Sometimes you gotta scrape the bottom of the barrel to share and create content and, in this case, I found a hole in the bottom of the barrel and decided to dip my fingers into the anime can below (which is, also, filled with gooey caramel. Go figure).
Anywho, let's start with something light and sweet and fun with a little collab between some voice actors/singers/entertainers from youtube from anime that I've never watched. Because why not.
And move right into a cover of the anime that everyone who wantys to get into anime or wants to call themselves an anime fan/expert should probably watch, Hideaki Anno's ambitious to the point of madness, Neon Genesis: Evangelion.
I don't love Neon Genesis. I'm not even sure I like Neon Genesis. But the anime's reverberations throughout the anime fan community and medium can still be felt today. The anime mixes intellectually dark and brooding themes of religion, gender, and puberty into something that is often uncomfortable to watch but, thanks to the beautiful animation and style, is something worth experiencing.
Many big names in anime started out on this project and, like I said, you can see it's influence everywhere. If you haven't, check it out. The dub is pretty good (even if Shinji is a whiny brat, so what? Can you really blame him? Really?!).
And now for something completely shallow and potentially divisive with the latest release from the perviest senpai MC on youtube, Hentai Dude.
Dude's name speaks for itself.
So, now that checking out some slightly too otaku stuff is out of the way, let's get pseudo intellectual for a second, again, and personal:
"
Never knows best" doesn't mean anything. That's a lie. Maybe the guy who wrote it didn't know what it meant. That's fine. He just thought it sounded cool because he didn't speak much English or maybe he was being intentionally vague and it didn't mean anything. That's fine. It still meant something to me when I was thirteen years old, staying up late, and watching anime on cable.
It doesn't take much to figure out why I was watching anime, because I watched it for all the reasons that a young teen anime fan watches anime. I watched it because I still liked cartoons, but wants to be mature. I watched it because the anime girls caught my interest. I watched it because, at thirteen, I was starting to get cynical as all hell.
I'm not sure what "Never Knows Best" means yet. But I do know what FLCL meant to me. It meant that feeling like you wanna grow up, like your between childhood and adulthood, and like you want to understand how to balance all these weird feelings against the childhood identity. It means learning to take responsibility but also it means realizing you'll never know everything. You think being an adult means trying to be cool or it means serious business. It doesn't.
At this point I'm rambling, but you might be able to dig the profound or presumptious message I'm trying to get across in the wishy-washy fooly-cooly sort of way that I am.
Sometimes, you just need a little crazy. A little Haruko.
Sometime I'll revisit this again when I'm feeling wistful.
