Shameful Otaku Secret!

Women have a hard time in the media, just as in some areas of society. Anime’s no different. In fact, I’m sure it’s worse than most. I’m also sure there are plenty of issues at play — especially Japanese cultural ones, not to mention most anime’s lack of originality —  but it’s a bit depressing. Too often, “strong” women in anime conform to one of three archetypes, which really aren’t strong at all. The easiest illustrations for these are their Evangelion examples.

Apologies (esp. to zaitcev) if I overstated the cheesecakey nature of the pictures that go with the post.

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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?

Wait, who am I? Are you my mommy?

I think that can tell you a lot about an anime fan from what they consider to be their influences — at least in the terms that we here on the anime-internets tend to related to one another. Also, I’m waiting on my Chiko to get subbed and I’m short on original ideas at the moment. So I stole one from Riex.

My most influential anime!

1. Neon Genesis Evangelion. What did they call it, the Series that Launched A Million Fanboys? You’re looking at one. The angst, the action, the symbolism, the pretentiousness, and the all-out mindfuck couldn’t be topped. I liked anime before, but all of a sudden this insatiable appetite to consume episode after episode of marginally believable animated nonsense starring underage protagonists took over — to the point where Pokémon briefly became an somewhat-acceptable form of entertainment. Plus, it was only the second time I’d seen such blatant contempt for humanity. The first?

2. Urotsukidoji. Yeah. That one. I’m not kidding. To this day, I don’t watch hentai, but I can still appreciate the horror of this flick. Make no mistake — it’s full of sex, violence, violent sex, and sexualized violence. That makes it appropriate for almost nobody, but it’s also got a well-written story that foreshadows plots like Evangelion and Blassreiter, except with huge demonic cocks. I was taken aback by the shocking nature of Japan’s original tentacle vehicle, but also by just how surprisingly good it was.

3. Akira/Ninja Scroll/Ghost in the Shell. Why put them together? There was a day when you couldn’t mention them separately. If someone had seen one, you forced them to watch the other two because that person was an otaku on the verge. Thanks partially to frequent commenter Jason (specifically for Ninja Scroll), I hit the whole triumverate of violence, story, atmosphere and quality and that’s all she wrote. Like so many American fans, if I hadn’t seen these, I wouldn’t be here yammering on about this shit.

4. Tie: Cardcaptor Sakura/Love Hina. Weird tie, no? But I watched these two series around the same time, and they served similar purposes in my degeneration into otakudom. I had mostly seen full series on VHS and of course VHS tapes were almost all dubs. We started watching CCS to find out only the first part of it was dubbed (the parts they took out back behind the shed and beat until it became the horrific American Cardcaptors). So I saw my first profesionally subtitled anime in a perfect scenario to learn just how much better it was than the dub. Love Hina was about a week after, and it wasn’t even out in the US yet (thanks, crack dealer anime-lender friend from Hong Kong), so no dub there either.

The second reason these are here: my first marathons. You bet your sweet ass I plowed the entirety of Cardcaptor Sakura. Wow. Still my longest record. Thankfully, my (now-)wife was there, and so was booze.

Maybe more important than either of those things, both of these shows proved without a doubt that an anime didn’t need to have a heavy story, or robots, or heaps of violence to entertain the shit out of me. A screwball romantic comedy and a kids’ adventure, if done well enough, can get the job done and then some. To this day, you can’t show me a harem or a childhood friend without it all looking suspiciously like Love Hina. Also, I have a coffee mug with Kero-chan on it. Judge me, go ahead.

5. Macross aka Robotech. OGT probably puts it best: The original reason anyone loves Macross is that damnable transforming airplane, the Valkyrie. When I was a kid I could give two shits about Lynn Minmay or Shao Pai Lon (which I also think is a great song, probably a shit movie though) but I did have a Valkyrie toy. And it was somehow cooler even than the transfomers because it had three forms — I still can’t get my mind around why the Gerwalk form is needed, but watching the show as a kid you knew that even that form had a point. Anyway, regardless of how bastardized it may have been, Robotech made a mecha fan out of me early in life so I have to thank it.

6. Haruhi. Easy, right? For me, yes. After Evangelion I went berserk for a while, then tapered off after a while in favor of things like Takashi Miike and David Lynch. But Haruhi made everything better again. It doesn’t matter that Haruhi is the product of a scientific formula that’s guaranteed to be loved by otaku everywhere, it’s a great show, a time-traveling treat with a pile of laughs. I also came to the mistaken conclusion that television anime had turned a corner quality-wise. Turned out that was just one studio.

So what got you going? Inquiring minds want to know, what made you the fanboy/girl you are today?