How Anime Made Superheroes Irrelevant by HoldMyDualshock
Though I find a lot of these points valid, it's kind of ironic, because I enjoy the superhero movies that are repeatedly cited in this video essay as examples of bad movies (too reliant on "bathos", as per the premise of this video essay). Thor Ragnarok, Thor Love & Thunder, Guardians of the Galaxy movies, James Gunn's Superman, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad,…and I've only heard good things about James Gunn's Peacemaker series.
I wonder if this is related to the stage of media I grew up during. I was a Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan, at the time when its creator's sense of humor felt fresh and new. It was subversive in a way we were ready for at the time. I watched Coppola's Dracula and loved it. It released 5 years before the Buffy series. I didn't grow up on "Monster Squad" and I didn't get attached to Scooby Doo. I watched Dark Shadows (1991) and Forever Knight. But I also watched X-Files, Sam Rami's Hercules, Xena Warrior Princess, etc. We were not lacking in sincerity back then. So when the villains in Buffy The Vampire Slayer would break their own "aura farming" (as the kids say), to make a joke, it was genuinely funny. Maybe that's why I still find the MCU's bathos humor funny.
I loved when Thor threw that ball at the window and it bounced right back at his head. I loved when The Master switched from his speech about the signs and earthquakes pointing to the fulfillment of a prophecy that would grant him power, to asking someone's opinion on the magnitude of the earthquake.
I still like sincerity, sure. Sincere, earnest characters are one of my favorite archetypes. I love anime, manga, and all the sincerity that this video essay speaks about. But the current generation talks like they are desperate for it. Like they are oversaturated and done with anything less. But I guess they did grow up with the MCU, with Snyder's Superman movies, with so many movies trying to emulate the MCU, etc. For them, that was half their lives. For me, far less. I grew up with an endless stock of sincere media. I had room for both bathos and pathos. Maybe because I was already well stocked on exposure to pathos, I had room for bathos. I guess the kids have every right to act starved and hungry for pathos these days. Because they are.
Well, there are like 20-30 anime every season, and 4 seasons EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Plus manga. And light novels. And manhwa. And Web Toons. And Chinese comics. Is it really a loss to just drop American (superhero) movies?
That sounds like a convenient cut to a backlog to me. Especially in a world where everyone has a backlog in MULTIPLE MEDIUMS: movies, series, comics (from any country), podcasts, YouTube channels, Twitch streamers, books, videogames, etc.
(Y'know, frankly, I don't have much room for Western IPs either. That's why I've been so surprised that my last several big fandoms have been Arcane, Nimona 2023, and KPop Demon Hunters. But aside from those, I've been on back-to-back fixations on Japanese videogames, anime, manga, and tokusatsu. Is there really time for much else?)