2023: I don't know what I expected.

(originally posted December 24, 2023)

Last year, I wrote about how almost everything on my anime shortlist was an adaptation or reboot and highlighted how various shows did or did not adapt their source material well, and what that even means. Much of that still holds true this year (fall season's discussion has centered around Pluto, an adaptation of an adaptation), and it got me thinking about why exactly that is.

Rather than any newer shows, my anime watching this year has been dominated by what we've dubbed the Tomino Power Hour. Whenever new stuff was in a lull, Gee and I worked our way through Blue Gale Xabungle, Aura Battler Dunbine, and Heavy Metal L-Gaim in a round-robin pattern, doing episode 1 of each, then 2, et cetera. We're still not done (it's shelved any time there are new shows we want to watch), but we're getting there.

What these shows have in common is they were all directed by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, airing one after the other without breaks during the span of years in between the original Mobile Suit Gundam and its seminal franchise-making sequel, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. If we're being comprehensive, Space Runaway Ideon aired before Xabungle, but we had to draw the line somewhere; watching four 50 episode shows concurrently is a little much, don't you think?

I broadly understood that all of these shows followed the broad template laid down by Gundam, but watching them simultaneously like this really highlights their similarities. I'm talking about individual episode plot points happening at roughly the same time: the female lead is kidnapped, the main protagonist leaves the base and goes off on his own, the rival reappears after being MIA for a few months with a dangerous new mech.

Similarly, the final two Reconguista in G movies also became available to English-speaking audiences this year. If you're familiar with Tomino's previous work, the similarities between G-Reco and Turn-A Gundam are unmistakable, despite some 15 years between the two rather than the immediacy of the previous slate of shows.

I find this fascinating. Was anyone during the 80s saying, "hey, this show is literally just the last show with a different coat of paint"? Did anyone dismiss Dunbine out of hand because it was clearly just Gundam, but fantasy? To be clear, they each have plenty of defining traits, but it's clear that some kind of template was being followed, consciously or not. Perhaps it's only to be expected that the same creator allows the same themes to permeate his work.

Tomino Power Hour aside, Gundam in general is an excellent example for this, because it has so many installments by so many different creators... and yet certain conventions are followed almost every single time. You know that Gundam will always be a war story with a masked villain, a mid-season upgrade, an orbital re-entry... and the dreaded politics.

(Aside: there's probably a whole other thing to be written about how the format of these kinds of shows - a weekly, 30-minute toy commercial - led to some of these specific genre conventions, but that's beyond the scope of this post.)

We knew this year's very own Gundam show - The Witch from Mercury - would have mecha, war, and politics, but we crucially didn't know how much. If anything we criticized it for not being enough about war and politics. The refrain on the GLORIO Chat podcast was along the lines of "well, maybe if it had more episodes..." and I find myself wondering: if G-Witch did have more episodes, would it have retread the same kind of ground as other Gundam shows? Perhaps the better question is: how closely would it have done so?

G-Witch probably brought in more new fans than it alienated old ones, but what would those newcomers think about older Gundam installments, or even just other mecha shows? Some things pioneered by Gundam are now foundational to the entire mecha genre beyond the franchise itself. To oldheads, it feels weird when they don't happen. Are fresh faces going to expect every mecha anime to have the same things they liked from that show about two crazy kids trying to make it in this messed up world? If they did, would it even be that unreasonable?

I wrote at length about various adaptations of Shonen Jump manga in last year's post, but touched only briefly on how the magazine's brand implies a certain type of tone and content. Consequently, its slate of series often have the same issues. The slow collapse of Jujutsu Kaisen (I mean narratively; its production woes are documented elsewhere) stinks of inevitability, with the series running into all of the same problems as its Jump peers and forebears.

I'm not sure how else to refer to the kind of action series pioneered by Dragon Ball other than some variation on the phrase "battle shonen"; the genre's collection of tropes appears (and disappoints) again and again, and you'd think we would have fucking learned by now. A new one will crop up, we'll appreciate it for some of its own unique spins on the material, but the cycle must repeat. Just as it happened with Naruto and Bleach, it happened with My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen.

JJK's second season has been a cavalcade of plot beats that make me think, "yeah, I've seen this before, and you're not doing a particularly good job of it." There's a multi-episode flashback arc that serves little purpose to the plot other than to build up the invincible fan-favorite Satoru Gojo. We previously praised the show for its cool female characters like Maki and Nobara, but they're both violently sidelined to either show how dangerous the main villains are or to (explicitly, in-context) motivate the main character; a main character who - naturally - is taken over by his super-powerful Evil Within and holds himself personally responsible for the havoc thus wreaked.

