Reflecting on Reflections

 So last year I made a blog series called 2020 Reflections going over all my favorite series reflecting my tastes on fiction. Exactly 1 year series later, I wanted to give some points I had thought in regards to it. 

1: Don't do it

If you were considering doing this type of project yourself, I'd suggest reconsidering. I made the blogs in advance of when they were needed, and I STILL felt a signifigant time pressure doing them, though that may just be my personality. Beyond that despite the fact that I consider myself pretty good at explaining what I like about things, I found myself really struggling to not just repeat myself. Why do I like this series? It has themes I like, it has characters I relate, etc. Maybe I'm just not very multidimensional in my tastes (something I think is true regardless), but I routinely found myself at a loss of what to actually say about my tastes.

2: I was worried about my favorite series popularity for NOTHING

So before I made this blog series I thought my tastes were unpopular. There's a certain type of personality, the stereotypical hipster, that enjoys things specifically because they're not popular. That's like the opposite of me, if I have an irrational bias in the other peoples opinions axis it's definitely that I want people to agree with me/want to fit in far more than I want to be contrarian. So I go over my favorite series one by one and they universally fit into 3 categories:

1: A massive, either national or globally, succesful franchise that is well loved by lots of people. I think of something like Sailor Moon or DC Comics here. Both of those that have people that don't like them, and highbrow types that don't "respect" them, but which are obviously widely succesful. 

2: A relatively obscure series that doesn't have a lot of attention but everyone who has seen it likes it. I think of something like Magicka or Shamanic Princess. Both of those don't have that huge fanbases but hardly anyone ever dislikes them.

3: Rarely something I like will be controversial. A lot of people don't like it, but it will also have a lot of people who do like it and its hardly seen as bizarre or weird to like. I think of something like Yuki Yuna is a Hero which has a lot of people who don't like it, but also a ton of people who do.

None of my favorite series were downright unpopular, the only downright unpopular thing I really loved was the DCEU, or rather the early DCEU, and even that I would say has gotten more popular and now is moreso "Controversial" rather than "Unpopular"

I think my one unpopular like combined with the fact that I often don't love the biggest series that everyone loves made me feel unpopular. But when I think of those series, I don't usually hate them or anything, I usually just feel kinda lukewarm about them. I also found that when I was saying my favorite moment from my favorite series...they were often just the most popular and common part from it. Favorite part from Metroid was climax of Super Metroid. Favorite Part of Madoka was the climax. Favorite Part of DC Comics was All-Star Superman Superman saving the jumper. Wow....so unpopular.

My tastes are a lot vanilla then I was thinking, and ngl that's a reassuring thought. 

That said I do have some particular types:

I find looking at someone's favorites really interesting in particular because I think you can get a generalized sense of what someone likes, and maybe even a sense of what they ARE like (although I'd wanna be cautious with that.)

For me I definitely have a clear type of thing that appeals to me. In fact I think my tastes are relatively clear, it's not that multidimensional. While not everything I like falls in these categories, there's overall 4 genres I usually like I would define as

1: Magical Girl Fiction: A story with a female protagonist who gains magic-like abilities whose magic is somehow associated with her femininity.

2: Superhero Fiction: A story featuring an idealized or archetypal person with superhuman abilities who generally dons an identity and uses their powers to better society

3: Occult Fiction: A type of fantasy with a dark/gothic tone and usually focuses either on real world purported occult phemonema or have a special emphasis on the realms of the afterlife and its inhabitants (angels, demons, ghosts etc.)

4: Mythological Fantasty: A type of fantasy set in a world where a certain real world Myth Tradition is true and tries to recreate the worldview associated with it. 

My favorite series is Sailor Moon and ngl that's just the intersection of all four of those.

There's also a very clear set of themes that I particularly like although listing them all here would be tedious since it's a much longer list of between like 10-20. I might make that a different blog if wanted.

4: I have a set of artistic priorities that are inversely proportional to "immediacy"

I say this not prescriptively, that I think it should be this or that, just descriptively what I feel. When consuming the art, some things are consumed immediatly, and some things take longer to understand. The more immediate the aspect the less it usually connects to me. To rank-order them and illustrate my point

The most immediate part of consuming media is the aesthetic sense, the visual and the auditory, the visual perhaps slightly quicker than even the auditory. These obviously do have an effect on me, but it is almost entirely subcouncious. It is the aspect I think about least, and which have the least effect on me over time. I don't usually care much for how information is presented to me, and that's how I view art. I don't think of it as escapism, I view it as the presentation of a thought or idea or feeling in a more intuitive more emotionally gripping form. There are some aesthetics I like more than others, but it is the least component. This is also why I don't really care much about fight scenes most of the time. Usually the fight scene is meant to cause a rush of adrenaline, to create stunning visuals, to have an aesthetic beauty like a graceful dance. But that doesn't usually align with my artistic priority. I have said, meant self-deprecatingly, that I "read" every work like a book. I think in words and everything I see and hear is converted to words where the excess detail is removed. On one hand this means I'm very good at remembering things like dialogue but it means I may miss something obvious in the immediate.

