Welcome back! I wasn’t originally planning to split my favorites up between multiple posts, but I realized while writing that there was just too much great anime that I wanted to talk about and it would have been unjust to cram them all into such a tiny space. It may also be that I can get a little long-winded talking about the things that I love… but that’s not necessarily a bad thing (at least if you enjoy my writing).
Just for consistency’s sake, I’ll reiterate that the anime series I’m writing about for my favorites were broadcast from Autumn 2017 through Summer 2018, rather than from the entirety of 2018, not only because I tend to watch things in fits and starts, but because I like to let my opinions crystallize a bit before naming something a favorite. There was obviously a lot of great stuff airing this Autumn… so some of it will probably end up as a favorite next year!
Now is the time when many of my favorite anime bloggers are posting their picks for their favorite (and sometimes least favorite) anime of the year. While this is something I’ve always wanted to do, what’s prevented me from posting lists like this in the past is the fact that I tend not to finish watching the Autumn season shows in a timely manner, and so feel ill-equipped to participate. I also like to let the series I have finished watching settle for a while so that I can ensure that my opinions hold up over time; sometimes I may feel one way about an anime immediately after completing it, but after some further thought my opinion becomes more nuanced and even completely different.
My solution, then, is to operate on a slightly different time-table. For this list of favorites, I’ll be drawing from the anime I viewed from Autumn season 2017 through Summer season 2018 (basically October 2017 through the end of September 2018). While that will offset my picks a bit from others’, I feel like this is the best way to confidently represent how I feel about the anime I’ve completed.
This list is in no particular order, other than chronological based on time of broadcast. I’m terrible at assigning rankings to things, and would rather feature these different anime for their specific good traits rather than attempt to figure out which ones I liked more or less. I also hope that through this list I’m able to feature a few underrated gems that readers might want to give a second look.
This was getting lengthy, so I split it up into two parts. Stay tuned for the second half!
I’d planned to finish seasonal anime stuff before my husband and I left on an out-of-town vacation – obviously, that didn’t happen (the vacation was fun and much-needed, though!). It’s funny, though, how I start looking forward to the next season when I’m done with the current one, but while I’m still in the midst of the current season I always have the urge to write about unrelated things. I’m sure it’s a side-effect of my anxious and avoidant personality issues. Anyway, I spend a decent amount of time keeping up with ani-Twitter in general and recently caught a thread in passing regarding the state of anime simulcast streaming. The specific conversation was in regards to some of the less user-friendly aspects of streaming websites, as well as how those sites might be disinclined to make changes or updates because of a (specific?) group folks who “evangelize” legal streaming in spite of its perceived problems. The thread got me thinking about the situation we’re in to the point I thought it was worth writing about.
To put it plainly, one could argue that I’m one of those streaming evangelists. When I present panels at anime conventions, part of the information I often provide to the audience are the legal channels by which they can view the anime I’m discussing. I also use the official English translations of the titles when they’re available, so that when people are searching for anime they’re more likely to find those viewing avenues instead of “unofficial” ones. To me, operating this way isn’t as much out of a sense of duty (although I do know a couple people who work within the US industry side of things), as it is a perception of how much easier it is than what I used to have to deal with to watch anime.
Like a lot of fans of my generation, I’ve had a long-standing relationship with fan-subs and other unofficial means of viewing anime. Let me tell you, the means of access that we have now is leaps and bounds more user-friendly than the mish-mash of torrent or direct-download websites and video formats that were the norm many years ago. Without going too far into it (again), for a long time there were no good central hubs of anime acquisition, no standardization of formats until much later in the game, and there was often some kind of delay between broadcast and episode availability for the simple reason that people were volunteering their time to perform unpaid fan-work to translate and encode video files. And you often didn’t have much of a choice in the quality of the translation; I still have some video files from the early-ish 2000’s where a native Italian-speaker translated a series into English because no one else was doing it – it was a good service to the community, but it definitely doesn’t read that well. On the upside, there was a much more direct line to translators in those days, along with supplementary notes about translations. I feel like I learned a lot from people whose language and cultural knowledge of Japan was more expansive than mine and I suspect (and hope) some of those individuals are able to do paid translation work nowadays.
“Chotto, shitsukoi desu yo!” – Shitsukoi (しつこい) translates to “obstinate” or “persistent.” The context is that a man has approached this woman on the street about a “job” (forced prostitution) and won’t leave her alone. From “Tokyo Tribe 2” translated by Kanji Subs.