And at this point I find myself wondering... yes, I have seen these things before, but have they ever been done well, in any battle shonen? Am I just fucking deluded? Mahito kills or disables three characters over four episodes purely to raise the stakes for Yuji, and I find it narratively lazy, tiresome, borderline insulting. Is it any different from when Nappa systematically murders Yamcha, Chiaotsu, Tien, and Piccolo in Dragon Ball? My gut says yes, surely it must be, but the seed of doubt remains. This is just how these shows are, right? They're clearly all just kind of stupid like this. What was I expecting?

That's what I find myself asking myself over and over as I attempt to critically evaluate the media I experienced this year. What was I expecting? What did I want?

First impressions are certainly important, but perhaps even more important are the expectations we bring to a work. Hell, expectations can prevent us from even having first impressions. As I wrote last year, I was content to ignore Bocchi the Rock! out of hand until proven otherwise because I made certain assumptions about the kind of show it was: I expected Yet Another Storebrand K-On!. I continue to ignore every single isekai show released because none of them have given me any reason to re-evaluate my prejudices.

The genre conventions I spent so many words on earlier are just a specific form of these kinds of expectations, I think. We expect media to be - if not directly in dialogue with its peers and forebears - at least aware of them, to take what worked then and avoid what didn't. To do otherwise without some other clear goal can make a work feel misguided or even ignorant.

This is why I shat on Sea of Stars for 3000 words; I had expectations that a game positioning itself as a successor to Chrono Trigger would understand why Chrono Trigger was good, and it didn't. We've been grousing about Bullbuster on the podcast all season long because it doesn't seem to understand what was appealing about Dai-Guard, a mecha show from 1999 with a similar premise.

Around here is where I start to feel like an old man yelling at clouds about recency bias. Both of those examples are complaining that something released in 2023 isn't reverent enough towards something released in the previous millennium. I'm comparing Jujutsu Kaisen chapters from 2021 to Dragon Ball chapters from 1989. I wasn't even born in 1989!

I feel this chronological tension most keenly when I'm watching Super Sentai or Kamen Rider. These are also weekly, 30-minute toy commercials, aimed at the age demographic that my children would belong to (if I had any). I feel in my bones when a cool new hammer is about to appear because these shows are deeply formulaic, driving the same roads every year in a differently themed clown car. Try watching the first crossover team-up movie - J.A.K.Q. vs. Goranger - and you'll see how it really has been the same shit for almost 50 years; the only thing that's changed is they shove even more toys in your face now.

With that in mind, what is the appeal of these shows to someone in their 30s? What am I expecting when I pull up the newest episode of Kamen Rider Gotchard? These shows are for kids. I'm not expecting any genuinely deep characters or complex storytelling. I instead look for how they try to put a new (or old) spin on The Formula, appreciate the craft of working on a shoestring budget, enjoy the inherent camp factor of men in rubber suits punching other men in rubber suits until everything behind them explodes.

This is why I find Anno's Shin Kamen Rider - likely 2023's most prominent tokusatsu release - somewhat bizarre, because it's closer to what I imagine a child's idea of Kamen Rider is than an adult's. It pretends the characters are multi-faceted and complicated individuals, that the monsters are genuinely dangerous, and that the audience doesn't find this inherently ridiculous (while possessing the ability to enjoy it because of this). Much of the movie eschews actual suit-on-suit action for more produced CG set pieces, as if seeing a suit zipper would break the illusion instead of enhancing it.

But this is just according to the expectations of me, some guy who doesn't speak Japanese and only started watching tokusatsu regularly in the past six or seven years. My perspective of the genre is fundamentally limited. The only non Neo-Heisei (and I'm sure assuming quite a bit of the reader here by just throwing this vague term out there as if it has any meaning) Rider I've watched in full is Kamen Rider Kuuga. I have no emotional attachment, no expectations of what Kamen Rider as a concept actually meant to a child who watched the original back in 1971.

Super Sentai is fraught in its own ways. As the consistently kiddier franchise between the two, I expect it to be campier and lean more into the physical comedy of tokusatsu. I consequently ignored Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, put off entirely by is reliance on full-CG cast members (if you thought Jar-Jar Binks looked like ass, InuBrother and KijiBrother are like being fucking maced), but it has a passionate adult fanbase who praise its writing. Royal Sentai King-ohger somehow relies even more heavily on CG for backgrounds and sets, but at least has actual humans doing the acting. I can appreciate how it tackles its premise with ambition, even if it's falling flat 99% of the time, because it meets my base expectations of the medium.

Some of these expectations leaked over to works based on tokusatsu. We discussed our feelings on Gridman Universe at length on the podcast, but to summarize: some of us liked it and some didn't, and I attribute this to our expectations going into the movie. I assumed from the premise - tokusatsu team-up movie - it simply wouldn't have any meaningful character beats, so I was able to be pleasantly surprised with the bits it did have. Zigg expected a level of narrative depth building upon the crew's previous work in both SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon, and was disappointed in the film's relative shallowness. Neither of these "approaches" (if you could even call them that) is inherently more or less valid than the other, they just reach different conclusions as they both draw from previous experience.

