Dreams of Falling

Inasmuch as I totally failed to pick out a harem, let's try this again with 'gang of friends I hang out with,' and the further proviso of only one character per anime because otherwise it gets boring.

( The list: Yomiko Readman, Phichit Chulanont, Hikaru Shindou, Takashi Natsume, Chihiro Ogino, and Hajime Murata. Details (including what anime they're frome) behind the cut. )

39: Is there an anime you wish was more popular?

I'm not sure. My usual response has been SHINGU, but as previously discussed, Not Everything Is To Everyone's Taste, and I'm not sure I actually want a Fandom to develop for my little-known faves, with everything that entails.

Mostly it comes down to - anything that I wish was more popular, like SHINGU (or INU X BOKU, to pick another example)? Really what I want is either (1) more people that I know to watch the thing, so I can burble about it with them, and/or (2) more people to watch the thing, and then write the fanfic that I want to read. Seriously, folks, there are three Shingu fanfics on AO3 (all written by me*), and 8 for Inu X Boku (none written by me), somebody should get on that.

(...I will also note that choice (1) is good for getting me to write fanfic. See also: the entirety of my INITIAL D output. Thanks, Stef and Kay!)

*There used to be a couple more, and written by someone other than me? But they got deleted for reasons I don't know.

37: Name a popular anime you love.

Most recent: YURI!!! ON ICE, as already discussed.

This is the drawback of staying firmly around the edges of anime fandom qua such - I'm not always sure which anime are popular in a wide sense, and which in a small sense. For example, I also love INITIAL D in all its Very 90s Anime glory, in which everyone mysteriously listens to Eurobeat and the only official relationship that will ever go anywhere is Takumi/driving (okay, also Any Other Main Character/driving). I didn't even drive myself when I first saw it.

35: Have you ever dropped an anime, if so why?

Oh dear lord yes. Several. Some of them with extreme prejudice. Why wouldn't I?

If you want actual reasons, they vary:
* Sometimes a particular character pings me the wrong way - see previous post on characters I hate for two examples. (To be fair, both of those were 'didn't even finish the first episode' reactions, which I don't think technically counts as dropping a series, because I hadn't even properly picked it up.)
* Sometimes I get into a series for X (a character, a plot point, a tonal feel), and then the series stops using X - see RE-KAN, which I burbled about here. Halfway through the season it developed something pretending to be a plot, and lost the sweet fluffiness I loved.
* Sometimes I think a series is going to be one thing, and then I watch a second episode and it's not - or I watch a second episode, and the things that irritated me in the first episode have only gotten worse, while the things I liked have gotten fewer. Example this time is AIRMASTER - bad fight choreography, insufficient girl love, I tapped out.

(And then, of course, there are lots and lots of series that I mean to go back to, but haven't yet. This is why my Crunchyroll queue is so long. :wince:)

33: Would you ever watch an anime with over 100 episodes?

Yes? But it's the kind of 'yes' that comes with a hand-wobble. I've watched Significant Chunks of BLEACH, for example, and I still have DETECTIVE CONAN in my Crunchyroll queue, which is up around 800-something episodes and still going. But I also noped out of BLEACH somewhere in the Arrancar arc (I think), and the reason I watch DETECTIVE CONAN is because I blithely ignore its Overarching Plot (which was silly even before it meandered on without resolution for, uh, :checks Wikipedia: nearly 30 years, Jesus Mary and Joseph) and stick to the generally-no-longer-than-two-episode mysteries du jour.

As a plan for future watching, no. I don't trust an anime over 100 episodes to know where the heck it's going, and I have plenty of shorter anime waiting for me.

31: Have you ever watched an anime with over 23 episodes?

Yes. Not recently, but I've done it. HIKARU NO GO, which I still love, is somewhere around 75 episodes; GUNDAM WING, my entry anime, is 49 according to Wikipedia. My completion rate is low, but the mere knowledge that there's over 23 episodes is not enough to stop me from watching.

(Now I kinda want to go to my Crunchyroll queue and see how many series in there are over 23 episodes. Hmm.)

29: Has an anime's fanbase ever made you hesitant to watch an anime?

Yes, but not necessarily for the reason that the question implies. Fandom's gonna fandom, you know? For a fandom to actually turn me off of a canon a priori, it would need to be (a) omnipresent and (b) clearly focused on Things I Do Not Like.

Generally, though...I find it pretty easy to watch things without engaging with their fandoms. (It helps that I'm not monofannish any more: it makes it easier to engage on the O HAI SHINY THING level, without feeling Personally Affronted when someone doesn't fan in my exact way, see also: my shameful fannish past.) So no, I haven't been scared off any anime by its fandom that I can remember.

(...also I tend to not engage with new/current anime? YOI is unusual for me in that sense. This means that I am coming across anime years, literally, after they aired, and whatever fans remaining tend to also be of the 'OMG SOMEONE ELSE ACTUALLY LIKES THIS THING' breed that makes best-case-scenario Yuletide so fun.)

26: You get to have [1] anime character as your waifu/husbando spend a day with you in real life, who do you choose?

Inasmuch as I still haven't finished my list of Anime Characters I Would Most Like To Be Friends With, I am not even pretending to tackle another romantic question. So instead, I'm going to change it, and spend my theoretical day with Natsume (from NATSUME'S BOOK OF FRIENDS). I mean, the chances are fairly high that I'm gonna be bugged by youkai before, during, and possibly after? But Natsume's got a good track record of dealing with that, and he's a sweet kid who makes friends easily, assuming you can deal with the aforementioned youkai problems. (Also I'd love to see how Nyanko Sensei reacts to Pallais, and vice-versa. :snerk:)

27: Which anime character are you most like?

A cross between Yuuri Katsuki (from YURI!!! ON ICE) - hooray canonical anxiety problems! - and Nenene Sumiregawa (from READ OR DIE), who's a writer (although frequently blocked and slow) and is even more frequently terrible at human interaction.

24: Name [1] anime you wish everyone would watch.

Hmm. My usual answer to this kind of question is SHINGU, which I already talked about in detail on Day 20. (Whoops.) On the other hand, I have evidence (from my own home![1]) that it's possible for people with taste and judgement to not be instantly fascinated with this series, and I refuse to be That Person who insists you have to watch it all the way through at least once before you can have an opinion as to whether you're interested in watching the series all the way through. -_- So, uh, SHINGU with an asterisk where it's like 'first disc and then we'll talk.'

[1] - by which I mean Wife. Not my sister, who was the one who introduced me to the series, and I'm pretty sure would be even more pro-everyone watching it. Not my parents, who Do Not Get Anime - seriously my mother got confused by SPIRITED AWAY, so I'm not holding out hope for her and an entire TV series.

22: You get to have a harem of [6] anime characters of your choice, who do you choose?

:helpless giggles:

See, the problem(s) here are, (a) I am somewhere on the ace spectrum, so I am less prone than might be to daydream about [FAVORITE CHARACTER HERE] in scanty clothing, and (b) a lot of my favorite characters would make terrible harem inhabitants. Like, I love Sanzo from SAIYUKI, but I am dead sure that any attempt to suggest he inhabit a harem would be met with shooting, shouting, or both. (And even if he said yes, he would be the crankiest, most un-cooperative harem guy ever.)

If we go for vaguely plausible...um. I can come up with a grand total of one so far. (Yomiko Readman, from READ OR DIE.) I suppose this means I'm putting a pin in this one as well.