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Anime and Manga
"Yes, once again, I am mentioning Evangelion, for the... fuck, I don't know, just assume that the next time I am talking about the evolution of some aspect within anime, Evangelion is gonna have some part in it."
"February 22nd, 1981 dawned a cold and cloudy morning in Tokyo, Japan, and yet, a large throng of people had begun to form around the east exit to Shinjuku station. It was not a political rally, as such public demonstrations had been banned in Shinjuku since the 1960s, and it certainly wasn't people on their commute, as it was Sunday. It was a promotional event for a film called Mobile Suit Gundam. Gundam had begun as an anime TV series, and a failed one at that, barely scraping by with unimpressive ratings when it first aired, its main sponsor, the toy company Clover, had cancelled it after believing the complex and overtly political storyline crafted by maverick director Yoshiyuki Tomino had alienated young audiences, which resulted in lower than expected toy sales. And while it did finish its overall story within 43 episodes, cut short from its original 52 order, Gundam appeared to be condemned to the forgotten annals of anime history. However, once the show entered reruns in the summer of 1980, it saw a complete rebirth. The company Bandai made money hand over fist with 30 yennote model kits based on the show's many war machines, pioneering the hobby we now know as Gunpla.''
Sunrise, the animation studio behined Gundam, knew they had to capitalise on this resurgence, so it was decided to recut the original TV series into three feature-length movies. Tomino, who would naturally be directing, was ready to usher forth this newfound fandom for his creation. In order to promote the film, premiering in three weeks at the time, a promotional event was arranged. The plan was to have an all day event. It would kick off in the morning with a preview of the movie, followed by interviews attended solely by people with tickets they could only win in a postcard lottery. This would then lead over to a public event that would commence at noon with a speech by Tomino himself. All who attended the event would be given a special promotional poster. The event was to be called "A Declaration of a New Anime Century".''
The promotional staff estimated that around 5000 people would attend, mostly children and a few hardcore young adult fans. They had prepared for this by having 10,000 posters printed. When the big day arrived, more people than expected were in attendance - men and women of all ages: elementary, high school and college level alike. The event had completely run out of posters by 10 AM. By the time the morning event had ended, an estimated 20,000 people had gathered at the station. Police warned the organisers that the crowd had grown too large to control and that they were prepared to pull the plug in the interest of safety. At that moment, Tomino took the stage early, and bellowed in the mic, "Everyone, take it easy!" He then launched into an impromptou call for order and told everyone that they had gathered all 20,000 people there to make a statement - to, in his words, make all the grown ups wonder what so many young people wanted to say, and they had to be on their best behaviour, for the entire perception of fandom was at stake.
"This is more than an event! It's a matsuri (festival). I appreciate the passion that brought you here today. But you know what will happen if someone gets hurt? They'll say "That's anime fans for you. Just a bunch of idiots running wild"... We need the grown-ups to wonder what this Gundam is all about. We need them to understand what young, modern people, teenagers, are seriously thinking about, and grasp that by seeing Gundam for themselves, even once."
At first, Tomino questioned if the masses even heard him. He second guessed the effectiveness of his microphone, and his speech had been completely off the cuff. Plus, he was pushing 40 at the time. Being one of those grown ups he was railing against could have made his words ring hollow. But then, a calm swept over the crowd. The mass of people, some of whom were dressed as their favourite characters from the Gundam anime, stood in rapt attention towards its creator. They took a step back, and began to listen. From that point onward, a parade of the series' architects followed. Animators came on stage and interacted with the crowd they held in the palm of their collective hands. Singer Takichin Yashiki sang the film's closing theme, "Cross of Sands". And more importantly, voice actors invited a select lucky few cosplayers on stage to perform some of the anime's most famous scenes. The event would close with the invitation of two other cosplayers on stage - cosplayers who would end up being future Gundam animator Mamoru Nagano and future voice actress Maria Kawamura. There, in front of a crowd of thousands, they delivered the Declaration of a New Anime Century, stating, "We, the assembled, have gathered here to declare the start of a new era. Our era, a new anime century!"
