Shh! This is supposed to be relevant!
Believe it or not, I’m not here to beat this dead horse, nor am I interested in whatever dorama was stirred up long before I knew that the anime blogosphere existed. Incidentally, I read that post when I first discovered aniblogs, which was before I knew wildarmsheero – I enjoyed it devoid of its original meaning.
But I digress. To summarize, DarkMirage wrote something about the bias that many fans have toward older series, and the fact that nostalgia can blind. It used to bother me when I was still in elementary school, innocently enjoying my Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker when the so-called vets would harp endlessly on Link to the Past. It also bothered me when I first started watching older anime, and I wondered how some of the Ghibli classics like Nausicaa could ever be better than modern anime films like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
In other words, I agreed with the sentiment without having put it in words, I agreed with it when I first read that post around a year ago, and I still agree with it today. But it’s also important to remember that nostalgia isn’t necessarily harmful.
I was always one of those GameFAQs kids. You probably won’t care to hear this story so I won’t bother elaborating, but the long and short of it is that I spent most of my childhood internet hours in one of the biggest mainstream gaming communities in the world. Starting as a literal 12 year old – or possibly younger – I eventually grew into someone who could make fun of n00bs by calling them 12 year olds, and I later grew into someone who couldn’t care less either way.
But that isn’t important. What is important is that I grew up with my N64 and Gamecube, with Mario and Link and Pokemon, and that the internet was filled with old-school gamers who were first acquainted with these franchises in the NES and SNES days.
Needless to say, nostalgia bothered me. Why is an older Zelda game automatically better than a new one? A handful of people might be able to justify their opinions in a series of coherent sentences, and a few of those might even be able to argue objectively about how the 2D games were better than 3D – but for the most part, it was like arguing about whether subs are better than dubs. Neither side says anything that isn’t either common sense or 100% subjective, and I’m sure many of you would agree that the mere sight of a thread entitled “Subs vs Dubs” is enough to drive anyone away from a forum.
But now, things have changed. I might still be younger than many gamers, but I’m in no way the youngest; I’m sure many casual Maple Story players grew up with Final Fantasy X and Katamari Damacy rather than FFVI and Chocobo Racing. And having distanced myself from video games for quite some time, I’ve found an entirely new form of joy that I can derive from playing mediocre N64 kart racers and repetitive Pokemon Stadium minigames.
Put simply, nostalgia can blind, but it can also be a beautiful thing.
Maybe this could allow Nintendo to reach out to an untapped market?
For the sake of brevity, I’ll adopt DarkMirage’s argument since I agree with it in its entirety. It’s foolish to say that something is better because it’s old, or to say that something is bad because it isn’t old. It’s just as bad as saying that Shugo Chara is better than Card Captor Sakura because it’s newer. I have nothing against those who argue that UC Gundam is better than Gundam 00, but please, find a way to articulate your argument into a sentence more meaningful than “Gundam Balls is for teh noobs who don’t understand the true DEPTH of Char’s burning manly passion,” or quite simply, “yaoi ftl”.
But like I said in the beginning, this isn’t a rant against wah – I respect the guy enough to listen to his podcast archives, which is pretty crazy in and of itself. It just so happens that this old post represents so much of what I’ve believed in since childhood, and I’m glad to finally understand nostalgia for what it really is.
I am not worthy to think of a witty comment to follow this.
The way I see it, nostalgia is something to indulge in. I won’t criticize you for enjoying something for the sake of enjoying it – as my anime list proves, I spend far too much time indulging in mediocre harem and fluffy VN adaptations when the same time could be spent on something like Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Indulging is great – nostalgia is great. Halo Wars looks like a great game, which I admittedly haven’t even touched, but I might very well have more fun booting up my old copy of Pokemon Blue. Something as simple as listening to the music, however few bits it’s comprised of, might be enough to soothe me like a good shoujo does.
In short, nostalgia is one of the few things with the power to heal.
