Tadaima Okaeri

[olivermoss]

So, I've got Crunchyroll for a bit. Even though I was super into anime a long time ago, honestly I haven't watched much in ages. I don't know if it's that anime went super hard on moe after a point, I don't have a good source to point me to the lesser known stuff Id like, or a combo of both.

But, I got CR to watch... . Tadaima, Okaeri. It's over cutsey and annoying, but I am a sucker for world building so I am curious how some things will play out. This is one of those worlds where alphas go with alphas typically and alpha/omega is deviant which is just... such a weird iteration of omegaverse that I don't really get. I'll keep watching for a bit. Also, is that meant to be a permanent bite mark on his neck?

I do not have time to really get into much right now, but I want to see some things. I can finally peek at Mob Psycho 100 which I've got reason to think might be very interesting to me, but also parts of the fandom make me want to scream.

For the record learning Japanese didn't increase my enjoyment of anime, it made me want to scream constantly at all the BS that gets passed as facts in English speaking fandom. omg the most BS crap goes viral on tumblr. (though tumblr isn't as bad as some RL anime fans, twice I went to a Japanese restaurant with anime fans and dear fucking fuck it just means grated radish, calm down, I also dealt with someone who had a meltdown over bonito flakes)

I should make a list of anime I watched back in the day but all I can think about right now is that Sayonara Zetsoubou Sensei would be a discourse bomb these days and I was obsessed with some very early slashy anime that I wouldn't care about as much now because I am not starving for scraps of gay. The days of 'watching' Level C by clicking through screencaps taken every 1/2 second, I don't want to go back to them.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I periodically get very nostalgic for my anime days in high school and early college. That was my entry point into fandom, and I'm a bit sad that I drifted away from it. For me I think I sort of lost touch with my real-life friends who were into it and then no longer had good sources for the series I saw mentions of in passing... I'm terrible at setting aside time and energy for new stuff as it is, and then eventually it just felt like there was *so much* to catch up on that I had no idea where to start!

I had heard that there were several dramas (a couple Thai ones, I think?) that had omegaverse settings, but had missed that there's an omegaverse anime now, too!

I can only *imagine* what discourse bombs some of the fave anime (and the general fandom consensuses of the time) would be now!

[olivermoss]

I got super into them just because mainstream media was still so limited, there was so little genre stuff and what there was could be hard to get a hold of. Anime existing was like finding a giant buffet. But, after some big market correction the whole industry went heavily moe / cute / slice of life because they're more reliable markets than some of the more experimental and niche stuff they'd been doing. This isn't just my take, a lot of companies shifted hard into that mode and I was like 'but where are my slashy near future privacy dystopias like Himitsu?'

Yeah, I tried with Pit Babe the Thai BL but it was so boring and awkward. There was another coming up, but I don't know if it's out yet. A Chinese one was filmed but will never see the light of day due to the LGBTQ backlash going on there, and that was the one with trailers that looked amazing.

I don't know if I'll like any of the shows, but I am just curious to see what's going on with all of it.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I loved a lot of the weirder late-90s/early-00s stuff that friends circulated on crappy mail-order VHS tapes. I went through my CLAMP phase (and pretty sure modern fandom could not handle how problematique that all was...) and the not-quite-gay-but-pretty-gay stuff like Weiss Kreuz and Yami no Mastsui. A lot of it might not have been GOOD, but it was also at least very different compared to what was available in western media. I know I missed out on a lot of the weirder stuff, or only saw scattered episodes at anime cons or clubs, but I remember just HOW different so much of it felt, and how much that appealed!

I definitely remember noticing the shift to the more moe style stuff, maybe around 08 to 10ish? I didn't have any series that I was actively following at that point, but I was still fairly connected to broader anime fandom at that time, and I think that's sort of when I recall the shift being more obvious, and getting that "eh, none of the current big things appeal to me..." feeling.
Now it's been so long, I don't feel like I even have an entry point anymore.

I don't think I've seen anyone enjoy Pit Babe. I haven't seen any of it, but everything I hear seems to be along the "it felt awkward" lines, ha. I think there is another one, but I haven't seen nearly as much about it.
It sucks about the Chinese one getting perma-shelved. :/

[olivermoss]

Yami no Mastuei, I loved that so much. I got the DVDs off of Netflix and just could not make myself return them. I could not let them go. Was is good? Who knows, but having something different just felt so good. Even if stuff in Japan was as oppressed and limited (not saying it was) just having different gay-ish characters and storylines was such a breath of fresh air.

