This Week in Anime

Chris

We get to write about games here occasionally as an appreciable bonus of working in the Japanese media space. That’s mostly a fun privilege, so I feel for those trying to make a living doing it in an online environment that feels increasingly hostile to the craft.

More than that, though, all this does make me reflective, thinking about the challenges of earning a living with this craft alongside the often paradoxical nature of professionally evaluating so much material that I otherwise personally follow as a fan for “fun.”

Why not take a break from reviewing anime to get all navel-gazey and see if we can’t review the act of reviewing itself!

Between this and the occasional bit of copywriting I do for MediaOCD, I’ve been trying to pin down that moment over the past couple of years when I went from lightly joking whenever I said “I have to watch this for work” to saying it in more of a matter-of-fact fashion. However, I want to clarify before going deeper: we’re blessed that we get to professionally write about cartoons week in and week out. That fact has never left my mind for a moment.

After writing reviews, copywriting, and the like for a while, you start to notice how different a work viewing is from a casual viewing. Not to mention how that affects your casual interactions with anime as well.

I can confirm it’s been interesting paying attention to my journey of watching anime for work over the past *checks* dear lord, nine years? That much time doing it this way has altered the way I take stuff in. Even series I’m not personally reviewing get shifted to be seen through that critical lens, be it because I’m considering them in the context of TWIA topics, or knowing that I might want to circle back to them as bests or worsts at the end of a given season or year.

I’ve watched a lot of titles that I otherwise wouldn’t have checked out. Sometimes it works out well! Sometimes.

You’ve been through the anime seasonal roulette way more than I have (this is not an invitation, oh mighty editor). However, this difference in experiences between us also shows how we each have our own strengths when it comes to reviews. You wrangle that seasonal firehose like a champ, while I’m going to exhaustively go through every little thought I might have about that expensive Macross Plus Boxset folks have been eyeing for the past few months.

Talking with Lucas about all the winter season romcoms was like going through a seasonal review crash course. I ended up walking away from it with an even greater appreciation for what the main reviews team goes through every week. When you’re assigned a show to watch regularly, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually run into a work you’re not all that crazy about. And then there’s James, who decided to turn an undesirable assignment into a psychological horror story.

It’s a fact that all reviewers eventually end up with an arch-nemesis. James has the artists at GoHands, I have some twerp named Touya with a smartphone.

I feel for James and his creation of an actual novella in service of evaluating Momentary Lily. Even when not trying to make lemonade out of the lemoniest pablum assigned, doing enough of these things (I’ve written at least a thousand episode reviews, myself) means you sometimes need to break out of the routine now and then. It’s why I’m grateful for editorially encouraged decisions like going as nuts with my Deer Friend Nokotan reviews as I wish the show had gone with itself.

As long as we’re batting around all these inside baseballs, we might as well note for readers Rebecca’s uncanny ability to remind us of series for topical run-downs, making sure a broader swatch of material is included. Or sometimes she just catches us afterwards by pointing out that we forgot to bring up Black Butler that time we were talking about anime witches. Thanks for the saves, Silverman!

Editors who know their writers’ foibles and have long-running rapport with them are useful. Lynzee knows she can count on me to be the guy to talk about BanG Dream!, for instance. This also runs into how writing professionally is different from just writing about anime for fun on your blog: Editors are going to have, well, edits! It’s important to be receptive to editorial oversight and pay attention to how they tell you to shore up your style and approach. And also swear less, so you don’t upset the corporate overlords.

Outside of reviews, I’d like to point out that you’re often adjusting your writing style to best fit the project you’ve been assigned. For example, I generally carry along with a more casual “podcast host-y” tone for this column, but if it’s an investigation (like this), I’ll be writing with much more considered tone. That’s even before you get into copywriting or editing a light novel. It’s a lot like making sure you’re properly dressed for the given occasion.

Sometimes, your Sunday best rider belt isn’t the right fit for the job.