Less immediate than the aesthetics are the characters. I don't become invested in characters the way most people seem too. The fact that they are fictional, and usually drawings on paper or digital images, is something that never fades from the front of my mind. Even when I love a character, I love them in what they represent, love their effect on the story, love the themes they carry. I don't love them like a close friend the way some people describe. There's a certain sort that will insist that the character is everything, that plot is nigh-meaningless in quality. These are the same sorts who will tell you that should definitely watch their slice of life series because it has such great characters and such great writing and thus you will like it. I know for my own part that is not true. I know this because the Sailor Moon Manga is my favorite series with my favorite cast and I've seen it adapted into anime, with filler eps that are mostly slice of life focusing on the Senshi's mundane lives...and I thought it was boring. Even my favorite cast in the world was not interesting to me in their mundane lives. The mundane world can be made interesting for a time, but it requires exceptional skill and I definitely wouldn't be interested in a series of nothing but. Characters are still less immediate than aesthetic, and are more interesting I would say as abstractions, representations of ideas.

Plot is less immediate than characters and least immediate are themes. This is where my interest truly lies. I am interested in a story for what meaning can be learned from it. The story, the events, these are instances meant to convey deeper pattern, deeper concepts. I am interested beyond characters in what characters do, and further still what this signfies. Stories have a power in them...there are great ideas and emotions beyond councious comprehension, or perhaps even if they can be comprehended that are cold to the heart, that are the theory-speech of academics rather than the ripples in one's soul. With each layer of immediacy the story, if well-done, manifests the deep and profound into plot, into character, into the most immediate of presentation. Each layer of immediacy I recognize the importance off in this noble endeavor translating and communicating from the ethereal realm of human awareness into articulation, but I think if you think of art this way as I do, then it would be most natural to cast for as deep into the ocean of a series that you can.

5: Some other interesting statistics

Just some things I looked at with my favorite series:

Of the 32 series:

-20 are Japanese (Cutie Honey, Saint Seiya, Metroid, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Shamanic Princess, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, xxxHolic, Pretty Cure, Okami, Axis Powers Hetalia, Bayonetta, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, and Yuki Yuna is a Hero)

-10 are American (DC Comics, The Powerpuff Girls, Freedom Force, Xiaolin Chronicles, Danny Phantom, God of War, The Stanley Parable, Wander over Yonder, Over the Garden Wall, Undertale)

-1 is Italian (Commedia)

-1 is Swedish (Magicka)

Given the degree to which I like Commedia and Magicka it's very likely I would like more works from places beyond Japan and America but I don't know anyone from those parts who could suggest a work from there I would like.

Of the 32 series:

-16 have female protagonists (Cutey Honey, Metroid, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Shamanic Princess, The Powerpuff Girls, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, Pretty Cure, Okami, Bayonetta, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, Yuki Yuna is a Hero)

-14 have male protagonists (Commedia, DC Comics, Saint Seiya, Yu Yu Hakusho, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Freedom Force (I think Man-Bot is the protagonist of FF, if you think Alchemiss is, you can move this to female), Xiaolin Showdown, Danny Phantom, God of War, Axis Powers Hetalia, The Stanley Parable, Wander over Yonder, Over the Garden Wall)

-2 have gender ambigious protagonists (Magicka, Undertale)

As the protagonists for most series is probably less than half (I would estimate 1/3), this seems notably high. I think this comes from three factors; my general love for magical girls (11 of the 16 Female Protags are Magical Girls), my slightly greater ability to relate to female protagonists, and imo the greater range of emotional expressions women are allowed. Female characters are allowed to range from stoic to emotional and sexless to sexual while male protagonists are generally not particularly sex-ed so as to not distress the straight male audience and are generally most stoic as stoicism for men is viewed as more normal.