This entire line of thinking may be the curse of being an enthusiast, or worse, a critic. The deeper you get into a specific topic, informed by greater context, the more myopic your opinions on it become (see that one xkcd comic, or that one ProZD skit). I truly envy those who can reset their brains with every piece of media they experience and judge it on its own (de)merits, but I don't live in a vacuum.

It seems the best recourse to temper my expectations around a work is to either seek out as much information as possible or avoid as much information as possible. Hence, I'm generally pretty okay with discussing spoilers or summaries, but if there's a chance for me to go in as blind as possible, I'll at least try.

To that end, I'm glad I got the opportunity to see Hayao Miyazaki's How Do You Live? / The Boy and the Heron totally blind, only knowing that it contained, well, a boy and a heron. Miyazaki's venerable status as a creator meant I couldn't help but have certain ideas, but the process of evaluating what exactly the film was in real time brought its own sense of satisfaction. Without giving any details, I'm personally willing to call it the best film Miyazaki has directed since Spirited Away.

What was I expecting? What did I want? I don't know that I had an answer for How Do You Live? other than, "well, It's Miyazaki, so I guess some nice animation." If I'm being honest, my answer for most other works is probably some variation on, "I just hope it doesn't suck," but that just feels so vague, noncommittal. That can't be the whole story.

I wrote above about expecting works to understand their place among their peers. The more I think about that, the weirder it feels. Do I want works to just... do the same thing? Clearly not, considering how much I complain about naked imitation. But it seems like when they go off on their own, I spend just as much time complaining that they aren't playing the classics. What am I expecting? What do I want?

Much of my own creative anxiety swirls around this concept. I guess I want to create something that's novel, original; I'm exhausted by the deluge of sequels and reboots from every direction. But I'm also influenced by what I enjoy, and I feel like I can never live up to them. I'm paralyzed by my own ephemeral expectations and assumptions about what makes a work "good". (And let's not get started about just, everything else re: capitalism.)

These days (at least in circles I tend to run in), we praise works for being "indulgent", for giving off the vibe that the creator eschewed mass marketability in favor of their personal ideals. I've been taught to seek "specificity": the idea that narrower, more esoteric subjects are paradoxically more relatable and applicable than broad, sweeping themes. Everyone says that your primary audience should be yourself before anyone else. Be the change you want to see in the world, et cetera.

My friends are groaning now as they read this, broken record that I am, but it seems impossible. I don't have anything that I feel so strongly about that I must make it into reality. I don't feel as though I have the skills to make anything that I simply baseline "like", nor do I feel as though I possess the (material, emotional, intellectual) resources to gain those skills. Who am I to expect better of things when I cannot provide better? I am simply not some wunderkind who can solo create some kind of world-changing indie project which ensures the financial solvency of me and mine for the foreseeable future while also inspiring other, better artists to create the things within their heart.

It occurs to me that perhaps, in this specific case, my expectations are a smidge unrealistic.

I look back at what media I experienced and "consumed" in 2023 - the stuff I'd probably put on "best of" lists - and it's still dominated by sequels, reboots, adaptations; known quantities. Media doesn't even have the chance anymore to spend time establishing its expectations of me. If it even has any, that means it's already fighting a losing battle. I ought be judging works based on what they purport themselves to be, not necessarily what I think they should be, but I'm too cowardly to branch out, too poisoned with expectations forcibly established by the big-budget, the mass-market, the Triple-A. They've muscled out all the competition.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I think this might be why franchises are so powerful. With something like Gundam, Star Wars, or Super Sentai, you've got a basic template, a "box" that the work will fit in no matter what, a smattering of extra free spaces on your bingo card. You know what you're getting just by the name, and so you're free to focus your expectations of novelty on the details. We knew G-Witch would have mecha, war, and politics; we were blindsided by the fact it had lesbians. And it meant we collectively spent nine months hooting and hollering about a show produced by the biggest toy company on Earth. It's self-perpetuating.

I don't intend this to be some kind of hackneyed screed about being "challenged" by our media or anything, nor do I intend to portray our enjoyment of things as invalid or misguided. We're all just a bunch of evil apes dukin' it out on a giant ball, after all. We do what we can with what we have, even when it's not always enough. And it's not like I have any answers either; just this pile of words attempting to communicate my fears and insecurities.

I have existed for another year. What was I expecting? The same shit, I suppose. What did I want? Something better... even if I still don't know what that is. Thanks for reading.

#anime #tokusatsu #manga #mecha