How an Android in Yokohama Taught Me to Be Human

For the past couple of years, I've been captivated by a genre of literary fiction I find hard to describe. It's some gestalt of cottage core, peaceful fantasy, and slice-of-life with low-stakes drama. There's been a lot of work produced in these genres lately: Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes series and the sleeper hit Frieren: Beyond Journey's End are among these. I'm going to insert Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou here as well, even though it's a far-future science fiction manga, and even though the manga was originally published in 1994, because of how well it fits our cultural milieu.   

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

As far as I gather from the first 30 chapters, the world of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (YKK) suffered from catastrophes that left humanity quite scarce. The land is a mess of abandoned asphalt and overgrown grasslands. Here is where we find Alpha, an android who runs a cafe which sees very little foot traffic. She has close relationships with a handful of townsfolk, and makes conversation with the random customers who happen by. Alpha's creator makes the occasional appearance, but the larger story behind the existence of robots in general isn't important.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

YKK is a manga where things just...happen. While this sounds like any slice-of-life story, there's a lack of urgency here that I find notable. Alpha doesn't have an overarching dream or mandate I can think of save for running the cafe. When she goes out to buy coffee beans, there's no indication that the cafe will lose business or Alpha will go hungry if things slow down. No one is ever in danger. People receive mail. Everything is great. Out of context, YKK sounds dreadfully boring---and lovely. 

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Kodansha, Seven Seas Entertainment.

Legends and Lattes, Frieren, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou are romantic visions of a world where employment isn't as important as adventuring. Meeting new faces and doing the most good for the most people is what matters. Time is precious, but instead of monetizing every second we have, it makes more sense to slow down and appreciate what's in front of us. (These sound like platitudes from the mind of whoever invented "Live, Laugh, Love.") In modern parlance, "Go touch grass."      

We live in a post-industrial age where increased wealth and technology do not always bring us joy. Late stage capitalism seems the law of the land. Climate change is real (even if people debate its causes). Obnoxious AI-powered technologies are advertised everywhere I look. We suffer the pains of minimum wage work with shrinking hopes for health insurance, salary, or retirement funds. People are dating less, marrying less often, and aren't reproducing at population replacement rates. Do our cozy stories have a cure for these woes? Can we live, laugh, and love as if nothing were wrong in the world?

In a week's time, I'm going to become a father. My job will be to show my daughter that despite the economic, political, and social upheavals that plague this era, life is very much worth living. She can be an adventurer if she wants to. She can turn off her phone (or subdermal implant or neural chip) if she wants to. She can solve people's problems for magic spells, run a bookshop, or open a cafe if she wants to. Orcs, elves, and androids do it all the time. 

Stargazing with Insomniacs After School

My father once purchased a telescope through a mail-order catalogue. I assume he bought it because I loved astronomy as a child. We only used it once to stare at a full moon from the roof of the three-story brownstone we were renting from. After that, the next time I went stargazing was 2018, when I visited a planetarium on NYC's Long Island and saw some of the Jovian worlds. I never did become an astronomer like I dreamed, but I still get excited about going to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. 

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. 2019.

Insomniacs After School is a fun story for my inner child. As the title suggests, Nakami and Magari don't get a lot of sleep, so they sneak off to the school's abandoned observatory for peace and quiet. When they get caught, their only option is to revive the Astronomy Club despite not knowing what such a club does. While stargazing is a good start, the kids aren't using the school's professional telescope until they master the basics. To that end, Namaki learns how to use the Canon he has for long-exposure night photography. 

As of the first two volumes, Insomniacs suggests that in a small city like Nakao, Ishikawa Prefecture, light pollution isn't a huge problem. The countryside seems to be a train ride away. In major cities like NYC, ambient light creates a general halo around the city; light pollution means photographers invest more time in light filters and post-production. The Long Island observatory I mentioned was at the far end of New York, practically in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, veiled in near perfect darkness.

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. 2019.