I’m glad you brought up Bubblegum Crisis, because we also have to talk about this little thing called Conflict of Interest. Our regular readers might be familiar with the “FULL DISCLOSURE” disclaimer at the top of this column whenever a title I worked on pops up in a key part of the conversation. A great example of this was when we talked about Kite as part of a greater discussion around content edits made to anime for palatability. Because I wrote the copy on Kite along with copy and editing a whole booklet for Bubblegum Crisis, it would be unethical for me to cover either in a review. Given the decent amount of copy for MediaOCD and Discotek Media I’ve done recently, you’re never going to see me writing a review for any of those products. I might casually chat about certain titles with the right disclaimers in place, but nothing more than that.

I’ve yet to write anything for an anime publisher, so I can take on anything so long as there’s a copy to review and the boss thinks it’s worth covering! The closest my name comes to being in the credits is on the list of Kickstarter backers for some of the ones I’ve contributed to. And you better believe I’ll have words, given the opportunity, for that Dirty Pair set if it ever actually lands in my hands.

Still, that kind of discussion of disclaimers and disclosure is why there’s a reason we have to note if we, say, were provided codes for copies of games we review. Or going the extra way around and noting that I had to go source a physical copy of the third volume of Kamen Rider Kuuga just to confirm that Titan Comics hadn’t updated the translation from the earlier review copy as they said they would. Sometimes reviews get investigative.

I find that most readers appreciate when a writer goes that extra mile, too. In response to my recent Teppu Volume 1 review, I noticed that there were a handful of readers who appreciated that I took the time to snap a few photos to display the print quality. As someone obsessed with physical media, if I can get my hands on something, I want to ensure that readers have a good idea of what their money might get. That’s why I went and nabbed a BLUE LOCK volume for comparison.

To the commenter who asked how Teppu‘s spine felt: it’s fairly solid, all things considered.

That calls to mind the point of context again. A review of a release isn’t always going to be about the series itself, but sometimes more about the specific handling of it. I think back to the aforementioned James and his tackling of the mammoth “Collector’s Edition” box set of Code Geass. Acknowledgement of the anime itself, sure, but anyone potentially going in for this is already going to be a fan of the series and more curious in this case about the whole-ass chess set packed in with this thing.

Similarly, I tagged in to review the recent Lunar Remastered Collection because I was a fan who knew the PS1 versions of the Lunar games well, and could speak to the quality of the titular remastering efforts that were the main selling point of that set. Sometimes the “extra” work of a review is just knowing from your time as a fan to prepare you for looking at new iterations.

I’m sure Steve still reels occasionally from how he catapulted Mob Psycho 100‘s Arataka Reigen into “internet sex symbol” status.

Writing criticism, compared to other articles, does necessitate being critical. It’s something I have to keep in mind alongside the people who make these products, in prompting a conversation about the work that’s done and how much of it is worth the audience’s time. Besides, keeping an open mind can be valuable—lord knows I had very different opinions on series like How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord, Onimai, and Gushing Over Magical Girls at their end compared to when I initially came at them. It’s important to be fair.

There is only one Utena, and she turns into a car. With my experience watching Revolutionary Girl Utena for the first time, that critical eye ended up enhancing the experience for me, allowing me to chew on what happens on and offscreen. However, that didn’t exactly help when I recently sat down to watch Revue Starlight. I enjoyed the series, but my brain was locked in “where’s the beef” mode at the start instead of letting the series breathe a bit. Revue Starlight goes places; it just takes a few episodes for the sewing machines to warm up.

Before I knew it, I had a delicious loaf of banana bread waiting before my eyes. I just needed my critical eye to soften the focus in this situation.

It won’t take much to provoke me (or Steve) into chatting about Revue Starlight. That’s not work, that’s just the nature of being a fan.

Still, I know the feeling of shifting from the watching-for-work experience. I’ve talked with previous TWIA alum Nicky about the niceness of letting ourselves watch anime without our fingers on the screencap button. I still like looking at things critically; it’s just the way I engage with media, and some of my writings about anime and video games on my old blog helped me land this gig in the first place. It’s still cool to watch something outside the anime wheelhouse like Severance or the original Total Recall and know that I’m not required to pump out a review or a column on it. A broader media diet can even help provide more context to inform my reviews in the future and—oh no! I was wrong, it’s all work after all!