#i mean i thought i knew about christian imagery and vampires but now the pieces fall together

[senadimell]

Been catching up on Dracula Daily and wow. There is a whole lot of Christian biblical imagery going on, especially references to the Gospels.

[smokeybrand]

I Mustn’t Run Away

I’ve been binging through a bunch of youtube stuff lately and i stumbled across a guy named Bennett the sage. He reviews and explains old timey anime. I think he has a ten year rule or whatever I often disagree with his synopsis but he’s literally a neckbeard beta so i guess he HAS to hate everything. That’s the most 4chan thing i’ve ever said but it kind of describes him perfectly. Sometimes he’s on point and experly executes his argument but he hates EVA. It’s hard for me to take his arguments, academic or not, to heart. If you don’t like EVA, you don’t understand anime. Watch his episode about it. Cat is on point. Everything he says is pretty accurate. The thing is, kid glazes over all of the reasoning behind why EVA is the way it is.

Sage ignores Anno’s mental breakdown and spiral into depression, causing the tonal shift in the later episodes of the series. After Anno’s mom died, cat had an existential crisis and that uncertainty bled into his show. HIS show. Sage ignores the fact that Japan is not a christian country so everything about the dominate American religion is window dressing there. it’s not taboo to use the superficial imagery to convey a story about humanity being self destructive and fickle because, to the Japanese people and Anno, himself, that’s all we are. Christianity, and Instrumentality by extension, is shallow because we, as a people, are shallow. Instrumentality is our lazy attempt to better ourselves, to evolve beyond the fickle human existence as a means to be more, and the 1r4 year old boy who supposed to Jesus us into the nest stage, reneges. He opts for the biggest “F*CK YOU” in human existence because he’s an obtuse, unlikable, whining, douche-nozzle who chooses to force everyone into dealing with his teenage angst rather than accept people into the omni-bubble of the hive mind of evolution. EVA is a scathing, cynical, and relatively apt description of what it means to be a growing adolescence in Japan, conveyed to us in the form of a post apocalyptic mecha series, wrapped in a healthy dose of Judaeo-Christian imagery. Or, at least, that’s one interpretations and the one i personally gleaned from the series. You get what you put into Eva and he refused to make the effort. Interestingly enough, FLCL could be the same goddamn story, just seen from a different set of eyes which makes sense because Tsurumaki was Anno’s junior at Gainax way back when. Fooly Cooly just went light on the depression and religion but WAY heavy on the sex.

 Neon Genesis Evangelion is a goddamn masterpiece and it’s wild to me that people are too lazy to invest in it enough to understand why it’s a goddamn masterpiece. Listening to Bennett the Sage go in on it was ridiculous. Every one is entitles to their opinion and i get that but i almost immediately knew this cat was full of sh*t. Dude doesn't like Eva. He doesn’t like Tenchi. He doesn’t like Vampire Hunter D. He doesn’t like The Big O. He doesn’t like Elfen Lied. He doesn’t like Inuyasha. It’s almost as if you have to actually participate in the narrative, kid isn’t interested. But he LOVES Ninja Scroll. Ninja Scroll is awful! it’s all murder and rape. Literally, that’s it. If that doesn’t tell you what this kid is about, you’re not paying attention. s i watched his critiques err toward “Classic” Toonami anime, everything made sense as to why he was so goddamn ridiculous; He’s a Toonami kid. His first foray into anime was, apparently, Pilot Candidate when he was 12. In 2002. I have been watching anime since 1988.

