Welcome to Only Child, where every week, I analyze my least favorite part of the food pyramid.
A Preliminary Aside
Most of you know about the COVID situation in India. New strains have are spreading rapidly. Hospitals overflow with patients they cannot treat, some healthcare staff and volunteers are working without having been vaccinated, and they estimate that 1 million Indians will die by the end of August. It’s a dire situation. Here are some organizations that you can donate to to lessen the devastation:
If you know of other useful aid organizations or resources, especially in Bangalore or Chennai where I have family, please let me know!
Big Imagination
I watched a dangerous amount of YuGiOh growing up. Each of the characters was my favorite for at least some portion of time—Seto Kaiba at first because he was a cool-headed tech mogul, then Joey Wheeler because he had a cool Brooklyn accent, then of course Yugi because of his ridiculous hair. My friend and I, superfans that we were, bought Duel Disks and played against each other for hours. Whenever we had our cards attack each other, we’d pantomime imaginary explosions as though the attacks were actually happening. When we didn’t hang out, I’d duel against imaginary foes in my basement, sometimes even losing intentionally to up the drama for tomorrow’s rematch.
For the uninitiated, YuGiOh is an anime series about a group of educated adults repeatedly gambling their lives and souls on a children’s trading card game. Major plot points revolve around characters trying to become the best player in the world, winning prized cards from each other, or saving their grandfather’s soul by winning a particularly difficult match.
Unfortunately, I eventually had a Bing-Bong-from-Inside-Out moment and lost interest in YuGiOh (and Pokémon, and DigiMon, etc.). I started watching Drake & Josh, about two-step brothers living together and the wacky hi-jinx that ensue; then, George Lopez, about a Mexican American family and the wacky hi-jinx that ensue; and Criminal Minds, about an elite team of criminal profilers that investigate criminals’ wacky hi-jinx that have already ensued.1 By that time, my mindset had changed, and cartoons weren’t cool. One day in college, I tried rewatching Pokémon, hoping for a blast of warm nostalgia, but all I could notice was the “Kk-k-k-k-k-kihhh!” and “Oh! Hoh! Hohoh!” and the “Uh-ah huhh!!!”
(For Reference)
But here I am out the other end of this, back into anime and stronger than ever. Right now, I’ve watched Attack on Titan and am making my way through Hunter x Hunter, both recommended by trusted friends. I now love the gasps—live for them, even—the nervous k-k-k-k-k’s, the clumsy voiceovers, the exaggerated facial expressions, the emo theme songs, the earnest storylines, the grand sense of adventure and heroism. They get me so hype. (Honestly I considered just making this post a collection of gasping gifs from Hunter x Hunter, but I decided I needed to push myself a little bit.)
Someone in my writing group has the perfect phrase to describe the skin-in-the-game feeling I get when watching these shows. When someone writes a story that elicits a particularly emotional response, he says it “drew heat from [him],” contrasting something more heady or philosophical. I like that expression a lot. I’ve never been into watching sports, but I imagine that it’s an almost physical experience because of how passionate people get. Anime shows draw heat from me the way a sports franchise runs on the zeal of its fanbase. You want your favorite characters to win fights, to use their special move on the villain, to cheer when they do something stylish.
It reminds me a little bit of the Indian movies I watched growing up, too, where the stories were simple, romantic, and always had something to cheer for. Watch the epic Tamil movie Padayappa and you’ll find your heart doing backflips half an hour in. I like to think this reaction is universal because one of my old bosses, an all-American man from Spokane, Washington, told me he went to the movies in India while on a work trip, and, when his fellow moviegoers got up and whooped during a moment of excitement, he jumped and cheered with the rest of them. It brings to contrast how silent and still an American movie theater is, with our luxurious reclining leather seats and cell-phone silence warnings. Every detail on the screen is important. Try whispering to your friend while watching Oscar nominees and see how quickly they disown you.
I can’t make any sort of general case about anime or what it means considering how much it’s evolving and how new I am to its world, but some part of me has definitely been unlocked. It’s nice to watch a creative, colorful show that doesn’t feel like a homework assignment, requiring repeated viewings and analyses to appreciate.
And it’s nice to watch something original. Nowadays, it feels like TV shows tend to reconstruct popular shows from before, each with an accompanying smorgasbord of thinkpieces that analyze every scene until a rating is reached. Sometimes, I like these; sometimes, they’re too much. At the very least, these action-packed Japanese cartoons have shaken me out of that reverie. I flip on the TV, cheering and stomping and clapping as Gon steals Hisoka’s badge or Kurapika fights Uvogin or Levi demolishes yet another row of Titans, and then, once I’m done, I turn it off, my blood running hot and my brain satisfied with no obligation to analyze its symbolism. Whatever the neural circuitry was that encouraged me all those years ago to play YuGiOh against imaginary enemies and pretend like card attacks were real reignites in some way.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is, give me anime recs please!
Other Things Of Note
Relinking these organizations here to help India through its crisis:
This tweet by comedian Joe Pera about a new book he’s written that’s coming out in 20 days called A Bathroom Book For People Not Pooping Or Peeing But Using The Bathroom As An Escape:
I’ve always hated the question “would you rather be the smartest person in the room or the dumbest” and this blog post by RibbonFarm articulates, using an assortment of heady sub-concepts, exactly why.
Anddd here’s another RibbonForm article about the scientific sensibility rather than the scientific method. I was always marked up in middle school for “not following the scientific method” during class, which never made sense to me because my teachers rarely talked about the scientific method, but in any case this article let me gloat over the concept’s relative unimportance, so here.
The cartoon to laugh-track to gritty nihilism pipeline is real, where the end state is having Coen Brothers movies crush our souls with their bleakness before we praise them online.