Confession of an Erstwhile Anime Fan

[rynling]

I'm sitting there watching moé shows like.



Although to be honest I'm not sure I even like anime anymore?

I recently made this observation to a friend of mine, and he was like, "How can you dislike an entire medium?" Idk, when an entire medium is either creeping on adolescent girls or following screaming teenagers across an endless series of battles, it's difficult to stay interested after ten years. I'm still vaguely into cinema anime and experimental anime and anime-style fan art, but I think it's time to give up on catgirls in maid uniforms.

Comments

[renegadefolkhero]

It seems like there was an uptick in availability of domestic translations in the late nineties/early aught, and I had friends who were really into anime, and I ended up watching A LOT of stuff and I never really recovered.

I mean, I binge-watched Evangelion over two days. Total blur, all I remember is giant Rei heads. To this day, whenever I see any kind of mecha-anything my instinct is to jump out a window.

[flonnebonne]

I felt the same way around 2006-2012, and I think there was a glut of moe anime at the time, but now it seems like there is plenty for me to watch. Like...farming anime. And anime about making anime (it's actually more an anime about office work than anything else).

I still like screaming teenager battle anime, but they have to be screaming about the right things.

[rynling]

What are you watching this season???

I'm following Durarara!! X2 and Wakaba＊Girl, and I'm considering getting into either Rokka or GANGSTA, but I'm still finishing up Yurikuma Arashi from this past winter season. I've also started watching episodes of the old Sailor Moon before I go to bed because there is something wrong with me.

I agree that it's very important to scream the right things, which mainly consist of your team members' names.

[rynling]

I had exactly the same experience with Eva.

People keep trying to get me to watch mecha shows put out by Sunrise, and I am like, NOPE nope nope nope.

Instead I have turned into one of those adult men who watches shows about high school girls, Cthulhu help me.

One of these days I will be detained at the Canadian border, and they will take one look at the Yotsuba&! desktop background on my laptop and arrest me for attempting to bring obscene material into their country. I will be sent to Canadian prison, where I will find out that all of the miscreant lumberjacks there are also into anime, and we will put together our own prison anime convention, which will feature all sorts of moé cosplay...

...wait what?

[flonnebonne]

These are not necessarily from the season!

Farming anime - Silver Spoon (Gin no Saji). Occasionally boring or annoying, but the hard moral questions about where our food comes from make it worth it. Also the kids sometimes use some country hick Japanese, which gets me right here because that's the kind of Japanese my students used when I lived there.

anime about anime - Shirobako (White Box - but no one ever calls it that). Really gets into the nitty gritty of making anime. It's a lot of work. The main character isn't an animator though--she's a production assistant, which means she overseas the whole process of making a show, not just the drawing part. She has to organize the hell out of everything. They ask lots of good questions about human creativity, the sacrifices we make for work, work relationships, etc. And most of the main characters are girls helping each other out. :)

Parasyte - this is one of the screaming teenagers battling eternally ones. The first episode is horrifying, but the you get used to it. Like Silver Spoon, it makes you think about the food chain. But we're not at the top of it in this show, so, uh, consider that fair warning.

Ace of Diamond - baseball. I absolutely hate the first episode, but I absolutely fell in love with the show after a while.

Girly shows (these are all just okay):

-chihayafuru - about the card/poem game karuta (there's also another show that expressly explains the poems, but I forgot what it is called)

-my love story (ore monegatari) - romance - guy is huge and strong, girl is tiny and cute, seriously, that is the premise

-gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun (monthly shoujo magazine nozaki-kun) - romance and comedy - anime about making manga, supposedly, but it's mainly about shoujo tropes.

[flonnebonne]

Oh yeah, and I'm watching the new sailor moon too, even though it is like why I am I watching this zzzzzz. We are all suckers.

[rynling]

Yeah they fucking tricked us.

I tried to hard to like the show, but it eventually defeated me after about fifteen episodes. Where is the camp? The stupid jokes? The shitty voice acting? The ridiculous monsters? What did they do with all the gay???

[rynling]

Oooohhhhh I have been thinking about watching Shirabako and Parasyte. Thanks for the recommendation!

I started watching Silver Spoon, and I loved it, but then I stopped for some reason. I'm still following the manga version, though. Even though I have trouble with the language sometimes...

Speaking of which, the Ore Monegatari manga is the best. I hear that Viz is translating it, and I hope the license makes a ton of money.

[flonnebonne]

The Ore Monegatari anime is exceedingly cute! Love the intro song and the art style. I sometimes wish it were not so episodic--conflicts are all solved within one or two episodes--but it is still one of the few slice-of-life shows I'm watching.

Oh, that reminds me. You might like Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon) if you are tired of screaming fighting teenagers. Slice of life + jazz + a bit of history.

[flonnebonne]

EXACTLY. Even the bad animation isn't the right kind of bad animation. It is just really boring bad animation.