The old stuff he reviews, your Gusmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis, and Burn Up!,i was watching fresh. I remember when i first got a bootleg of A.D. Police. I thought it was brilliant! When Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 came out, it was nostalgic for me and became one of my favorite shows. I grew up with the popularity of anime. I grew with the culture. I enjoy Bakuretsu Tenshi because it feels like an updated piece of the Bubblegum franchise. I imagine Bennett would hate it because he’s a goddamn Toonami kid. Toonami kind of killed anime for the generation after me because of the insipid shows that were put on. Don’t get me wrong, DBZ is a force. It’s culturally relevant and Goku might as well be Japanese Superman, but, let’s be honest, it’s a one trick pony. That trick is dope as f*ck but it’s a trick that has hindered the culture ever since. Because of DBZ, we got Naruto and One Piece, and BLEACH and, more importantly, Weeaboos. Weeaboos take the most superficial, the easiest to digest of anime, and hold it to such high esteem, it’s crazy frustration. These are the cats the regale Attack On Titian like it’s high art. It’s not. These are the cats that made SAO a thing while slighting it’s direct inspiration, the Dot.Hack franchise. These motherf*cking children are the types of people to try and convince me that Samurai Champloo is the greatest thing since the second coming because of Hip Hop music and Watanabe. Look, i get it. Bebop and Champloo are great. I don’t care for them though. The Fandom is too fervent to tolerate and they’ve ruined the experience for me. Just like they did for Inuyasha. Just like they did for FMA. And Bennett the Sage is like a lightning point for these first generation weeaboos. It’s wild to see.

He apparently doesn’t like Dragon Ball Z either. This f*ckboy, man...

It’s wild to think that there are anime fans that have never seen Ghost In The Shell. It’s wild to me that there are kids, now, getting into the culture, think that Kirito is the greatest anime protagonist ever. It’s wild to me that Akira, one of the most influential movies ever created, get slighted because it came out in the 80s for more “mature” subject matter in shows like Tokyo Ghoul. Cats nowadays think that anime has to follow a formula but, when i was coming up, the only formula anime had was the boundless creativity of it’s creator. There wasn’t a saturation pussy harem antagonist, insipid Slice of Life tropes, or Travel to another world and be a bad-ass nonsense. Production values were generally on point and the wild creativity of early anime was tantamount. I mean, there’s no way Angel’s Egg gets made today. You want to talk about being saturated in Judaeo-Christian imagery, go watch that sh*t and come talk to me about it.

I adore anime. All of it. I’ve watched it long enough to appreciate all facets of it. There are moe-blob shoe i adore like Chobits and Lucky star. Some of my favorite shows are mad pretentious and crazy convoluted like Elfen Lied or Evangelion or Deadman Wonderland or Mirai Nikki. Still, other like Erased and A Silent Voice get a spot on my all-time list because of their raw emotion and gentle portrayal of what it means to be vulnerable. Of course Space Dandy, Onepunch Man and BLEACH all have a special place in my heart and even the grand daddy of mainstream anime, Dragon Ball Z gets recognition. My point is, i love this sh*t man. Love it. All of it. So to see someone who jut adopted it as a hobby in 2002 but acts like he’s been in it for decades is wildly infuriating to me. His analysis for most of these shows is the analysis of a child. Because he IS a child. Because he came up in that Toonami era of anime where everything had to be profitable and accessible. I didn’t have that. I saw Gilgamesh and Melody of Oblivion before i saw even one episode of Naruto. I saw Evangelion and Guyver for the first time when i was 12, way back in, like, 96. This kid was watching Pilot Candidate and f*cking Blue Gender. He was at the mercy of the Cartoon Network zeitgeist. I was not. And it rains through almost all of his reviews. He’s looking at shows i watched with fresh eyes, through first generation weeaboo goggles and it’s frustrating because of how shortsighted that view can be. It’s cats like this, i think, that have slowly strangled the life out of anime. They choked the creativity out of a once wild and unique medium because of their narrow, pedestrian, tastes.

Toonami did a lot for making the culture accessible but i don’t think that was a good thing. I thing. Toonami created a culture of formula and profit rather than creativity and uniqueness. And cats like Bennett the Sage eat it up. Cats like Bennett the Sage fuel this crippled machine. Cats like Bennett the Sage are what’s wrong with anime.