Patreon Letter - 11th July, 2018 (Patreon)

We recently released a podcast about Love Live season 1, which you can find in this feed. It was a patreon-directed episode, as our friend Andy chose it for us to watch. It's been a strange situation, because initially I was really reluctant to watch an anime I would have characterized as 'meant to sell you waifu merch'. 

Honestly, I've had a weird long-standing grudge with anime that I've really worked to get over now that I have an anime podcast. Like most kids my age, I really got into anime in the mid/late-90s when Toonami started bringing shows over in earnest. I watched that first 1/3 of Sailor Moon and DragonBall Z like six times as they repeated them over and over. My fandom was intense. Anime felt special because it was so hard to come by. Nobody I knew was a tape trader or anything. 

But then DVDs blew it all up and I remember the day my junior high best friend showed up with a backpack full of amazingly well-produced anime bootlegs he bought from someone. There was a lot of stuff there, including more Tenchi Muyo than any one human should possess (any is the legal limit, it seems), and Chobits, a show I loved at 16 because I was a dumbass. 

But then anime exploded right when I got really tired/skeeved out about loli shit/generally not into watching a bunch of TV. I definitely took a 'it's not me, it's you approach' to the late 00s, really getting grumpy about anime. The culture happened, you know? I got on twitter. It was a time. Mistakes were made. 

Starting The Great Gundam Project was a great way to re-approach anime. The shows are old, at least so far, which means they look incredible to a curmudgeonly animation nerd like me. It's been measured out so that we don't have that much to watch any given week, so if I'm burned out my commitment is low. And it was the thinky sci-fi anime (that wasn't LoGH) so we could at least tackle it sorta how we watch Star Trek. Perfect for us. 

The thing that happened though is that when we have a good week I want to watch more anime, so I found non-Gundam things to watch. It started slow, picking at shows like Flying Witch or Death Note, but as the year has gone on and my depression over my real life tragedies this year have started to unwind themselves and be things I have to process, I've increasingly found anime a great escape. Love Live is a great example of this, but also Dragon Ball Super, Ping Pong, My Hero Academia, Sailor Moon, Lupin the 3rd, and any of the other shows I've watched in this time. 

Anime has been a great balm for the spirit because it's so colorful and so cheerful. It's funny and often focused on friendships and finding oneself through doing for others. The music is almost always pleasant and assuming my luck holds out, I rarely come across anything too explicit or gross. I go off the recommendations of friends a lot for that, because you can never trust twitter at large. Crunchyroll out here recommending I watch Citrus and excuse me???

I don't really have a point to this letter other than to say I think anime is a pretty great way to manage the bad days of feeling sad, and I'm really happy we have an anime podcast that has spurred me into finding new things to watch regularly. It's easy to get burnt out on the big stuff we do for our podcasts, but I can always throw on a show and have a great time, Gundam or Love Live or anything else. I can't wait to cover more anime in the future. 

Thanks everyone. See you next time.

- Em

PS be my friend on anime planet, yo https://www.anime-planet.com/users/embeing