Indeed, it was. The Declaration of a New Anime Century has gone down in history as anime's Woodstock - a massive coming out party for TV anime and its surrounding culture, showing that it was not merely a tool to sell toys to children and fill up air time, but to tell stories that resonate with large audiences that went beyond the children's demographic. It had been 18 years since the premiere of Astro Boy, and TV anime had now come of age. But more importantly, it introduced the general public of Japan to a new emerging subculture - a subculture marked by obsession for things like anime, manga, Sci-Fi, fantasy, horror, guns, idol, gunpla, figures, toku, martial arts, pro wrestling, Hentai, Yuri, Yaoi, Cosplay, doujin, Computers, Stereo, Video Games, Visual Novels, and anything else in the same orbit. They would be known as Otoko-zoku, or just simply Otaku. Soon, otaku would enter the very same anime industry that defined them, shaping it from their own influence, and within 10 years after that fateful February day in 1981, one group of otaku animators would document their experience through anime."
— Kyoto Video reviewing Otaku no Video
Comic Books
"You would never think of having Superman be neurotic or have doubts or anxieties or anything like that. That was true of all the DC characters. What was different about Marvel compared to DC was like in Greek drama, the gods were in their heavens unquestioned, and then Euripides came along and decided to analyze them and make them more human and bring them down to a human level, and I think that's what Marvel did with the superheroes. And maybe it was time. You know, you can't have those characters running around forever without beginning to wonder what they did in their off hours."
— Ramona Fradon, Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle
Films — Live-Action
"There's Something About Mary wasn’t just a colossal critical and commercial hit in the summer of 1998. It was a full-on cultural sensation. The shot of Cameron Diaz with stuck-up spunk hair became one of the defining images of '90s comedy, and There’s Something About Mary still ranks as one of the highest-grossing romantic comedies of all time. Without There's Something About Mary, the entire comedic landscape of the aughts might’ve been very different. Along with American Pie the next year, it kicked off a new comedic era that included films like Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Superbad. Who knows how Judd Apatow's zeitgeist-defining career would’ve panned out if There's Something About Mary hadn’t paved a path for rom-coms that wore their R-rating not as a matter of fact (like When Harry Met Sally... or Pretty Woman) but as an edgy badge of honor."
— Caroline Siede,
"Raunch hijacked the rom-com after the runaway success of There’s Something About Mary"
"Raunch hijacked the rom-com after the runaway success of There’s Something About Mary" Literature
"In the world of YA Fantasy, there's before Tamora Pierce, and there's after her female heroes started kicking down the doors (and walls, and other barriers)!"
Live-Action TV
"No one-hour drama series has had a bigger impact on how stories are told on the small screen, or more influence on what kind of fare we’ve been offered by an ever-growing array of television networks."
— Maureen Ryan on The Sopranos
on The SopranosAt the time of this recording, we live in a strange, somewhat unprecedented era of media consumption and creation. Back when I was growing up, the popular wisdom of children's media was that it lasted a few years, and then the show ended and it never came back. Revivals of old shows did happen - reunion movies, maybe a sequel series, but this wasn't for material made for children. Nostalgic revivals were for stuff like Gilligan's Island movies, Star Trek: The Next Generation coming about because of various factors including syndication keeping interest in the franchise alive, or maybe The Munsters or The Addams Family would get a TV movie or the like to try to get lightning to strike twice. While these kinds of things were family-friendly, children were not the target audience for them. Children's media didn't get revivals, because when you were an adult, you were supposed to stop caring about the stuff you watched as a kid. I mean, I'm still waiting on that gritty reboot of Mathnet. But back then, media was also harder to consume. Tivo and DVRs? Didn't exist. You were at the whims of a TV station's programming. Maybe you'd get lucky by setting a VCR to record it, but that wasn't the norm for most. If they missed it, they missed it unless it's in reruns. Home media? Video tapes would generally hold no more than two episodes of any given show even if they could fit more. It was rare for an entire series to be released on home media, and even then it was ridiculously overpriced compared to later DVD and Blu-Ray boxsets.
