/u/temp9123 likes ... my (/u/temp9123) writing
Let me be extremely self-indulgent for one three (!) posts and go over my own favorite posts, going all the way back to when I started using reddit, several years ago.
My opinions, stances, and especially my general knowledge have certainly grown and developed over the past few years, but looking back, I don't regret or look with
disdain on anything I've written. So this is going to be a long.
It's also a sloppy auto-biography. Just press the [-] button to hide it.
It all begins here, on my first reddit account:
The /r/bestof post for this post made the front page several years ago and gave me a sense that I could make something meaningful for reddit. I had been mostly a lurker for quite a few years and following this post, I received an overwhelming number of messages of people informing me that their entire perspective on life had changed. And I still occasionally get these messages, several years later, of people who've completely changed their lives for the better because of a simple, 2,700 word post.
But one other important lesson I learned that there was value to the information I've gathered online, reorganizing it, and conveying it in a way that can mean something to them. And when I developed an interest in anime later that month, it was this attitude that would serve as the foundation for how I would approach all of my posts.
My experience with anime prior to reddit was the following: several Studio Ghibli films, Akira, and Metropolis, all of which were shown to me by my father. In fact, I loathed watching televsion and pursued other interests. It wasn't until somebody posted the scene from episode seven of Kids on the Slope on /r/jazz in late 2013 that I developed an interest in anime. I watched this series, moved to Cowboy Bebop, then Samurai Champloo, then Black Lagoon, then Darker than Black, then Code Geass, then Guilty Crown, and a few other action-oriented anime.
Then I watched Baccano and I fell in love.
And then I watched Bakemonogatari and I fell in love again.
And then I watched The Tatami Galaxy and it fundamentally changed who I was as a person.
From there, the amount of anime I watched increased dramatically. For the rest of the year, I used up every spare moment of my time marathoning shows until 4 AM in the morning. I wanted to taste of everything, to see if I could ever get that same feeling I got from The Tatami Galaxy. The above post was the last post I made on that reddit account, after I realized that what I wanted to say about anime was far larger than what that account deserved. So I created an alt account, /u/temp9123.
The interesting thing about the anime industry is that it's small. Puny. Basically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. But it is this fact that made it so alluring. As foreign and alien as it was, it was the fact that the scope was small enough that it seemed like I could actually get to a point where I understood it that made it so approachable.
One good example of how small it is is how polarized the opinions are. People are blunt and obvious about what anime they like and what anime they despise and they'll go to extraordinary lengths to explain why. These posts were the best - because they challenged who I was and how much I understood what I valued. When I watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica, I felt like I understood it and I felt that what I understood was nowhere near deserving of the praise it garnered.
So I said so, and that was my first post as /u/temp9123. And for the record: I still don't like it very much.
It was in late 2012 that I started watching currently airing broadcast anime. It was in fact the popularity of Sakurasou and Sword Art Online amongst my peers that had dragged me in, but because train had already passed, it wasn't until Hataraku Maou-sama! that I watched an anime week to week from beginning to end.
But I'll admit, when I watched The Tatami Galaxy in early 2012, it completely wrecked me. It took up my mind for an entire week. I struggled to get back into anime, starting with easy harem romances and slowly developing into more advanced materials. My expectations were simply too high and I had to forcibly lower them. I still watched quite a bit, but most of it felt transient. Filler.
In late 2013, it was two broadcast anime that aired back to back that brought me back to life - Uchouten Kazoku and Kyousougiga.
I've got to thank /u/Bobduh and /u/tundranocaps, who both used to be regulars on /r/anime and earned their positions as the sole owners of the positions as top comment in nearly every discussion thread they showed up in. Watching /u/Bobduh post about Uchouten Kazoku (to no surprise, written by the same author as The Tatami Galaxy) every week made its vibrancy fully come to life. I had already fallen in love several minutes into the first episode (by the point when Benten flies), but it was /u/Bobduh that transformed that love into a form of idolization.
It wasn't until Kyousougiga, which aired the season after and evoked many similar feelings, that I made my own attempt.
Tangent: you know that image of Ao getting her head pat in Yozakura Quartet? I was the one who posted in the discussion thread the day the subs came out. But /u/temp9123, it was on /a/ already! Actually, when I first made the gif, I was so disappointed with how the dithering came out that I went ahead and made another one, one that I posted a few times across /a/. I won't claim I was the first, but I admit I like to claim responsibility for it.
Here's the first time I hit the top comment spot for a show I didn't think it was going to happen for, as I watched as Kyousougiga, a show I love so much, lose so much steam. I could also be found in the series finale discussion.
At this point, I had taken this hobby a little further than I had anticipated and I needed a good dose of reality, and it was in the writing of this post that gave me the opportunity to truly think about how outsiders perceive anime and where connections could be found. This is where I began to reconcile a pragmatic, practical perspective on the medium and its relationship to myself.
And I also had to re-adjust my perception of the community. It wasn't just /u/Bobduh and /u/tundranocaps who made up the entire community. I had to reconcile the fact that the community was in fact both incredibly juvenile and incredible perceptive all at the same time. Here are two posts that bring that to life, one of which gave my first does of reddit gold for the first time.
One of the things I also began to learn as 2014 started to come and go was that fully understanding the industry was no simple task. In my harem spree following my post-The Tatami Galaxy depression, I encountered Kana Hanazawa playing a role in To Love-Ru. After recognizing her voice from Darker than Black, I realized a whole world of voice actors and actresses could be delved into and I fell into a watching spree - almost solely of her works. But it was too much for me to handle.
But my interest in the staff and production went further when I eventually came back and watched Shinsekai Yori, which aired just when I started getting into currently airing anime. I had noticed a few problems, particularly in pacing, in my research, I discovered that the cause wasn't in the hands of the director, but at the fault of having so many directors and staff serving separate portions of the story that parts simply came across as incoherent.
For the record, it took nearly a half year for me to build up the courage to post here and I don't regret it one bit. So you lurkers out there, definitely be sure to participate. We'll gladly
assimilate welcome you!
My second reddit gold for an anime-related comment.
