I do sort of wish western anime fans would analyze anime and manga from a framework of japanese historical and cultural context. Specifically a lot of works from the 90s being influenced by the general aimlessness and ennui that a lot of people were experiencing due to the burst in the bubble economy and the national trauma caused by the sarin terrorist attack. I think in interacting with media that’s not local to our sociocultural/sociopolitical sphere it’s easy to forget that it’s influenced and shaped by the same kinds of factors that influence media within our own cultural dome and there ends up being this baseline misalignment of perception between the causative elements of a narrative and viewer interpretation of those elements. It’s a form of death of the author that i think, in some measure, hinders our ability to fully understand/come to terms with creator intent and the full scope of a work’s merits
reminding myself there are no truly "bad days", because every single day, someone somewhere in the world has taken a photo of an extremely tiny animal and shown it to someone else, and that's very good actually
The passing down of the Straw Hat from the legendary Oda Eiichiro (Creator of One Piece) and the one & only Tanaka Mayumi (Luffy's Japanese Voice Actress)