That isn’t to say that modern streaming translations are altogether infallible or always superior to fan translations. While I suspect that some criticisms of streaming translations come from fans whose familiarity with the techniques of translation and understanding of the Japanese language might not always be top-notch, I’ve also been in situations where my rusty grasp of Japanese and my decent English ability have been able to suss-out some unsatisfying “official” translation choices. In some cases the problem may be as minor as dialog that doesn’t “flow” properly in English; translation is always a push-and-pull between forces that demand slavish accuracy and those that translate more liberally in service of fuller localization. I’m more on the side of liberal translations myself, as long as the original intent is preserved, but there’s absolutely a great deal of wiggle room.
Panty says, “yarou” (野郎), a suffix meaning “wild or uncouth” (literally “field boy”) that, in context, often has negative connotations. Panty is mad because the announcer was wrong about her career. The word “yarou” doesn’t have a sexuality component; a better and less problematic choice (imo) would have been a term implying a lack of intelligence. Official Funimation streaming translation.
In other cases I find that language sensitivity is an issue that even official, vetted translations have trouble avoiding. The examples that stick out to me are those that use gendered or sexual slurs in place of more general or neutral words. While I love Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt in large part due to its general vulgarity, the official English translation makes some of these kinds of missteps. It definitely says something about our culture when insults towards male characters are so frequently focused on their lack of perceived masculinity, and the series is full of them. Even back in 2010 when this series was released, though, I feel as though words like “f*g” or “s*ssy” were already perceived as insensitive and generally off-limits, even if the reasoning wasn’t as clear to many people; the fact that these subtitles were not only produced, but were also not subsequently edited and finessed when I think it would have been easy enough to fix at least the online version, just goes to show that paid professionals have their blind-spots and other subjective challenges. For every Land of the Lustrous or Made in Abyss, which have translations that consciously use gender-neutral language for non-binary characters, there are several other anime translations that stumble. Let’s not forget thatYuri!!! On Ice, an anime released only 2 years ago that’s largely about a romantic relationship between two men, still had a subtitle translation that assumed a potential lover’s gender when none was implied by the Japanese word used.
Here, Victor uses the term “koibito” (恋人), which translates to “lover” and is gender-neutral. This line takes place after mentioning Minako, Yuri’s ballet instructor – it’s an understandable (though somewhat careless) error which was corrected in Funimation’s English Dub. Official Crunchyroll streaming translation.
It’s easy enough to be an armchair translator when you’re not the one sweating to complete an episode translation under a deadline, and I think that’s something many of us, whether we’re enthusiastic about anime streaming services or not, forget to acknowledge. Language is full of nuances, idioms, and complications; to expect a translation put together at odd-hours of the day (which sometimes becomes a reality if an anime’s scripts aren’t available with enough lead-time), quickly and with little opportunity for translation-checking, to be perfect right out of the gate is always going to be unreasonable, no matter how talented the translator.
I agree, though, with some criticisms of streaming services, mostly in regards to the inability of viewers to provide feedback about errors or other aspects of the viewing experience. While I do think that some translation criticisms boil down to pedantry or one’s desire for one language to reflect another one like a mirror (rather than as, for example, a different instrumental arrangement of a popular song), as I’ve mentioned there are choices that are more obviously actual mistakes – mistakes that have remained in place for months or years, based on the screen captures I took for this piece today. If there were some obvious feedback button on an episode’s streaming page where users could report a language issue, time-stamped at the appropriate point in the episode, that might be helpful to quell some of the complaints. This would, of course, require a new set of resources, including employees available to read and determine the veracity of the complaints, as well as a way to easily change subtitles or re-upload files, but it could be an avenue for innovation that hasn’t been explored yet. To Crunchyroll’s credit, they’ve already shown that they can respond to ad-hoc user feedback; earlier this anime season, they added a content warning to the first episode of Goblin Slayer after users responded to the unexpected shocking nature of certain scenes.
Oh, Lupin… from “Lupin III: Part 2,” Episode 155, screen cap from Crunchyroll.
Ultimately, though, some rough translations and other relatively minor issues aren’t enough to scare me off from being a streaming evangelist. While I hate to beleaguer the point, as I’ve said my earlier fandom years were defined by fly-by-night translation groups, hard-to-acquire digi-subs, and a general decentralization of fan spaces that made it a lot of work to be an anime fan. This time period had its perks, not the least of which was its frontier spirit and its enduring illusion of being somehow more “special” because of its niche qualities. Unfortunately, anime fandom was also a bastion of sexist gate-keeping and online (and in-person) harassment, both things I experienced many a time in supposedly “welcoming” spaces. Streaming services, many of which, like Amazon or Netflix, are general-use and present anime alongside other popular media, have helped bring anime out into the light, thus inviting new and more diverse fans and helping to drown-out at least some of the jerks. A lot of non-anime fans I know have at least heard of Crunchyroll and are familiar with what anime is and what some of the popular series are (and I no longer have to keep explaining that anime isn’t “Japanese cartoon porn!”). And streaming is easy, relatively inexpensive, and available in high-definition – all things my college-aged self only dreamed about. The only thing streaming isn’t is permanent, and that’s something I hope changes; while buying digital downloaded episodes on Amazon or iTunes is definitely an option, it’s still an imperfect one. As someone with a collector’s tendencies, I prefer to own the things I like, and that’s becoming more difficult.
