#like watching all these mid to late 90s animes has me just

[vveakfish]

oughhhhh the urges™, they are back gaaaahh

[kafus]

i’ve been showing my mom pokemon horizons (we just finished episode 8, will be watching 9 whenever we do another session) and like for context my mom is over 60 years old and not a pokemon fan (though she does have scattered pokemon knowledge because of osmosis from me and living thru pokemania in the 90s with my older brother before i was born)

it’s been interesting seeing how she reacts as someone at that age. like uh

- this is further proving to me how important the adult characters are in horizons. my mom isn’t super articulate with her feelings on media but she had a lot of visible/audible reactions to moments between friede and roy the past few episodes - like personally as a 24 year old i get a lot out of the adult characters but i think my mom does too because she relates to/enjoys the parenting dynamic, which is helping her enjoy it more overall

- in speaking of friede, them putting in a gen 1 charizard pikachu man was actually a very good decision because my mom has remarked on how cool charizard is and gets a kick out of cap’s smug energy. they’re very recognizable to her and she likes them LOL

- it’s really funny how much the anime art style can still confuse her though, despite being exposed to it heavily since i got into anime in the 4th grade in the mid/late 2000s. sometimes she mistakes a certain expression/emotion for another, like asking why liko was mad in one scene when she was actually Determined. she has asked me why anne only has one fang and why it keeps switching sides, and she asked if landau was even a human being and not a pokemon because she was so confused by his facial hair’s stylization and his wacky clothes (he actually freaks her out a bit. the only character she doesn’t like LOL it’s hitting some sort of uncanny valley for her)

- this is more applicable to my mom because of her exposure to pokemon and not the average older person, but it’s funny seeing her deal with the new anime structure with what little she previously knows. she’s asked things like “doesn’t he have more pokemon?” @ amethio continuously sending out ceruledge and “don’t they have other moves?” @ liko and roy spamming leafage and ember at each other. horizons tends to give everyone just one or two partner pokemon and catching and training up pokemon has been comparatively slow, which is actually something i enjoy, but my mom is a bit confused by it LOL

- on the note of my mom’s pokemon knowledge, i just found this really endearing: in HZ006 when rayquaza is first released, for one she excitedly asked if the pokemon was coming out of the ball, and then when she saw it she asked if it was gyarados. i said no that’s rayquaza. and she was like huh why did i think of gyarados. and i said well they’re both flying noodles. later she said she was surprised she knew that association/was proud of herself for it and i thought that was cool too LMAO

- she has no strong opinions on dot yet, we aren’t far enough, but i made sure to point at the screen really emphatically when she showed up and say THAT’S MY FAVORITE CHARACTER!! so she knows. she Knows i’ve been showing her all my likodot art anyway SORRY MOM

anyway those were just some of my thoughts watching it with her has been really enjoyable :)

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so like we're all aware of the uh absolute disaster of arrests related to the coronation, right? with the police arresting people for seemingly no reason at best?

anyone want to hear a first hand account of one of them? yeah?

well, let me introduce you to the group who were arrested in the middle of a seminar that was entirely unrelated to the coronation who were arrested by the metropolitan police with a rather surreal tangent about vegan breakfasts.

[Alt Text:]

‘It was utterly surreal’: police accused of farcical error after 14 arrested at seminar on day of coronation

Primary teacher and ex-civil servant were among those attending class. Here they recount what happened

Daniel Boffey Chief reporter, Sun 21 May 2023

“I felt that they knew by the time they had taken us to the station in the van that they had the wrong people,” said Lauren, 26, a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry.

The post-coronation wash-up over the last fortnight has been marked by an array of surreal stories of bungled arrests, from the republican activists swept up by police for possession of luggage straps to the pro-monarchy Australian architect who had been simply seeking to enjoy a pleasant day out at Westminster Abbey.

It has been notable that in each of those cases, after intense media attention, the Metropolitan police has since admitted some regret and announced that no further action would be taken.

The group, almost entirely female or non-binary, aged between their mid-20s and late 60s and largely new to activism, let alone its more extreme manifestations, were arrested on suspicion of being a Just Stop Oil cell intent on disrupting the crowning of Charles III.

In reality, they had gathered in a small nondescript room in a rented work space in east London for a seven-hour seminar about the theory, history and practice of non-violent protest after expressing an interest in the social activist group Animal Rising, largely via its website.

They were put in minivans outside the building, with eight of the group taken to Brixton police station in south London and six to Stoke Newington in north London. Hillwood was sat in the vehicle for hour and a half before disembarking in Brixton. There was a further 90-minute wait outside the station before being checked in at the custody desk.

It was 4pm by the time Hillwood was led to her cell. She asked for her solicitor and was served a vegan “all day breakfast”. “It was literally beans,” Hillwood said. A solicitor advised her to offer no comment to the officers’ questions.

But when it came to his turn, Jenkins felt no such compunction. “I said my intention was to sit in an all day training course learn about non-violent protests, meet some new people and avoid the coronation.”

The group were let out late in the evening on bail pending further investigation. Those arrested have since tried to piece together what may have happened. They learned that Just Stop Oil had previously used the building for meetings, along with many other organisations.

The police had mentioned some placards lying around in part of the building, and some paint unconnected to the training. The truth, said Caitlin, was that it was a horrible bungle. Animal Rising is planning a civil case for wrongful arrest and imprisonment. “I want the police to drop it,” said Caitlin. “I want my phone and my watch back and I want this wiped from the police database.”

The Metropolitan police has declined to comment.

full article here

so little tl/dr: the metropolitan police essentially raided a 7 hour seminar that was unrelated to the coronation, and arrested 14 people on suspicion of being part of just stop oil and held them for over six hours because uh, well theyd rented the same room as just stop oil did one time and there was some signs i guess.

(side note on just stop oil; ive read a lot of conflicting information about them as activists and i honestly dont know if they are a real activist group or if its astroturfing. if anyone more educated on them wants to elaborate, please do.)

they were arrested “on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” because the police believed they intended to disrupt the coronation.

im not sure how they planned to do that since they were five miles away from it and in a seven-hour seminar, but who needs logistics or facts when you have a law that violates human rights.

theyre still being investigated now; the police still have caitlins phone; theyre out on fucking bail.

again, the police believe their part of just stop oil because they rented a room that anyone can rent and apparently they saw some signs and placards.

if you wrote "25 police officers mistakenly raid a seminar on non-violent protest as they believed them to be part of a conspiracy for renting a room" as satire, youd probably get the feedback or it being a little on the nose. but nope, this actually happened.

[ligbi]

Yet Another Comparison Of  ‘90-’99 And ‘14-’23 Anime Girls

Used in-episode screenshots and semi-neutral expressions to keep some semblance of consistency for accurate comparisons, and only used tv anime so no golden boys or makoto shinkais

Feel free to comment on this post or add to it- I know I had a lot more children's anime in the 90s than in the 10ishs but there were also a lot less shows back then

List of series and thoughts under the cut

90-99

knights of ramune \ nadia

goldfish warning\ future gpx

dog of flanders\yyh

akazukin chacha\slam dunk

tenchi universe/ eva

escaflone/ those who hunt elves

kero kero chime/utena

akihabara/ devilman lady

tenshi ni narumon/gto

14-23

yuki yuna/garo

rakudai kini no cavalry/ nisekoi

kuma miko/ maisou gakuen

urara meirochou/tsugumomo

a place further than our universe/ happy sugar life

endro/carole and tuesday

bna/ interspecies reviewers

drugstore in another world/blue period

lyrocois recoil/birdy wing

revolution magical world yuri/ ice guy and cool colleague

I tried to keep it younger characters/older characters for the 90s and that was not an option for the recent anime series because

There are way too many damn anime nowadays. 

