The Old School Otaku Lounge

I've been thinking about this topic again. Obviously no one here needs to be convinced, but I thought it would be interesting to hear how people here have tried to pitch the idea of watching older anime to others.

As a general rule, I myself don't actually try and get other people to watch older anime. Hell, I don't try and get people to watch anything (I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had this experience: a friend is being really annoying trying to push something onto me, which results in me never wanting to watch the damn thing ever). I don't give unsolicited recommendations, and I don't take unsolicited recommendations. My personal "to-watch" list is already too long.

However, back when I thought that perhaps I could get other hardcore anime fans (jokes on me because I had the best success rate convincing the much more casual/non anime fans) to consider watching older shows, here was my thought process.

• Insisting people watch classic shows to be a "true" anime fan was out the window - I don't care for the concept of a "true" fan. More importantly, that could run the risk of suggesting the show isn't just straight up GOOD.

• If they like certain genres that get less representation now, like SF or mecha, then they could perhaps find more by going back. I've yet to meet someone who was into mecha anime that wasn't already going further back though. Side note: I got my high school non-anime-fan friend who is into SF literature to watch LoGH and he thought it was great. He's the only person I've ever convinced to watch LogH.

• The cel animated aesthetic is different from digitally animated shows. However, this is typically a con for most modern fans. I won't deny that initially I myself had a little bit of an adjustment period.

These are fairly specific axes to think about this though. I preferred to center my pitch around a more general concept:

• It can be really hard to find a quality indicator with a good signal to noise ratio. I'm sure you've had the experience of following the show that's real hot with all the otaku, only for it to end up flopping. The one indicator we do have however is the test of time. If people are still talking about some show 10 years after its original release, then perhaps you really ought to consider checking it out. You probably won't like every show that passes this test, but I'd wager you'd still find an awful lot of good stuff. I'd even say that even for the things you end up not liking, it could be worth the time to think of why this show didn't gel with you despite it being so big with others. In trying to understand that, you'll probably understand your own preferences better which will help refine your process to filter out the trash from the treasures. Or alternatively put, learn which indicators to listen to that suit your tastes.

Granted, the "test of time" would suggest I really ought to check out DBZ, and that is just not happening.

Now, friends I'd give this pitch to would actually react pretty positively to this concept, such that they understood better why I have such a fascination with older works. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that they just return to their usual habits of watching whatever shows are part of the short-lived zeitgeist. Even if the otaku hyped shows end up bombing, they still continued to watch shows this way. That's when I realized if the poor batting average won't convince them, then nothing will. The other thing I noticed is that being part of the zeitgeist was actually more important than watching a good show for some of these people.

When I was younger I used to be a lot more bothered observing this. Since then however I've long accepted that this is not really a productive use of my brain cells. I'm content enjoying what I like, even if that's in isolation. Time really is too short to care how other people spend their time .

So if you were to try and convince someone (be it a non-fan, a casual fan, or a "hardcore" fan however you define these) to watch older anime, what would you say?

these days, there are very few circumstances where I would pitch an anime show to someone without some kind of prior context. Maybe if I knew they were into a thing by a creator, and I knew of another show by that creator, I might say "Hey, you like Gundam, have you seen Zanbot 3?" or something like that. Or if someone's discussing the Galaxy Express 999 TV series but hadn't seen the films, I would recommend the films.

I find it's helpful to write columns or do panels where I discuss a bunch of different shows, and I can throw in some deep cuts just to get them in front of eyeballs that might not otherwise see them. And again, it puts them in context.

Sometimes I have conversations at work or in other non-fandom settings where I'm asked what kind of Japanese cartoons I enjoy, and the truth is that a lot of what I like to watch are either shows I watched as a kid - your Prince Planets, your Kimbas, your Gatchamans, Space Battleship Yamatos, Getter Robos, Macrosses, etc., or shows that come from that same time period or aesthetic. It's easy to explain "well, I saw these things as a kid and I never got over them." But I don't know that people without my particular experience will share my particular enthusiasm. Those people ARE out there, I've met them, but the best way to find them is to engage in some sort of public fan activity related to those shows - a fanzine, a panel, a screening, a cosplay- and watch them come to you, like moths to a flame.

