub changes are being more approving of Otakudom?

Now if this Blog has any Normie readers you're probably baffled at the prospect of saying a show should teach the Dating Sims/VNs are a good place to learn about how to treat women.  Well they may not be the absolute best place, but the thing is there are plenty of good thoughtful Dating Sims that are trying to educate their male players on exactly the gender issues these cynical Anti-Otaku think the medium as whole merely uncritically reproduces.  Especially among the classic 90s Bishojo Games that the 16bit Sensation was appealing to nostalgia for.  Amilee Doree is a YouTuber who's a woman who's talked about those kinds of VNs fighting to give them the credit they deserve.  

But this is also a localization change worth talking about for how it's the opposite of what most of these modern Anti-Dub reactionary Anime fans think is driving the makers of modern Funimation/Crunchyroll Dubs.  They think these Texans are hyper Woke scolds trying to appeal to the Noralities types even though it's them who made the Ghost Stories Dub.  A Dub that is explicitly more Pro-Otaku then the Sub should absolutely destroy their entire world view, but instead no one's talking about it.

Now there are a lot of good reasons to mock Explanation Points in his bad Rudeus video, but the fact that he said he was unsure which was more accurate to the Japanese is not one, Subs can make translations mistakes as well. There is good reason many assume they'd be smaller and that a reinterpretation of the text that virtually reverses the meaning could only be made by a Dub.  But as someone constantly going back and editing really embarrassing typos on this very Blog I know full well how easily forgetting to include one word can completely reverse the meaning of what I meant to say.  The fact is the simple fact that the Sub was made day of broadcast while the Dub had at least a couple weeks means it had for better or for worse more thought put into it.

Now that LN readers seem to affirm the accuracy of the Sub here is the main reason I think the Sub is probably accurate.  They of course are reading those LNs via translations and this Anime has not always been faithful to the LNs  But still I will concede that in all likelyhood the Sub is what's accurate.

But I don't actually care about Accuracy, the Dub versions of these two scenes is what I prefer for ideological reasons that don't even relate to why I generally watch Dubs in the first place.

Nintendo was right to stick with Cartridges for the Fifth Generation

So many YouTube videos on gaming history still repeat the old conventional wisdom that Nintendo’s refusal to jump to CDs right away was one of the greatest blunders of all time.  And I’m tired of it.

No one denies that Nintendo 64 Games like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were the key groundbreaking developments of true fully 3D Gaming.  The original PlayStation and Sega Saturn never made a fully 3D game like those.  And what is more well known to non industry insiders now than it used to be is that if Nintendo had jumped to CDs that console Generation they would not have been able to make those games for it.  So many 3rd Parties wanted the CDs because they wanted FMVs and less limited audio options, but there was a trade off for that which fans and journalists didn’t understand at the time.  Nintendo then like now prioritized actual innovation in how Games are played over flashy cosmetic things that look cool in a trailer.  

And the thing about Final Fantasy VII is that the FMVs are exactly the part of the game that visually hasn’t aged well.  Most of the time I find these failed attempts at “cinematic” animation ugly and would much rather have watched those scenes play out with the charming 32 bit models.  The only one that works is the opening Cinematic, but it’s so minimalist compared to the others that when I look at CutScenes in N64 Games like Jet Force Gemini and Majora’s Mask I see no reason the same scene couldn’t have been done on it.

And another thing, the Sony PlayStation launched in 1994, it was on North American store shelves in September of 95.  Yet the great Iconic PlayStation games didn't start coming out till 1997.  It took seeing Nintendo break 3D ground in the spring of 96 for them to even start tapping their own inferior console’s full potential.

Yet still so many of those 97 PlayStation Games do nothing in the actual game play that couldn’t be done on the N64, in fact I see little that couldn’t be done on the SNES.

And it’s not like only Nintendo themselves could make great games for the N64.  Rare had a slew of Classics.  And then look at what Star Wars did on the Console, Shadows of The Empire, Rogue Squadron and Pod Racer.  George Lucas had a similar innovation over superficiality spirit to Nintendo so it makes sense his IPs were among the few licensed games on the N64.

The FFVII we got was a great game, but it could have been so much better on the N64.