I tried to just get a general assortment of different character designers for both but feel free to tell me what a bad job I did for the modern stuff. Pretty sure I don’t have any dupes for the 90s ladies

personally the issue with modern anime is less ‘uwu moe moe kyun isekai harem bullshit’ and more ‘heres a single cour cheaply made no ending adaptaion of a manga or light novel why don’t you go check those out’ big budget ads of which there are too many

i’d like to run the numbers to see if the percentage of original anime has gone down or if the original works are just being flooded out by the sea of overworked nothings that are being constantly rushed out the door

yes obviously not all original works are good (or finish well rip wep) and there are good adaptations but when people think anime once they're past shounen jump series 1-500 the biggest names are original works and sure you might end up with an fma or ouran but your bebops your evas your utenas are originals. or media mixes which are weird collabs we could get into but let’s not today 

i won’t disagree that there’s too many anime nowadays targeting lolicons (yeah yeah any anime for them is too much but we’re talking about comparing eras not judging content here) but I /think/ 80s and 90s relegated that type of stuff to OVAs generally. Don’t have the data to back that up but between ovas nowadays being only just for porn and the lemony history of ovas since the 80s.... there were just More ovas back when as well

doing a loose count on mal of all ovas from 90-99  1050 to about 750 total for 14-23. given the tv ratio for 95-19 being  around 1:6

yes yes these numbers are fast and loose and theres chinese animation in there and we can get finicky about What Is Anime but this was a conversation about what era of anime stylization is better

it’s the late 90s btw

but that’s a personal preference of course because art is subjective blah blah blah 90s character driven comedy fantasy/scifi ova are peak

PER SON A LLY

did I have more thoughts?

probably

i started this over two hours ago make less anime

Make less anime and put more effort into what you do make

less anime. more episodes. more pay. more breaks. take longer. more original stuff

stop remaking shittttttt. you already wasted time and money and effort on a mid anime adaptation of a manga. don’t do it againnnnnn

anyway watch kero kero chime 

appended thoughts the next morning less on art style and more on volume

as of mid 2023 for completed series we are at halfway of all anime having been made after ~2011 this adds up to a reddit post I found with some very nice data https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/lvvexe/chart_of_number_of_anime_per_year_over_time/  40 was a nice number of series a year about 10 a season starting and older ones continuing. 200+ is. 

yes numbers are iffy with second seasons listed as different series like sailor moon r s supers stars and mha 2 3 4 5 6 ect so for accurate numbers a human touch would be needed there is semi-finite air time to work with- obviously some companies could make new tv and satellite stations just to house their garbage but i think there is a cap somewhere in sight if anyone did crunch the numbers more accurately, total episode count is necessary. one 80s robot show of 60-80 epis is equal to 4-6 modern single cour isekais

make less anime

[katmaibearfan]

Blog FAQ

Have a question about something related to this blog and can't find an answer somewhere else? Check here before you send me an ask!

This is a constant work-in-progress, and is subject to change and grow as the scope of this blog changes and grows as well.

Who are the bears in your pfp/header image?

Questions About Me:

Whats your main blog?

@caseyscraftycorner -- i mostly reblog stuff but also post about fiber arts, board games, ttrpgs (note: not d&d 5e), and various musings.

Right now, the bear in my profile picture is 806jr and the bear in my header image is 151 Walker. The photos are screenshots from the Explore.org cams and were taken by me in fall 2023.

How do you know so much about the bears?

See the media links in my new pinned post. It's all just those and the powers of autism and adhd.

When did you start watching the bear cams?

I started watching them (or highlights re-posted to youtube) occasionally back in 2019, after 435 Holly won Fat Bear Week, but it wasn't until this past year that i really got into them.

How do you find so much time to watch the live cams and post about them?

I'm unable to work due to a combination of physical, developmental, and mental illness disabilities, and I need to fill my time somehow. Also, it's good background noise to have on when I'm crocheting/knitting/making pixel art.

How many bears can you identify?

It depends on some specific circumstances, but i'd say i can generally identify about a dozen of the bears at Brook's River. This might sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that nearly 80 non-cub bears have been seen on the cams so far this season.

Can you identify this bear for me?

Nope! Your best bet is to check the comments on the live cams for an ID. That's where I get about 90% of the IDs in my posts from.

You blocked me/my friend, what gives?

if I have blocked someone it's probably because I saw something transphobic on their blog. I'm a nonbinary man, so transphobes will be blocked on sight. I also block blogs that are blank, to reduce bots. The only other situation in which I block people is when they post about hunting bears specifically, but this is really uncommon for me to run in to and as such is not likely to be the answer.

Questions About Blog Language & Topics

Why do you list most bears' ages as X.5 years?

Brown Bears are born in mid-winter, and we see them between late June and late October, so it's more accurate. it's also the terminology used by Katmai, particularly for cubs.

Why do only some bears have names, and are those official or unofficial names?

All bears that frequent Brooks Falls have numbers, but only some have names. The older bears with names (Holly, Otis, Chunk, Grazer) were largely named by rangers at Katmai. However, the NPS has moved away from naming monitored animals, due to the issue of subconscious pet-ification or humanization of wild animals by humans. You can read more about their position here. Young bears with names, like 4.5 year olds 428 Studious and 429 Social, are named by the bear cam viewers and not staff at Katmai, so their names are unofficial.

Which bears are related to who/are there any family trees/is 856 503's father/etc

Bear pregnancy is complicated. Two bears from the same litter can be from two different fathers, and both sows and boars mate with multiple partners during mating season. Therefore, any ideas about any boar being any specific bear's father is purely speculation unless we have DNA evidence.

In addition, unless we see a cub with their mother in early summer and then they separate shortly afterwards, saying that any specific subadult was any specific cub is also generally speculation (unless there is DNA evidence) due to the fact that by the time we see them, it has been 6 months, and young bears do a lot of growing and changing in that time. The guesswork we do here is more reliable than guessing fathers, but it is still fundamentally guesswork. There are DNA collection efforts every few years at Katmai, to monitor the genetic diversity of the bears in the area, but not enough bears have had their DNA collected at this point to accurately map most families at this time.

[snekverse]

Ik in mystreet a lot of the chars are anime enjoyers but im gonna be so specific with ranking them and the type of anime they watch

Travis: bro's the type to only watch it early morning, mid afternoon because the daylight makes it more enjoyable and his nd ass needs the mood to be there so he can watch his favorite shows. He had a BNHA phase but over the 3rd seasons halfway point he became a Sailor Moon watcher and is now embarrassed to admit he only watches shoujo anime, specifically ones with a good magic system because shapes and colors make him happy /lh

Katelyn: Strictly a magical girl anime enjoyer. I think this is cannon but she's the type to only watch it at night when everyone is asleep so nobody walks in and asks why she's smiling 😭 she never watched the origional Soul Eater but regularly re-watches Soul Eater Not! because that still counts /lh. She never finished Sailor Moon because she wants to watch the movies on the TV but almost never has time alone 😭

Nana: She watches a large variety but refuses to watch BNHA because Bakugou just pisses her off so much 😭 whatever it is about him she just wants to claw his eyes out. She definitely bullies the 30 year old bakugou fangirls /lh

Garroth: watched like one episode of one-piece but didn't care for the art styke and dropped it 😭

Lucinda: girl watches death note and only death note. She just likes the plot and the skrunkly ass man that doesnt wear shoes he's funky and reminds her of one of her ex's when she was still comphet /lh

Aaron: "i dont like the voice acting" he's so picky. Genres don't particularly matter but if the voice acting is a certain way he won't watch it 😭😭

Jeffory: He put on Madoka Magica with Abby thinking it was a cute show to occupy her with when he was too tired one day to play. It in fact was not just a cute magical girl show. She isn't allowed to watch anime he doesn't do research on now no matter how innocent it looks /lh

God... all of these are so true... Aaron just like me fr lol

Travis FOR SURE is a shoujo and shounen enthusiast,, heavy preference for shoujo. He def also watched, or at least tried to watch, a bunch of classic ie Naruto, DBZ, all that wackass 90s/early 2000s stuff lol. He def doesn't watch them anymore but still looks back fondly <3

Katelyn for sure is a softie for magical girl animes and probably enjoys watching shoujos with Travis from time to time, but she vehemently denies it all. I think she would really wanna cosplay some of the characters but would uncomfy with,,,, all of it lol

Nana watches anything popular until she decides that it sucks ass, which doesn't happen very frequently but she def watched episode 1 of BNHA and gave it a HARD pass bc.. yknow.. Bakugou.. anyways she is easily the most involved in Fandom culture and for sure starts shipping discourse for fun lol

I think garroth would be pretty off-put about a lot of anime tropes/genres and would generally not enjoy it but you're so right like so many people in his life watch anime he's gotta at least try right?? Don't ask me where this come from, but lowkey he seems like the kind of guy to accidentally watch a hanime and not realize until if was too late...

