Something fun happened. I didn’t think I’d have much to share for May 2022, until a series of strange events unfolded in the last few days of this otherwise-serene month.
It all started with a stranger, who kindly reposted a very old article of mine unto Reddit. Further investigation revealed that this person didn’t post about anime much at all, but this small act caused a considerable spike in traffic over the next few days. I always greatly appreciate it when people share my work around, so this absolutely made my day. However, where there is kindness, there must be evil. Where there is light, there will be shadow.
Just as the traffic from Reddit started to fade, Reasons to Anime was beset upon by a second wave of traffic originating from Twitter. Since I maintain 0 social media presence, this proved to be a baffling situation for me. Once again, this traffic was routed to an older article; this time a negative review of a generally well-loved series. I had to employ some creative methods, but eventually tracked the origin of this phenomenon back to none other than Shadow the Hedhehog!
Shadow the Hedgehog himself had posted a link to my review to a modest audience of followers. Regrettably, the video game anti-hero was not amused with my perspective on this particular show. They labeled it “the worst review ever”, to which their audience agreed. An audience that, suspiciously, featured a lot of people with names and images related to the anime being criticized.
Now, I am not above criticism myself. I have made changes and corrected mistakes in my reviews in the past based on feedback. However, I much prefer to receive such criticisms directly, rather than having to track down what obscure online community is complaining about me this time. Being brigaded from some unknown source isn’t very fun and, for that reason, I won’t actually be linking to the Tweet in question nor which review of mine they took umbrage with. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
Instead, I wanted to look at a recurring point made in the comments. One that alleges that I have a “shounen mindset” or am, otherwise, inclined to favor shounen anime.
This somewhat baffled me. I am a dude, yes, but I have never been the biggest fan of traditional shounen anime. I only got into Dragon Ball Z last year, after all. I decided to verify this by checking my AniList stats and ranking the tags category for mean score. This puts shoujo anime at #53 at a mean score of 70.61%, seinen at #65 at 68.77%, and shounen at #91 with only 65.4%. Even when ranking for the amount of series watched, seinen anime have a massive lead on shounen.
However, that’s all tucked away on a separate website. What does my taste look like judging by Reasons to Anime itself? Well, I pride myself on the range of different series that I talk about. Even looking at the homepage today, there are harsh critiques of shounen series right next to my brand-new, loving review of Legend of Light. One commenter pointed at my review of Interspecies Reviewers as proof, but to even get there you have to scroll past the shoujo classic Natsu e no Tobira. And don’t scroll too far, or you end up seeing the positive reviews for the josei anime Wotakoi and the shoujo isekai My Next Life as a Villainess.
So no, I don’t think this whole ordeal had much merit to it. It did bring me a lot of amusement, though. Worrying so much, only to find out it’s somebody on Twitter with a pretentious nickname and Shadow the Hedgehog avatar is absolutely hilarious.
Aaaaaaaaaanyway, sorry for that rant. I got a little obsessed over this.
For June I once again got a fun mix of reviews lined-up. I was in a bit of a visual novel mood, so I got two feature reviews of visual novel adaptations lined up, as well an article about them and a bonus review for a PSP-based visual novel itself. For variety, I got a review of a romance anime, some hentai, and two sturdy opinion pieces.
I do have to admit that my buffer of content has been shrinking these past few months. I am trying to cram in some video games before the summer heat makes gaming too unbearable for me, so that has eaten up a bunch of time. I am also working on a BIG article that has taken far longer to write than anything else I have worked on in the past. I might actually take a 2-week break after June, just to finish that monster up.
We’ll have to see about that. Look forward to the next Behind The Scenes post on July 1st for an update 🙂