Of the 32 Series:

-17 are Anime/Manga (Cutie Honey, Saint Seiya, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Shamanic Princess, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, xxxHolic, Pretty Cure, Axis Powers Hetalia, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, and Yuki Yuna is a Hero)

-8 are Video Games (Metroid, Freedom Force, God of War, Okami, Bayonetta, Magicka, The Stanley Parable, Undertale)

-5 are Western Cartoons (The Powerpuff Girls, Xiaolin Showdown, Danny Phantom, Wander over Yonder, Over the Garden Wall)

-2 are Assorted Literary (Commedia, DC Comics)

Finally just a bunch of connections in a meta context I noticed of the 32, not thematic connections but like meta stuff connecting them. I notice that this kind of meta stuff causes "clusters" that if people tend to like one they also tend to like the other, an idea I find really fascinating that you can sorta tell a person by their clusters they're in...here's the clusters I'm in:

-Obviously the 11 Magical Girl Series on this list all form some kind of cluster of their own, with many of the series internally connecting. This broadly breaks down into the 5 "traditional" magical girl series; Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Mew Mew, and Pretty Cure, and the 4 "dark" magical girl series; Shamanic Princess, Princess Tutu, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Yuki Yuna is a Hero with the Cutey Honey and Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt being a bit harder to classify. Many of these share fandoms as part of the larger "Magical Girl Fandom"

-Cutey Honey was an influence on Sailor Moon who then recurvisely was an influence on Cutie Honey causing the creation of a more Sailor Moon-like Cutie Honey called Cutie Honey Flash. Ryota Yamaguchi who was a writer for both Sailor Moon Stars and Cutie Honey Flash also worked on DokiDoki Pretty Cure and Saint Seiya: Sainta Sho.

-Sailor Moon was an influence on Tokyo Mew Mew, Pretty Cure and Puella Magi Madoka Magicka. Junichi Sato who worked on the Sailor Moon anime co-created Princess Tutu and directed Hugtto Pretty Cure.

-Puella Magi Madoka Magicka was an influence on Yuki Yuna is a Hero

-Princess Tutu and Puella Magi Madoka Magicka have connected fanbases with the former possibly being a predecssor of the latter.

-Magic Knight Rayearth and Cardcaptor Sakura both obviously have a connection as they were both made by CLAMP along with the series xxxHolic

-Commedia was a direct inspiration for Over the Garden Wall and can broadly said to be the one responsible for the trope of telling the epic about the common person, the universal human experience rather then the transcedent demigod. This is relevant in sometimes DC, Cutie Honey, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Yu-Gi-Oh!, The Powerpuff Girls, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, xxxHolic, Pretty Cure, Danny Phantom, Axis Powers Hetalia, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, The Stanley Parable, Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Over the Garden Wall and Undertale

-DC Comics created the modern superhero idea and as such is directly inspiration for The Powerpuff Girls, Freedom Force, and Danny Phantom although for the latter two Marvel acts more as an intermediate step. It's also likely an inspiration for Sentai, which influenced Cutie Honey (through Warrior of Love Rainbowman), Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Tokyo Mew Mew, Pretty Cure, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka and Yuki Yuna is a Hero.

-As 90s Occult Shonen, the fandoms of Yu Yu Hakusho and Yu-Gi-Oh! overlap

-Due to their cosmic imagery, coming out around the same time, and similar plot structures there is an overlap in the fandoms of Saint Seiya and Sailor Moon

-Due to the marriage of their creators, there is an overlap in fans between Yu Yu Hakusho and Sailor Moon. Sukehiro Tomita also worked on both of their animes. 

-Hideki Kamiya created both Okami and Bayonetta

-Craig McCracken created both The Powerpuff Girls and Wander over Yonder

-Emiri Kato played Kyubey in Puella Magi Madoka Magicka and Hyper Blossom in PPGZ as well as assorited roles in Tsubasa and XXXholic animes. 

-Nami Miyahara who played Rolling Bubbles in PPGZ also played Akari Tsukumo in Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal

-DC Comics's Wonder Woman inspired some elements of Sailor Moon, in particular Sailor Moon's tiara throw was inspired by the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman

-Both being 2010s metafictional games The Stanley Parable and Undertale fandoms intersect

-Undertale makes reference to Tokyo Mew Mew

-Ouran High School Host Club and xxxHolic have a bit of a fandom overlap, due I think to both being series about main characters that have to be in service to elegant teasing people they don't understand in exchange for paying their side of a deal

-God of War and Bayonetta have some fandom overlap due to being in the same genre of game

-Wander Over Yonder and Undertale have a signifigant fandom overlap due to both have a similar theme of befriending people instead of using violence and a few shared worldbuilding elements

-Cutey Honey and Bayonetta have some fandom overlap due to being sex-positive depictions of femininity with a heroine that is both sexual and has agency

-Tara Strong voice acted as Bubbles in the Powerpuff Girls and Omi in Xiaolin Showdown, and has had various more minor roles in Danny Phantom, Wander over Yonder and several DC productions (including the relatively major role of Raven from Teen Titans)

-Metroid and Cutie Honey have some fandom overlap for being relatively early science-fiction works to have a female protagonist

-Takuya Igarashi worked on the animes of both Sailor Moon and Ouran High School Host Club as well as an episode of Futari wa Pretty Cure. Yoji Enokido also worked on both Sailor Moon and Ouran High School Host Club.

-Shiori Teshirogi wrote both Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas as well as a DC Comics Manga.