Lucinda def does not strike me as someone who really watches anime like at all,, unless the art style is genuinely just gorgeous beyond reason. That being said, I think she's a huge supporter of women's wrongs and would be interested in fucked up (female) charas like Makima from JJK. I don't think she'd ever get around to watching it, but she'd like all the fanart n shit and lowkey be involved in the fandom

Aaron is spot on lol no notes. He started watching it for Aphmau’s sake and while he doesn't dislike it its only very specific anime that he does like. Literally if anything is off it becomes just about unwatchable for him

Jeffory I think started watching because Katelyn used to be SUPER into anime and while he likes it a lot he rarely ever watches, partially bc he's such a busy guy. He def talks about anime the same way a parent would yknow?? Like he's trying to be interested and supportive but he's so out of touch now that he has no fuckin idea what's going on anymore lmao

Aphmau only watches super cutesy things, and sometimes shounens. She seems like the kind of person though he can't for the life of her sit through an entire show, but she's always super active in the fandom and despite never finishing the anime and not reading the manga, she's always up to date on what's going on plot-wise (def not projecting nope no way). The only exception is Attack on Titan which she's seen in full several times

Zane is almost the opposite, generally preferring shows with darker themes and goreier visuals. I generally think he tries to stay away from fandom spaces until he's up to date, and while I think he'd prefer to read the manga before watching the anime that takes a LOT more time and his free time's limited enough as is

[bowelfly]

while i usually keep this blog focused on art and bugs, movies are my third big passion, and since i don't believe in streaming services i don't have a spotify wrapped for 2022 to show off but i do have a letterboxd account so i felt like going through my 2022 movie watching stats. this post is basically for me alone and will be obnoxiously long so i'll put in a read more thing here out of courtesy:

ooh so close to almost 1000 hours of movies! still 718 films is pretty good, though that does also include around 80 or so shorts, mostly animations, that i also logged.

i was averaging around 2 movies per day for the year. being 500 miles away from all your friends, family, and partner does give you a lot of free time it turns out. the most movies i watched in a single week, december 10-16, was 28. the weeks i only watched a couple things were either when i was visiting my partner or too depressed to even watch movies

one of the things i've done this year to keep myself sane in isolation was to stream movies for friends. however since i have multiple non-overlapping friend groups, there were a number of movies i watched multiple times because i have a deep psychological and emotional need to share weird shit with the people i care about. NOVA SEED, FANTASY MISSION FORCE, and BUDDHA'S PALM were the triple crown winners this year.

i only watched 7 movies that came out in 2022. my sweet spot is genre movies made from the late 70s through the mid-90s which you can see clearly if you look at my lifetime stats. predictably, i have very strong opinions about practical effects and stunts and film stock

my ratings spread for 2022 is about what it normally is for other years with a lot of things ending up in the 3.5-4 star range. maybe i'm just generous with my stars or maybe i just like what i like and try to not watch things i won't like unless they're bad in a fun way but i really feel like i've been moving away from the whole so-bad-its-good thing over the years and focusing on things that i unironically like--though these are often films that other people do categorize as bad or so-bad-its-good.

my most watched actors is a bunch of golden age hong kong dudes because i went super hard on the kung fu and wuxia films this year. like about half of these are big name stars and the other half are less well-known character actors that still are in like 200 movies playing assorted emperors and evil administrators. really glad to see my main man lo lieh running away with first place. he's most well known for playing evil white-haired kung fu masters usually named pai mei or variations of that, but he's also played the protagonist or antihero of a number of great films like FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH or THE FUGITIVE (1972, not the harrison ford one). my favorite role of his is without question Bi Gu of East Island the rascally kung fu wizard who hollers his name from offscreen before every time he enters a scene in BUDDHA'S PALM (1982).

also very pleased to see one of my favorite american character actors, brion james squeaking his way onto the list, though sad that he got separated from his best friend and frequent collaborator tim thomerson, who i think is just below the cut here.

most watched directors. i've been a huge fan of the very recently deceased albert pyun for years now, largely on the strength of his absolute god-tier masterpiece NEMESIS (1992) though he has a number of other very entertaining movies (RADIOACTIVE DREAMS, CYBORG) and also a cavalcade of very bad movies that are nonetheless all fascinating in their own ways. i could go on about him at length but this post is long enough. maybe another time.

other than that, chor yuen (THE MAGIC BLADE, DESCENDANT OF THE SUN) and chang cheh (CRIPPLED AVENGERS, FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS) are gods of early wuxia cinema and fucking rule, and keita amemiya's 90s work (ZEIRAM, MECHANICAL VIOLATOR HAKAIDER, CYBER NINJA) are pinnacles of kickass japanese practical effects work.

i also watched a lot of russ meyer and john waters films because i'm a pevert.

this is mostly just a reminder to check out my WUXIA WIZARD WARS tumblr post and letterboxd list if you like movies about wizards shooting lasers at each other and summoning fucked up monsters and shit like that

finally, because i have a brain disease, i made a list of the 100 best films i watched this year, mostly first-time watches but probably like 15-20 rewatches that i especially enjoyed or think more people should know about or give another shot. if i didn't already have way too many projects i'd consider setting up another sideblog just going through all these one by one with reviews and screenshots but that's a lot of work and i am a tired old man. i might give an occasional highlight post like i did for THE BARON AGAINST THE DEMONS

and i guess that's about it? this has been an especially heavy year for golden age hong kong kung fu and wuxia films but i explored a lot of other interesting places and times and genres and microgenres and have a lot more i plan on checking out next year. i've got stacks and stacks of unwatched japanese V-cinema and pinku violence and kaiju and tokusatsu films; tons of giallo and hammer horror and eurotrash lesbian vampire flicks; classic westerns, revisionist westerns, spaghetti westerns; SOV horror, eastern european stop motion, hong kong CAT III sleaze, russian postapocalyptic dirges, poliziotteschi, krimi, and noir films; AIP and PM Entertainment action schlock; italian mad max ripoffs, italian alien ripoffs, italian conan ripoffs; approximately 300 movies with NINJA, BLOOD, or SHAOLIN in their titles; and probably some other shit too.

finally, if you've made it this far and you're a nasty little film freak like me i'll let you in on a secret: i have copies of every single one of these movies on my hard drive. literally thousands of movies dug out of dozens of digital dumpsters with my own two greasy grabby raccoon paws. if any of them particularly catch your interest but you can't find a copy, well you can maybe slip old professor bfly a little private request and get yourself a copy of whatever you need. it may take some time since i only have so many google drive accounts unless someone wants to subsidize a deluxe mega.nz subscription for me to mass-upload things to. i also have a soulseek account sharing the entire hoard but it's very slow and not always online but you can DM me for that as well. again though you may have to be patient because i am old and tired and slow and have a full time job and a hundred dumb hobbies and social anxiety and generalized brain damage

happy new year everyone now go watch a movie about some dudes kicking the shit out of each other for me

[piperslovebot]

The Next Next Generation kids (born in the 90s)

(Just to keep track. Also inspired by @einsteinsugly. Srsly, I’m obsessed with your verse)

Julian Alexander Dupree-Sanchez (born late ‘96) - He has a sharp tongue like Millie but has a big heart like Caroline. I haven’t thought deeper into it since me and @disneymbti just started talking about their octopulets but later, I’ll create distinct personalities and remake a post.

Miguel Ryan Dupree-Sanchez - He’s very kind, sometimes to the point where he’s oblivious when people are being mean. That doesn’t mean he’ll let people walk all over him though. He’s also gay and proud of it.

Beatriz “Bee Bee” Jody Dupree-Sanchez - Bee is very smart and intuitive. She’s very good at reading people and knows how to cheer people up. She loves bubblegum pop and the pop punk aesthetic. Her dream is to be a musician.

Mariana “Mary” Caroline Dupree-Sanchez - Mary comes off as a ditz but is actually super intelligent. She’s gets straight A’s and loves to exercise.

Ethan Louis Dupree-Sanchez - Ethan is very clever and sharp-witted young man with quick remarks and a protective side. He's really good at playing chess and knows how to be a good talker. He loves indie rock music and the smell of wood and leather. His dream is to be a lawyer.

Ella Alice Dupree-Sanchez - Ella is a smart and focused young woman with a heart of gold and ambitious about her future. She's really good at planning big events and listening to people talking about anything really. She loves watching musicals and reading about personality types. Her dream is to be a party planner.

Ariana Sofia Wilde (Melissa and Dave’s daughter) (born early ‘97) - Ariana is a feminist and kind-hearted young woman with a strong-minded aura about her. She's really good at making music and knows how to fix things with her bare hands. She loves reading books and listening to rock music. Her dream is to be a music producer.

Mia Anne Forman (late ‘96) - Personality wise, she’s actually nothing like Eric nor Donna. She’s a lot like Kitty. Kind, sometimes over optimistic, well meaning, along with a sharp tongue.

Kat Hyde (early ‘96) - She’s very into the pop punk aesthetic and can come off as intimidating similar to her father but has the biggest heart. She’s pretty feisty and blunt similar to her mom and was in the cheerleading squad during high school.

Reggie Hyde (early ‘96) - He tries to be tough like his dad but is really bad at it. He also pretty in touch with his feelings to the point where kids at school tease him for being gay (he's not). He's super smart but also has a bunch of conspiracy theories.

Lula "Lulu" Julia Mitchell (early '96) - She loves fiercely and is brave like her mom. Lulu loves candy to the point where she wants to make her own and sell it. Also, she's a lesbian who's into hyper feminine women.

