Happy New Year Everyone

Hey…I know I haven’t made a post since uhh December 2021 but you know…I still love my anime blog.

Not too sure what I can quickly type up here, but here’s a quick life update!

A blog post in the year 2022????

Happy New Year Everyone

Hello! I apologize for not posting for the past few months. I broke my at least 1 post a month requirement. Orz.

I strongly recommend buying this set and watching this special series with your family this holiday season pic.twitter.com/lF89xFYlZp

— Reiseng (@ReisengRath) December 28, 2021

Manga and how it kept saving me

CW: This is a personal, somewhat depressing blog post. No notions of self-harm or anything, but some low points in my life.

Let’s go back in time to 2015. I was getting ready to wrap up school. I had a job offer from my final internship and if I accepted it, I’d get a nice big paycheck working for <EVIL TECH COMPANY> in the US. My primary hesitation at the time was that something just didn’t feel right.

I didn’t want to grow up. I had an inkling that once I settled into a job, that’s all I would do. All of my personal ambitions, goals etc would just be tossed away as I came home too tired from work to do anything. There was a feeling in me that if I just followed the easy path, nothing interesting would come out of my life.

So, I made the bold, but very reckless decision to turn down that job offer and make a last second u-turn towards Grad School. My good friend at the time even questioned me, “are you sure? Usually folk who go to grad school plan for it years ahead not as they are about to graduate?”. He was right, of course.

Some thoughts on ‘oppressed villains’

Shortly after Marvel’s Black Panther was released, a discourse erupted in my internet bubble with many critics calling the movie ‘too centrist’. What they meant by that was the villain wanted to overthrow systems of oppression and the hero stopped him because said villain’s methods was wrong. There was a fair bit of discussion on it and I won’t further open it up or anything (you can read this post and this one if you want the gist of the interpretations).

Black Panther isn’t unique though. A large amount of fiction, heck fiction for a long time, has villains who, due to the cruelty their group was treated with, grew up into monsters and I am generally not fond of this.

Example: In Bleach, the Quincy were basically wiped out by the “good guys” only to come back in the final arc as villains wanting revenge

My relationship with Anime and the Anime watching community

Hello,

If you follow me on twitter, you may have noted that I have a rather positive outlook on anime. My tweets about anime are mostly devoid of negative opinions and a significant portion of them are gut reactions to the tune of ‘kyaa’, ‘OMG’, ‘AMAZING’, and ‘I am dead’. Perhaps more importantly, I seem to enjoy most things I try. As an example, this season not only am I enjoying blockbusters like ACCA & Maidragon but also some low key, seemingly less popular stuff like Spiritpact and ēlDLIVE.

I wanted to take this chance to talk about how I arrived at this form of engagement because while the end result appears to be a simple, blissful buffoon, the process to get here was anything but trivial.

Note: This is a very selfish me oriented post, but is hopefully fluffy enough that no one will be rattled by it.

More on chuuni web novels: Common tropes and my thoughts

Hello,

I recently made this post on Chuuni Web Novels and this is a pseudo-sequel that is a fair bit less personal. You don’t need to read that one first. A lot of this post is actually just me talking about the few web novels I’ve read. It’s a weird post.

In my previous post I mentioned that web novel protagonists often lead the life the reader, and perhaps the author, wishes to lead. This raw, from the heart (if you will), story telling can lead to a strong sense of resonance if you identify strongly with the main character, but questionable politics and some less good things tend to sneak through as well.

[Note: Once more I sort of assume that the readers and perhaps the author are approaching this fiction from a chuuni delusion/self-insert perspective. That is by no means the only way to engage with this fiction and I am confident very few folk only engage in that mode. It is an assumption made to ground this post.]

-Mushoku Tensei manga

[Warning: Discussion of sexual assault/homophobia/transphobia and stuff]

Some thoughts on reconciling with negative anime opinions especially those pertaining to fan-service.

This is a bit of a wishy-washy post, but all of my posts these days are. This is may also be taken as an insult or a hot take and uhh, sorry about that.

It can be hard accepting negative opinions on stuff you like. There is a reason ANN forums, reddit comments for a review or CR comments etc, are often full of disdain for the author who just ‘doesn’t get it’.

And of course, it is pretty bad if you argue (like most people on the net) using flaky reasoning and personal attacks. If anything, I strongly recommend you just don’t bother. 99.9% of the time, your ‘objective reasoning’ will simply be a matter of taste or priorities (some need x in an anime to be good, others prefer y to be good).

Still, it comes from an understandable place. You don’t like it when something you liked was disliked. It makes you feel like you were wrong to dislike it.

It has taken me 6+ years, but I’ve finally grown an opinion shield, I can handle hot takes about the anime I like….well, not entirely, especially not on twitter.

If only I could turn off my phone so easily.

Some thoughts on Web Novels and our Chuuni Delusions

For the uninitiated, a web novel is just well, a story published on the web. In this particular context, I’m referring to the stories that get written chapter by chapter in Japan then translated over for us. I’ve been thinking a little about how these stories come to be and why I read them and figured I’d do a haphazard job of putting it into words.

The Mushoku Tensei Volume 3 Cover (my favourite bit, really)

Winter 15: OTPs

I asked a few people on ask.FM for post ideas and Alex told me to make a post on OTPs. In theory I should make one for all time my best OTPs (like a top 30 or something), but that would require too much thinking and work, so instead I am just going to focus on this season.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty terrible season for season. Oh well, hearty sailors make do, I guess.

Your taste is objectively shit.

We, the residents of the ani-blogosphere are an interesting folk.

Instead of greeting one another with a Good Day or a Good Morning, we use the timeless phrase: “your taste is shit”.

To be insulted for our questionable taste is perhaps the greatest compliment one can receive. Being complimented for great taste is somewhat of an insult as that implies conformity and no one wants to be normal.

Picture not quite relevant.