I live in Ohio nowadays. While it lacks comparable entertainment, ocean views, and robust transportation options when compared to New York, it makes up for with open sky. License plates boast the "Birthplace of Aviation" because Orville Wright was born here. Neil Armstrong, the first human on the moon, was from Ohio. NASA's Glenn Research Center has a whole webpage dedicated to showing how vital the Ohio-based facility is to the Artemis program. I don't own a camera or a telescope now, but I'm in a pretty good place to start thinking about space once again.

Here's a fun fact: the first manga I ever bought was Planetes back in 2003. Maybe I'll pick it up again when I catch up with Insomniacs After School.

I've had this book for twenty-one years? Damn.

Video Games as an Artistic Medium, or Why the Celeste Soundtrack Slaps

As a genre of video games, 2D platformers rarely catch my interest because I die too easily. I bought Celeste recently and learned that I still suck at platformers... but the Celeste soundtrack is amazing. It was nominated for Best Score at the 2018 Game Awards and won ASCAP's Video Game Score of the Year in 2019. I'd consider it a work of art.

Celeste. Maddy Makes Games. 2018.

On a related note, Polygon.com has a fun series on media hot takes, and their recent post on the writings of late film critic Roger Ebert have revived the debate of whether video games are art. I didn't know this was a question people ask themselves, but as an Art History degree holder, I'll shove my foot into this debate. 

A quote from Marcel Duchamp succinctly states my understanding of art production. Whether or not anyone else agrees about the quote's veracity is secondary to our the need to establish common ground:

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Duchamp explicitly shares at least two facts:

• Creative acts are performed by an artist.
• Through interpretation, spectators connect creations to the outside world and become contributors.

The Fountain. Marcel Duchamp as R. Mutt. 1917.

I'll tackle the first point: who is considered an artist? Merriam-Webster defines an artist as:

1. A person who creates art (such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing) using conscious skill and creative imagination
2. A skilled performer
3. A person who is very good at something

Assuming people who design games are at least "very good at something" and use "conscious skill" to create objects from "imagination" in a virtual space, they should qualify as artists. But maybe the fact video games are commercial productions with dozens (if not hundreds) of developers and financiers corrupts this idea of artists and creations? Let's consider two viewpoints: 

• A conservative person might say, "Commercial gaming generates revenue by using software engines to capture audience interest. Artistic merit is secondary to how we get people to pay for the experience. Money is the creative force here." 

• A liberal person might say, "Gaming, regardless of finance models, is rooted in audience interest, and that interest is guaranteed through realizing the vision of creators who have mastered the craft of writing, directing, compositing, graphics, music, etc. People pay for good stories."

I feel both opinions would be right. Roger Ebert might yield that this portrait of the gaming industry as composed of corporate greed and countless craftsmen is eerily similar to the realm of film production. His own thoughts can be found in the article "Video Games Can Never Be Art," where he points out cathedrals need many people to construct them, yet they are arguably artistic creations. (He actually leaves this an open-question, perhaps not wanting to cause more trouble than he already has.)

Celeste. Maddy Makes Games. 2018.

Now let's tackle Duchamp's second assertion that spectators impact art creation. While this implies art is to be seen by others, video games produced privately on one's hard drive and kept from prying eyes are still a kind of creative practice, I think. Not all art is made to be seen: maybe the creator is embarrassed by it or changed their minds about selling it.

My Celeste stats, which are not impressive by any means.

Let's concede that many video game developers aim for distribution on commercial platforms. This means the spectators are the consumers who buy and play the games. These people, as I would extrapolate from Duchamp’s quote, add criticism and popular opinion to the creative act as they interpret the "inner qualifications" of any given work. This can be uncomfortable for creators because it removes agency from them, but it can also be liberating if we consider creation to be a communal process. This was exemplified in Roger Ebert, who was an interpreter of film because of his belief in its artistic qualifications, and therefore contributed to the form's legitimacy. 

