30 Day Anime Challenge #6 – An Anime I Want to See, But Haven’t Yet

For the past few prompts I’ve lamented the fact that I seem unable to provide straightforward answers to what I’m positive were created to be very straightforward questions. Since I’ve been using them not for their intended purpose, but more as ways to jump-start my writing again after a few days of writers’ block, once I start typing up an answer it tends to un-cork all sorts of complicated feelings about my own anime fandom and they ways in which I interact with the medium that I love. This prompt, however, feels a little less heavy; maybe it’s because asking about things that haven’t been done yet opens up a new world of possibilities for the person answering the question, rather than drumming up old, complicated feelings from the past.

As an anime fan who watches an above-average (but no longer obscene) amount of anime every season, I’ve made some peace with the fact that there are always anime series that seem to fall through the cracks. Maybe the series got mediocre initial reviews and was generally overlooked, only to reveal itself as interesting later on. Maybe it was released on an odd schedule (for example – everything on Netflix). Maybe it just appeared as an also-ran in an anime season that was already full of great things to watch. Whatever the reason, I constantly have a sense that I’m missing out on watching things that I might like, or not giving series enough of a chance to “prove themselves” before I move on to something that better suits my tastes. It’s tough to always second-guess my fandom choices and I haven’t found a good (and time-respectful way) to quash that feeling completely.

On the up-side, I’ve gotten better at both dropping series that turn out to be duds, as well as simply giving up on the obligation to watch as many anime series as free time allows. I decided long ago that, though anime is my primary hobby, I like to do other things with my day as well (which even occasionally includes going outside the house). This, of course, means that I’m still constantly behind on things I’d like to someday watch, and there are just too few hours in the day with which to make more of an effort. I’ve joked that the anime industry will have to go through another crash so that I’ll have time to catch up with everything (no, I don’t actually want that to happen… please pay for anime discs, merch, and streaming services!).

That’s a lot of time spent making excuses about how my exceedingly long list of “want-to-watch” anime series came to be. Unfortunately the list grows more and more each season, but I’ll pick out a few of my top priorities to talk about. All the series below are those which I haven’t watched yet (at least beyond a possible preview episode or similar). There are various reasons why I’ve never watched them – mostly due to time constraints, but I’ll get into my other reasons as we go.

My Hero Academia

I suppose this is the elephant in the room here. It’s sort of an open secret that I tend not to watch as many of the most popular anime series out there. A lot of very popular anime is broadcast for a long, long time, and I’ve found that I tend to lost interest in long-running series pretty quickly (I got about 7 episodes into Bleach and that was it). I also went through a period of time where I assumed that anime that were very popular were such because they appealed to a “lowest common denominator” fan base. I’m not proud of that belief, but I carried it with me for longer than I’d like to admit. I’m not sure when it was that I started to feel my attitude shifting, but at some point I noticed that my personal tastes were beginning to cross over more with what the fandom in general was enjoying. I’m guessing that anime streaming played a big part in this, because suddenly the type of series that appealed to me were more available to all. Likewise, the general ease of watching streaming anime in one or two places made it more likely for me to keep up with things I might not if I had to go through the trouble of finding it via other means.

That doesn’t mean I left all of my prejudices in the dust, though. I still have a general disinterest in typical shounen tournament-style anime, for various reasons. I have a difficult time relating to the protagonists, and as I mentioned, these series tend to go on for a long time and lose their focus along the way which becomes frustrating. In the time it might take me to watch one long-running shounen series, I might be able to toss back a dozen series that are more to my typical tastes.

My Hero Academia fell victim to this disinclination of mine. The series itself has actually taken seasonal breaks, so it’s not really the length that’s the issue; I could probably pack away its 60-some episodes in a matter of a few weeks if I really wanted to. But my prejudiced self took one look at its main character – a spunky green-haired shounen with a heart of gold and a “ganbarimasu” attitude and decided that it just wasn’t for me.