That’s why I think the most important thing is to identify the feelings of nostalgia and separate them from the rest of your judgment. I learned to describe Clannad as both “the show that crosses shoujo with slice of life and drama and explores the challenges we face in life while searching for happiness,” and “the show with the dojikko moeblob that likes dangos.” Both descriptions accurately portray my opinion, but I acknowledge that they are two very separate feelings. I do not call K-ON the show of the season: Eden of the East is easily my top pick. But if I had a new episode of both sitting on my hard drive, I’d almost certainly pick the former.
It would do us all a great lot of good to learn to separate our nostalgia from our personal feelings, and to keep both of those from our objective opinion. A “review” that consists entirely of blind fanboy praise isn’t worthy of the word, and an argument based on nostalgia is void. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy something in the name of nostalgia. I know that The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya will always be special to me, just like Super Mario 64 and Star Fox 64, but if and when KyoAni does something with the remaining novels, I’ll be careful to enjoy the show for what it is and not bash it for failing to surpass a personal, irreplacable memory.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
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But isn’t nostalgia part of our personal feelings? How about separating nostalgia from personal preference?
Selective memory. Immaturity at that time. Anyway I once did a paper on nostalgic in pop culture, but generally, most research indicates that people only remember favourable things in the past, even if that thing sucked, they’ll look back on it fondly for some other reason. Like, “even though life in the 50s was tough, it made us true men.”
The best part is, people can actually feel nostalgic about stuff they have never experienced. Like all the 12 year olds who insist that FF6 and FF7 are the best, and the youngsters who rave about retro music or the craziness of the old school rock.
I think perhaps a further nuance is needed here (or at least explicitly said): something that is older is not necessarily better than that which is newer, but neither is something which is newer necessarily better than that which is older. The problem comes from being locked in the past, or being locked in the present, and overgeneralizing in both directions.
I have no idea if some of what I feel for older series could be called “nostalgia”, but we sure aren’t going to get modern EXCITING SHOUJO SERIES like Rose of Versailles anytime soon. And, as always, video killed the radio star.
OGTs last blog post..Eden of the East: Theories on a Conspiracy, or: Tinfoil Pope Hats
There’s another element which is key here: selective memory. What I mean is this: it takes time for the anime community to decide once and for all if a series is great, and when that is agreed on we call it a classic. Series today might or might not be as good, it’s too early to tell if they can stand the test of time. But what happens is when we old folk think of the past, we recall only the classics (as we should) whereas when we look at the present we see a host of series good and bad and middling. The past will always look better.
I myself tend to read books at least 100 years old. The reason is because the chance a “classic” will turn out to be a lousy work is much less than just picking out today’s bestsellers at the bookstore. This doesn’t mean in the past people were better writers, it just means those bad writers have been thrown into oblivion where they deserve to be, so what’s left is the good stuff. Hmm, this is kind of a pointless comment but there it is!
animekritiks last blog post..Chidejika Saga (you know it’s epic when ABe steps in)
Well, I tend to separate ‘fun’ from ‘good’. There’s quite a few shows that I watch because even though they are mediocre from several ways, they are still fun to watch.
As always, it’s a balancing act. I can go on about how awesome Macross Plus, Gunbuster and Bubblegum Crisis are but as long as I’m open to more recent shows of brilliance such as Mushishi, Denno Coil and (if it continues its standard of excellence) Eden of the East, I won’t be worried. I often find myself splitting my viewing time between interesting new shows and revisiting old favourites…the diehard nostalgics who reject anything less than X years old and the n00bs who refuse to admit anything existed before Haruhi are as bad as each other, and are sadly missing out on a lot. Nostalgia is indeed fun and not harmful at all…as long as it’s in moderation, as is the case with most things! ^_^
There’s also something to be said about expectations for a new show that I consider legitimate, such as:
1. If a show is part of a franchise such as Gundam, I appreciate homages in the form of ‘easter eggs’ and aren’t done for their own sake. Macross is very clever with this. However, I expect the newer show NOT to repeat the mistakes the previous shows made (similar plot-holes)
2. All other things being equal, animation quality must be better (Macross 7 I’m looking at YOU. I don’t expect Frontier to look as good as an OVA like Zero, but the case of 7 is particularly bad. Also, GSD w/ its recycled battle animation comes to mind.)
