An Essay On Anime, Fandom, and Metaphorical Comets of Joy
Recently I've been thinking on those times when life is hard and then some piece of media comes blazing through your life like a comet, bringing a little bit of light and wonder in its wake.
I remember around this time of year three years ago, when I stuck in a long stretch of unemployment. Few things chip away at your self-confidence than the endless search for a job, trying to tell total strangers what you think they want to hear and trying to project enough confidence to pretend that you can do some random office job in some industry that feels miles away from your true calling. That's where I was, filling the time that wasn't spent in that search (or the resulting funks that came from the lack of results) with household work and writing reviews.
That's when the fall season of anime started, which included what was easily the most hyped show of the season, an original work by a well-acclaimed lady director about (of all things) ice skating.
Of course, that show was Yuri on Ice!!!. It had incredible animation, timely themes, shocking emotional depth, and a couple of hot anime dudes who changed their lives and did a smooch. It managed to live up to its hype and then some. I don't think I need to tell you at this point how well that went.
Three years later, I still love that show and consider it one of the best of the decade. What truly sticks with me about that show isn't the work itself, though, but that feeling of light and wonder it left in the fandom as it passed.
I remember the wave of joy and anticipation that ran through AniTwitter every Thursday as the latest episode would drop.
I remember all the new people I discovered through silly fandom jokes, deep discussion and fascinating threads of skating trivia.
I remember watching thousands of random people on Twitch experience (and re-experience) this for themselves when Crunchyroll marathoned the series over the course of a single evening.
I remember AnimeFest 2017, when the prospect of getting a glimpse of the women who created this wonderful thing leading me to dust off my cultural interpretation skills to make some great panels, discover some great new films, and turn some of those familiar Twitter handles and icons into the names and faces of real men and women who I came to know, and in some cases closely and regularly enough to truly call them friends.
And all of that because of a wonderful, well-made show that came blazing through our lives in the fall of 2016, leaving a trail of joy and wonder in its wake long after the final episode ended. These are the moments that stuck with me long after the last episode aired.
__________________________________________________________________________
Flash forward to now. While that long jobless streak ended roughly a year and a half ago, the joy of steady employment has long since faded thanks to the struggle of keeping up with a demanding position in an job that you're not deeply invested in, not helped by the daily emotional grind of dealing with pessimistic, small-minded, petty, gossiply, and deeply, offensively conservative coworkers. It's been hard finding an equilibrium between that and the things that you want and need to be doing at home. That's not even getting into everything that's going on in politics on the state and national level. At times it seems the only thing that relieves the tedium is the prospect of another big con, where you get to see some of those AniTwitter friends and make a few more and turn some of your personal fandom fascinations into panels.
And then the latest work from the big, bombastic mind of Hiroyuki Imaishi and Studio Trigger is licensed. Of course I'm hyped for it - Gurren Lagann was one of the first shows I watched when I got into anime, and his particular brand of big, dumb, earnest shonen energy has stuck with me ever since. You felt it when Kill La Kill came out, and even when Trigger's output has been hit and miss, you still hope that the next work will tap into that same energy again. It's what convinced me to go to Otakon again last year, and when I had to miss its screening there, I swore to see it as soon as it hit regular theaters.
Which is how I dragged myself, barely recovering from a bout of bronchitis, husband in hand, to go see Promare.
Of course I loved Promare. It had wild and wonderful visuals, dazzling color design, themes that were timely (if not terribly deep), it had hot (and eventually shirtless) anime dudes saving the world and doing a smooch, and most importantly it had that big, dumb, earnest shonen energy I was hoping for. It soared through me in a firey burst of neon pink, purple and green, hand in hand with Hiroyuki Sawano's joyful brand of musical bombast and somewhat over-literal lyrics, bringing that fleeting feeling of light and wonder that I hadn't realized I missed until I felt it all over again.
It's hard to say just yet precisely how this passion will take shape. In my case, it's mostly taken the form of eager discussion of the movie and sharing loads of Lio/Galo fanart with mutuals on Twitter like it's going out of style, in various degrees of thirstiness since I can't go see it again. Yet I see some of that same spark spreading to others, making them dust off AO3 accounts and open up drawing programs to share some of their own sense of joy and wonder with others.
It's what motivated me to finally dust off this blog after months of inactivity to try to give shape to my own feelings, to capture this moment, this feeling into words like a bug in amber as I listen to "Ashes" and "Inferno" on repeat.
This is not an unique story. Odds are good that every single one of you reading this right now has felt the same way at least once about something. The details may have been different for you. The works that might have inspired those feelings may have been different. The particular shapes and directions it took afterwards may been different. Yet the feeling itself -that wave of joy and inspiration bursting through the dark, leaving a metaphorical trail of stardust in the hearts and minds of others - that is universal.
