This year, in my ongoing quest to make friends and get out more, I joined a Dungeons and Dragons circle. Up until then I’d not played a single session and already had way too little free time to spare, but “What could one more hobby hurt?”, I naively thought… As it turns out, D&D is pretty addictive, time-consuming, and expensive (if, like me, you’re partial to pretty dice), who knew? But I’m already far too invested in my party and I’s adventure to back out now, so I suppose I’m in it for the long haul… Anyway, in typical Ty style, I just had to find some way to incorporate my love of anime into my new pastime, so, when creating my character I considered the anime characters who most bewitched and inspired me. After much deliberation I finally settled on the one I wanted to base my own character on: Princess Jellyfish’s Kuranosuke. Thus, my character, Sorrel, was born…
Princess Jellyfish
Soon after coming off of my four year-long hiatus I realised just how outdated some of the pages on my blog were, especially My Top 30 Anime List. I first published this list back in 2012. Since then I’ve seen literally hundreds of shows, many of which have become firm favourites. As such, this list no longer accurately reflects my favourite anime. This bothers me for the simple reason that I want people visiting Watashi wa bucho!! to get a good feel for the kind of shows that I like. This can tell you a lot about a person, like whether you’re likely to share an affinity with them. It also serves as a handy reference guide for when people ask me for recommendations. In light of this, I decided to embark on a quest to rewatch some old favourites (many of which I’ve only seen the one time) as well as a handful of more recent ones. This was to ascertain just what anime were worthy of a place on my new and improved Top 30 Anime List.
There’s a reason why, after nearly 10 years, I still love anime. In fact, there are many reasons why it’s as much a part of my daily routine as eating my breakfast (a single Pop Tart every morning – yum! nutritious!) and taking a shower. But for the purpose of this post I wanna expand on just one of those reasons.
I thought it might be neat to turn this into a community-wide project of sorts, partly because I’m still trying to introduce myself to all of the new faces that have popped up during my five year absence and partly because I want to know what other people have to say about this topic! There are many bad things about anime, for example: its treatment of things like mental illness and minority groups, the industry’s tendency to play it safe and churn out the same uninspired, monotonous schlock every season, and toxic fandoms. BUT, in spite of these things, many of us continue to watch anime and have committed a sizable chunk of our lives (and finances) to this hobby. So why is that? Let’s explore this question together!
A big thanks to Moya, the writer behind The Moyatorium, for nominating me for the Build a Harem Challenge. It’s funny, because I’d actually planned to write a post like this several years ago, but never got ‘round to it. This was the final push I needed to actually do it, so, yeah, thanks for getting my lazy rear in gear!