Category: Personal

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Meta Opinion Personal

The Balancing Act of Being Critical: Part 1 – Passions are Personal

Over the past couple of months I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I approach my writing and reviewing, and the things that go into crafting a well-written critique that has value to others. I think media criticism and textual analysis is interesting no matter what your chosen medium of focus is, but anime in particular appeals to me because I feel like there’s a lot to unpack – both regarding the material itself, as well as the ways in which the Western fandom interacts with it. As an affect of the Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, I’ve also had a lot more time to interact online with folks within my anime club friendship circle; as a result I’ve gotten into some interesting discussions regarding anime likes and dislikes and had the opportunity to consider some alternative viewpoints to my own. Because I’ve been hoping to write more about the more “meta” parts of anime fandom, I wanted to use this opportunity to record and ponder some of those thoughts.

I’ve been writing about anime for a long time (since early 2007 at least). While plenty of anime series have crossed my path over the years, some blazing onto the scene with a lot of fanfare before being largely forgotten and some remaining favorites of mine despite all the things I’ve experienced in the interim, one thing that’s been a constant is that anime as a medium has always had its share of controversial material. This isn’t something unique to anime; there are plenty of Western TV shows and films that push the boundaries of our collective social taboos (or just trample all over what I’d define as good taste). But I suspect that there are traits of anime that make these kinds of transgressions stand out to a greater degree than they might otherwise.

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Personal

Happy Halloween!

“Hey Jessi, why did you basically stop updating your site over the past couple of weeks? I thought you were trying to keep up on first episode reviews?” Well, friend, it’s Halloween season, and while I typically don’t put a ton of effort into my costumes (I’ve told folks in my “real life” that my special shitpost language is conveyed through my janky Halloween costumes that are typically funnier than they are legitimate cosplays), I thought this year deserved something a little better than minimal effort. Typically, I like to base the costume off of either some meme, or something that the anime club has watched recently, and this past Summer I was lucky enough to convince people to watch one of my recent favorites, Planet With.

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Personal

Giving it Another Try

Since I’ve been a blogger, my primary focus has been on newer or current anime. Watching newer series has helped me maintain my interest in anime fandom, which is a fandom that often seems to pride itself in bulk consumption – as much as possible and as quickly as one can manage. There are certainly a lot of anime series out there and it can be very easy to get caught up in the destructive mindset of watching as much as humanly possible (I have to say, I do pride myself on the number of anime I’ve completed even though I’m not necessarily proud of having finished everything on that list. I’ll leave that to my readers to guess at which anime fall into what group).

With a near constant onslaught of new anime, it becomes much more difficult to look backwards to the classics. I’ve admitted in the past that I have some large blind spots when it comes to certain famous franchises. I’ve watched very little Dragon Ball (or its offshoots). I don’t have a special connection with older sports anime like Slam Dunk. And, in probably one of the more surprising twists of my life, I’ve never really gotten into the Gundam franchise.

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Personal

A Few Meager Words for a Hero I Never Met

It might seem a little weird for me to have much to say about Zac Bertschy; I’ve never met him, and our online interactions were limited to a few isolated tweets back-and-forth some years ago. But when I learned of his untimely passing yesterday, after the initial shock had began to dull I began to ponder all the ways in which his words and writing had influenced me over the years.

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Personal

Looking to the Past

For a long time I meticulously maintained a MAL page where I’d keep track of the obnoxious number of anime series I was watching at a time. Every season I’d watch anime I liked, anime I didn’t like (I was big on watching things ironically at the time; I’m sure I was completely insufferable), and older anime I’d heard about that I thought might fill in some of the many gaps in my viewing history. The nice thing about using the tracker was that it helped me stay on top of what I’d seen and what episodes I still needed to download and watch. And I have to say, doing things this way exposed me to a lot of anime series that I enjoyed and barely anyone else remembers, which is both very cool yet somewhat lonely at the same time.