How to play nostalgia in an awesome way: hire Imagawa Yasuhiro. Just look at his work in re-presenting the really old shows like Giant Robo, and this season’s Mazinger Z.
Shhh! Don’t tell WAH that classic shows aren’t better! :P
Well, the new developers can learn from the old skool guys. So, in theory, their games should actually be superior! This applies to everything, pretty much. Having said that, I am often biased towards old school stuff, just because of the nostalgia factor. Well, for all the stuff that I consider nostalgic, I reckon they are excellent products, even when seen objectively, as you suggested. I’m referring to Doom, etc. But yeah, nice post :D.
M12s last blog post..Sushi (and) train
Well DM’s post was total bullshit anyway since at that point I had only just seen the original Gundam Trilogy one year ago, and until that point had only really partaken of a sampling of AU series. And I guess Zeta Gundam, which I appreciate now more than I did then.
>>Shhh! Don’t tell WAH that classic shows aren’t better! :P
Uhhh, even if I used to do it just be pretentious, I do not at any level think old shows are better than new ones. I’m pretty knee-deep in modern otaku subculture, especially now that I’m living in Japan.
wahs last blog post..Comic 140: Secret, underground base
@ egads: Technically speaking, you’re right. Our feelings affect our personal preference, but it’s all a part of our subjective opinion in the end. I guess it comes back to the notion of separating one’s personal opinion from their objective opinion, especially when claiming that a is better than b.
@ tj han: You’re right about remembering things fondly, I’ve been noticing that with myself lately. I played the first Tales of Symphonia in the sixth grade, and I spent hundreds of hours trying to get everything. I even got a few friends to help out. We were all obsessed with the game, and we treated it like one of the greatest RPGs ever made.
Now, as I’m playing the sequel for the Wii, I can only enjoy it if I don’t take it seriously. It’s a decent game, but very, very flawed. And yet, if I think back on that final dungeon and the scene before the credits, I feel warm and fuzzy. It’s a vague way of describing it, but yes, it’s definitely funny how memories make everything seem better :P
@ OGT: Explicitly stating that would have required a few hundred more words that would make the post even more needlessly verbose, but yeah, blindly praising modern shows is just as bad. Like you said, closing your mind off is the real danger.
@ animekritik: For some reason, I can’t help but feel that I’ve used that argument before, though I know it wasn’t in this post. Anyway, that’s a good point, especially considering the fact that the community as a whole watches almost everything that’s airing at any given point in time. Lots of moe anime/VN adaptations end up failing miserably, but old-school mecha probably had the same problem – it’s just that we only talk about the ones good enough to live for decades.
@ Stevo: Of course! I don’t think K-ON is all that great and I know there’s nothing spectacular about Saki, but I’m watching both of them because they’re fun. Doing things in the name of entertainment is natural, and certainly not a bad thing – it’s only bad when you start blurring the line in your mind between “fun” and “good” that it becomes a problem.
@ Martin: Acceptance of different time periods in a medium is like acceptance of different genres; it might not look that appealing at first, but it’s usually worth it, and it’s a necessity if you want to properly understand what you’re watching. That’s the main reason why I decided to finally go back and watch some old Gundam :P
@ ghostlightning: Repeating the mistakes of the past is probably the worst thing they can do. If we’ve already had to put up with certain careless mistakes or plot holes a decade ago, we definitely don’t want to see them again today.
@ wah: Like I said, his accusations against you may or may not have been fair, but the fact remains that the non-dorama content of the post captures an important concept. I don’t doubt that you’re still in touch with modern anime, and I expect that a Kaede fan wouldn’t try to claim older anime to be unconditionally better :P
@wah – Fully tongue-in-cheek, there, in case it wasn’t clear. ^_^