I’m sure in 10 years we’ll all be preoccupied with some other very passionate debate about anime consumerism. The streaming landscape may have changed completely by then, and with every improvement there may be an equal amount of new, unforeseen problems to deal with. I don’t fault people for wanting more convenience and user-friendliness from their hobbies and experiences. However, I also think it’s important to take stock of what we have now, and to be thankful for the challenges that have been addressed and overcome; myself from 10 years ago would be blown away by the things we fans have access to today. Though I’m not trying to come across as some old crone waving her broom around and yelling at kids to “get off my lawn!” I do think that seeing the transformation firsthand (similar to the transition between analog to digital video and audio formats and the continual increase in internet speeds, to name a few other technological advances from my lifetime) has allowed me the perspective to give a little leeway toward companies providing me a much-welcome service that I thought I may never see. And I’ll definitely keep letting people know that it exists!
And as a palate cleanser, an actual parody sub. “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” by Duwang subs.
As you can probably tell from the general lack of posts, it’s been a rough few weeks or so. Mental health has always been a struggle for me, and with the stress of the US elections (and aftermath), some long-term dental work (ugh), and various job-related stresses (I love my job, but it keeps me very busy and often leaves me mentally exhausted) I haven’t had much cranial strength left over to do any writing. I’ve actually avoided most corners of the internet aside from communicating directly with others; this is unusual for me, but sometimes I just need to stay away. There are also other factors that occasionally cause me to disengage with anime fandom more specifically for brief periods, though for right now I’m not interested in going into much detail about that for fear of harping on the same sorts of things too often. Needless to say, sometimes a break is in order (this is actually the first time I’ve sat down at my desktop computer at all in several days, though I’ve likely posted a thing or two now prior to this particular post being scheduled).
In addition to my general lack of internet presence, I’m still not particularly concerned with writing speed or volume anymore; as I told an audience at a recent convention, I may not be the fastest with my first impressions, but I am the slowest! Reviews will get done when they’re done, and I want them done to my specific standards. I’m more about maintaining an archive of reviews than I am being up-to-date anyway; friends of mine tell me that they appreciate being able to look up anime they’re interested in, and many of them aren’t weekly anime-watchers, so the relationship works well.
Though I assume most people who were planning to have already watched the first episode by now, I’ll warn that the first episode of Goblin Slayer – and by extension this discussion of it – includes references to sexual assault and rape, both generally and specifically.
As I mentioned in my Goblin Slayer first impressions post, I had the desire to write further about some of the extreme content that appears in the episode. This isn’t because other bloggers and reviewers haven’t been writing about it, but more because I haven’t seen my thoughts and feelings reflected in most of the reactions and I’d like to provide my perspective. A lot of what I’ve been reading in the past week has been very analytical, weighing various points in an attempt to come to some kind of logical conclusion about whether the episode’s content is warranted or appropriate. I believe that kind of disaffected point-by-point examination of scenes and images is the luxury and privilege of those whose lives are untouched by crimes of sexual aggression. I’m not trying to make enemies by saying as much, but I feel that there’s a certain survivors’ perspective on this matter that can be difficult for others to understand except from first-hand experience (or an incredibly robust sense of empathy).
Unfortunately the first book club entry for Mononoke is going to be delayed (well, is already delayed), probably just until this coming Sunday the 26th. I have just a few personal things going on that interrupted my workflow and I thought it best to wait a week rather than attempt a mid-week post (that, and I have other things I’m planning to put up instead and I don’t want to crowd this space too much). I hope this gives you the extra time (and motivation) you might need to check out the “Bakeneko” story arc from Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales!
I’ve been writing on and off about anime for over ten years at this point and have been enjoying a relatively fruitful run the last couple of months. It’s taken a long time for me to get back to this productivity level because I’ve been through some personal ups and downs and some major changes over that time period. I know first-hand how difficult it is to focus on side projects like this when everything else in one’s life feels out of control. Getting back into writing regularly just feels right to me, though; it’s a way for me to express my thoughts and feelings about something I love in a way that occasionally reaches other people (it’s definitely preferable to sitting at home and talking about anime to no one in particular).