I was also obsessed with Princess Princess for some reason >.>

Until the market correction it was constantly growing, experimenting, etc. I am sure there is still amazing stuff, but it's not like what it was.

[mistressofmuses]

Yami no Matsuei is a forever fave for me, honestly, though I haven't watched it in a pretty long time. I bought the DVDs, I have downloaded copies should they ever fail me... I do feel like I can't say it's "good", but it is great, imo. It was very different when compared to the mainstream media I had available to me, and tbh, even the niche queer indie media that existed (which I was generally not cool or in-the-know enough to find at the time anyway) didn't give me *that* kind of genre story.

I forgot about Princess Princess! I never saw all of it, but I remember the episodes we did watch very fondly.

I'm sure there's a lot of fantastic stuff out there, and I just don't know as well how to find it, particularly when it feels like there's so much more meh to wade through. I miss when stuff just had bonkers premises that wound up rewiring my brain.

[olivermoss]

I haven't watched YnM in forever, but I am pretty sure it being gay-ish was a surprise for me. I was just checking out some stuff I hadn't seen and was watching it going 'wait.... wait... am I reading into things.... wait...' That is such a great feeling, instead of tracking down something queer and hoping it works for you to just in something, like it's normal to be there and doesn't need warning labels.

Yeah, I miss some of the weird stuff about being book-elementalists or stuff like that. But, it was an exploding market at the time and that just means a lot of stuff works that would be a risk now

[mistressofmuses]

I think I know YnM was gay-ish going into it, but it was still a surprise to me just HOW gay-ish it was. I think I'd assumed it was like Weiß or some of the other series that we watched around that time, where the cast is made up of bishonen that are easily shippable, but it is honestly barely subtextal. (Minus maybe some suggestive official art or whatnot.)

It really is a delight to discover things from that angle, though. The "wait, I came for the plot but I get queer stuff along with it?" instead of "I hear it's at least queer-ish, so I guess I'll have to see if I can make myself like the story..."

Yeah. I'm sure there was some bias in terms of what stuff did get translated (or became popular despite a lack of official translation) back in the day, but so many of the stories seemed just so wildly different and interesting and unique. I feel like I *hope* the weird stuff is still there, but I just have no idea how to find it anymore.

Though I guess at least to a degree there's a lot of that in ANY media realm right now; Western live-action series are getting made with an eye to being easy crowd-pleasers rather than niche weird genre stuff. If niche stuff does get made, it's miraculous if it gets more than a single season. There are outliers, but every studio wants stuff that's cheap to make that also has a broad audience. Mainstream publishing has a lot of similar complaints, where everything is about building broad hype, even if the work doesn't really deliver.

You're very right; the market explosions can be fantastic in terms of the really excellent stuff that gets made at the time, but after the market cools, everyone wants a safe bet instead. :/

[olivermoss]

I was always so confused about the hype around Weiß, especially because in that day people denied being in fic / slash communities. There was something around the hype that I was missing at the time.

Yeah, the 'throw stuff at the wall and see what works' thing when a market is growing rapidly can produce so much amazing and different stuff.

It's so weird because over time, it's the niche stuff that is the money maker. Star Trek TOS ran 3 seasons and they are still selling merch, not to mention the whole home-grown franchise they've got. It's that network's IP, no need to license to deal with the license going elsewhere. Geeks are likely to repurchase media on multiple formats. The current BS diminishes audiences over time. But, yeah, Hollywood is tearing itself apart copying how other, less stable, markets work. Guess it's working out for the CEOs if no one else.

[mistressofmuses]

Weiß was definitely another of those "it isn't GOOD, but..." series. I watched it with a high school friend, but then did find a lot of fic community around it. Not baby's first fandom for me, but it was probably the porniest fandom I'd found at the time, haha.

That "throw it all and see what sticks" period of a new market or new era for a medium really does produce a lot of interesting stuff that wouldn't exist before or after that period. It still sucks to see such a medium that was the source of a lot of wonderfully, weirdly unique stories get taken over by samey blandness.