Kira Amaya Kwan (late '98) - Kira is a calm and easygoing young woman with patience on her fingertips and a old soul spirit. She's really good at helping animals and making people feel comfortable around her. She loves rose scents perfumes and the smell of lavender and ocean. Her dream is to be a author.

Cleo Joy-Martelli (mid '99) - Cleo is a bold and confident young woman with a dreamy outlook of the world and has a charm with her in her bones. She's really good at giving hugs to people she loves the most and singing songs with her band. She loves the smell of smoke and lavender and playing her music out loud to people. Her dream is to be a world famous Broadway singer.

Anne-Marie Lauren Kelso (early '99) - She's a huge bookworm and loves to read, to the point her friends and siblings tease her (basically a Rory Gilmore). Every day, she comes to the library after school (present day, she works there). Oh yeah, Jonah is her Logan :)

Margot "Margie" Anne Kelso (early '99) - She's very quick witted and uses a lot of dry humor, similar to Red. But does have a good heart. Her dream is to be an artist and is currently taking art course as of present.

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Kristina Kelso (early ‘99) - She loves acting and majored in drama.

Arnold James Barnes (early ‘95) (based off of Jesse Kelso, @tht70sblog’s oc) in a way, except way less redeemable)- The school delinquent who got held back more than one can count. He was Anne-Marie’s boyfriend. He’s known to cause trouble and hurt people with no remorse. He was mostly raised by Ryland Barnes. His mom, Sophie, isn’t really in his life that much. Margie and Lizzie were against Anne-Marie dating him, mostly because he was 18 and she was still 15 at that point. After being sent to juvenile detention for theft, he dumped Anne-Marie via letter.

Julia Johnson (early-ish ‘99) - She’s very smart and suspicious. Kinda like the moral compass in a way. Julia is a creative and passionate young woman with a fierce heart and a bold fashion sense in her outfits. She's really good at designing outfits and not listening to people's mean words about her. She loves watching Aubrey Hepburn movies and the smell of perfume and vanilla in the air. Her dream is to be a fashion designer.

[raeseddon]

Had one of those "well *that* makes sense" moments the other day when I realized that the specific American cartoons I watched as a kid all but assured I'd adore Shounen and (some) Shoujo manga later in life-- I'm talking your YST/Ronin Warriors and your Pretear's and the like-- the ones that take time to really push and examine the psychological impact of being told "you are the world's only chance at survival, and for as competent as they seem, everyone else around you is winging it as much as you are."

(I tried, but couldn't get into Madoka Magica, it struck me as one of those shows that people were reading way too much into to justify liking something that was that dark and unabashedly misogynistic. There's deconstructing a genre, and then there's punishing your main characters because you think they deserve it for having certain feelings/beliefs that are stereo-typically associated with their gender.)

The American cartoons I've been jumping between watching are the D&D cartoon and Mighty Max, and man, the mid-80's to early 90's really had a thing for not just cryptic but borderline cruel "mentor" characters who's primary flaw was having planned things out sometimes thousands of years in advance in their heads only to become very flustered and upset by the main characters deviating from "the plan" -- a plan that more often than not said mentors never reveal in full because they know their protege' will disagree with it vehemently. (See: Dungeon Master in D&DC and Virgil in Mighty Max.)

I'm almost willing to give Virgil more of a pass than DM because there's genuine PTSD and survivor's guilt going on in Virgil's case, whereas DM has compartmentalized things so much the only time he shows any regret for how he treats the main characters is when they quite literally snap and tell him that's it, they're done, fuck it, someone needs to die. (It shows how frustrated with modern social media I am when it's actually refreshing to hear a cartoon say the words kill and die. God that's depressing....)

Virgil has watched his previous protege' sacrifice his life for The Cause and it's one of the biggest reasons he gets upset whenever Max "goes off-script" because literally everything he's planned up to that point has been about keeping Max, the literal child savior, alive...while at the same time forgetting he's a child and that kids can be really good at improvising on the fly. And where Virgil learns to trust Max's instincts in the end, there's nothing of the sort between Dungeon Master and the kids in the D&D cartoon-- he leads them around from one traumatizing situation to the next, relying on Hank's innate willingness to trust people who help him and play on his good samaritan streak--which is so strained by the end the only reason he continues to trust DM is because it's the only thing he knows how to do, and he knows it. So it's really, really hard at the end of the day to have a lot of sympathy for Dungeon Master, while Virgil at least works through some of his issues.

Come 1995 and of course I'm going to see the parallels between Mighty Max and YST/Ronin Warriors-- sketchy mentor characters contrasted with really bright, caring and trusting main characters (with a fantastically written female lead this time as well!)and later Pretear. In fact a huge part of me feels like Himeno and Max would benefit from being in group therapy together-- especially with the "everyone around me lied by omission almost right to the end because they refused to believe I would mature to the emotional challenge of handing The Truth" plot point.

TL;DR

American cartoons in the mid/late 80's and early 90's weren't quite as "dark" or edgy enough to catch the culture zeitgiest that anime later did--<i>but</i> if anime had taken longer to catch hold here in the States, you can absolutely see where American cartoons were stepping up to the same level of maturity, aging with their audience and filling the emotional need for more mature stories that had been growing the entire time Regan had his iron-fisted control of the FCC.

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

Bonkposting

I was randomly re-watching BONKERS this week. Coincidentally, that show turned 30 this year... Now that's *bonkers*!

For the uninitiated, it's a Disney TV Animation-made series that had the usual 65-episode run. It was a WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT-inspired show made at a time when Roger Rabbit's future was up in the air, and this series - inspired by ROGER RABBIT'S core premise of cartoon characters living in our world and being the actors of their animated pictures - just so happened to be in development. Seemed to be the perfect "that'll do" situation! Its production history, so complicated it scrambles my brain, but fascinatingly so, like any troubled production. The entire show, including an episode that was held from TV for years due to depictions of bombings (in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11), is available to view on Disney+.

The show itself is every bit as puzzling as its production history, no matter which batch of episodes it is or who animated on them. It feels like it's a weird outsider-artist's attempt at a wacky, spontaneous Tex Avery-inspired cartoon, but it frequently misses the rhythm even though it's earnestly trying with everything it has got... That is all juxtaposed with this very high-grade art direction and animation (for a 1993-era animated TV series, that is), particularly the episodes made at Disney TV Animation Japan. It's like I'm watching some badass '80s anime take on L.A., but with these silly-looking 'toons. A hell of a contrast! But the show's weird attempts at zany humor are all the more questionable because this is a DISNEY SHOW, you would think they could pull this off. I know it's popular opinion that Disney animation, all throughout history, was never "funny"... Though I beg to differ. Disney TVA, from my perspective, tended to be more "fun adventure" than wacky comedy. Not in the wheelhouse of, say, ANIMANIACS or REN & STIMPY. Bonkers D. Bobcat himself actually started appearing on one of Disney's attempts at a wacky show, RAW TOONAGE, a year earlier. There was also this show called THE SCHNOOKUMS & MEAT FUNNY CARTOON SHOW, which fits this bill, too. The respective executions of these shows apparently left a bit to be desired.

I first saw BONKERS when its re-runs aired on Toon Disney, a long-defunct channel, in the late '90s and early '00s. That was the way I, a 1992 baby, could see all of those early-era Disney TVA cartoons and many of the ones that were part of the legendary syndicated "Disney Afternoon" block. I saw almost all of 'em, from DUCKTALES to TALESPIN to TIMON & PUMBAA. That was a brief period of time though, when my grandmother had a cable package that included Toon Disney. Later on, she didn't, and neither did I at my house... So I went a good many years without seeing those shows again, the only one I had pieces of on VHS was NEW ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH.

I'll tell you what *weirdly* filled the void for me...

SONIC ADVENTURE.

Yeah, you heard that right... SONIC ADVENTURE. And by that, I mean the original version released for the Sega Dreamcast in North America in 1999, which I got sometime in - I wanna say - spring 2000? Easter present, maybe?

Now, my grandmother still had Toon Disney when I had SONIC ADVENTURE... Because at the time, Toon Disney was airing... ADVENTURES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG! That's right, the DiC cartoon from 1993. The wacky one. I sometimes caught it in passing, but I really wanted to see it now that I was playing SONIC ADVENTURE religiously circa mid 2000... But it was never on when I was over there, I had only caught a commercial or two. I remember catching one during an airing of BONKERS, and it was like "The SONIC show... Whoooooaaa." My 7 1/2-year old brain on a high of some sorts, 'cuz that's just how my weird-ass autie brain works you get the gist?

Anyways, when I no longer could watch Toon Disney, I had SONIC ADVENTURE...