To make a long story short, I think video games can be works of art. Celeste's soundtrack was recognized as a masterpiece upon release, and the game itself was nominated for and won more awards than I can articulate here. Yet, Duchamp would have agreed with Roger Ebert in stating video games are not art, if only because Duchamp's definition concedes to the subjectivity of art interpretation in general. And I'm perfectly fine with that.  

I'm Too Dumb for Spice and Wolf

The first arc of Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf sees Lawrence investing in a rumor that silver trenni, the most valuable currency in the kindgom of Trenni, will increase in purity. As a 21st century person watching a series set within a pseudo-European world still governed by kingdoms and the church, I was confused. What does purity have to do with coins? Why are there competing currencies? I really enjoy the dynamic between Lawrence and Holo, the titular wolf, so I'm eager to understand the economics that drive the plot along. The rest of this post covers my investigation into how economies work overall and how these principles apply to Spice and Wolf. 

Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf. Passione. 2024.

Let's start with our current economy as a baseline. We use fiat money, or money that doesn't rely on a commodity to determine its value; printed money is intrinsically worthless. The United States Dollar, for example, is valuable because the U.S. is a nation with political stability and high Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our government assigns the denominations, prints the money, and allows citizens to use it. The money can be traded on international exchanges between nations that have their own currencies. This is a web of relationships that's necessary for the current global economic system.

Now, commodities are goods that can be exchanged at particular rates. In a fiat system like the U.S. economy, I could offer X amount of grain for a particular rate and receive Y amount of dollars in exchange; money would serve as the medium of exchange, or the thing that allows people to participate in the buying and selling of goods. Without dollars serving as the intermediary, I'd resort to bartering, or offering my grain for another commodity of equal value as determined by the traders or a third party. Value varies based on the intrinsic worth of these commodities (whether they are useful in and of themselves or parts of a larger product) and what value people arbitrarily assign to them. Grain, a product people rely on for survival, is literally consumed. Metals, on the other hand, are often constituent parts in a larger production processes like making armor and such.

Image by DevangshuNandi1540630. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

The intrinsic value, or melt value, of a coin is determined by the ratio of silver to base metals in its composition; this is the definition of purity. In Spice and Wolf, the silver trenni's face value, or its denomination, should not change due to a new minting. If the purity of silver in newly minted coins increases, this might translate to increased desirability because a currency with more silver is a mark of a powerful nation with rare assets. The face value of a U.S. penny, for example, is always one cent, but there are prohibitions on the exportation, melting, or alteration of pennies because of the need to keep them in circulation, as well as consideration of the melt value of its copper and zinc. Such prohibitions are also the case for currency like the trenni in Spice and Wolf.

The reason for increasing the silver content in a trenni coin, according to Spice and Wolf, is to manipulate this desirability and increase the coin's circulation compared with coinage from other nations. As Lawrence explains in the light novel I bought to supplement my viewing of the anime: 

"Nations do not always fight through strength of arms. If your country's currency is overwhelmed by a foreign coin, you've been just as thoroughly conquered. All the foreign king needs to do is cut off your supply of money, and your marketplace will die. Without money, you can neither buy nor sell. They control your economy." 

It seems several nations in the real world use multiple currencies. In the case of Ecuador and Zimbabwe, this is because their native currencies suffered from inflation, or the devaluing of a currency because of its abundance, which then causes an increase in the price of goods as businesses struggle to make more profit using the weaker currency. As a result, Ecuador and Zimbabwe rely on USD to stabilize their economies but cannot print USD on their own. To pay for USD they're using, these countries enter trade agreements with the United States for items like bananas or other commodities. 

In Spice and Wolf, Trenni would be able to command the local money supply if more people use its native currency; this is possible if its currency is more desirable in the local market due to a purity increase. Internationally, desirability is judged by frequency of trades on the exchanges, but I won't dare venture into those geopolitics. In both instances, anyone's interest in silver trenni is heavily based in how much the citizens trust Trenni's economy and political stability.