There are a lot of guides out there that cover the ways in which one can be a successful blogger and make a side career (or actual career!) from their writing (I recommend starting with The Otaku Journalist). Because of the uncertainty inherent to that prospect I’ve never considered that to be an option for me since I appreciate stability and consistency over all things. However, I have intuitively happened-upon a few things over the years that have helped me out as a blogging hobbyist and I thought I might pass them along to any readers who are interested in following a similar path. These are in no particular order, and many of the items have as much to do with general online interaction as they do with blogging specifically (and likely stem from a specific incident or interaction I’ve had).
I spend quite a bit of time on social media, which has its high and low points. One positive aspect of it is that I happen to follow a lot of anime-related folks on Twitter and it helps me keep up with what’s going on in anime fandom, anime news, and anime blogging/reporting (also anime fandom drama, but I try not to worry about that too much). Someone who works for a famous anime news outlet posted some thoughts that are relevant to individuals in almost any job or industry, regarding being recognized and given credit for your work. They provided some examples of work they’re proud of to which people have given mixed reactions (and, it being on the internet, some truly rude variations on “this is something I disagree with”). It was something that really struck a chord for me and I wanted to expand on it. Certainly, I’m especially sensitive when I feel like I’m not being given credit for something I’ve done (or someone else gets credited in my place; this has happened in several situations in my past and continues to affect me as an adult despite me realizing that it’s petty), so I felt like this was worth talking about more.
I keep a pretty low profile here at S1E1, for various reasons. Part of it is due to aforementioned internet rudeness; I’ve gotten some pretty terrible, abusive comments and emails from people who didn’t like what I had to say about one anime or another, especially if it skewed a little bit further towards feminist critique. I understand the feeling of being pissed-off by a review of something that seems to miss the point of what you enjoyed about a piece of media, I really do; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen in love with something (usually an anime aimed at women, telling a woman’s story, or simply featuring a lot of women… is that snarky?) that I’ve felt the fandom at large has misunderstood, mis-categorized, or simply not given a proper chance. However, in spite of my strong feelings I really haven’t gotten the urge to then fling around death threats like confetti. But that’s just me.
Another reason, though, is that I just have never felt like my writing is that good. So many of my feelings on anime are just that – feelings. Emotions are so, so difficult for me to properly put into words because I don’t often have words to describe them (despite the fact that I’m a native English speaker and our language has so many words for everything). Whatever I’m feeling in my heart and mind seems to lose all of its luster and life once it’s stuck on the page. I also feel that writing doesn’t come to me very naturally; I’ll sometimes spend all day trying to write one review, and on some level I’m a little ashamed of that (especially when I see others able to complete more work in a shorter amount of time and sound more than competent doing so). I’ve heard it said more than once that “comparison is the thief of joy,” but it’s a difficult habit to break when your self-confidence about something isn’t much to speak of in the first place.
Really, though, I think the big, underlying reason I don’t do much self-advertising is that I have a major case of impostor syndrome. I’m sure this is the case for many people who express themselves creatively, so I don’t want to beleaguer the point. Whenever I’ve been given an opportunity for more exposure, however, whether through another person/website or just an opportunity through one of my other fandom ventures (usually conventions), I doubt myself constantly and end up self-sabotaging myself. I start to question what I’m doing and then become paralyzed with anxiety. It makes me look like a flake (which I suppose is accurate to anyone observing), and then I just end up depressed and unable to produce much of anything for an extended period of time. So I suppose my line of thinking is that, if I don’t call attention to myself, no one will notice when I’m on an extended absence from writing.
And the truth is, it’s hard to keep going without constant encouragement. Maybe this is a symptom of being an older Millennial – I need praise and feedback to feel as though something is worthwhile, when really what’s worthwhile is participating in an interesting fandom, making connections, and sharing something I love with a few other people. I think the message of the original Twitter thread is that many people don’t understand the work that goes into creating something, and if they aren’t also in the same line of work (or unpaid hobby-work, as it is for people like me) they don’t know to recognize, understand, or acknowledge the effort. There will always be people who do understand, though, and it’s also good to be able to point out things to yourself that you’re proud of having accomplished. I’m going to try to do a little of that now.
