Shameful Otaku Secret!

Sorry to invoke anime’s greatest ending. This post isn’t about Gunbuster. But it will do nicely in lieu of a birthday post that I never put up (short version: I’m old). Oh, the humanity and mortality of it all.

Re-watching anime, like any visual entertainment, can give you new perspective on it just from the plain and simple value of seeing things again. We tend to see plot, character development, and visuals the first time around (and considering anime means watching with subtitles for most of us, even the visuals can be secondary at times). But that second viewing can reveal details of reference, symbolism, and detail. If you only watched The Holy Mountain or, yeah I’ll say it, FLCL just once, you missed something.

But more than that, a re-watch is a reflection of where you, the viewer, are in that particular point in your life. That means it’s also a reflection of a few different factors:

I view the world through BOMBER colored glasses

Sum Total of experience

This is obvious, and especially obvious when re-watching (as I am) a series like Martian Successor Nadesico (or say, Lucky Star) that’s full of references. But it doesn’t have to be a situation where you say “Hey! I know why they said no smoking on the bridge!” during Eureka 7.

My experience as an anime fan was pretty limited when I first saw Nadesico. In fact, when it comes to sci-fi non-super robot stuff, nearly everything at that point in my life was viewed through the filter of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Since then, I’ve seen a whole lot of other anime, including those outside the mecha and guro genres that I was big on in the 90s. Having seen the later Love Hina helped me appreciate the “harem-esque” aspects of Nadesico’s bizarre romantic story (see fig. 1).

Changing values and perspectives

This is tied in, but relates to the rest of your life as well. As we grow older, and our interests change, we desire different things out of our entertainment. Back in the day I never really desired escapism — sure, fantasy is fun, but I would gladly have watched something resembling 5cm per Second daily. Now, life is a little harder, extreme and “real” emotional impact is something I can still get great value out of, but in smaller doses. Jading and cynicism color your outlook despite your best efforts.

For some people, it may even work in the opposite way. Maybe you’re sick of the empty escapism of your average anime, and crave something with a little more meaning. Of course, we should all try to keep a balanced diet going, but the point is that tastes change — and you might find yourself enjoying something far more (or less) than you did the first time you tried.

It can even be much simpler than that. Tastes change. Maybe you didn’t even like comedy anime the first time you saw Tenchi Muyo. And now, you do. It’s still dumb, but that’s beside the point.

Slice of your life

Something that you might rarely think about, but has a very direct effect on your opinion, is where you are at this particular moment in time. On a Wednesday, in June, in 2009, what direct circumstances are painting your life differently than in 1999?

Maybe you’re watching on an HDTV instead of a 13” TV/VCR combo with bunny ears. You’re living in a different city, watching with different people (in my case, different city and same person). Maybe that bit about escapism is particularly important right now because you’re in a draining job that makes you tired and unwilling to devote a lot of brainpower to anime. Perhaps you just talked to ghostlightning and your positivity quotient is doing better than most days.

Whatever it is, the circumstances at that very moment are important.

Your mileage should vary

When you’re watching something for the second, or third, or whatever, time, take these things into account. Sometimes the old George Costanza adage “It’s not you, it’s me” is totally applicable.

Did you ever have an experience where you went back months or even years later to something, only to find that you’ve changed or even done a 180 on your opinion?

Forgive me for speculation based on mostly ignorance, I’ve been a bit out of touch lately. But it seems to me, while barely reading any blogs lately, that an interesting subject I don’t see many people talking about, probably thanks to the shadow of Kadokawa’s vicious real life trolling and fan provocation. That’s the fact that they’re streaming online. Surely in this, the Year of the Stream, it’s not going unnoticed?

What if, amidst all the baiting and switching, R1 is actually their potential target? Author seems to think the numbers tell a disheartening story for that theory, but that’s not really a surprise. The sales of the first Haruhi series over here were nothing like the fansub-watching internet fandom naively imagined they would be. That doesn’t mean we’re not a potential market, even if we’re more likely to buy something like Black Lagoon. Besides, Kadokawa have become in/famous for milking the golden goose, or something like that. And you would too if you were responsible for H2O.

Anyway, it makes me wonder if they’re planning to stream the next (fictional?) Haruhi series on the internet, with Haruhi-chan and Churuya-san as a litmus test. [Edit: I realize this scenario only works if a real S2 broadcasts, since streaming the rerun would get confuzzled with Bandai owning the R1 license to the first season] In a beautiful, lovely, perfect and probably completely fictional world, we’ll get the second series over here zero-day.

That is, if it exists.

[More edit: Author weighs in again, and while he stops short of calling it a no-brainer, he mentions that "Chairman Kadokawa has gone on record with his international inclinations." Interesting times ahead, no doubt. Great to see different types experimentation from different companies on both sides of the Pacific.]

Finger-touch panty-removal game probably not next

Every once in a while, I decide that I need to reinforce the name of my blog by, I dunno, watching Rosario+Vampire, or (thanks to the twitter link from Blue Mist) by downloading the first bishoujo game for the iPhone/iPod touch.

The game is somewhat-hilariously titled “Ah… Moemory,” and it’s basically a classic card-matching game except with a few pictures of anime/manga type girlses on the backs instead of something more random. Click some screenshots:

That’s… pretty much all there is to it. Only a few patterns on the cards, those match the background pictures you uncover. I suppose that’s the limit of the “lite” version, which is all that’s currently available. However, I think it’s a bit of a stretch for the game’s website to say “See images of girls in significant volume.” I want significant volume! Anyway, this lite version is free, check it out for the lulz and such if you have a Touch.