Heyo friends and welcome to yet another new type of blog post!
So hear me out: I’ve noticed that whenever I have something I want to write about, it usually isn’t substantial enough to fill an article-length post. For example, talking about why Kimi no Na Wa is my favorite movie (not just animated, but overall). No matter how much I try to brainstorm, I realistically only see myself writing a few paragraphs about the topic. And so this is where these types of posts come in. Instead of trying to stretch one idea into a single post, why not cram together a bunch of ideas as random thoughts? Hence the name: [Rando Ramblings]. Depending on how many random thoughts I can produce per day, this could be a weekly thing. And hey, with the amount of time I have nowadays, I have a lot of thoughts. But we’ll see how long I can go until the well dries up.
Anyway, enough ramblings on how this works. Let’s ramble about random things, starting with a recent trend:
Isek-why? (I’m sorry.)
Disclaimer: I had the idea for this post months ago and only just recently got around to writing it. So one of the blurb ideas I had was to talk about how Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou (Arifureta) was getting a second season. Yep, you can see how long I’ve been putting this off.
Isekai anime have been a trend recently, to put it lightly. I think this season alone has five of them (give or take a couple dozen). So a lot of anime fans are wondering: why are there so many isekai anime?
As someone who’s been on the inside, I have a pretty good theory as to why that is. Having worked for the content team for Crunchyroll, I had access to viewership numbers for their entire catalog of anime. In fact, analyzing those numbers was one of the big things I did in my few months interning there (if any data science people are reading this please give me a job thx).
So from that I can confirm one thing: people watch isekai. And I mean a lot of people. The biggest numbers come from obvious powerhouses like Naruto, Boku no Hero Academia, One Piece, etc., AKA the shounen anime. Even less popular shounens such as Black Clover had some pretty big numbers. But the surprising thing is that isekai anime’s viewership numbers weren’t that far behind. And we’re not talking about “good” isekai like Re:Zero or Shield Hero (which released after I worked there). No, we’re talking about anime like Death March kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyousoukyoku and Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni.
Yeah. I know.
Honestly, in the case of Arifureta, it’s most likely that a second season was already in the works no matter how well the first season did. But overall this is one of those cases where a silent majority really tells the story. People watch the anime, and it’s not hard to say that those people also end up reading the original source as well. Which, at the end of the day, is what production committees want. Because anime, as harsh as it may be, are advertisements for the source material. And as long as people continue to read/watch isekai, they’ll continue to be made. So get used to the isekai trend for now.
(And before you’re wondering if I should be revealing these viewership numbers — I didn’t have to sign any NDAs and this information isn’t exactly secret. So it’s fine… I think…?)
Nico Nico No
A few months ago, in my quest to descend further into the pits of idol hell, I started watching the Idolm@ster anime. That includes the original series and Cinderella Girls (CG), a “spinoff” version. They’re both pretty great idol anime, but there was something interesting I noticed while watching CG.
Now at this point of my anime-watching career, I know which characters I’ll generally like. Usually it’s the kuudere (quiet), or genki (positive/energetic) but not too genki, or tomboy. That’s how it went with the OG Idolm@ster, with my favorite character being Makoto (read: tomboy). But there’s something weird with idol anime in particular where my favorite characters end up being… none of the above.
Similar to the character archetypes I like, there are ones I usually steer away from. The onee-san. The teasing type. The annoying type… well, that’s the best way I can put it. The characters who make you groan in annoyance when they show up on screen, hoping they move on to a different scene ASAP. Somebody like Nico from Love Live, who has her whole “Nico Nico Nii” routine, or Yoshiko from Love Live Sunshine with her chuunibyou tendencies. Yet funnily enough, those two are my favorite Love Live girls. At the time I just chalked it up to “they were the most fleshed-out characters in a franchise of trope-y ones”. Everything was fine.
Until the Cinderella Girls nation attacked.
Before going into CG, I did some quick research into each of the 13 “main” characters to see who I should keep an eye on. One character stuck out to me, and not in a good way. That would be Miku Maekawa, otherwise known as the cat idol. AKA wears cat ears and a tail during performances, uses “nya” to end every sentence, and generally acts cat-like in daily life. Hoo boy.
But you know what? She was actually… kinda funny? As I continued watching the anime, she started becoming one of my favorite characters. Definitely not my favorite (that would be Uzuki) but she was up there.
So what the heck, me? Why is it that I like these “annoying” characters in these idol anime?
It comes down to two reasons. They either have a legitimate reason to act that way or its usually played for laughs. The latter applies to Nico and Yoshiko as the punching bags of their groups (I would argue that the former also kinda applies to Yoshiko as well, but that’s not as obvious).
(Also, not related, but it is interesting to note that Nico took her “Nico Nico Nii” thing from her dead dad (according to the School Idol Diaries, a canon pre-anime storyline). Reading this honestly changed her entire character for me, so I would recommend even if you’re not the biggest Nico fan)
For Miku, it’s pretty clear. She knows she’s not as cute as the other idols she’s competing against, so she embraces the cat idol theme to differentiate herself and as a source of self-confidence to lean on. And it’s not her true personality, as stories have shown she’s a serious student in school. The fandom even goes as far as to call her Miku-nyan when she’s an idol and Maekawa-san when she’s a student.
Even other “annoying” idols in Idolm@ster like Nana and Sachiko aren’t that bad after watching the anime/reading the 4koma comics. Nana, similar to Miku, uses her “forever 17” act as a way to separate herself from the other idols out there. It also helps that she gets into precarious situations where she almost reveals her true age (usually played for laughs). And Sachiko… well it’s funny to see her get her comeuppance when she tries to play up her bit (see wiki for more)
So maybe it turns out the annoying characters aren’t that bad. Well, in idol anime at least.
(Kinda related but here’s my tier list of the voiced characters in Cinderella Girls. Please appreciate this as it took me many hours to make and most of that was trying to figure out how to use GIMP only to give up and use Photopea instead. Because seriously, why can’t you select multiple layers, GIMP? WTF?)
Now on Spoofy
One thing y’all should know about me is that I love music. Whenever I’m home, I usually have my headphones or earbuds on. I listen to a lot of stuff (classical, rock, random pop from when I was in school), but most of the music I listen to are anime songs (anisongs), including stuff from openings/endings and franchises like Love Live/Bandori. In fact, I’m listening to my anisong playlist right now as I’m typing this up!
Recently, the music service I use has been on a roll releasing new anisongs to the western audience, and I’ve been stoked about it. I don’t even know why: I have the songs downloaded, but seeing them available for streaming honestly makes my day. Maybe it’s because the downloaded songs are about twice as loud as the streamable songs, so it’s a pain to have to switch volumes whenever I’m listening to a playlist that has both types on it.
There are still 140-ish downloaded songs in my anisongs playlist (out of ~400 songs). Hopefully that number goes into double digits soon!
And that’s all for this week! Wow, that ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be… sorry about that! Like I said above, this has a possibility of being a weekly series, though I’m still debating whether that would be a good idea. I guess we’ll find out next week if that’s the case. Until then, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next post!
Fractals and Recursion 