Animisery – A Blog About Living Miserably with Anime (Among Other Things)

It’s not called peak because it’s good but because it’s a climb

I don’t really like to just sit down and engage with long media in general unless it is absolutely captivating me. I’d like to say it’s because I’m holding on to some sort of higher ground that “I prefer stories that say what they need to say and then move on” but it’s probably more due to the fact that Momma gave her son unrestricted computer access when I was a kid and ye olde internet was stuffed with flash games I could dive in as much as I want. Now that means that I’m an adult who doesn’t want just a really long Toblerone for a snack but all the candy and sweets I can have in all the flavors possible all at once and now now now why can’t I have them mommy etc. etc.

This is all well in good in our modern society where we can overdose on micro videos all day long (darn those kids and their danged ol’ TikTok) but in anime? I think it’s held me back more than anything. My crown jewel of anime watching is the fact that I can concretely confirm that I watched all 110 something episodes of Yu Yu Hakusho and can kind of remember what happened in most of them. It’s impressive to me knowing that I was long sternly advocating for just watching 13 episodes of anime for Otaku Melancholy (my old podcast) but it’s not really a stone to be proud of for my kingdom in the wake of anime discussion online filled with denizens who bombard me with “oh man watch One Piece, it’s peak, dude”. One Piece, for the two of you who stumbled upon this blog that don’t know what the massive franchise juggernaut is, exists as a behemoth of an anime with 1000+ episodes of CONTINUIOUS FREAKING STORY that demands you watch every single episode. It would be one thing if such a monster existed on the edge of our weeaboo society for us to ignore and not pay attention to but alas. One Piece is the anime Godzilla that is actively tearing down the otaku country side and has just assaulted my house and murdered my cat and cold blood.

But the kids, Mattie! They say it’s peak! It’s peak, Mattie! Yeah, it’s peak. But not for quality. I have read, at the time that my sweaty hands are gliding across my well dusted keyboard, 840ish chapters of One Piece. I may not be able to sit down and watch the show but I’m not going to left out. Yet, somehow, I feel like I have been. I’m not sitting with the show and climbing it with other anime aficionados. I’ve not been with them as I watch Toei Animation start the trek that they had hardly a clue would go on for 20 years and barely phone it in week to week to finally get to the Wano arc where God himself is doing the in between frames of every fight. I don’t get that journey and that’s why I think calling a long piece of entertainment like One Piece “peak” is hilarious. It makes me think that maybe One Piece isn’t peak because of the quality of the end product but maybe partly because the climb, that journey to the latest episode, has you convinced that there’s a lot more to your watch time than there actually is. Now take this all with a grain of salt because I am not a professed One Piece fan. I’m not a hater either though. I’m just aware of the nature of the allegorical kaiju that has rendered my bedroom asunder in flames.

So I don’t watch long anime, yeah? Not yeah. Very unyeah actually. I love Gintama. I’ve not finished it. I don’t know when I’ll finish it but I love Gintama.

I’m about 100 episodes in Gintama and I am so in love with every aspect of the show that our whirlwind romance will soon become an epic poem that our future generations will have to devote their eleventh grade of high school studying. It’s just that good to me and Gintama asks for so little from me outside of maybe pausing every 6 or 7 minutes in an episode to read a very long subtitle about a pop culture reference involving Japanese TV programming from the 90’s that my American buttchecks don’t know a fart about. I think the humor is so wacky and irreverent and so just purely Japanese that it provides the kind of joy that can only be found from something like this. It doesn’t feel like a climb to me though. It feels like a long joyous stroll with tons of fun little trees and bushes to gaze at that all look like poop because that’s the kind of trees and bushes that Gintama would think are funny and I’m not going to say they aren’t. The thing I’m trying to express through this blissful analogy is that Gintama isn’t a climb for me. Getting to the end of Gintama would mean nothing to me except that I don’t get to do it any more and that’s a tragedy. I’m not going to be able to talk with the other Gintama fans about Gintama fights or jokes because I don’t want to. I just want to enjoy my walk with Gintama hand in hand. I want our beachside stroll to reach until the end of the pier.

That’s a lot of text just to say you love Gintama, Mattie. It is, isn’t it? So it’s not a climb to me. Cool. Different strokes for different folks and other charming phrases for “people like what they like” inserted here and all that. That’s neat. What I want to ask though is, after all my Gintama praise and mild One Piece bashing, does the climb of the anime we watch affect how we enjoy it? The obvious answer is of course it does. If we’re watching all 700 episodes of Naruto then we must enjoy it or we would expel it from our eye holes as fast as we could. We’re only going to invest our time in what we enjoy obviously. I don’t know about that though. I think that anime as a hobby and entertainment media encourages the climb because so many stories drag on due to the nature of their source material like manga and light novels. We at some point say that we have to be thrilled with the ride we’re currently on unaware that we need to get off. I know this is a long winded phrasing for “don’t fall for the sunk cost fallacy” but I think it rings true as I’m casually bombarded with friends imploring me to watch 200+ episode shows ad nauseum. At some point we can just embrace that THE CLIMB isn’t necessary and some anime loving folks are just better off without it. Let your fellow anime enjoyers take the ride they want.

I’m not going to tell you to watch Gintama and I’m not going to hate you if you do check it out (of your own volition you know because I’m not going to tell you drink a Sprite Cranbe- I mean watch Gintama) and loathe it. I just hope that some of you kind souls will give me the same kindness when inform you that I dropped Black Clover after 9 episodes.

Sorry you had to find out this way.