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

It’s not a grand accomplishment by any means but this January marked five years of me doing consistent anime podcasting content. I can’t honestly say that it’s all good or even okay quality wise (the first episodes I recorded were in a closet with a 40 dollar mic I bought off Amazon that had a nondetachable pop filter) but I can say profess that trying to summarize my thoughts for the sake of disposable weekly content has changed my perspective on how I watch and review anime. Firstly, it’s forced me into scenarios where I’m pressed to watch anime that I absolutely despise and would rather not watch which will affect you in more ways than it should. Nothing will ruin your day harder then getting home after a stressful day at work and being on episode 3 of a 13 episode show that you absolutely loathe but you kept putting it off and now it’s the day before record and you have to barrel through kicking and screaming. Secondly, it’s also forced me into situations where I’ve been exposed to shows that I would’ve never given the time of day because they just aren’t what I subjectively view as my “thing”. This has honestly been the hugest boon about the whole thing because it’s given me reasons to watch shows that I now adore like Princess Principal which I would’ve never tried otherwise. Lastly, it’s made me more critical the dissatisfaction that certain shows will instill in me and more lenient with the facets that give me great joy. For example, in my first pod Otaku Melancholy, it was a hard rule that every show that had a beach or pool episode got an automatic one point deduction for such an exhaustively forced fan service element. That wasn’t just a meme for the sake of what levity we could find on OtaMel; my cohost Audrey and I legitimately grew to be absolutely repulsed by those kinds of episodes.

When you exhaustively pour over dissecting one form of media then you catch on to things that enforce what you love and loathe about it. Anyone can watch an anime and give thoughts about it and they’re all equally valid. It doesn’t matter if you have a personal platform like a podcast or a blog which you critique anime that would make your opinion more warranted than others by comparison. The only difference is the depth of the dive you take. When I adore an anime now, it feels like I have to watch it twice if I want to give it that internal score of ten out of ten since I’ve been burned so many times. Previously, I’d declare that “X anime is the zenith of the media! It’s where we have truly reached the highest echelon of animated entertainment!” then watch it again later to find myself waning on my positive impression. I chalk it up to how emotional I am or was. If a film, video game, or book had hit me while I was under mental duress and gives me that dopamine I severely crave then I’d struggle to find contributing factors to hate on it. After about three years, I realized the faults in not giving a “perfect” show a double watch before stating it was perfect.

Take my capital offender, Tsuki ga Kirei. Tsuki ga Kirei is a sublime romance anime; it’s grounded to the fault of being cruelly constrained by gravity. The kids are awkward in the way that only middle schoolers can be and their emotions dictate their every move in a similar way. It’s a great watch and on my first go around? I adored it in every way. The music, the characters, the plot were nigh impossible for me to say anything about but positives thus I said it was a ten out of ten. On my rewatch however I realized something: I had completely let myself become susceptible to my feelings of failed intimacy and self loathing. An adorable story of young love had been such a healing salvo to my soul that I didn’t notice that Tsuki ga Kirei actually really bored me at times and was slow in ways that don’t make for a great narrative. It existed to develop the cast more yet it was like quadruple dipping your chip at a party; you were just doing it for yourself. With that, I reconsidered the entirely arbitrary number value I assigned to this piece of media that someone put their blood, sweat, and tears into and took away a point. That’ll show you, hardworking underpaid Japanese animators.

