Thank You Kyoto Animation

After the horrific tragedy that occurred last July, I knew I needed to write as near a perfect personal tribute to the wonderful people at Kyoto Animation as I am able to before I would even contemplate continuing to write about anime. It seemed like the right and proper thing to do, as well as being the bare minimum I needed to do as so much of the joy that anime has given me in the 15+ years I’ve watched it has been connected to Kyoto Animation.

While the intent as obvious to me, the form of such a tribute alluded me. I almost decided on doing a countdown of my favorite KyoAni works, in part because I’d been thinking of doing one for years now, but realized after further reflection that some clickbaity sounding article was not even close to what Kyoto Animation deserved from me. A better option would have been a long post where I talked about an assorted list of favorites and I almost started blocking such a post out. I realized I still wasn’t happy with this idea since I could really make such a post about any animation studio. As I worked slowly towards the answer, I also realized that I sort of didn’t want to find the answer. Doing so would acknowledge what happened, make it a fact, and remove any space in my brain to retreat to and imagine Schrodinger’s box is still unopened. Incidentally, that’s why I’ve never watched Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue; once I do then there are no more movies of his I can look forward to seeing and I have to acknowledge he’s been gone for 9 years now.

To combat my disinclination to post this, I signed up for this year’s Anime Secret Santa that the website all geek’s considered is continuing from the tradition started by Reverse Thieves. To post my review for that, I need to write this first 🙂 .

And I eventually realized why I’m so uniquely thankful for Kyoto Animation. Episode 0 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina.

Returning to Video Games After 11 Years

A decade ago, I never intended to go so long without playing video games. I had dozens of PS2 games and had spent hundreds if not thousands of hours playing them. My favorite genre was Japanese RPGs and games like Final Fantasy X/X-2, Xenosaga, Dark Cloud 2, and Dragon Quest VIII probably helped my get ready to enjoy anime when I would discover anime during this time period.

Looking back, it was a combination of my burgeoning interest in anime/manga with a poor start to the PS3 that caused the initial break and that was further solidified when I started this anime blog. It also didn’t help that the only video games that seemed to get made and talked about were shooter games which was a genre that I wasn’t interested in. Then, somewhere along the way, the idea of getting back into video games just fell by the wayside.

And that likely would have been how things stayed if two specific wires didn’t get crossed before the most recent Christmas.

The Null Set’s 10th Year Anniversary

Ten years ago, an anime fan suffering through a period of anime burnout decided the smart thing to do was to start a blog mostly about anime with a bit of science fiction thrown in. And so, with little interest in what was currently airing in that Winter 2008 season, The Null Set was born. Writing about anime helped me work through that burned out feeling and somehow it’s now ten years later and I’m still watching anime and still writing (occasionally) about anime.

The Anime Recap Episode – # 5: October 2017

As the last bits of summer gave way to the falling leaves, October saw the ending of the summer season of anime and the start of the fall season of anime. I intended to be a proper anime blogger this month; I was going to watch as many of the new shows as possible and write first impression posts of them. It’s been a long time since I last tried to watch more than a cherry-picked group of new shows at the start of a new season and I kinda missed that feeling one gets when realizing they’d stumbled upon a terrible new anime series. I was only partially successful, as the almost month long lack of posts can attest to. I did get to watch a large number of the new series – I’m currently watching 22 – but, the time to write about these series dried up this month as I discovered that rereading the first two books of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive was as engrossing as the first time I read them. I thought knowing what happens would have allowed this second time through to be a more relaxed reading experience but I was wrong. There were a long string of days that I lost 1 – 2 hours of sleep a night because I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Oh well, maybe next time.

So, this is my first chance to talk about the new season of anime and I have a lot of ground to cover.

The Bizarre Ending of Re:Creators

I would like it explained to me what, exactly, happened when the surviving characters of Altair’s failed rebellion walked through that portal in the final episode of Re:Creators. Because I think I watched them kill themselves.

This depressing thought snuck up on me the other night, as I walked to my refrigerator for a drink, after being generally happy with the final episode of Re:Creators and mulling over how cutting Altair out of the show completely would have made for a much better show. I tried to deny this thought and couldn’t. (Either thought, really, Re:Creators would have worked better as a slice-of-life series without the presence of Altair but that’s not the purpose of this post.) I slept on it and still can’t find the fault in this depressing idea. I had not intended to revisit Re:Creators after writing such a long post last week about the problems this show had; however, I was not expecting to watch a number of cast members getting spaghettified in some sort of cosmic blue portal of death.

The Disappointment of Re:Creators

I will not rage.

After 20 episodes I realized that Re:Creators was somehow going to find a way to under-perform even the meager expectations I had about it’s telegraphed ending. I can’t pretend I was shocked, surprised, or even offended about how poorly executed the creators of Re:Creators resolved the central conflict of the series in episode 21. In fact, the only feeling of surprise I had while slogging through episode 21 was finding out how little I actually cared about how the show was going to resolve itself; I thought I was more invested in this show than I turned out to be.

Then again, maybe if all the likable characters weren’t killed or completely sidelined from the show, I might have cared enough about Re:Creators to feel the need to rage about this ending. Instead, I feel disappointed that not even a decent ending could have been salvaged from this show.

So, I will not rage. I will, however, lay out some of the reasons why Re:Creators was a disappointment.