It's moments like this that keep me going as a person and it's the reason I became and remain the shameless weeb I am today.
I remember around this time of year three years ago, when I stuck in a long stretch of unemployment. Few things chip away at your self-confidence than the endless search for a job, trying to tell total strangers what you think they want to hear and trying to project enough confidence to pretend that you can do some random office job in some industry that feels miles away from your true calling. That's where I was, filling the time that wasn't spent in that search (or the resulting funks that came from the lack of results) with household work and writing reviews.
That's when the fall season of anime started, which included what was easily the most hyped show of the season, an original work by a well-acclaimed lady director about (of all things) ice skating.
Of course, that show was Yuri on Ice!!!. It had incredible animation, timely themes, shocking emotional depth, and a couple of hot anime dudes who changed their lives and did a smooch. It managed to live up to its hype and then some. I don't think I need to tell you at this point how well that went.
Three years later, I still love that show and consider it one of the best of the decade. What truly sticks with me about that show isn't the work itself, though, but that feeling of light and wonder it left in the fandom as it passed.
I remember the wave of joy and anticipation that ran through AniTwitter every Thursday as the latest episode would drop.
I remember all the new people I discovered through silly fandom jokes, deep discussion and fascinating threads of skating trivia.
I remember watching thousands of random people on Twitch experience (and re-experience) this for themselves when Crunchyroll marathoned the series over the course of a single evening.
I remember AnimeFest 2017, when the prospect of getting a glimpse of the women who created this wonderful thing leading me to dust off my cultural interpretation skills to make some great panels, discover some great new films, and turn some of those familiar Twitter handles and icons into the names and faces of real men and women who I came to know, and in some cases closely and regularly enough to truly call them friends.
And all of that because of a wonderful, well-made show that came blazing through our lives in the fall of 2016, leaving a trail of joy and wonder in its wake long after the final episode ended. These are the moments that stuck with me long after the last episode aired.
__________________________________________________________________________
Flash forward to now. While that long jobless streak ended roughly a year and a half ago, the joy of steady employment has long since faded thanks to the struggle of keeping up with a demanding position in an job that you're not deeply invested in, not helped by the daily emotional grind of dealing with pessimistic, small-minded, petty, gossiply, and deeply, offensively conservative coworkers. It's been hard finding an equilibrium between that and the things that you want and need to be doing at home. That's not even getting into everything that's going on in politics on the state and national level. At times it seems the only thing that relieves the tedium is the prospect of another big con, where you get to see some of those AniTwitter friends and make a few more and turn some of your personal fandom fascinations into panels.
And then the latest work from the big, bombastic mind of Hiroyuki Imaishi and Studio Trigger is licensed. Of course I'm hyped for it - Gurren Lagann was one of the first shows I watched when I got into anime, and his particular brand of big, dumb, earnest shonen energy has stuck with me ever since. You felt it when Kill La Kill came out, and even when Trigger's output has been hit and miss, you still hope that the next work will tap into that same energy again. It's what convinced me to go to Otakon again last year, and when I had to miss its screening there, I swore to see it as soon as it hit regular theaters.
Which is how I dragged myself, barely recovering from a bout of bronchitis, husband in hand, to go see Promare.
Of course I loved Promare. It had wild and wonderful visuals, dazzling color design, themes that were timely (if not terribly deep), it had hot (and eventually shirtless) anime dudes saving the world and doing a smooch, and most importantly it had that big, dumb, earnest shonen energy I was hoping for. It soared through me in a firey burst of neon pink, purple and green, hand in hand with Hiroyuki Sawano's joyful brand of musical bombast and somewhat over-literal lyrics, bringing that fleeting feeling of light and wonder that I hadn't realized I missed until I felt it all over again.
It's hard to say just yet precisely how this passion will take shape. In my case, it's mostly taken the form of eager discussion of the movie and sharing loads of Lio/Galo fanart with mutuals on Twitter like it's going out of style, in various degrees of thirstiness since I can't go see it again. Yet I see some of that same spark spreading to others, making them dust off AO3 accounts and open up drawing programs to share some of their own sense of joy and wonder with others.
It's what motivated me to finally dust off this blog after months of inactivity to try to give shape to my own feelings, to capture this moment, this feeling into words like a bug in amber as I listen to "Ashes" and "Inferno" on repeat.
This is not an unique story. Odds are good that every single one of you reading this right now has felt the same way at least once about something. The details may have been different for you. The works that might have inspired those feelings may have been different. The particular shapes and directions it took afterwards may been different. Yet the feeling itself -that wave of joy and inspiration bursting through the dark, leaving a metaphorical trail of stardust in the hearts and minds of others - that is universal.
It's moments like this that keep me going as a person and it's the reason I became and remain the shameless weeb I am today.
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