One thing that I’m proud of, related to this website, is a series of posts I did some years back called “Women in Anime.” In these posts I’d choose an anime I liked with interesting women in it and talk about why those characters were important or what set the anime apart in terms of women’s representation. I can’t say that I always hit the mark with these posts and I recall sometimes having to pull some pretty weak arguments in order to justify series that could also have been easily interpreted as problematic, but I always liked writing those sorts of features and celebrating things I liked in that way. Probably my favorite series of these posts had to do with Puella Magi Madoka Magica back when that series had just finished its broadcast. Sadly, due to reasons that aren’t worth going into here, I no longer have access to or copies of those posts, so they’re just distant, positive memories. I do remember them fondly and hope maybe some others out there might have read them. Maybe I’ll revive the series someday.
I also wrote reviews for The Fandom Post for a while, which was a job I really liked but which I eventually self-sabotaged in the aforementioned manner. I did some episode recaps and some standalone reviews there for various series, but I did one DVD review there that I was really proud of. The series in question is called Intrigue in the Bakumatsu: Irohanihoheto, and was an anime series that I had been waiting on to get licensed in the US for many years. The show itself is incredibly dense and deals in a lot of historical details that would be difficult for someone with a casual interest to get through anyway, but couples that with some odd theatricality and some very anachronistic character design. In short, I really liked it and wanted to share that. The review is like five-and-a-half years old or so as of the time of this post, but I still think back on it with pride since it flowed from me so easily and I felt like it captured what I wanted to say in a way that’s not consistent across my writing.
I’m happy that I’ve been able to make this site semi-active again by my own hand rather than relying on others for help; I’ve gone through a lot of things over the last several years, and to have gotten through the weeds and figured things out by myself has been a great boost to my confidence. Maybe someday that will translate to my writing and I won’t be sad over the lack of comments or interactions with other fans (or I’ll stop self-isolating and stick my neck out again and make it happen). It is nice to know that all of this isn’t entirely just a product of my quirky brain and that others (even people who I think are great at their jobs), struggle with similar feelings and lack of recognition. It would be great to exist in a situation where we could all just enjoy our fandom feelings and not worry so much about what other people think, but there is certainly some additional satisfaction in learning to be empathetic of others and sympathetic to ourselves.
"Laid-Back Camp" lets us soak up pleasant feelings without really having anywhere to go.
“Laid-Back Camp” lets us soak up pleasant feelings without really having anywhere to go.
I think a lot about anime (obviously), and also about the way in which I consume it, as should be evident by my earlier post regarding my totally-not-superhuman ability to watch a lot of it in a short amount of time. Years of reading reviews and lurking on message boards, as well as trying and failing to participate in message board discussions without getting into weird, unintended arguments, has told me that my way of thinking about anime (and other storytelling media, by extension) is probably kind of strange and a little contrary to the norm. This isn’t a “look at me, I’m such a special snowflake” statement, just an acknowledgement that I recognize my critical eye has some… astigmatism.
I hear people chatting all the time about an anime’s “plot.” Where the plot is going, what should happen next in the plot, is this or that thing that happened indicative of a plot hole (don’t get me started on that one)… examining this structural aspect of an anime series is very important to a lot of people, and certainly one broad way of discussing and interpreting media in general. In the modern anime fandom, this type of discussion is a huge part of participating in that fandom, and writers ranging from amateur-level bloggers (for example, myself) to professional staff writers for bigger anime and fandom websites post recaps and dissections of weekly episodes from their favorite (or occasionally obligatory) series all the time. This is awesome for people like me who are put off by certain things and might want to seek out more details about certain kinds of content (for example, I needed to be sure that After the Rain was not actually a romance between its two protagonists before I was willing to invest the time to finish it).
However, speaking as someone who’s written them, the downside of weekly recaps is that one can feel compelled to pick at every last detail with a fine-toothed comb and analyze every single action of the characters and movement of the story, because otherwise a half-hour episode of your typical anime series can be exceedingly difficult to write about at length. With a word count to reach and a deadline to meet, what’s the easiest thing to write about? What happened, who it happened to, and where they might be going, that’s what. There are writers who are definitely better than I am at this, but I only read these types of reviews piecemeal and occasionally so I can’t really call out the “good” ones. I personally have a lot of trouble with that format because it’s just not the way I feel comfortable interacting with media and I don’t gain much pleasure from it. At best, it can be a satisfying way to go back and examine something I’ve already watched or read once I’m familiar with it.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that I got a better handle on my beef with this line of thinking. Maybe this is more a function of being a woman in internet fandom circles, or maybe it’s that I tend to be emotional and sensitive in general as part of my nature, but I’ve had several run-ins with people during which I’ve been criticized for having a strong feeling about something, instead of basing my opinions on some sort of measurable “logic.” Man, almost nothing rankles me like someone telling me that pure, unfeeling logic is somehow superior to emotion-based reactions. Never mind the fact that “pure logic” almost always seems to actually mean “cherry-picked realities that align with my own emotional investment in the topic that I refuse to acknowledge as being emotional,” the simple truth is that our lives are informed every single day by the facts and realities of daily life and emotional fallout from our many ways of perceiving them. And sometimes the things that people say and do, or the things that happen, just don’t align with some nonexistent grand logical scheme running the universe. Our lives are full of dead-ends, poor decisions, standalone moments of extreme elation, fruitful conversations, wasted time… we’re a mess. Society is a mess. The stories we tell are sometimes (always) just an extension of that.