Here are the weird connections I made between SONIC ADVENTURE and Disney TV Animation's output circa 1987-1995:

Anthro animals, check. Goofy villain, check. Sonic's design channels Felix the Cat and early Mickey, very much Western "funny animal" in spirit. Coincidentally, FELIX THE CAT: THE MOVIE was airing on Disney Channel and Toon Disney around this time, I remember seeing commercials for it at the time... And remembered seeing scenes of him running around some palm trees, a jungle-like setting... and I thought it looked kinda Sonic-y and kinda cool. Moving on: Tails' bi-plane, the "Tornado". TALESPIN vibes. Has two tails, 'tis his nickname... What else, Station Square, a city with both humans and cartoon animals, reminding me of not only BONKERS, but also Duckberg. The "At Dawn" section of the "Speed Highway" level in particular had those vibes, for me... And then you have the Mystic Ruins, the spacious jungle hub world with the temple. Disney had a couple of "jungle" shows at the time, outside of the JUNGLE BOOK-inspired TALESPIN, you also had JUNGLE CUBS (basically MUPPET BABIES by way of JUNGLE BOOK), MARSUPILAMI (a very bizarre adaptation of the Franco-Belgian comic of the same name), and the aforementioned TIMON & PUMBAA spin-off.

So yeah, SONIC ADVENTURE and certain Disney TV Animation shows were kinda "linked" in my brain circa 2000-ish. It's a thing my brain does, it makes these weird connections or associations with disparate media. Like, I'll be hyperfixating on three or four separate things in a period of time (say, September-November 2005)... And because of that, they're all linked in my head. I'll think of one of those things, and I'll think of the three, if that makes sense.

In fall 2002, for my birthday, I received a DK book called DISNEY: THE ULTIMATE VISUAL GUIDE. It had a two-page spread dedicated to the DTVA stuff, and lo and behold, BONKERS was on there... and it all came back... And for whatever reason, I built up BONKERS in my head as this amazingly funny thing. It was even in the name, and at the time, I was developing a cartoony slapsticky idea of my own... Which totally morphed and mutated over two decades into the behemoth beast that it is now... Partially thanks to BONKERS, a show that's considered one of the worst of the Disney Afternoon and that whole era of DTVA... I simply had to see this show again, and all the other Disney TV Animation cartoons that weren't being shown on any other channel.

And I eventually caught a few of the Bonks on Toon Disney somewhere's else in mid-2003, and remember thinking "Yeah, it's as cool as I thought!" But then many, many moons later - with much more knowledge under my belt, a lot more context, a lot more animation history, etc. - I gave it a proper revisit. This was probably right around the time it came to Disney+, and after hearing other outlets either fairly criticize or outright trash the show. I mean, ANIMANIACS - probably fueled by Steven Spielberg's beef with Disney/Eisner at time, which affected ROGER RABBIT plans going forward - was roasting BONKERS. And what I saw was a show that was certainly a mess... I mean, when your plug is pulled halfway through production and your show is straight-up rebooted w/ an all-new supporting cast and main character redesign- it's a miracle the show even got made, finished, and was somewhat watchable. I have a soft spot for it, really. There's a kernel of a really cool, wacky, ROGER RABBIT-lite there... and under different circumstances, it could've really stuck the landing... But it meant a little something to me, and that's all that matters.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

I've been on a slight classic Disney TV Animation kick.

I'm talking mid-1980s to early 1990s era DTVA... The era of DUCKTALES, CHIP N' DALE RESCUE RANGERS, TALESPIN, DARKWING DUCK, etc. I loved these shows as a kid, as I caught the many re-runs of them on Toon Disney in the late '90s when staying over my grandparents' house during the summer days before my mum got home from work.

And the funny thing is, when reading up on these shows and their histories... If a ton of these shows were being made today? I think they'd be met with a lot of doubt and skepticism on the Internet...

Like... "TALESPIN? Wtf is this? JUNGLE BOOK characters as cargo pilots in an INDIANA JONES-esque adventure setting? Chip and Dale lookin' like Indiana Jones and Magnum P.I.? Trying too hard to be relevant and cool. So dated! A Disney cartoon about Gummi Bears??? A candy??? Disney is totally out of ideas, man-"

And yet, the fledgling division - a brainchild of the newly-arrived CEO Michael Eisner, who saw that Disney had long barely contributed to the world of episodic television animation - went through with these shows circa 1985-1993... They came out, kids and audiences watched them, they all did very well, are fondly-remembered favorites of American animation's 2nd Golden Age. The early batch of shows arguably changed the game for TV animation in the states, which was by then soaked in toy commercials and cliche kidvid stuff.

And I almost get the feeling that once the Golden Age went full-throttle with the advent of THE SIMPSONS, Nickelodeon's "Nicktoons", Warner Animation's offerings (many of which involving Steven Spielberg!), MTV's groundbreaking adult cartoons, and many more, Disney TV Animation did have some re-routing. The early '90s was a kind of weird era for them, when they put out shows like BONKERS, RAW TOONAGE, and THE SCHNOOKUMS AND MEAT FUNNY CARTOON SHOW. The game was changing fast, and soon they were wowing once more with the likes of GARGOYLES, and venturing into other territory with shows like PEPPER ANN. They'd get creators of shows that were hits on other networks, such as Paul Germain from RUGRATS, who co-created RECESS with Joe Ansolabehere, who had previously worked on another iconic Nick show, HEY ARNOLD!

Kinda makes me think of where Disney Animation has been for a bit these past few years, in an era where the mainstream feature animation game is changing fast. And how! And it's not that what they do is bad or - as largely insufferable people say - "mid". Release something like ENCANTO or RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON or even STRANGE WORLD in 2015, it'd be praised, most people would be in agreement, "Yeah, another strong entry from the revitalized WDAS." Of course, RAYA and ENCANTO enjoyed solid reviews and excellent streaming results, and STRANGE WORLD even got pretty passing grade reviews (whereas something like the MARIO movie... Didn't. Funny how that works), but large chunks of weird animation fans on the internet seem to think they're all just "mid" or whatever... It's some console wars-caliber nonsense, I think, that's reductionist. If I didn't like something, I still acknowledge the hard work put in by the filmmakers/crew (especially crucial amidst the writer and actors' strike), and go about my day. I'm not pitting STRANGE WORLD against PUSS IN BOOTS 2, for sure. There's no reason for me to do so.

I thought about how in ANIMANIACS, they took potshots at BONKERS. The same era as "SEGA does what NintenDON'T." Those extreeeeeeme aaaaattitude '90s!

I know, because I lived most of that decade.

BONKERS is a show that fascinates me (I recently wrote a little thing about it on my main tumblr), and I thought while watching it... Release this show in 1988, and *not* 1993, it's likely hailed as groundbreaking. A cartoon trying to be zany and fun like 1940s Tex Avery cartoons, visually satisfying and nicely realized, and much more original than - say - the umpteenth CARE BEARS cartoon or the new Hanna-Barbera ersatz Scooby-Doo stuff. But, post-TINY TOONS, post-REN & STIMPY, and sitting next to ANIMANIACS, it seemingly just could not compare. It also didn't help that it was heavily inspired by the amazing film that is WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, its characters and premise ostensibly being a replacement for a property Disney could no longer do stuff with because of their feud with co-owner Spielberg. (Which puts TINY TOONS and ANIMANIACS' potshots at Disney and BONKERS, respectively, into perspective.)

Similarly, Hanna-Barbera - long one of the studio names synonymous with TV animation in America - were in an odd place themselves, until they - under the stewardship of one Fred Seibert - began bringing in some incredible talent like Genndy Tartakovsky, Paul Rudish, Rob Renzetti, to name a few... We had moved away from the likes of YO YOGI!, TOM AND JERRY KIDS, and SIMPSONS-chasing "adult" cartoons like CAPITOL CRITTERS and FISH POLICE... 2 STUPID DOGS, which had been dismissed as a REN & STIMPY wannabe by some folks back in the day, was really a launchpad for those talents. And soon, Hanna-Barbera Productions was rockin' the mid-to-late '90s with all the iconic Cartoon Network shows we all know and love... Kinda makes me think of how Illumination gets looked at, they've been around for some time and they "churn out" stuff that's just "mid" or "bland" or whatever, but I think post-SING 2, post-MINIONS 2, there's a sort-of newfound appreciation for them in some circles. Somewhat. SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE got a pass from a lot of people engaging in these weird console wars, despite its middling critical reception and a lot of folks saying it actually wasn't good. (I liked it fine, but I felt it was more a "Mario's Greatest Hits" showcase than an actual movie.) But, Illumination has an adult animation division (Moonlight) firing up, some pretty dynamic side projects and shorts, too. They even got talent like Benjamin Renner, who directed the upcoming MIGRATION. They're doin' something right if they got him.

