Well, it’s opposite day, so instead of dropping a review, I’m providing this: a countdown of the shows that I have no intent to ever review here… and an explanation of why.
#5 – Avatar: the Last Airbender
So, once upon a time, I muddied the waters to talk about the first three seasons of RWBY. It’s a choice I made because I thought it was kind of relevant, and one that in a sense I have regretted.
While, as I pointed out then and have reiterated since that this is my review blog and I make the rules around here, going for an American production that happens to be anime-inspired is a little beyond the pale.
But before RWBY was the not-an-anime-anime of the town, the Avatar franchise kind of had that distinction, as a Nickelodeon cartoon that took clear pointers from Japanese animation in both its visual design and, in some senses, its writing.
This one is #5, both because it stands for “Western Productions”, which I have reviewed and can’t totally rule out touching ever again, especially as the world’s creative spheres become more integrated for better or worse (for the record, I kind of agree with Hideaki Anno on this. If you know you know.) and because, well, I can kind of make this a little micro review of Avatar: Classical Elements Avatar is way better than Blue Cats Avatar.
And okay, that’s not a fair comparison, one is a cartoon that reaches its heights on the depth of its writing and worldbuilding and the other is a series of “live action” (though mostly CGI) blockbusters that smashes record after record very legitimately on the force of its pure visual wonder. But as a writer, I know which I personally have a greater affection for.
The original series is perfectly paced, has remarkably little waste for as many episodes as its three seasons consist of, is fully engaging for both kids and adults most of the time, and features some of the greatest, most nuanced, and most likable characters to have ever graced Western TV Animation. If you haven’t watched it despite being enough in the anime sphere to be reading a review blog, give it a try.
But I won’t be doing a big spoiler review or issuing a letter grade to Avatar, or many if any other Western productions.
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#3 – Legend of the Overfiend
I have reviewed a lot of sketchy or sensitive stuff on this blog. While I usually avoid cussing in my text and in that way you could consider most of my writing vaguely “family friendly”, I certainly don’t shy away from topics that include sex or violence. I don’t even feel the need to censor myself with words that people have gotten very nervous about in recent years like “rape”, “murder”, “suicide” or “kill”. I prefer to call a spade a spade, and I’m not going to avoid a show just because it contains some taboo stuff. I’d have missed out on some of the best shows that way (and my absolute most hated, but that’s neither here nor there).
But one thing I don’t do is review Hentai. Actual porn. Media where the point is graphic depictions of sex acts. Frankly, there’s a difference between a show with adult material in it and a show that simply is Adult Material, and it’s a fundamental divergence of goals that would make even porn with plot kind of impossible to rate fairly against other, non-pornographic material. Plus, for my own sanity, I’d rather draw the line at taking on hard-R material, but not pure X-rated.
Legend of the Overfiend is a 13-episode OVA and Feature-length Film from the late 80’s famous for two things, and one of those things is being the work that popularized the tentacle hentai genre. The other is supposedly having story and worldbuilding despite that.
To date, I have not viewed Legend of the Overfiend. Sometimes, considering its landmark position in media I find myself tempted, but I also kind of want to stay far, far away. One thing is certain, though: if I do ever allow my Lovecraftian compulsion to plumb the depths of forbidden knowledge that I know is probably going to mess me up win, I won’t be bringing any report of what I find here to darken the light of day.
#2 – My Hero Academia
So, a little confession – I have no affinity for “cape” genre, or western comic book super heroes. I mean, I watched a few MCU movies and enjoyed them until I eventually fell off that horse and didn’t care enough to get back on, but I never read super hero comics when I was a kid, and frankly even as an adult I think I’ve dug into a grand total of two print materials that most people would consider to count. And one of those is Watchmen, which is a deconstruction of the genre.
I’d say I have nothing really against the Cape genre, but that’s not quite true. Because I didn’t grow up with it or immerse myself in it, its contrivances and repeated foibles are not contrivances and repeated foibles that I’ve trained myself to enjoy or at least tolerate. At my age, I think my tastes are pretty much set. I’m not saying that Cape material uniquely has foibles or contrivances, every genre of fiction and every medium does, but when you have an affinity you get used to them and embrace them, where as other folks will be directly annoyed by them. I’m used to the foibles of classic anime, cyberpunk, scifi, and high fantasy, but not of super heroes. I’ve got nothing against the people who like that kind of stuff, but I’m not one of them and probably never will be.
So, My Hero Academia is a show that got massively popular, especially in the west, that adopts the Cape Super Hero genre and remakes it in anime form. For my personal enjoyment, that’s not something I would really bite on to begin with, but I watched those Marvel movies I mentioned earlier, and relevantly Sky High which was surprisingly decent for its provenance, I could set my lack of love for the genre aside for, oh, six or twelve hours of viewing and try to give it a fair shake.
The problem with that is that MHA is eight seasons and 170 episodes. And that’s only counting the “Season N” listings, not the movies, TV specials, or other material. That would be a hard ask for any show or even franchise. I put away a similar number of episodes with Macross, but that did burn a whole month of reviews and I could only really commit to doing that because I kind of knew I was capable of liking what Macross had to offer. I didn’t know if it would be good or not until I saw it, of course, but I suspected I wouldn’t be suffering for all that time.
MHA, despite its sterling reputation, I can’t say that for. I can’t burn a whole month of reviews on something that I know is going to needle me and that I might not even be able to really be fair and objective towards because of that.
Of course, when talking about sheer length, there’s one show that really does come to mind…
#1 – One Piece
This one is simple, and I could have probably made the whole list about this exact same issue: One Piece is over a thousand episodes, and even though it’s supposedly ending some time in the near-ish future, making it finite rather than, oh, Case Closed, that’s still way too much anime for me to get through.
True, as with many giga-long-running shows, there are surely on-ramps for new viewers to get involved without having watched every episode up to a certain point. Frankly, One Piece is kind of famous for them. And it’s clear that a lot of younger fans probably haven’t been around from the beginning and have used those quite successfully.
But this is the part where this little blog of mine has become something of a day job. It may seem like the greatest, easiest job in the world since I just watch anime and put down my thoughts about it, and perhaps that’s why it doesn’t pay, but it does still take time. With an average workflow, I can sort of gain ground when I’m reviewing one-cour shows and tread water on two-cour shows. Anything more than that, and I have to justify.
I have, of course, reviewed a few longer shows, like Eureka Seven or Armored Trooper Votoms, but those represent, more or less, the top end of what I can realistically put out for a standard weekly review. Any more than, say, 52 episodes, and I can’t in good faith really run with it. If I want to address it, I have to chop it up, and if it doesn’t chop well, then I need to find this side topic or maybe there’s something else related that’s shorter and review that. And when we get to true behemoths, of which One Piece is the most iconic, and I realistically can’t actually tackle the topic.