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Opinion Personal

Charting a Course

How deep into the anime fandom would you say you’ve delved? If I really push it, I can trace my fandom back to somewhere in the mid 1990’s, when Sailor Moon and Akira were first popular in the US, and perhaps even earlier to when a friend of mine commented that my character doodles looked like “Japanese cartoons” – it turned out it was mimicking some of the designs from one of several anime that had been wiped of Japanese culture for the consumption of American kids on Nickelodeon. While I know that anime had a minor presence in the West even prior to that, the era of anime alongside Saturday morning cartoons really marked a big jump in its fandom cache. I don’t say all this to imply that I’m somehow “more” of an anime fan than any particular person, I just want to point out that I have the benefit of time and exposure to a lot of series that have since become much less available to newer fans.

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Gaming Personal

Just For Fun – Minecraft

My cat.

The other day I heard one of my Facebook acquaintances complaining about their kid’s obsession with Minecraft, and how they just don’t understand it. I can relate, but maybe not in the way they might expect. In my household, I’m the one obsessed with Minecraft – although I do have a pretty good handle on why it appeals to me. Though, at almost 38 years old, I might be a little bit of an anomaly, or at least outside the “average.”

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Meta Personal

Summer 2019 – It’s Time for a Change

Hi all, it’s been quiet here for a few weeks, hasn’t it? Without going too deeply into the gory details, my partner and I are currently undergoing IVF/ infertility treatment, and since I’m the one with more involved anatomy the medication has left me feeling really exhausted. Unfortunately, I get home from work feeling exhausted, and that leaves me with very little energy to indulge in my hobbies – including this blog. The down time has given me the opportunity to think things over a bit, and I suppose now is probably a good time to implement a few changes.

  1. Regarding the remaining first impressions from this season – I don’t know if I’ll finish them or not. There have been a lot of great things airing this season and I feel a little bit guilty about not providing my personal input, but at this point many series are wrapping up and it feels a little silly to talk about first episodes when many people have already watched the final ones. It’s not like I haven’t been watching stuff, so I may come out with some kind of wrap-up or summary or something similar, but that will depend highly on my free time and energy (I’m getting close to finished with this round of medication and I anticipate there will be some down time after that, so hopefully I’ll feel a little bit more up to writing).
  2. Going forward – I’d like to start switching stuff up a bit. Obviously I enjoy doing first impressions and surveying the anime landscape each season, so I don’t want to stop doing that. Instead of deep-dives into each series, though, I have been thinking about doing a few posts with shorter impressions on some of the series I’m not quite as interested in, and then writing a few “feature” impressions of the things I think are more worth talking about. These could be ones I really like, ones that misfire in interesting ways, or just episodes that provide a lot of food for thought. Part of what makes my current system really difficult sometimes is that I feel obligated to write at length about episodes that I just don’t have very strong feelings about, and that’s always really frustrating for me and wastes a lot of time.
  3. I’d like to spend my energy writing more thoughtful pieces – digging into the details of certain anime series and writing more full-series reviews. Those are the types of things I find more satisfying to write about, but as soon as first impressions start falling behind my time to write these types of things is diminished quite a bit.

It remains to be seen how this will all end up playing out – I’ve got a surgery scheduled right around the start of the new anime season, so my ability to put into practice the things I’ve planned may be compromised somewhat (though on the other hand I’ll have a few days of free time with no obligations, so it might work out to my advantage). But hopefully the new direction will be a good refresh and re-focus for me. Thanks for reading!

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Personal

A Different Type of Convention Reaction

Another year, another CONvergence. I’ve written here before about the convention itself, and I may have more things to say later about the nuts and bolts part of the convention since it was in a new location this year (spoiler: I thought it was a net positive overall). Today I’d actually like to talk about CONvergence’s panel culture and some specific experiences I’ve had related to that, including some positive and not-so-positive ones I had this year. My experiences aren’t necessarily directly related to CONvergence in all respects; I’ve got some personality problems/mental health issues that make certain situations different for me than they might be for others, but hopefully this will all resonate with others to some degree.

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Personal

The Disorientation of Unplanned Hiatuses

Some people plan their writing hiatuses, some don’t. I’m obviously the latter type of person. My preference is to post here a few times per week as it suits my schedule, but I’m also quite the slave to my own emotional state. Depression for me doesn’t really manifest as outright sadness a lot of the time. Instead, it bubbles underground as a lack of motivation and exhaustion at the thought of trying to accomplish anything (even something fun – like watching anime and talking about it with my readers and friends). I especially struggle when I compare myself to others who are much more consistent than I am, because I get this nagging feeling that there’s just something wrong with me.

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