But after the 80s and 90s, millennials who grew up with shows like Transformers or My Little Pony or, indeed, Power Rangers just didn't stop watching. Companies kept making new seasons and new shows. Casts would rotate out, animation styles would change, but the core concept of these series wouldn't go away, and the audience stuck around far past the point they were supposed to. Some attribute this to sociological changes. I grew up in an era when The Cold War had just ended and the youth of that time had several cultural revolutions of their own. The disaffected of The '90s, spoiled for choice in a world that no longer feared mutally assured destruction and consequently choosing nothing, a response to the yuppies and Reaganomics of The '80s, the embrace of the excessive EXTREME! in their media, comic books especially, leading into a more mellow outlook by the late 90s, until that was shattered by 9/11, and, well, we're still paying for that culturally. Point is, my generation, now adults, just does not have the same kind of upbringing as our parents did and just didn't see a need to reject the childish things of our past any more, especially when technology, stuff like the internet and YouTube, suddenly allowed us to share the things that we loved with more people than ever before. History of Power Rangers itself spawned from that. Furthermore, millennials are adults with their own children now, and with streaming services and entire series released on home media, those adults can share the things they enjoyed with their children and make new fans. And that same media is catering to those adults. There's merchandise specifically for the people who grew up with stuff in the 80s through the 2000s that's just bigger, more expensive versions of the toys they had when they were kids. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying it's unprecedented. The nostalgic boom of the last decade or two is not like the one those parents in the 80s had. You didn't see them wearing shirts mashing up Star Trek: The Original Series and The Mary Tyler Moore Show or something. You didn't see new versions of toys made for Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossbles but intended for adults. And thus we have the bizarre situation that's before us today - children's media that is also specifically pandering to adult fans. Power Rangers Beast Morphers featured the return of Venjix in the finale - was specifically planned to have Venjix return and tie up a loose end that had been left at the end of its series just over a decade beforehand. They made tons of references to past Ranger series, brought back actors from previous seasons when they were under no obligation to do so, even for the sake of utilising Sentai footage from a crossover. No child who was just joining the franchise for the first time would care about any of this, but adults cared. Adults talked about it. I, as an adult, talked about it. I started making a massive retrospective series over a decade ago about a children's franchise, and it's probably my most popular thing I do, with people still asking "When's the next one?" and "Have you stopped uploading old ones?". And as someone who spent a good chunk of these videos making fan theories and conspiracies and seeing patterns in things that aren't there, I'd be lying if I sadi there wasn't a sense of vindication from me as a fan when I am catered to with fanservice references.
But something that should give you pause in this is that by bringing in lots more nostalgic aspects that cater to a very specific demographic, you run the risk of the product being more about that than being something new, because there is a demographic that is going to grow up and have a different kind of nostalgia than you had. And would you rather your show be nothing but references to older stuff, or would you rather create something that lives up to its legacy?
But after the 80s and 90s, millennials who grew up with shows like Transformers or My Little Pony or, indeed, Power Rangers just didn't stop watching. Companies kept making new seasons and new shows. Casts would rotate out, animation styles would change, but the core concept of these series wouldn't go away, and the audience stuck around far past the point they were supposed to. Some attribute this to sociological changes. I grew up in an era when The Cold War had just ended and the youth of that time had several cultural revolutions of their own. The disaffected of The '90s, spoiled for choice in a world that no longer feared mutally assured destruction and consequently choosing nothing, a response to the yuppies and Reaganomics of The '80s, the embrace of the excessive EXTREME! in their media, comic books especially, leading into a more mellow outlook by the late 90s, until that was shattered by 9/11, and, well, we're still paying for that culturally. Point is, my generation, now adults, just does not have the same kind of upbringing as our parents did and just didn't see a need to reject the childish things of our past any more, especially when technology, stuff like the internet and YouTube, suddenly allowed us to share the things that we loved with more people than ever before. History of Power Rangers itself spawned from that. Furthermore, millennials are adults with their own children now, and with streaming services and entire series released on home media, those adults can share the things they enjoyed with their children and make new fans. And that same media is catering to those adults. There's merchandise specifically for the people who grew up with stuff in the 80s through the 2000s that's just bigger, more expensive versions of the toys they had when they were kids. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying it's unprecedented. The nostalgic boom of the last decade or two is not like the one those parents in the 80s had. You didn't see them wearing shirts mashing up Star Trek: The Original Series and The Mary Tyler Moore Show or something. You didn't see new versions of toys made for Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossbles but intended for adults. And thus we have the bizarre situation that's before us today - children's media that is also specifically pandering to adult fans. Power Rangers Beast Morphers featured the return of Venjix in the finale - was specifically planned to have Venjix return and tie up a loose end that had been left at the end of its series just over a decade beforehand. They made tons of references to past Ranger series, brought back actors from previous seasons when they were under no obligation to do so, even for the sake of utilising Sentai footage from a crossover. No child who was just joining the franchise for the first time would care about any of this, but adults cared. Adults talked about it. I, as an adult, talked about it. I started making a massive retrospective series over a decade ago about a children's franchise, and it's probably my most popular thing I do, with people still asking "When's the next one?" and "Have you stopped uploading old ones?". And as someone who spent a good chunk of these videos making fan theories and conspiracies and seeing patterns in things that aren't there, I'd be lying if I sadi there wasn't a sense of vindication from me as a fan when I am catered to with fanservice references.