That’s why I don’t really care that much to pick-apart plot. It’s true, there are some stories that are entertaining to me just because they’re what I’d call “page-turners” (each episode ends in a cliffhanger, and the show doesn’t seem to have a super-deep message – Attack on Titan is one of these types of series I’ve really liked), there are so many more I find enjoyable because they provide a window into a character’s life, or create a fascinating new world, or speak to some truth about being human. Sometimes these series might initially imply a certain story arc but start to turn in a different direction, or sometimes there’s not really a grand story to tell in the first place. I’m more than willing to let a show with a fascinating premise carry me where it wants to go and I’ll then consider the whole package, even if it’s not where I expected to be going. I’m also on-board when an anime exists to cultivate an emotion, rather than drag me along to some concrete destination where a person does a thing because of reasons.
“The Perfect Insider” is as much Nishinosono’s story as anyone else’s.
Whenever I start mulling over this topic, I inevitably start thinking of examples of anime that I really liked for the above stated reasons, which anime fandom as a whole was cold towards. The Perfect Insider is one of those shows that I really loved (and wrote weekly recaps of… whoops), but which the larger fandom and many other reviewers just did not like at all. The series is a tough nut to crack, not only because of some of its subject matter (murder, statutory rape, the nature of genius, etc.), but because it (wrongfully, in my opinion) markets itself as a murder mystery tale. Contrary to first impressions, the point of story has more to do with deciding whether the type of intellectual existence Saikawa-Sensei and Dr. Magata strive towards has any value and less to do with figuring out the identity of the murderer. It’s also a snapshot of the consequences of nourishing and celebrating a gifted, precocious intelligence without also encouraging (or insisting upon!) normal, age-appropriate emotional development. There were a lot of critics and fans who seemed to be frustrated over the series as they watched its final few episodes, not just because of the ways in which the “mystery” resolved itself, but even more so because the enigmatic figure at the center of it all, the striking young genius Dr. Magata, was ultimately motivated by a set of rules and standards that were perceived as illogical and ridiculous.
To me, The Perfect Insider was a real punch in the gut, though I’d be hard-pressed to provide a concrete reason. I think I connected with it because it reaffirmed for me that, as much as humankind worships the notion of transcending the limitations of its basic meat-based form and reaching some higher plane of mental existence (as Dr. Magata ostensibly has done and Saikawa-sensei wishes like hell he could figure out how to do), what defines them is their infallible passion, pain, joy, feeling as represented by Nishinosono Moe, who is highly intelligent, but not an intellectual the way that Saikawa or Magata are portrayed. I didn’t care so much about the details of how the perpetrator overwrote the lab’s security camera footage (though that was neat, too!), or how a second person arrived in Dr. Magata’s locked room without anyone realizing it (that was easy to figure out after a certain point). What I connected with was the story of Nishinosono’s past and her passionate devotion to bringing Saikawa back to reality time and again (two things that are actually related), as well as Dr. Magata’s truly tragic life, the sadness of which I don’t think many people must have realized.
I have too many examples of these types of anime experiences to list here, but I hope this one helps to at least explain what I look for in a viewing experience. Watching anime, to me, isn’t like clutching a map in one hand and a compass in the other, marking off landmarks as I make my way from A to B. Watching anime is more like hiking to the top of a tall hill and breathing the crisp, clean air as the sun warms my face, or a summer storm drops rain suddenly, or fog drifts by below. If I decide I’m where I want to be, then I can be open to almost anything that happens (unless it’s that one-in-a-million time that a bird flies by and poops in my mouth – I’m looking at you, Gangsta.). As my husband likes to say, some of the best series out there are those with the lowest stakes; shows in which no demon king needs defeating, no items need to be obtained, and no damsels/dudes/cute animals need rescuing from the clutches of evil. Sometimes it’s better to stop anticipating the next step and just enjoy the way that life unfolds around us. Or to just accept that anime series don’t always cater to our own expectations, and maybe being passive and open in the face of the unexpected is okay, too.
We all consume media in our own way – this is just an explanation of mine. And heck, it’s served me well for years. What’s your favorite way of enjoying the shows you like? Let me know in the comments!
