Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
What weapon is the best?
Who will win in this Death Battle?
Is this costume practical?
You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
We've all been duped.
A harem anime is a romantic comedy where the lead has the attention of more than two girls or boys, each candidate having their own personality and set of fans who cheer them on, nothing gets an anime fanbase so riled up as having ships to support, just ask Ash Ketchum.
But you never had a choice, more often than not it's usually the first girl who wins.
Why that's so annoying for a watching crowd is that they are also the least popular choice; Naru Narusegawa is hated among the fanbase and is used as the poster child for hatred of tsunderes.
I don't think much has changed, in this era, an anime literally has to make the correct choice or face a public execution, although the Gundam Wing yaoi baiting was just pathetic back in the day, but we still get it now, and no Midoriya will never love Bakugo.
Some anime with dating game backgrounds will use the option of pick everyone, Photo Kano gave us time and endings with each girl and is left up to the fans to decide which one should be canon, Happy Lesson flat out has the lead marry everyone, spare a thought for anime that never have a conclusion like Sakura Taisen despite us leading to believe there would be one.
So choice in what girl or boy to have is entirely at the writers digression.
The only choice from an actual harem to be correct is from Kiss Him Not Me.
But the first piece of media to really break this trend can't even be considered manga; original English language manga Aoi House, a story about two guys ending up in a yaoi fangirls college dorm, and while I have some opinions about that era of fandom circa 2005, but despite having an obvious candidate in the resident tsundere, she doesn't win the harem.
I used to do a segment where I quickly cover topics I don't have time for full posts on, time to bring it back.
Code Green
A random post on Facebook ranking the best black characters in anime put Piccolo as their number 1, there are too many things wrong with that to name without using certain language. Toriyama never really had the most decorated history of portraying black characters, so I wouldn't rely on Dragonball for that, I like Eiichiro Oda's approach where he named the Strawhat's nationalities if they were real people, which paid dividends when casting the live action series.
Sonico is Plus Sized
Rewatching Super Sonico you realize that she's actually a plus size model, at least by anime standards, but we still don't know the mystery behind the headphones.
Sonic Cartoons are Peak....Mostly
In the UK we have a free view TV network that can 24hr stream different series, we recently gained a dedicated Sonic channel consisting of the Jaleel White Sonic cartoon era.
Aosth is just as silly as ever and more off the wall than I remember.
SatAM lacks the edge it once had thanks to the comics far out living all other non video game Sonic media but still good.
Underground has this weird balance between bizarre and compelling that it's hard to really categorize it.
Rewatching an episode of Kiss Him Not Me, reminded me of how utterly petty the idea of shipping is.
The example they use is who in the yaoi couple is the dominant one in the relationship, the episode reaching a peak when Shima wins a fanfiction battle against Kae which greatly upsets Kae, Igarashi calling out Shima's behaviour as not only petty but potentially could end the friendship.
I kinda feel this is the only way these shipping wars end, it's a tale as old as time, or at least since Gundam Wing has been a thing, but we've since dropped the forums in favour of all out content creation wars and video essays on why Bakugo and Midoriya are a canon couple and why everyone else is wrong including the mangaka.
What happens with a character is up to the original artist, it's fine to fantasize and fan theory but remember that the anime was not made just for you.
This extends to anyone in the field of translation who change meanings and dialogue or add things that don't match the intention of the creator, unless told otherwise by said creator or production company to do so, translation and localization are two different things, the job of the localizer is to make the story make sense in the language they translate to as a good portion of Japanese dialogue really doesn't translate well, you only have to see a cheap Hong Kong knock off dvd to see how poorly it translates.
It's really not worth alienating yourself from the anime community over a drawing's sex life.
There are a lot of reviewers I really respect but they are not immune to bad take reviews.
I recently went to see Sonic Movie 3 but before then I watched a review from Moviebob, he hated the film but then again he hated the other films, one instance he destroyed his voice out of anger while he was already sick through the sheer misunderstanding of why the movie series was popular.
With Sonic 3, his comments came off as disingenuous, while I don't expect everyone to like this film and some points were justified like GUN's confusing role between hero and villain, what I disliked about the review is he had no intention of liking anything about it, even trying to force himself to like the performances of Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves.
Sonic Movie 3 is a simple film that's fun to watch, the formula is hardly going to win oscars but it's worked for the franchise since it's inception, we've also seen as Sonic fans what we don't want in the franchise and it took over a decade to get there, now the franchise has done what only Don Bluth has done, defeat Disney on merit.
It's not the only time a reviewer has annoyed me.
Saberspark when reviewing a Mummy film from Spain couldn't stop bringing up that they should've been more harsh with the British role is tomb raiding treasures, missing the point that 1. It's a film from Spain and 2. They couldn't give two shits about what happened historically when they only wanted to release a silly mummy film.
Mysterious Mr Enter infamously said about Turning Red that they should've brought up 9/11 in a setting that was in the early 2000s, forgetting that it's also set in Canada and about teenagers but at least he apologised.
Even Bennett the Sage of anime abandon, the one reviewer I hold in the highest regard didn't exactly treat the Sonic fanbase too kindly with his take on the Sonic OVA, even if he was playing a character while reviewing.
Ben Yahtzee Croshaw went through a period where his usual caustic comedic review style was getting stale which has happened more than once.
I've never seen a poor take from Nostalgia Critic, but his skits get painful to watch very quickly.
And finally, I wish Nux Taku would stop watching drama channels, I honestly couldn't give a shit about failing Youtubers or the state of politics just talk about Helluva Boss and stuff you like.
These are all the ones I usually like.
The bad ones are ten times worse.
The key takeaway is, always make sure to make your own judgement, you are not a sheep.
I used to do a segment where I quickly cover topics I don't have time for full posts on, time to bring it back.
It All Started with Ranma 1/2
I've likely mentioned that my first interaction with anime of any kind was Ranma 1/2, despite my age at the time being around 6-9, I fully understood that Ranma was changing into a girl with water, so I was exposed to LGBT content at quite an early age and saw it as normal, so when I was introduced to it properly later on, I really wasn't questioning it.
Chun-Li Was My First Fictional Crush
To this day, I still don't know what attracted me to Chun-Li to begin with, maybe it was her vivid colour palette, her dress or maybe it was because it was the first time I laid eyes on a fighting woman. As an adult, there are more obvious reasons to love the character.
Pokemon TV is Back
The Switch had a fantastic app showcasing seasons of the Pokemon anime but was dropped after a couple of years for unknown reasons, it has recently returned as a Youtube channel and is uploading season 1 sporadically as we speak, so if you want a free legal way to watch old seasons of Pokemon, you can now do so.