But something that should give you pause in this is that by bringing in lots more nostalgic aspects that cater to a very specific demographic, you run the risk of the product being more about that than being something new, because there is a demographic that is going to grow up and have a different kind of nostalgia than you had. And would you rather your show be nothing but references to older stuff, or would you rather create something that lives up to its legacy?
— History of Power Rangers: Power Rangers Cosmic Fury
Music
"Call me a shallow critic if you want, but I'm not all that interested in music that's just... music. I like the big, gaudy videos and the biographical career arcs and all that stupid extra stuff. I like music with mythology attached to it, the big iconic figures, and in the late 2000s when I started reviewing music, those icons were all pop stars. It really is just the same nerdy impulse that got me into comic books as a kid. You've got these larger-than-life figures in ridiculous costumes, and every release is an event. That's my nerd cred. You may have all 42 volumes of the original Dragon Ball manga, but I listen to mainstream music! So yeah, that's basically how I got into this. The pop stars like Lady Gaga or Katy Perry, those are my superheroes.
Or at least they were. Before the bomb dropped.
In hindsight, Lorde's big anti-pop pop anthem "Royals" seems like the shockwave that destroyed everything. Basically, Lorde killed Superman, and now we're in some kind of post-apocalyptic dystopia comic instead. It didn't happen right away, of course, and obviously, you can't pin everything on one song. But it feels like the turning point that explains where we are now. How we got from Pitbull to Post Malone, from "Party in the USA" to "Stressed Out". And slowly but surely, those big, godlike figures, those big names with big reputations, burned themselves out. The genre still exists, but the hits are coming from people like Charlie Puth or Camila Cabello or Dua Lipa. And y'know, I like Dua Lipa a lot. I don't like Camila Cabello at all. But in both cases, there's no star power coming off of them. They're just people who make songs. It's my job to keep track of these people, and I barely even know what they look like. And that's before you get into EDM, where the music is made by disposable no-names working for literally faceless producers."
Or at least they were. Before the bomb dropped.
In hindsight, Lorde's big anti-pop pop anthem "Royals" seems like the shockwave that destroyed everything. Basically, Lorde killed Superman, and now we're in some kind of post-apocalyptic dystopia comic instead. It didn't happen right away, of course, and obviously, you can't pin everything on one song. But it feels like the turning point that explains where we are now. How we got from Pitbull to Post Malone, from "Party in the USA" to "Stressed Out". And slowly but surely, those big, godlike figures, those big names with big reputations, burned themselves out. The genre still exists, but the hits are coming from people like Charlie Puth or Camila Cabello or Dua Lipa. And y'know, I like Dua Lipa a lot. I don't like Camila Cabello at all. But in both cases, there's no star power coming off of them. They're just people who make songs. It's my job to keep track of these people, and I barely even know what they look like. And that's before you get into EDM, where the music is made by disposable no-names working for literally faceless producers."
Professional Wrestling
"Inevitably, no matter what you consider the essential attributes of a successful wrestler in a given era, someone who breaks the mold, a Mick Foley, appears and changes the rules again."
— The Top 100 Pro Wrestlers of All Time
Toys
"Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been... dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. Until...
<cue Also sprach Zarathustra as little girls smash their baby dolls in favor of Barbie, in homage to the Stone Age scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey>
<cue Also sprach Zarathustra as little girls smash their baby dolls in favor of Barbie, in homage to the Stone Age scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey>
—Narrator, Barbie (2023) prologue
Video Games
"Valve's first game was Half-Life. I think I once said in one of those old videos that may or may not share the current timeline, I don't know, that Doom was the Citizen Kane of video games, a claim I would like to walk back if I ever made it in the first place. Doom is more like the technical cinematic breakthroughs of the 1910s, like Birth of a Nation. except instead of all the… Oh no… Instead of all that, it's wholesome demon-fighting. Half-Life is closer to the Citizen Kane of gaming. It is a critical mass, a point of no return. Where narrative in video games was changed forever."