Just a selection of items from the many anime I’ve watched.
“How do you watch so much anime?” – Everyone, to me.
I’ve been an anime fan for over twenty years now. When I was just a little chibi fan, all I could do stoke my fandom flame, other than doodle anime characters in the margins of every notebook, was to wake up early before school to catch Sailor Moon on local TV and hope that the local Blockbuster might stock a few random OVA series. It was easy to stay up-to-date on the fandom, even without the benefit of online anime blogs or news outlets; when you could count the number of “big” releases on two hands, there wasn’t a lot of deep discussion to be had. If it wasn’t on TV or sitting precariously on the shelf with the other “cartoons,” it was unlikely that most fans (including my gangly teenage self) would know to even look for it.
Times have obviously changed, with each new season unleashing an onslaught of 40-50 new anime to watch and many of them available to us within a fairly short time period (some with an English dub option!). There was a time, back in the fansub-heavy days of the mid-2000’s that I tried to sample every single anime that was released (at least those that amateur groups deemed worthy to translate). There were fewer series coming out back then, but it was still a huge undertaking. I felt like I was doing anime fandom some sort of service, however minor, since I had few qualms about where and how I was getting my review material.
I eventually reached a point in my life where all that watching, writing, and reviewing became impossible due to the time investment and conflict with my day job. I’ve known people to have gotten away with watching things at work, or doing writing at their desks on a regular basis, but I’m not really in a position to do that – and I like my job, so I’d rather not jeopardize it! There are also substantially more series to get through now than in during the bust years around 2009-2011, and more still are available in easy-to-obtain official forms. About once a year I make an attempt to go comprehensive again and am quickly jerked back to reality, because I’m no longer unique in my coverage methods and I’m an unpaid staff of one. I also have a household and a relationship to nurture, and I think even a very passionate hobby shouldn’t take the place of those things.
This is all a very roundabout way of saying that I don’t feel like I really watch all that much anime – at least not as much as maybe I would like to, if I lived in a world where I had fewer other responsibilities. Yet friends, family members, and people I meet at conventions have all remarked to me in recent years that I watch so much anime and they don’t know how I make the time for it. I started to think about it, and came up with a few insights.
I have a daily commute of about 45-50 minutes each way.
I’m lucky enough to live in a fairly urban area, and I take public transportation to go to work so I don’t have to pay out the nose for parking. That provides me with at least an hour-and-a-half each day where I can just chill, read a book, or watch anime on my phone. I pay a decent amount of money for an unlimited data plan and live in an area with good coverage so I can stream anime every day that I commute by bus. 50 minutes is just about two episodes of anime, so I can get through a 1-cour series in 3-4 days if something unusual doesn’t happen or I don’t choose to drive my car instead. I also subscribe to pretty much every streaming service that does anime simulcasts, so I rarely exhaust my queue.
These are options I’m privileged to have and make it really easy to check out a lot of anime in a short period of time. If I get bored of one series, I can check into another app and watch something else. And watching anime on the bus has the added bonus of keeping other people from trying to harass me during my commute; sit down, headphones in, bye bye outside world!
I don’t consume a lot of other media.
I don’t consider myself a boring person (others may beg to differ) and I have several hobbies that aren’t related to Japanese animation. I like to cook and do the majority of the meal prep at home. I like to edit video. I like reading manga and playing video games. But when it comes to consuming media, anime is far and away the bulk of what crosses my path. There are quite a few Western TV series and movies that sound interesting to me, and I get a chance to see a few of them here and there, but most of the time I set aside for watching things goes towards watching anime, discussing anime, or attending and providing programming at anime conventions.
I’m guessing that most people who comment on the amount of anime I watch probably just prioritize their time in ways that are more suited to the types of things they like to do. They probably see more movies, watch more TV, do things outdoors, or spend their free time doing any number of other things that aren’t watching anime. And that’s great too!
I will acknowledge that watching and reading more things outside of my comfort zone would likely make me into a more well-rounded consumer and probably a better writer. It’s something that I think about fairly frequently. But as a human being I’ve chosen to quit beating myself up over it and to instead just enjoy what I choose to do.
I am not a “plot enthusiast.”
This might seem like a strange thing to say, since anime is mostly serialized entertainment, and that type of entertainment is all about the plot, right? There are a lot of blogs and bloggers that focus on discussing anime series episode-by-episode, detailing what happened, how it happened, who did what, and speculating about what might happen in upcoming installments. I enjoy reading these sometimes, but when I’ve tried to write that way in the past it eventually became a huge chore. I just don’t have that much to say about a show from week-to-week. This might paint me as more of a passive consumer, but really I just prefer to take each series as its own whole. I like to feel out its themes, connect with its characters’ motivations, and allow the creators to take me where they want to go (rather than where I think they ought to be going). I’ve found this to be a more fulfilling way for me to watch anime, and because of it I spend less time worrying about minutiae as I watch.
