So I would call myself an anime fan but I would also want to point out that it's always been a bit of a infrequent part of my life. When I do find anime I can enjoy I rarely watch anything else then when whatever I was watching comes to an end it'll probably be months before I find something else I enjoy. It's been going on like this since I first encountered the stuff when I rented Ninja Scroll at the local Rogers Video many years ago. What always contributed to my hiatus' from anime was some of the fandom surrounding the genre and there not really being a community of folks I could identify with when it came to discussing a particular show.
Now I'm not going to sit here and brood all over the place with some "woe-is-me, no one thought about anime like I did" kind of egotistical garbage. What bothered me was that regardless of what anime it was, there always seemed to be something off about any show I watched; whether I enjoyed it or not there was always something that bothered me that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Since learning about feminism and it becoming a lens that I view the world through I'm now able to understand a little better what was so off about the anime I watched. For the most part, anime is like any other industry in a patriarchal world, sexist and misogynist at it's core with much of it so normalized that many creators and fans barely recognize it.
Since gaining a feminist lens some anime I watched in the past doesn't quite stand the test of time while others I've found seemed to be stories I could appreciate more. Even the anime that I enjoyed that didn't quite hold up in terms of it's use of harmful or tired tropes ended up being fun things to go back to because it was so easy to see through some of the stereotypes playing out in them; situations where you're fully aware how cliched a particular storyline or character is but are able to enjoy it none-the-less. As Anita Sarkeesian reminds everyone who watches her videos says: "it is possible to enjoy a piece of media while still being critical of it."
With all of that said, I think I'm going to start watching some favorite anime (as well as some anime I've been meaning to watch) and write some reviews/thoughts about what comes up for me. I hope to be fairly frequent about it but I can't promise anything unless I find some sort of routine for these. For my first series I will be watching/reviewing: Serial Experiments Lain.
For nearly as long as I've been watching anime Serial Experiements Lain has been an anime that's always been on the "to-watch" list but has, amazingly, never been something I've got around to actually watching. So I think it's fitting that my first one of these would be something that I've been putting off for so long. I'll move through the series, probably writing something about each episode, with my feminist lens fully active and see what comes up. I fully welcome questions or thoughts or challenges from any who feels inclined to do so. Not sure where this will go but I suppose we'll see.
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