I'm gonna stop here, as this plot unravels into something far more complicated than I care to dive into. There are many, many Spice and Wolf Reddit posts and forums dedicated to explaining this first arc. The barrier to entry on this franchise is unusually high--and that's coming from someone who loves Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I hope you've learned a little about economics, though!

Frieren Would've Done the Same

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is the best anime ever made according to many corners of the internet. It surpassed Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on MAL, has a 100% average on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.9 on IMDb, and has become a social media darling thanks to its eponymous, small-statured elf. After ending last season, the memes of Frieren, Fern, and Stark in modern day swag have kept the series alive until next season. Then, Ruixian Xu stopped a knife attack in Taiwan because Himmel "would've done the same," thrusting the franchise that never quite went away into the spotlight again. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Although our Taiwanese vigilante was obviously using a refrain Frieren makes throughout the series, it's notable that Himmel is dead by the time the story starts. For those who also read the manga, Himmel was both savior and folk hero during his time, making sure to do what little he could for everyone he met during the ten-year journey to fight the demon king. I just think it's odd for fandom to attribute acts of present-day heroism to someone who isn't canonically alive but lives on in the memories (and many, many monuments) scattered throughout the land. There's someone who is far more deserving of this hero-worship: Frieren herself.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

The quirk and charm of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is that the story is rooted in saudade, the wistful memories that Himmel left Frieren with upon his passing. We almost never see Himmel as he lived but through Frieren's recollections. If we use Serie's statement about remembering each one of her disciples throughout her centuries, then I'd also assume Frieren, as an elf, has perfect memory recall. The flashbacks we see of Himmel are valuable as meeting him in real-time. But that's cheating for us as an audience, isn't it?

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Imagine Frieren: Beyond Journey's End without the Himmel flashbacks. The characters would be the same, but the presentation would be more somber, focused on a widow who cares for the children of her best friends as they guide her to heaven. She would recall stories of her lover (a word she doesn't use because elves seem incapable of doing so) and how she became a better person because of him. Instead of flashbacks, we'd watch Frieren's attention shift to a past that was, in elf time, only moments earlier. Her emotionless features may twinge with warm joy and piercing sorrow--until remembering the purpose of her journey. I think that Frieren, the same Frieren who gives herself to anyone in need because of a man we never had the privilege to know, would be someone worthy of our praise. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Next time you do a good deed, tell people that "Frieren would've done the same." Thanks for coming to my TED talk. 

Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story

I'm a sucker for a good boy-meets-world kind of story. These tales feature teenagers who often bump into girls with entirely different backgrounds and far more experience navigating society. FLCL, Eureka Seven, and Gurren Lagann are ones that stand out in my mind; the otaku universe has a billion more tales just like them. Call of the Night is in the same vein, but with some contemporary twists I really dig. 

Here's the short version: Ko Yamori loves playing hooky and travels around the city from dusk til dawn. Before long, he bumps into Nazuna Nanakusa, who claims to be a vampire. (I'm ninety-nine percent sure Nazuna Nanakusa is based on Haruhara Haruko from FLCL). Ko, the weird and misanthropic kid he is, wants to become a vampire, too. Turns out the only way to make more vamps in this world is for the human victim to fall in love with their vampire. Naturally, Ko and Nazuna spend their time getting into antics while figuring out what love looks like for them.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

Nazuna loves to drink and play video games. She makes a living by relieving people of their loneliness--giving massages, cuddling, and overall being a kind host. (Although it's tempting to consider this non-sexual business a uniquely Japanese idea, I feel this is more a symptom of isolation stemming within first-world, heavily capitalist and networked societies.) The glancing media critic might identify Nazuna as a manifestation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but Call of the Night front loads almost half the series with an exploration of Nazuna's past and how she fits in (and doesn't fit in) with the rest of the vampire underworld. 

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This uniqueness of character obviously brings her to Ko's attention in the first place. It also shows us the very-real phenomenon of worshipping people we just met before spending any real time together. Does learning more about Nazuna make her more or less appealing to Ko? The problem with IRL romance is that we often fail to appreciate people as relationships grow. Combined with the miserable contemporary dating scene and declining birth rates in the largest economies, any story about successful romance seems like a bold, defiant leap towards hopeful futures. Ko's desire to turn vampire comes from a naive but very human impulse to spend an exciting night with a good person.    