The downside is that I occasionally overlook details that others find to be obvious, but to me that sort of bookclub-style analysis is more suited to a second watch. Great series are always worth another viewing down the line, and by that time I’m usually watching with friends and my enjoyment is even greater because of it.
I don’t waste time hate-watching things that will make me angry (most of the time).
When I was an itty-bitty fan, all anime fell under this huge umbrella of “things I want to watch.” Like I said before, there wasn’t that much around to sift through, and my standards as a young fan weren’t very strict. But as with all people, more familiarity with the entertainment, as well as a much wider selection, allowed me to hone in on the things that brought me joy. As I’ve grown I’ve also become more conscious of things like sexism, racism, and other prejudices present within media, and this has greatly affected my tolerance of certain types of entertainment. I’ve gotten very good at identifying things that I know are not going to be worth my time and energy to deal with, so I usually avoid them. I do appreciate analysis of the wrongs being committed by trashy anime, I just rarely have the energy to be the person providing that commentary.
That isn’t to say that I never hate-watch something; generally there’s one thing a year or so that everyone wants me to watch that I know is probably not for me, and at some point I bow to the pressure just to get it out of my system and have the ability to discuss it if it comes up in conversation. But while I spent a lot of my early reviewing career watching things I didn’t like and ranting about them on the internet, In more recent years I decided that I would rather put effort into making time for things from which I expect to get some positive emotional return.
I don’t wait around for other people.
This is probably the point which will come across as the most rude, but believe me when I don’t mean it that way.
I used to belong to more anime viewing groups, including an anime club (which I actually still attend most of the time), as well as a couple of informal groups of friends who would get together to watch anime together and have dinner. Once we chose something to watch, I’d generally avoid watching ahead. This was great for the purposes of enjoying the show with others in real time, but not so great for the purposes of watching anime at a pace to keep up with the seasonal releases. I find that my husband, the person with whom I watch the most anime, also has drastically different viewing habits than I do. This caused some problems for me because I didn’t want to watch things ahead of him, but his tolerance for marathoning several episodes of something in a row is drastically different than my own. Now I’ve chosen to be okay with watching anime on my own and then re-watching it with others, rather than sweating about avoiding spoilers and missing out on internet discussion. It’s so much more difficult getting behind on watching something and then to have to catch up again than it is to keep pace with watching a series in real time (life pro-tip: that goes for responsibilities other than watching anime, too).
I let others do some of the dirty work.
One piece of advice I give to people is to read a lot of reviews and find some reviewers whose opinions you feel you can trust. You don’t always have to agree with them, but you should be able to discern from the things that they write whether or not you’re likely to enjoy something. I read a lot of anime news, opinions, and reviews. I read some other blogs, including those written by individuals whose opinions are different from my own in a lot of ways. I’ve worked to become familiar with some anime directors, staff, and studios, so that I can follow and anticipate their work. I take time to be informed, which lets me narrow down the list of anime I might want to try.
It’s also convenient that most large anime news outlets produce seasonal previews of one form or another. I used to do this for myself in the past, but as just one person it’s difficult to match the speed and comprehensiveness of a website with multiple writers who have time built into their day to preview series as they’re released. If I can go to a few different websites and see opinions from dozens of writers, that helps me to narrow down my planned viewing each season. And with many people doing weekly recap discussions, I can help hone my plan of attack even further.
But still…
Believe it or not, despite watching hours upon hours of anime, I still don’t always get around to watching everything I would like to in a timely manner (or at all). Even with all the aforementioned tools at my disposal, there are still anime series that fly under my radar or end up on the back burner until some vague future time where I have a chance to “catch up” (LOL, sure). A symptom of the current anime boom is that there are simply too many anime series, period, being created for one person to realistically watch, and even the number of very-good-to-excellent series are beyond the average person’s ability to consume in a reasonable manner. It’s not a bad problem to have, to be honest, and definitely not one I would have expected as a teenager in a fandom that nobody cared about at the time. There will always be anime that I never see, films and series that are compelling and brilliant that will never quite cross my path. It’s both wonderful and frustrating, but it’s the world we live in, and I’m actually sort of okay with it.
So there you have it. I’m not special when it comes to watching anime, but I have my system and it works for me. How about you? What do you do to help maximize your anime-watching potential. Let me know in the comments!