By the next gen things had advanced enough so using CDs wouldn't hold Nintendo back mechanically anymore. 

Environmentalist Allegories in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have a common recurring problem

From Final Fantasy VII in 1997 to Darling in The Franxx in 2018, but also in between many interpretations of how and why Krypton blew up.  The common tactic is to allegorize it so it’s that Humanity or the Evil Corporations are killing the Earth via what they take out of it, essentially being Parasites who are Vampirizing The Earth.  

That is a problem because the actual issue with real life Climate Change is the opposite, the Fossil Fuels themselves are just Ancient Prehistoric Garbage in and of itself removing them from the earth isn’t a problem.  The problem is how the Atmosphere is poisoned by the byproduct of burning those fuels.  The primary issue is what we’re putting in, not what we're taking out.

Now I don’t think a good Allegory needs to be a perfect 1 to 1 allegory, my opinion on allegory in general is similar to Tolkien’s.  For example in a JRPG type setting having the energy source also be a source of Magic makes perfect sense.

So you may wonder what the problem even is?  The problem is getting the nature of how we are harming the planet reversed makes it a lot harder to propose any useful solutions, since both scenarios also have it so we need to do more than just stop, we also need to fix the damage already done somehow.

The truth is something like The Lifestream to me would make a better allegory for the renewable energies we want to encourage. On a Metaphysical level I have trouble believing something like that could ever be depleted.

It’s not a coincidence that this mistake is made so many times however.  It’s a product of the desire to tie environmentalism to mysticism, making The Earth itself a Deity we are taking from and not giving back to.  But also way back in the day the issue of CO2 emissions caused by Fossil Fuels wasn’t even the original main concern of the Environmentalist movement, it first grew out of Conservationism, concerns about things like Deforestation.  The thing is as bad as Deforestation can be, it's not the irreversible damage that CO2 emissions are becoming, it does make that problem worse, but it isn't the main source.  [Update:  I do believe Reforestation is a vital part of combating Climate Change which is why it really annoys me when Anti-Zionists try to paint Israel Reforestation of land Deforested by the Roman, Muslim and Ottoman Empire.]

The Irony about how these tropes pop up even in Japanese media is that I feel it would actually fit Japanese Mysticism more.to make it a matter of poisoning the Life Force of The Planet rather than Vampirising it.  Shinto mysticism includes a concept called Kagere, direct references to which in Anime often get translated as "Sullied".  The concept of a spiritual pollution tied to immoral or even merely taboo acts or sometimes just negative emotions.  Plenty of Anime and Video Games have concepts that definitely feel to me like a fantastical adaptation of that concept given a new name, Miasma gets used a lot, the recent Zelda Games have Malice/Gloom, Tales of Zestiria has Maleficence, Fate/Stay Night has it's Grail Mud.  Now I consider this concept an unhealthy and toxic way to look at morality, but as a Fantastical allegory for CO2 emissions I think it would be much better.  Make it the source of your Dark Magic and the Planet’s Life Force the source of the regular Magic.

Another thing both FFVII and Franxx have in common is that in the backstory actual Fossil Fuels had been the dominant form of energy production before the villains of the story succeeded in imposing their system on the world.   And that is where the concerns I’m talking about here are parallel to the main point of my blog post titled Dystopian Science Fiction only Reinforces the Real World Status Quo.  Making your allegory for fossil fuels something that replaced what it's an allegory for makes it so many won’t see it as an allegory for that at all.  Fears that what we might replace Fossil Fuels with could turn out to be worse have long been a vital tactic of how Fossil Fuel Energy companies suppress alternatives, Nuclear Energy never took off in the United States because shows like The Simpsons present it as cartoonishly toxic and dangerous.

I imagine critics of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII who come at it from a Leftist perspective see all the stuff about rebuilding the Fossil Fuel Industry in stories set after the original game as Recuperation, but that an Oil Industry being suppressed by ShinRa helped cause the crisis was part of the Lore already in the original game, that wasn’t something added later.

Both these stories I actually like overall, I defended the later part of Franxx in 2018 when doing so was not very popular, and FFVII’s lore intrigues me for how it can intentionally or not be read as Stoic and how I think it’s thematically more like Tolkien then any Medieval setting JRPG.  This is just one critique I felt had to be made.