The thing about Ko is that he doesn't actually know what it's like to love. He's only a middle schooler, so that's totally valid, but Call of the Night lingers on this for long enough that I wonder if this is a teenage affect or a literal, chemical deficiency of oxytocin. It's clear that Ko isn't asexual and that he wants to understand the positive relationships some vampires share with humans. But this libido question is tied into the way vampires reproduce: sucking blood is inherently sexual, and converting someone into a vampire requires a love connection. To extrapolate again into real-world context, it's significant to note that teenagers report having less sexual intercourse, but this complicated by evolving definitions of what sexual intimacy and identity look like. In Call of the Night, the vampiric relationship is entirely dependent on consummation via bloodsucking and conversion, which causes trouble for Ko and Nazuna among the old guard when they fail to do so.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This post is titled Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story, but discusses a manga centered around a heterosexual relationship. The manga does explore a few LGBT+ relationships, and these turn out to be significant in Nazuna’s life. Considering the value of sexual reproduction is nearly nonexistent for vampires, this gender indifference makes perfect sense for author Kotoyama to explore. Call of the Night is not a BL or yaoi manga; nevertheless, this attitude towards fluidity is refreshing. It's notable that this manga is part of the Viz Manga app and not the Shonen Jump one, so its target demographic feels broader than just action-loving boys.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

At the risk of making a longer post with more ramblings about the contemporary state of love--a matter in which I am not an expert but can only speak from the perspective of someone married for six years--you should read Call of the Night. I plan on watching the anime as soon as I finish the manga.

Stravaganza and the Strange Case of Monkey Negroes

(NSFW; racism and rape discussion ahead)

In Stravaganza: The Queen in the Iron Mask, Claria must defend her kingdom from a horde of Umber, these mindless gorilla-like beasts who look like Alf with white fur. We eventually learn there’s a poison that infects animals and drives them mad, so the queen sets out to find the source. It’s a dark fantasy tale in the seinen demographic, mixing violence with fanservice. It's not until Volume 2 of the omnibus, however, where this manga hits you with a double whammy of awful content. 

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

The racism starts as soon as Claria ventures into a vertically-oriented city of Reydin built by the Klord, a BLACK RACE OF MONKEY-TAILED PEOPLE. Having read halfway through the series already, I wanted to believe this was some misplaced form of flattery. “Having a prehensile tail can be cool, right?” Combining that factor with the big lips, and names like Tom Tom and Kum Kum, made such a dream impossible. Dignifying this weird shit would lead to a well-deserved loss of my Black card.

And yet, it was hard to look away from the proverbial train wreck.

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

I read on as our blonde heroine is forced to kill one of her Klord hosts in self-defense. (He tries licking her and tearing her clothes off, too, as a perversion of the attraction he had while still sane.) The village constable doesn’t care for Claria's explanation, and doesn't believe she's been traveling around for a poison cure. Claria is swiftly thrown in jail, where she is stripped, assaulted, and whipped for supposed spy secrets. It turns out these Klord really love whipping people? 

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

It would not have taken Akihito Tomi much effort to see how this content might offend. Yes, I understand Stravaganza is fiction. And no, Tomi isn’t obliged to create content anyone agrees with. Most Klord in the comic are nonviolent (until the city is poisoned, that is). In real life, Black people sometimes have big lips and can be quite athletic. But do you see what’s happening here? We can excuse any sort of creative decisions by appealing to tangential facts. What are the relevant facts, then, when it comes to Stravaganza and comic book racism?