I think, more than anything, things change so fast in entertainment. Tastes change, things trend, animated movies take a while to come out and are largely determined at a stage long before a print (or digital file) of the finished film projects onto a screen somewhere. How does one know what the world looks like, culturally, five years after they have started their film? Let alone 2 years? It's why I don't pile on films like ELEMENTAL, STRANGE WORLD, LIGHTYEAR, RUBY GILLMAN, et al losing money. They seemed surefire when they signed off on them, and like William Goldman said... No one knows anything!

I dunno, I thought I'd just relate some current feature animation things to what was happening in TV animation some 30 years ago... all because I was watching TALESPIN and BONKERS and such-

[barbwritesstuff]

Top 5 TV series!

I forgot I put that 'top five' thing into my queue and wasn't sure what prompted this message until I scrolled back through my blog.

Thanks for the ask, anon! I hope you're ready for some unpopular (and very dated) picks.*

5. Art Attack

Look, I was a lonely kid. For much of my childhood it was just me and my brother... and this very keen British man who taught me how to turn scrap paper, paint, and foil into my own spaceship cockpit. Ideas from this show allowed me to decorate my room as a kid, got me through high school art class, and saved my arse several times when I was a kindergarten teacher in South Korea.

One of the best informational programmes ever made. They should bring it back.

4. Air Crash Investigation

I'm sorry. I know it's cheap. I know it's tacky. I know all that. But I love this show. I love learning about and solving mysteries that aren't murders (sorry Sherlock), and the terrible acting makes it so much better. I can't watch this show with people, because I always try to guess the cause of the crash before the end of the episode and yell it out... and I don't know anything about planes to I'm usually very wrong.

Example:

Me: "It's the bulkhead! Check the bulkhead, you fools!"

Voice over: "The investigators check the bulkhead, but find nothing."

Me: "Yes! Because it's clearly the wings, like I've been saying all along."

3. Justice League Animated Series

I got into this series really late. I'd just moved out of home for the first time to go to film school and was having a hard time making friends. I don't know how it happened, but I somehow ended up watching the entirety of the DC Animated Universe during that time, which is impressive, because internet was expensive and terrible where I was living, so I had to go to the library, download episodes, and walk the 45 minutes home carrying my massive old laptop. It was a feat, but it was worth it. This show did what the Avengers couldn't, made me love superheroes.

2. Yu-Gi-Oh!

When I was 12 I was the best Yugioh player in my school. Sure, it wasn't a big school, and not everyone was into the game, but it was still a big deal for me, especially as I was also the only girl who played. The game has since evolved way beyond my skill level, but at the time, I was a god among mortals. 12 year old mortals, but still. I got up early every morning to see the latest episode, and then I went to school ready to d-d-d-d-duel.

Xena: Warrior Princess

I'm sorry. This show is just so nostalgic for me. For a while, I grew up on a farm with no actual TV signal, but we did have old VHS recordings of Xena and I watched it religiously. Lucy Lawless is amazing and this show is forever the best thing to come out of the 90s (and I say that while also, myself, being a product of the 90s). It has:

Monsters

Magic

Mayhem

Queer Love (not explicitly stated, but this wasn't queerbaiting, this was censorship, they were a couple by the mid point of the series, they just couldn't say it, so instead they made a lot of unsubtle sex jokes and came up with obscure reasons why they always had to kiss to save the world).

Aotearoa (New Zealand is the most beautiful place on the planet, I'm sorry if you disagree, you are wrong).

Tonal whiplash (not just between episodes, but sometimes in the same episode, and it was wild)

One very horny vampire episode

Xena can sometimes fly without any explanation

They met an early reincarnation of Jesus and he was a conman living in India?

You know that scene where Character A gets hurt and Character B goes absolutely feral? This.

Leather bikinis and ninja kicks except it's ancient Greece, maybe

The musical episode was the best episode

They fight on ladders a lot and I just think that's neat

*Disclaimer: I am into more modern and normal things but I'm in a nostalgic mood, so these are the things you get to hear about today.

[bmpmp3]

I READ a lot of different manga recently and i WANNA talk about em :)

SO LIKE i ADORE stories about the entertainment industry like music actors celebrity whatever i LOVE IT so oshi no ko had been on my to-read list for like a bajillion years now BUT queen bee doing the ending song for the anime (MEPHISTO!!!! LISTEN TO IT!!!!!!!!!! ITS SO GOOOOOOD!!!! LISTEN TO EVERY QUEEN BEE ALBUM RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!! the opening is good too) finally pushed me to read it (not watch it sorry... normally the anison industry has this symbiotic relationship between the songs and the shows where the show makes people get interested in the musicians and vice versa but as a person who cannot watch a single episode of a show ever (jk.....probably) I only ever check out the manga and osts HJKFJFDHKDSLS its kinda cool that the first episode is like a movie length adaptation of the first volume of the manga though from what i can tell) AND its very good!!

i did NAHT expect the reincarnation stuff (all i knew was it was a manga about an idol who has kids in secret) but theres some glimmers of interesting concepts touched on with that (kinda like half way between the modern isekai “i just am the person i was before i died just in a different body” and the 90s shoujo manga style “im mostly the new born person but there is the remnants of someone else in here”, it hasnt touched on it That Much but what they brought up is interesting, like that kid has simultaneously been alive for over 50 years and also is incredibly 15 years old hjkfdsjhfds) but it’s a showbiz mystery thriller with so much tonal whiplash OF COURSE i’d like it those are like. my favourite genres hjkfddsjklfd

so far ive been digging it. OR... well i’ve caught up and the last third has been. a little odd? i know i just said i love my tonal whiplash but it feels a little like its going really fast but also like. dropping some plot threads and character arcs that i was kind of hoping they would go back into? it’s still ongoing though, it could easily bring stuff back and turn around. im assuming this is a symptom of the weekly release schedule? 99% of the manga i read is monthly or occasionally volume at a time so im not as familiar with the structure. is the author like. okay. i know they take breaks but man. i could feel it with the arcs about the manga authors. salutes

that does remind me though. this isnt a manga ive read Recently (i first read it like a year or two ago) but recently i finally was able to collect all volumes of penguin revolution (VERY DIFFICULT FEAT for some reason all the volumes were cheap as hell except people kept listing volume 6 for like hundreds of dollars and i was like. its not worth that. i was finally able to find one for like under 15 bucks after like a year but MAN) and its interesting that like oshi no ko felt like. the slightly bloodier penguin revolution. penguin revolution with more blood and less acting magic hallucination little girls (actually what was that one little girl who showed up for a chapter....maybe they both have equal amounts LOL) JK JK they’re probably not very similar ones an award winning 2020s era seinen and the others a weekly shoujo from the mid to late 10s that was cut off short and while well rated, largely forgotten (not to me...to me its Everything) so they got different things going on  its just little blonde boys and their mother situations put me in the mind of penguin revolution...i should reread it again...

ALSO before i started that i read sweat and soap and um. first of all. that man is a little freak <3 second of all ITS REALLY GOOD its a really nice and sweet story about a couple navigating their relationship, the first chapters are a little clunky (i think the author mentioned it was a one shot that unexpectedly got picked up for a full series so thats why the first chapter is a little fast lol) THIRD OF ALL the depiction of bullying and how it can affect one later in life even as an adult was Very well done like especially how the bullies themselves may have completely moved on, thinking nothing of it even while it still consumes you, real ass shit for a manga about a little freak who sniffs <3 also just a very funny and fun manga with pretty great characters. if i ever get physical copies some of those book covers are gonna be. hard to explain

speaking of real ass shit before that i also borrowed sand chronicles from my library (<3 my local library it has so much manga for some reason!!!!) and that was ALSO 99% really really good as like a decade long coming of age character study about this girl and her trauma and how she attempts to navigate it, very realistic in a lot of ways, i mean it was heightened in classic 2000s shoujo ways but so many of the characters had me going like damn. i feel like i know these people jfkdshfds its good!!! EXCEPT. why’d they make that one guy marry his cousin. 99% good and 1% girl why. oh well, im still glad i read it, sometimes i find that something that does most things fantastically and one thing really bad has a lot of value as someone who loves media analysis LOL

OH and i havent finished this one yet, but seeing that little red bespectacled blonde twink and his 2018-ass undercut reminded me that i’d been meaning to read trigun, i watched the original anime when i was like 10 but all i remember is like. the opening theme guitars. something about plants. love and peace SO this is basically a new experience hjkFjdskdjfkds its good so far! I’ve only read like 3 chapters but i like it! i wish i could watch the new show too (i love that style of 3d animation) but as i said before. watching a show is. a monumental task. maybe someday

ANYWAY this has been BEEBEEPBEEBEEEBEEBEEP (news jingle) things i have read in the past couple months thank u and good night

[clover-the-awesomest]

I think that there’s a very soft line drawn in a sandpit when it comes to TV show ratings. Yes, when it comes to shows marketed towards kids under the age of say 8 or 10, those shows need to watch what they allow. Just like what the previous person said.

