I want to leave this theme park at some point.
So I recently watched the first episode of Wind Breaker because it got somewhat popular due to a combination of Cloverwork’s visuals/fight choreography and nothing else really standing out when it first debuted unless you’re an old-school Spice and Wolf fan. And that episode was fucking terrible apart from some of the action. Dialogue was bad. Main character’s angst and the catalyst for his growth was rushed. Him getting saved at the last minute was some of the worst plot armor I’ve seen in an action show (how the fuck did nobody notice the friendly gang approaching them until the very last possible minute, and why were they barely foreshadowed?). And there doesn’t seem to be any story beyond “I will become a great fighter and protect this boring ass town while learning to be nicer due to my violent friends”.
This is some of the most bare minimum Japanese gangster shit I’ve ever seen. And while the spectacle can be fun, it’s so bite-sized compared to the continually raised bar for animated action nowadays that you can’t sell me on it. Yeah it could get better later, but do I want to stick around for that possibility? I finally started watching the new X-Men show and the action is so clean and creative in it from the very start. Plus, what are the chances it’ll at least reach the heights of the other spectacle anime from last season? Like Mashle? Or Bucchigiri? Or Solo Leveling? Or Frieren?
All of which by the way I stopped caring about after they ended. Yes, even Frieren, or at least the entire second half of that series. While my review of it was largely positive and I did acknowledge how it became more shonen over time, one thing I realized I didn’t make clear was how fucking bored I was with a lot of the exam stuff. I didn’t figure out what exactly was bothering me about it beyond it being very similar to the first arc of Hunter x Hunter, which I’m also not a big fan of, but I finally got it after looking at the reactions of the not-very-vocal minority who didn’t like what Frieren turned into.
It’s mainly because in addition to acting as setup that will not pay off until the next season with all of these new characters, the only thing we really learn from those twelve episodes is magic lore/power system shit. And I can’t stress enough how much I don’t care about that, especially when it’s mostly used to explain how to fight a fucking mud replica. I like it in Undead Unluck because of how creative it gets with it, but that’s more an exception to the rule. But in Frieren, why would I ever care about how magic works in that show? If it’s used to fuel some other life philosophy like how that demon king got reset to Level 1 due to magic evolving so much over time in the century he was trapped as a statue, sure.
But all explaining magic did in the Exam arc was clarify why someone is strong or why they’re taking the exam in the first place. And the reasons were never more than okay at best. Denken’s was one of the more interesting reasons, and it was basically because he can’t go back to the home that he and his dead wife grew up in because it got swallowed up by the Golden Land and only first-class mages can go there. That is a pretty standard story you can find in most fantasy JRPGs. It doesn’t question life the way Old Man Voll’s insistence on protecting a village in memory of his dead human wife (Voll is a dwarf in case you don’t remember, so he outlived his wife) just because he wants to and slowly becoming more senile with age did.
And then there’s the other anime I mentioned, who pretty much have nothing to them but spectacle and bullshit to justify said spectacle. Now to be fair, Mashle and Bucchigiri are comedies, and Solo Leveling I already knew wasn’t going to have much appeal besides the spectacle to begin with. So it doesn’t surprise me in the least that I’m probably going to forget about them down the line. Ninja Kamui I also have similar feelings with, but it’s far from over at this point, so the finale might do something interesting. But after watching all these shallow spectacle anime in the same season, I just don’t want to start any more when I could be playing video games instead.
I do believe that you can have spectacle as substance, but the problem is that similar to comedy, it’s so subjective in what counts as entertaining spectacle. It has to be fitted to your individual tastes in very specific ways like how I enjoy Fast & Furious movies while most people hate them. A lot of people like the ridiculousness of Baki or Jojo. Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen are what I enjoy in terms of shonen spectacles and it’s mainly because they up the action to a point that it’s just fucking art. Frieren is the same when it does an action scene, but since action isn’t the primary focus of that show, it can’t carry it in the same way.
But I’ll at least give Frieren props for getting on to that level despite the action mostly being beam spams. What makes these shows standout from something like Wind Breaker is that it’s so rare to get action on that level, so it’s so much more special when it happens. When something becomes common, it’s not special anymore. My Hero Academia and how it’s popularity changed over the years is proof of that. All the TV shows that Netflix and other streaming services churn out is proof of that. Let’s not even get started on Korean dramas, which I have to be very selective with because most of them are like sixteen hours long minimum.
At the end of the day, my favorites in any medium must stand out from the pack. When you consume too many things that don’t stand out, it feels like you wasted your time and resources, similar to what would happen if a company offered interviews with everyone who applied for a job regardless of whether or not their resume was good. Especially when it comes to anime, which I love, but has to compete with other mediums for my entertainment. Why would I watch Shangri-La Frontier when I can just watch a Twitch stream that’s way funnier? Why would I watch Dangers in My Heart when I can watch a Korean romance or One Day on Netflix? Why would I watch any anime from the Winter season over Hazbin Hotel or Invincible or X-Men ’97? Or Shogun, which isn’t even animated, but it’s a great Japanese/American product in comparison to Tokyo Vice, which I stopped watching because it was just good enough.
Because I like pop culture meta, I’ll still consume something I’m not too big on if it has enough of an impact. That’s the main reason I’ve been binging the original Dragonball stuff as of late. That’s the reason I started watching X-Men ’97 despite mostly only enjoying the SNES game Mutant Apocalypse when it comes to that version of X-Men. Although to be fair, the new show is pretty good, even though I don’t love it like the people who use IMDB do. There are limits to how much I can tolerate when it comes to consuming something for pure meta reasons though, especially if it’s not going to stay relevant for long. Like Tokyo Revengers. Lord knows those last two seasons were a waste of my goddamn time.
Well, here’s to hoping Kaiju No. 8 can stand out when it airs. Lord knows Crunchyroll wants it to. They keep asking if I want to watch the trailer every time I boot up the app.
Standing On My Neck 