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I am about to say something that would have been downright blasphemous of me to say a decade ago because I wanted to fit in with a "cool crowd" that ultimately didn't give a damn about me. I'm watching Pokemon: Diamond & Pearl. I decided to watch all 191 episodes. And there is one simple reason for this; I love Dawn. And I'm tired of pretending I don't. A decade ago, I was in severe denial of this fact, and I kinda wanna make up for it. That said, it's slow going. At the time I'm posting this, I'm only up to episode 35. My weird schedule means my watching isn't consistent, and I was wondering how to approach it, though I decided to make it a bare minimum of two episodes a week, maybe more if I can fit them in. I also decided to throw the movies into the equation. It's actually pretty good so far. It ain't perfect, heck no, but I am finding myself enjoying it a lot more when I'm not trying to fit in with a crowd that would throw me to the wolves the moment I even slightly deviated from what they said was "acceptable."

I watched a couple episodes of season 1 before setting it aside. Not exactly feeling FOMO Though I actually kinda enjoy some isekai that don’t take themselves all that seriously, notably Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill (looking forward to season 2 in the fall). The only isekai I’m currently watching is Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra which is kinda like Overlord, but more comedic (so far anyway). And 2nd season of Reincarnated as the 7th Prince which is isekai adjacent. Favorites from the current season so far are sequels of Kaiju No. 8 & Dandadan.

Honestly, felt more connected to the scene during the late 90s-early 2010s. This isn't to say we haven't had good stuff since then, but I have only gotten worse at keeping up over time as I get older. I strongly suspect this won't be over soon, if ever. But oddly enough, I'm okay with that.

I think the period between the release of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann is my favorite. The late 90's was peak. Yeah, 80's OVAs might be the peak of actual cel animation, but the stories were often underbaked. The late 90's combine great cel animation with better storytelling and characterization. The early 2000's adoption of digipaint did lead to a bit of a dip in aesthetics IMO, but NGE was still close enough in the past that studios were willing to crank out big, weird stories in hopes of lightning striking twice. Something like Mai-Hime, flawed as it is, only happens in 2005, and I think that's pretty cool. I think of TTGL as the end of this post-EVA era. After that, CGI integration starts to really take off, backgrounds start to suffer, and in the 2010's, pretty much 90% of anime looks ugly as sin. I enjoy plenty of modern shows, and I think anime as a whole is bouncing back in the 2020's, but I will watch pretty much anything from that 1995-2007 range. It's just my jam.

I think the ones from around 2005 to 2015 are about my favorite