For example, let me mention a couple shows that rub people the wrong way when it comes to what they show.

The Owl House. Pretty simple to explain why I’m mentioning this. Disney refused to let this masterpiece go through a full three seasons because it didn’t fit the “Disney brand.” What that means is the show was depicting much more graphic material compared to their previous shows, and the target audience wasn’t meant for the kind of audience Disney Channel usually has. They were afraid their usual audience of pre-teens and 9-year-olds would end up watching a very dark and not fun episode of TOH and would not have a good time afterwards. It’s a pretty reasonable concern all things considered, but they have to be reminded then that they allowed this show to air. They gave Dana a chance, people really liked it, the pilot got good ratings, the show racked in a ton of good money, and the rating was very fair and accommodating.

Now, this is a pretty rare concern but it still exists, so I’m gonna mention it. Hazbin Hotel. Yeah. There are genuinely people out there who think this show is catered towards kids. I am dead serious. Hazbin Hotel, as we all know, is an animated show with a target audience of mid-teens and young adults. No measly 13+ rating here! And this is all made very obvious by the fact that the show isn’t on some big mainstream cable channel or on Disney+ or anything like that. Hazbin is on Amazon+, a streaming service filled with 18+ rated shows! I can understand the classic Christian mother complaints and all that, but there are other usually normal people out there who actually believe this show was made for kids! This is all due to the bright colors and warm atmosphere of the hotel and the characters, and the designs all feel like something straight out of a young and dumb animation studio or something. Kids are naturally drawn to bright colors and cool animation, but that’s literally the only two things that could hint at this thing being made for kids. Everything else is clearly showing that Hazbin Hotel is an adult show, and even the dumbest of Karens should and hopefully does know this.

And finally, after that huge block of text, we reach The Amazing Digital Circus! And just like Hazbin, TADC features fun, stretchy, expressive animation with bright and attractive colors. Not only that, but the world takes place in an old 3D circus video game from the late 90’s or early 2000’s, and the whole theme of the circus seems as though it is intentionally trying to draw in little kids. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!! The show is gonna be available for free on YouTube. If that’s not a recipe for concerned parents complaining then I don’t know what is. But just like TOH, the rating clearly states that the target audience is 13+, and its reputation of being Murder Drones 2.0 immediately clues people in that this show is not made for young itty bitty babies. Hell, the fact that it’s written and conceptualized by Gooseworx should say all that and more!

So basically what I’m getting at is that shows made for little kids can show slightly dark things such as grief and change and themes that kids can experience on a daily basis, once something hits that 13+ mark they can basically go apeshit if the director allows it. And if you have a little kid under 13 years old who seems a bit too eager to explore the internet, take responsibility for that kid and check the rating of the shows they wanna watch. It’s the responsibility of not just the kid, but also the kid’s guardian or trusted older person to figure out what to watch. Just because something looks fun and happy and bright and colorful… Yeah. It’s probably not.

IN SHORT, BE CAREFUL ON THE INTERNET. THERE’S SOME REAL CRAZY SHIT DOWN HERE.

People know that the whole "don't portray [harmful action] because viewers might recreate it" thing is a rule for children's shows right? It's supposed to be shit like "don't show peppa pig playing with fire so we don't get sued if a kid watches it and burns their house down." Not like, fanfiction for adults.

[this-is-mine-and-mine-alone]

ABOUT ME

Call me Ky (rhymes with eye)

I'm 22 & a libra

I'm a WOC

I'm sadly a working girly

I'm not straight (I don't have a gender preference)

I use she/her pronouns

I'm pretty introverted & shy

I suffer from depression & anxiety

I've had a tumblr since middle school

This is my 1st time being interactive with others on this app so please be sweet

I literally made this as like a low-key rant diary/Void to scream my interests & thoughts because life,years of trauma,& damn near crippling anxiety has fucked up my social skills & I just need an outlet. I don't expect I guess anyone to respond to this. I just don't want to continue being alone with my feelings & I think this could be a place to start. If anyone does respond to this you're welcome to comment (within reason & with kindness I beg of you),but be warned I'm super shy/anxious & will shy away from responding to messages (think of me as a scared stray & don't shake your pet food can at me too intently). I just want to get all my jitters/hyperfixations/Madness/general feelings & ickiness out. Also just an FYI dni if you're a minor/uncomfortable or triggered of talks of abuse & mental illness/a bigot of any kind/sex stuff (I'm not gonna go on about my nonexistent intimate life don't worry. I don't even really talk about sex like that I just have an interest in femdom stuff from time to time (me being the dom) & I think the psychology of it is interesting as well as the dynamic).

Ok now for the fun stuff

My interests (off the top of my head) include:

Movies

*horror/action/sci-fi/thriller/animated movies from my childhood & "some" of the new stuff

I like most MCU & DCEU movies (I owned a tumblr in the mid to late 2010s I'm practically a veteran. But I will say I have more nostalgia for the older mcu movies,but I kind of fell off in the past few years of fond remembrance outside of fandom for it as a whole. I actually really enjoy most of the new stuff (all of the shows except fatws/some of the 1st season of loki)

My favs include

Studio ghibli (I didn't watch a single movie till the age of 19) specifically Howl's moving castle/Spirited away/princess mononoke/kiki's delivery service/arriety/the cat returns. These movies fill with legit smiles & warmth

All the john wick movies (mf Keanu Reeves)

All of the evil dead movies

The lost boys

Scream 1/2/4/6

The old bratz/Monster high/barbie movies (barbie specifically from the vhs-to before the 2010s)

Jennifer's body

Bride of chucky/seed of chucky/Cult of chucky

The 1st 2 bill & Ted movies

The Matrix/the matrix reloaded

Mad max fury road

Constantine

Sucker punch

Isle of the dogs

Train to busan

Promare

All of the mha movies

Teenage mutant ninja turtles mutant mayhem

CATWS

Thor the dark world

Black panther

The amazing Spiderman

Into the spider-verse

Across the spider-verse

Black panther wakanda forever

Saw 1/2/3/x

Ginger snaps

Kill bill 1/2

Battle royale

Death proof

Moulin rouge

Chicago

The hunger games

Bullet train

Midnight

Ballerina

Obviously old childhood movies from Disney/pixar/DreamWorks & just really almost any kids movie that came out when I was young

Music

*literally anything but country (no offense to people who like country music. Off the top of my head I listen to rock/pop/metal/kpop & jpop occasionally/hyperpop/50s,60s,70s,80s,90,& early 2000s music/rap/hip hop/some anime music/some game soundtracks (especially Bayonetta/dmc)

Video Games

*I usually stick to horror/action with the occasional comfy games

Games that I have played (played/finished & or played/haven't finished) include:

Dmc 1/2/3/5

Bayonetta 1/2/3

BOTW

TOTK

Horizon forbidden west

Horizon zero dawn

The last of us & dlc

The last of us part 2

Ghost of tsushima

The quarry

Resident evil 4/5/6/7 & the Resident evil 3 remake

Animal crossing new horizons

Stardew valley

Sunset overdrive

Sims

Astral chain

Unpacking

Cult of the lamb

Spiritfarer

Uncharted

Spiderman (I haven't played the new one yet yes I know it's amazing & yes I will be playing it once I get a ps5)

The tomb raider reboot trilogy

The arkhamverse batman games

Old ds games from my childhood (my littlest pet shop/mario/hello kitty big city dreams/some of the Mario & Sonic Olympic games/cooking mama/monster high/a few bratz games)

A decent amount of mortal kombat/tekken/street fighter & 1 doa game when I was a kid

There's definitely more I just can't think off anything else

I'm not really a first person shooter game person & really don't like 1st person pov in games. I don't know why I just don't care for the perspective.