I like the phrase "being part of the zeitgeist was actually more important than watching a good show for some of these people," and I think that's a fairly accurate description of how a lot of people interact with popular culture - it's something they do with others, and that interaction with others is integral to the enjoyment. Nobody's sitting down and watching "Rocky Horror Picture Show" for the cinematography, to use an extreme example.

davemerrill wrote: ↑Fri Oct 05, 2018 8:07 am these days, there are very few circumstances where I would pitch an anime show to someone without some kind of prior context. Maybe if I knew they were into a thing by a creator, and I knew of another show by that creator, I might say "Hey, you like Gundam, have you seen Zanbot 3?" or something like that. Or if someone's discussing the Galaxy Express 999 TV series but hadn't seen the films, I would recommend the films.

I agree. I can't recommend watching things to people unless there's a particular reason I think that person would actually like it. Similarly when someone recommends something to me and gives no explanation as to why, I usually assume they're recommending it because they like it and just assume that everyone else will too (bad assumption).

I'm honestly really bad about taking recommendations from friends about things to watch. A lot of times there's an assumption about my tastes that simply isn't correct, which is understandable, as it's been, like 15 years since I spent a lot of "hanging out watching movies" time with my Atlanta pals. Tastes change, and a lot of really, really terrible stuff I sat through just because it was what everybody was doing that particular Saturday night, well, I am not gonna sit through any more.

At the same time, I do feel sometimes I need to give new things a chance, so I try to leaven my 'nopes' with a few 'why nots' every now and then.

I'm another one who can be bad about giving out recommendations; like you guys, I want to know some specifics and always frame my recs around those specifics. I'm good about taking recommendations but extremely bad about acting on them.

My reasons for sticking by older anime are formed by some deeply personal experiences. I got involved in some social clubs through school (both anime and general nerd stuff) and often wound up doing a lot of the programming for anime content because I spent a lot of time watching and researching stuff. Coming up as a fan in the early 90s, much of the hard curation work was being done by folks like Dave and plenty of others, so while a few questionable things slipped through, there was always good stuff to watch. But when you were "caught up" enough and looked only at new stuff, the late 90s and early 2000s had significant changes in aesthetic, production and story quality but there was also this boom of fandom population going on. It was after this that I moved away from anime evangelism in general and to "classic anime" evangelism specifically. A lot of it was grounded in trying to show others evolution of tropes and archetypes of their current favorites, sort of building some pantheon of wider appreciation, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit some of this was knee-jerk reaction, where age was often mistaken for pedigree. I was, as a fan, kinda broken down by the fact that people who loved anime found Ninja Scroll TV droll because they never saw how wild the movie was, found Yawara! to be plain, and Galaxy Express to be ugly; they would eat up Gundam SEED but wanted nothing to do with Zeta.

I went through another bout of this fandom burnout, which is why we started the Akihabara Renditions podcast and wound up starting a convention and a whole new level of burnout hit. Put everything on pause and asked myself, "what joy am I getting out of being an anime fan?" and I kept coming back to that 70s-90s time period of stuff - stuff I'd seen a million times, stuff I'd only heard about - that's what interested me. So after spending some time away, I'm comfortable only being a fan of stuff within a certain window and taking a look at some new stuff on my own time and only stuff that looks like it might interest me. I really enjoy podcasting and writing about anime, so we eventually got back to AkibaRen, but we've shifted focus away from just older stuff and do a little bit of newer stuff now.

In so far as making recommendations of older stuff, though, outside of a podcast review, I'm super cautious about it. A lot of my convention panel presentations are less about making a recommendation specifically but more talking about specific series within a topic or theme. If someone asks my opinion on some show, and if I have one, I'll give it. Again, cushioned with a lot of caveats. But really, I'm watching this stuff and talking about it, mostly for myself, so if someone doesn't like the show I'm talking about, then that doesn't bother me.

A lot of newer anime is made by staff who made older anime. It can be interesting to see stuff like the first episode of a show directed by a now famous director.

A lot of newer anime is made by staff who watched older anime and wanted to make something like it. Sometimes watching the thing that inspired your favorite director to make your favorite thing can help you understand where they were coming from.

Sometimes bad anime gets better with age, because now in addition to being bad it is also dated; when bad and dated combine, you can get entertainingly cheesy. The characters that have nothing to say are less irritating when you can laugh at their absurd 80s clothes. The tired synthpop becomes novel when nobody plays synthpop anymore. The animation that seemed low-effort then seems even worse now, making it almost seem like a parody of itself.

And of course with good anime, you are so absorbed in the show that you don't notice that it's an old show. (^_^)