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

While there are other kinds of humanoids in this comic—ogres and giants come to mind—the Klord are the only ones that rely on and reinforce tropes that were used to cause social harms to real people. Now, it’s commonly argued that racism as we know it in America has no cultural context in Japan, so their Jim Crow depictions are abstractions without meaning. I doubt that level of ignorance is possible in 2024, but let’s make that concession: a broader view of racism would at least criticize Tomi’s lazy design choices behind Reydin, the Klord, and their afro-sporting king who looks like he was pulled from a disco party. There’s plenty of contemporary anime and manga that doesn’t raise these flags with its Black characters.

If I finish this series, I’ll use scanlations or something. The idea of paying to read the rest makes me feel icky.

Currently Watching - May 2024

Life’s changed a lot since my posts from TEN YEARS AGO. (I’m bald now, for starters). The shows I watch are often chosen with consideration of my wife’s interests. She’s not an anime maniac like I am, but really enjoyed Frieren last season. 

Here’s what I’m into this month:

Konosuba 3

Konosuba 3 starts off by mocking Kazuma’s trauma from the feature film, Legend of Crimson. It really shouldn’t be funny, but it is, which reminds me a lot of the irreverent comedy you would see in a show like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. From there, Kazuma gets sucked into babysitting a princess, swapping bodies, dying, and some other shit I can’t even get into here. There’s an overarching plot to find lost relics from other reincarnated Japanese like Kazuna, but who cares?

Konosuba’s the kind of series I can’t really explain to people; you just have to watch it. Every character is both stupid and depraved. Every conflict devolves into screaming. It’s pathetic, but so fucking funny.

Date a Live V

I marathoned this show’s previous four seasons last year, which may explains why I can’t follow anything happening this season. The copious amount of spirits Shido has in his harem is also dizzying, so why not add another? The strangest thing is that the opening and closing themes show me exactly what’s going to happen in this season. Like, why? I’m still gonna watch, but damn, leave some things to my imagination.

Like most of the Internet, however, I’m drawn to Kurumi Tokisaki. If there’s a true pairing here, she seems to be The One. I doubt Shido’s the type to choose, though. He’s just gonna go the Tenchi Muyo Ryo-Ohki route and marry all of them, isn’t he.

Spice and Wolf (2024)

Someone recommended the original series to me over a decade ago. From what I can tell, this seems to be a retelling of that story. Being only one episode in, I really like the atmosphere so far. Feels like I’m in store for a Kino’s Journey vibe, filled with repugnant and strange people living lives they’re too self-involved with to rationalize. The early 2000s energy is strong with this one. 

All you need to know is that Holo is a cute wolf-humanoid god, and she’s tired of helping out a host of ungrateful villagers who have abandoned their faith. A traveling merchant is gonna bring her back home so she can… retire, maybe? We’ll see.

Bridgerton Season 3

Not an anime at all but my wife’s fervor for this is as hardcore as any otaku’s. The Polin ship is honestly weird to me; nevertheless, this show gets its claws into you and doesn’t let go. I would love to take a shot every time someone exits a conversation with an awkward “Excuse me.” 

Nelson the Ever Living

It's like, 4:22AM on a Saturday? 

Anyway, last time I posted to The Anime Guardians was ten years ago? That's craaaaazy. A lot's changed, but those details will seep into the blog over time. 

It's no secret I like to write, and a colleague of mine recommended I develop my online presence in preparation for future publishing opportunities, so I figured reanimating this blog would be the best choice. Do people know what Blogger is anymore? I doubt it. But I'm too apathetic to switch to Medium, and too Twitter/X averse to write 52-thread posts about why people should read Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. This is all I know. I need a regular writing practice as I gear up for bigger projects, so why not revive a passion project? 

Anyway, if you've made it this far, thanks. I've unpublished the old posts because they were straight-up cringe. Will someone ungrave them with the Wayback Engine and laugh at my depressive Katawa Shoujo posts? Maybe. But I was 21 years old back then, so shut up. 

In case you've forgotten who I am, I'm Nelson aka @oldmannelson on X. By the time I go back to sleep, hopefully this enthusiasm remains and you won't wait another ten years to hear from me again. Until then, keep watching anime and reading manga and gaming like the otaku you are.