Because that's very much it! It's the niche stuff that has staying power, that sticks around long-term and attracts new people even decades later. It's hard to even try to guess what stuff nowadays is going to wind up with that sort of reach, because so few things get a chance to fully find their feet. Though as long as there's short-term profit in it, I guess the decision-makers are happy with it. Frustrating to watch happening.

[olivermoss]

And so many of the shows these days are grasping onto old niche IPs and draining them dry. It's like decades of niche stuff is having all the remaining value drained out. Years ago people were already bored of them mining every established IP ever and thought it had gone too far... and now Keanu Reeves has been cast in Sonic as Shadow the Hedgehog?

Apparently, the new Sonic stuff isn't considered bad by fans but still... Keanu as Shadow is a thing that is happening.

C'mon, cowards, mine my nostalgia! TV rights to Last Herald Mage exist at some company, just do it. Or reboot Sentinel or finally, after a dozen failed attempts, do a Buckaroo Banzai reboot. Although, wait, after several dozen failed attempts we are actually getting a new Highlander film. I keep forgetting that's real. One of the licensing deals fell through so late a network made a short lived TV series about an immortal with an antique store, who is friends with someone who watches immortals, and right before cancellation was the reveal that the mysterious immortal was named Adam. Cracks me up, they didn't even scrub the serial numbers and were too late to no film the start. I forget what it was called, but it was hilarious. (note: if you never saw the Highlander TV show you wont get how obvious that all is, but it's amazing)

[mistressofmuses]

I know it's wildly cliche to complain about everything being yet another fucking franchise entry, but christ. Trying to just keep capitalizing on Marvel and Star Wars and reboot after reboot... I feel exhausted even when a lot of it is for properties I haven't had strong feelings about in decades. I know that it's been the cynical money grab forever at this point, but MAN has it escalated. And yeah... "more of x franchise, but now with y celeb as the voice!" sure is a thing.

But seriously! Gimme that Last Herald Mage prestige fantasy series! Or hell yeah, reboot the old fandom mainstays! If you're going to pander, pander to me for a change!

While I never saw a lot of Highlander, that is DEEPLY funny about the "we didn't even file the serial numbers off" series.
I have heard a lot of hype around the new remake/reboot, and it is amazing to me that it really is happening!

[olivermoss]

At least Hollywood has stopped giving J J Abrams all the nostalgia canons.

I think the reboot must've gotten massively delayed, but it's still on as far as I know. There were a lot of attempt to redo the whole canon and there's been a lot of weirdness around the rights.

[mistressofmuses]

Lmao, that's the truth!

Yeah, it sounds like it's still on. I had coworkers barely able to keep it in their pants when Henry Cavill was cast, haha. I think filming was supposed to start this year, though I haven't heard any updates. Hopefully it doesn't stall out, though it sounds like it wouldn't be the first time something fell apart.

[profiterole_reads]

What kind of anime are you looking for? The Ancient Magus' Bride is really good, for example. <3

[olivermoss]

I'm not sure. Anime is really hard to navigate and a lot of stuff that sounds up my alley turns out not to be.

I've heard amazing things about Mob Psycho but didn't make it past the first ep, especially since it's dubbed. I have a feeling this is one of those that you need to watch for a while and see if it clicks for you or not.

I really need to make a list of what I used to like so reccing to me is manageable, but in general I like a lot of the genre stuff but hate school settings and characters who are 13 or look like they are. There are exceptions, but very rare ones. Like Bokurano was meta about the whole '15 year olds piloting mechs' thing

[profiterole_reads]

I haven't tried Mob Psycho, but it's by the creator of One-Punch Man, whose Season 1 I've watched. It was kinda fun, but I wouldn't recommend it.

[olivermoss]

I keep hearing that 'the themes' are good and that I'd really like them. Based on what little I saw, I think I'd need to watch everything to date to see what they are talking about and I can't do the whole 'watch for dozens of hours in case people are right' thing anymore. Also, I am way more likely to give an anime more time to get good if I can watch it subtitled

[profiterole_reads]

Are you sure there's not a subbed version as well somewhere on Crunchyroll? It's usually either subbed or subbed-and-dubbed. I've never heard of anything that was only dubbed.

[olivermoss]

I have a Crunchyroll trial membership via Amazon. It might be available on the actual site, but I'm on Amazon.

[profiterole_reads]

I have no idea how this works, but even on the actual site, it's usually at two different links, so it might be hidden somewhere on Amazon.