Luckily I have enthusiastic friends and follow some animation-centric blogs, so I have some idea of what I’ve been missing. If there’s one thing that can get me to check something out, it’s the promise of a good climactic moment with animation quality to match. I manage an AMV contest at an anime convention I’m a part of and have gotten a good taste of some of the anime’s great scenes that way (it’s a popular source material, obviously). I also constantly see a lot of cool cuts and clips posted to twitter which, though they lack context for a non-viewer like me, have gotten me hungry for more. I’m perfectly fine watching anime that’s barely-animated in the first place; I’m here for the stories and character drama. But I’ll be darned if my knees don’t buckle for some 10,000+frame episode goodness.

I also have a couple of friends who are passionate about the series. This isn’t to say that one has to watch an anime just because one’s friends do, but when someone you like really, really enjoys something and wants to share that joy with the world, it’s difficult to resist the wave of their passion. In a larger sense, while I don’t think that this is true of absolutely everything, if a large segment of the anime fandom seems to agree that something has merit, it’s likely that it has some merit. Just saying. Someday I hope to verify this for myself.

Space Dandy

Ah, Space Dandy. I was so excited for this series to arrive, and I watched the premier live on Adult Swim (even though I tend not to watch English dubs regularly). Boy, was I feeling ambivalent afterward! I loved the animation and the action, but really disliked the characters, especially Dandy and his attitude around women. While I don’t think the series ever became a mega-hit, it was generally well-regarded and yet I couldn’t bring myself to watch more after that. I’m sure part of that was due to the personal situation I was in at the time (I won’t go into the details, but I wasn’t feeling very upbeat or interested in much of anything), but I think on some level the feelings themselves were genuine, if somewhat amplified.

It wasn’t until some time afterward that I realized the potential value of the series. It’s the type of anime without a real plot; its story is repeated with variations over and over again throughout the various episodes. But those episodes are all handled by various creative minds from throughout the world of Japanese animation, and that’s the aspect that’s made me want to give it a second look. If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s watching very creative people take an idea and run with it, demonstrating their great talent as they go. And again, the promise of interesting, expressive animation when there’s often such a dearth of that in anime certainly adds some additional appeal.

While I doubt I’ll ever be able to overlook the fanservicey aspects of the show (you’re not satirizing something if you’re literally just doing that thing with zero substantial commentary!), I think my desire to see animators and directors at their very best could outweigh my aversion to the characters’ more irritating characteristics.

Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter

I’m fairly certain that this series fell victim both to Amazon’s poor handling of their anime properties, as well as my general aversion towards 3DCG anime.

Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter is an adaptation of a Swedish children’s novel, presented by none other than Studio Ghibli. That alone is fairly notable as they’ve never really dabbled in serialized TV animation (though many of the famous faces in the company started off in the industry as animators and directors with other classic children’s TV series). I’d overlooked the show due to its poor availability (its arrival on Amazon was some time later than its actual broadcast) and, as I said, my dislike of 3DCG anime. Unlike a lot of Western CG animation,  I feel that computer animation in Japan more so tends towards attempted replication of hand-drawn 2D animation, and even as the years go by I still consider it a poor facsimile most of the time. The most successful example, in my opinion, is Land of the Lustrous, and even that has plenty of “off” moments. Ronja was created earlier and rendered more poorly, from what I can see.

What rekindled my interest in the show was a panel that my husband and I ran at CONvergence this past Summer. We did a presentation on “Anime for Kids,” and while we spent the most time talking about series and movies we’d actually watched that would be good for kids and their parents to view together, I did a little bit of extra research beforehand on series I wasn’t as familiar with. That’s when Ronja came up again. I ended up reading several of the user reviews on Amazon and many of them elaborated on how the series was great to watch as a family, and espoused good values like overcoming differences and living together harmoniously.

I’ve filed this series away for a time when (if?) we ever successfully procreate, because I hope that my child(ren) might someday share my love for anime, and I’d love to have some in my back pocket to help build their interest (and which I can also tolerate watching).

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There are probably dozens more series that I could easily add to this list. One of the things that’s great about being into anime is that there’s just so darn much of it: Crunchyroll alone has literally hundreds of series available to watch, and they’re just one streaming service of several. Of course, that leaves those of us with limited time and a lot of missed opportunities and “what-ifs,” which is just something we have to address in our own way.

What are some series you’d love to watch someday? Feel free to let me know in the comments, or write a post of your own!