TV

*The walking dead (I fell off on season 7 I think)

TVD

Old law & order svu/criminal minds reruns

You

Bob's burgers

Invader zim

Blue eyed samurai

Live action one piece

Owl house

Amphibia

The imperfects

Voltron legendary defenders (I was very late to the party but I remember chaos)

She-ra princesses of power

ATLA

The legend of korra

Adventure time

Gumball

Arcane

Santa Clarita's diet

The boys

Gen v

Castlevania

Castlevania nocturne

The legend of vox machina

Supernatural (preferably season 1-9)

The umbrella academy

Lovecraft country

Moon knight

She-hulk

Alice in borderland

Sweet home

All if us are dead

Squid game

Ms. Marvel

Wandavision

Hawkeye

Peacemaker

Infinity train

Burn notice

6teen

Abbott elementary

Modern family

Pose

Freakazoid

The Simpsons

Old nick/cartoon network/Disney cartoons

[Can I say teen wolf even though I only watched 1 episode but I know the lore from fan-fiction/tumblr/clips from YouTube from my preteen years]

I obviously watch more things but like I said off the top of my head

Anime (yes this is a separate section from movies/shows)

*Black butler

Naruto/Bleach/haikyuu/sailor moon/one piece/Inuyasha (I'm on the 1st seasons & won't finish anytime soon but I do enjoy them

Assassination classroom

Tokyo ghoul

Demon slayer

The apothecary diaries

Kamisama kiss

Noragami

My hero academia

Soul eater

Fire force

Angelbeats

Dorohedoro

Spy x family

Attack on titan (I remember when the 1st season came out & watching it in the 7th grade I believe & got bored waiting for the next season. I did like it though & it was my first anime I watched & will probably catch up at some point)

Jujutsu kaisen

The ancient magus bride

Yona of the dawn

Maid sama

Durarara!!

Durarara!!x2

Angels of death

Death note

Trigun

Trigun stampede

Devil may cry

Tokyo ghoul re

Tokyo revengers

The God of high school

Helsing

Akudama drive

Helsing ultimate

Seraph of the end

Toilet bound hanako-kun

Nanbaka

Gangsta

The boondocks

Life lessons with uramichi oniisan

That time I got reincarnated as a slime

Fruits basket

Chainsaw man

Bed & breakfast for spirits

Kill la kill

Black lagoon

The promised neverland

Madoka magica (1st anime I watched by myself not what I expected by a long shot,but still enjoyed)

Little witch academia

Kakegurui

Kakegurui twin

Ouran high school host club

Komi can't communicate

Bungou stray dogs

BOOK

* maze runner

Hunger games

Anything by edgar allan poe

Hooky

I just recently got back into reading recently & I have a fuckton of books to start reading.

I flit from fandom to fandom,even returning to old ones. Anything that catches my interest & becomes my new hyperfixation. I usually juggle between a few at a time. Usually games/movies/anime. Also obviously I read fanfic on tumblr (duh).

Final notes: I like history/mythology/polytheism/writing/media/cooking/baking/winter/nature/animals & I'm a dog mom. His name is anubis & he's a dalmatian.

That's about all I can think of as of now

PS for the love of fuck dni MINORS/RACISTS/ANTI-LGBTQ+/INCELS/MISOGYNISTS/RADFEMS & JUST ANYONE WHO'S HATEFUL/IGNORANT.

I have to deal with enough nonsense,bullshit,& all around dumb shit irl keep it off my blog & away from me please & thank you.

Goodbye I love you *smooches* ♡

[talenlee]

The Seemingly Sudden And Impressive Presence of Actually Queer Anime Circa Right Now

Hey, do you know what I mean by ‘this user can say it?’

I want to say it’s a cohost meme but the idea is that there are some words that get treated as cursed or slurs or dangerous magical words that are reclaimed slurs, in the mouths of people who can reclaim them. Simply put, if I, a bi dude, want to make a joke where I use the word faggot, fuck off telling me I shouldn’t. And this led to the joke that ‘This User Can Say It’ was a flag that signalled that whether or not an individual wanted to out themselves in any specific way, they had the rights to use particular terms.

But I’m not here to talk about slurs I’m here to talk about anime. It should be no surprise to anyone who pays attention to the trends on this blog (so, Tab, gotyaoi, me) that there’s a low key anxiety about doing too much on this blog about too many anime. It wasn’t intentional but I’ve just been watching more this year and that means more of this year has been talking about anime.

Here then is a list of anime that won’t show up in the Story Pile, but absolutely Can Say It.

Birdie Wing

Yugioh Golf Lesbians. It’s Yugioh Golf Lesbians. I can’t believe that’s a useful summary of a real anime that exists and that it’s actually good, but believe it or not, Yugioh Golf Lesbians is a real thing, it really exists and it’s really enjoyable. The characters have crushes on one another, they are awkward about that relationship, they want to be around one another and tease each other and oh and also someone assassinates a golfer with a bazooka.

This series is silly in so many ways. Birdie Wing was going to be a June Story Pile. I wound up bumping it, not because it wound up being unworthy of being a Pride Month series, but just because it’s currently ongoing and if it’s a good two-season anime I’d rather watch them all at once and make a single unified block of it. Also, when I have as many possible options in front of me as I do, even a modest reason like ‘do both seasons at once’ is a good reason.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

See also Birdie Wing. I really like Witch from Mercury! I think it owns bones! It has some truly heroic moments and the action is beautifully constructed and intense and oh my god I love these characters so much, and I love the setup for the second season that the first season left hanging, particularly because I can see a lot of a familiar experience in Suletta.

No, I was never a lesbian mecha pilot, I’m sorry.

Still, everyone gets a favourite Gundam I think and god damn if Witch From Mercury might be mine. Or 0080, I gotta finish that one. It’s also just so exquisitely good looking. I’m used to mecha anime having some fuzziness or sloppiness depending on when they show up. Late 90s mecha anime often relied on blockiness of the mecha to cover for animation errors, and mid 00s often were relying too much on 3D models that stood out. Whatever they’re doing in Witch From Mercury looks so good on its own.

I really look forward to seeing if this one has a coherent, solid throughline. But if it’s got a tragic end I don’t want to cover it in a Pride Month because we have time enough for queer tragedy the rest of the year. Let Pride Month be things that are cool and rule, and I hope that next year, that will include Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury.

Also, I get to double dip and maybe it’ll be a smooch month series because so many smooch month series fail to hold my attention because they don’t have sick ass mecha battles.

The Executioner And Her Way Of Life

If you watch the opening of this series and think hey does this get gay, let me assure that yes, yes it does, this is an anime that can say it, and will say it, and offers you its hand as it leads into a light novel series that gets not only canonically and repeatedly gay, but it’s gay in a way that I think resonates pretty hard with say, anyone who’s had a long distance relationship over the internet.

I think this series kinda rules! It will get an entry, you will be able to see it sometime this year! But also, it feels like this anime is set up to put every piece in place and explicitly outline a queer kiss, and it’s a very enjoyable narrative with a really enjoyable set of pieces all being positioned around one another…

and then slams the book closed before the relationship progresses. You get to see a queer yearning, a queer plan, a queer crush… but not queer love. Not queer life.

You do get to see a giant centipede monster girl though.

Do It Yourself

For reasons that make more sense when it happens, I already covered Do It Yourself. This is a series that Can Say It, but also doesn’t, which is a bit of a bummer considering the series is otherwise very wholesome and very sweet. It still owns an interesting spot in history which means it needs to live alongside another article.

It’s been written, it’s in the scheduler, it’s going to happen in time.

Princess Connect: Re-Dive

I don’t imagine I’ll ever write about Princess Crincess Rincess Dincess. I got it because the game attached to it shut down and I thought it’d be interesting watching an anime tie-in and see what you can assume or extrapolate about the game based on that. That idea didn’t wind up working out, because Redive Of A Princess Connection is just a pretty sweet, middlingly funny unimpressive anime, which means, eh, nah, not gunna bother talking about it. If you like cute girls that get thirty seconds of screen time each and the same four jokes each episode, then yeah, that’s this.

However, as a Pride anime, it does have a metatextual thing. See, Connection of A Princess and Her Redived Life is a sequel series to a game subplot, and it’s explicitly about the world resetting from a point in the game, changed in a way that means the villain kinda wins.

In the game, that villain is a dude. In Princess Connect But The Pryncess is Gwyn, the same villain with the same name is not a dude.

Trans girls will literally defeat the hero and reboot the world to get nice hair, and I think that’s admirable. It certainly sounds easier than putting up with the way doctors dole out the support.

My Master Has No Tail

I really liked My Master Has No Tail, which is a fun little anime about a Tanuki Girl who learns how to perform Rakugo theatre from a disillusioned kitsune pretending to be a human. This series kind of rules and it’s got this ongoing thread through it about people sustaining illusions about who they are, about how they interact with the world, and how they engage with art. Simply put, this is an anime that wants to be about how people are fooled and how we like to be fooled.

Unsurprisingly, this shows up in Tricks Month.

My Master Has No Tail doesn’t say it, but it absolutely could.

There! A bunch of stuff! If you’re just looking for queer anime to check out, and maybe if you want to see if you’re into them the way my articles wind up shaking out, you should check them out!

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Anime #Media