It’s also helped me enunciate my thoughts better on what I enjoy and what I don’t as it concerns my entertainment. It’s not by personal experience either; it’s by the listening I’ve done to my co-hosts and guests. I’ve gone into several discussions excited with what I thought was a nuanced take with a perspective that would challenge the show or movie we were talking about only to find myself with conflicting parties. I would be stoked on an anime only to find that my co-host didn’t share the same view points. Maybe it’s the only child syndrome I have (well I’m legally an only child and it’s a long story that I’ll tell you over coffee some day at that nice place downtown that just opened up, it’s great, they make a wonderful matcha latte there) but people who disagreed with my thoughts and opinions used to be challenging for me. I kept to a crowd of people in my real life who absorbed the same inflow of content so it was kind of a rarity to see a dissenting opinion. I see now that I absolutely should appreciate the difference in perspective way more than someone agreeing with me because it challenges how I perceive anime. By podcasting with guests and hosts who weren’t weened on the same shows as me, I got to open myself up more to ideas that I would’ve never been keen on validating. Take for example, a show like Scum’s Wish. I thought it was delightful steaming trash but I was met with an onslaught of critical opinions that differed from my own. I believed that everyone would’ve seen how up it’s own ass that Scum’s Wish was and respected that. I was outlandishly wrong.

Obviously, you have to stand your ground on what your thoughts but be open to changing when presented with new evidence and facts. It’s television entertainment though; screw what they think! It’s a balancing act of your perspective versus the objective criticisms of others and it’s never really something you get right, I guess. One man’s mid is another man’s masterpiece. It’s getting outside of your box that matters and anime podcasting has done that for me. I try to think critically about what I’m watching and I mean that I sometimes write bullet points about the shows I watch. I like taking notes and it helps me annotate my opinions meaningfully in my mind. I mean, at the end of it all, it’s basically me making a list of things I enjoyed and didn’t enjoy and little bubbles of thoughts that occurred to me as I watched. I do it more and more for anime I do for the Anime Brothers but this blog has also helped me kind of keep an internal record as well! I want to have little pieces of valid thought so this isn’t 100% me rambling aimless thoughts, you know?

My biggest change over the past five years has been how I try to find the little pieces of joy more now then ever. I was overly critical when I first started and would seek out failure rather than success which isn’t optimal. When you look for faults then you’ll always find them which detracted me from the fun I was having with anime. I would say “oh this animation looked pretty choppy, it’s really distracting” and it would pile on and on and on and I would’ve convinced myself the show was devoid of any redeeming qualities barring that it was moving pictures. I had to change that and only see the flaws that were present and not the ones I had to force through. Does that make me an invalid critic when I don’t search for things to critique? I don’t think so. I still know a turd when I smell it and I still know a polished turd when I see it as well. Some shows are absolute, for lack of a better term, horseshit and will still be horseshit no matter how much you try to push them into the light to find that brighter side. You’re going to get one good chuckle and you’ll have to ride that high all the way to the end and I can respect that. Some people love the anime Akikan and I have to breathe the same air as them and that’ll be the only thing we share positively. It is what it is.

I’m not the same person I was five years ago when I was in that closet surrounded by coats and shirts. Heck, I’m not even hosting the same podcast or watch the same shows! I started doing the whole thing because I loved anime and wanted an excuse to watch more and more and also keep up with my best friend after I moved. My motivations soon changed as I just had more and more fun but I still grew into a different kind of anime watcher without even being fully aware at the time. I’m changing and I think that’s a wonderful thing especially due in part that making my little pieces of content helped me achieve just that. Thinking critically and meeting other people who has dissimilar feelings and takes morphed me more and more and I think that’s the best thing of it all. I watched shows because a stranger on the internet praised them and I skipped shows because another stranger said that I should. I started being able to tolerate shonen action shows and respecting that I didn’t have to enjoy them and that there was nothing wrong with that. Any hobby is a journey and I’m elated that mine has been so much fun in these five years. I hope that I get to do this for fifty more until I’m a weeaboomer who rambles on about Code Geass as I’m relieving myself into my Gundam adult diapers. Maybe by then I’ll have finally finished the first season of Fruits Basket.

Thank you for reading this! Please leave a comment below and tell me how you’ve changed with how you think and feel about anime! I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to go listen to my podcast, the Anime Brothers Podcast (episode 200 and onward), wherever you get you shows! If you’re so inclined and want to see what I mean then you can also listen to said old show the Otaku Melancholy podcast while you’re there too! Thanks again!