D-Obscusion X: A Decade of Obscure & Forgotten Degeneracy

I know nobody knows where it comes and where it goes, but when you talk about things that nobody cares, or wearing out things that nobody wears, & when nobody's calling your name but you gotta make clear that you you can't say where you'll be in a year... And, boy, was the year 2020 a real good liar, 'cause the world stage boogie certainly set our pants on fire! There's nothing I can say about how the world itself, & especially the country I live in, that hasn't already been said online this entire year, so how about how things worked out for me? Admittedly, I got lucky in that the global pandemic didn't do anything with my actual job beyond changing me into an ad hoc employee, coming in to work when needed, while still getting paid regularly, since I have a salary; I wish everyone got that kind of treatment. Still, that resulted in me having a lot more time to write for the blog, & already I've put out slightly more this year than I did last year. However, all this extra time also got me thinking, likely too much so, about something:

Have these past 10 years of The Land of Obscusion really amounted to anything?

"Legacy" is something that no one naturally thinks of when they start doing something, and for some the concept never really comes to mind. However, the longer & longer you do the same thing, I think it's only human to start wondering if what you've been doing has any "point" to it, beyond doing so simply because you enjoy doing it; you don't have to think this, but I just think it's natural. This is all the more so when you do something in which the entire point is for others to experience it, such as writing. Really, the catalyst for this came this past May with the sudden passing of Zac Bertschy, Editorial Director for Anime News Network. There's no doubt that Zac was a polarizing person, and some might argue that he purposefully played it up as a way to encourage good conversation, but there's no denying that he left behind a legacy for ANN, one that transitioned the site from a simple "news & review site" into one that actively encouraged its visitors to not just enjoy anime/manga/games/etc., but also dig deeper & search for why they loved it, while also encouraging people to call out its problems (both meta & industry-wide) & hope for improvements. I certainly had my grievances with Zac at times, though nothing that reached into hateful, but I always had the highest respect for him & seeing how his death affected so many (including myself), regardless of whether they personally knew him or never even interacted with him online at all, made me start to think about what this blog's entire relevancy even is, after a decade in operation.

Of course, I'm in no way comparing my writings about obscure & forgotten anime, manga, games, & whatnot to the sheer reach Zac had on North American anime fandom & journalism; to do so would be embarrassingly fruitless & egotistic. That being said, I've been doing this blog for an entire damn decade, something I never even considered back when I put up the first post on December 1, 2010, and in that time I have seen the rise (& some falls) of other people who put themselves out there online with their opinions about similar subjects. Some of them started either around the same time as me or years later, yet have achieved recognition that I still can only dream of. Admittedly, these might not exactly be "heights" to them, but to me they're things I still look up at; it's all about perspective, after all. I try to prevent jealousy from taking over, as I have nothing but joy for their achievements, but whenever someone tries to praise them for said recognition, they tend to respond with a simple "Oh, come on, it's nothing special," like they were Chopper from One Piece, only without the playful insults. While I love seeing that kind of humility, as it's something that you often feel is missing from a lot of people (especially online), it hits me like a ton of bricks, because while to them it might feel like nothing, to others it can feel like an insurmountable wall.

You got a pull quote on the back cover of an anime/manga release, you were asked to provide commentary on a subject that others feel you are knowledgeable in, you were invited to be a guest at a small little convention because you managed to get a following of some sort, or some other achievement that doesn't come about to just anyone. All I'm saying is to take some modicum of pride in what you've accomplished, because it's not something small or irrelevant that just about anyone can achieve. In some way, you came at the "right" time, in the "right" place, with the "right" method, & about the "right" subject, and no matter how much you might not feel that way, the facts don't lie. I've always been of the feeling that the opinions of others are what determine things like "expertise", "relevancy", & "legacy", because it's not something that you yourself can define. It means that others find great value in what you say, and they want you to be known to more people, because they feel you are worth it. To me, acknowledgement is the highest regard out there, because it's usually something people don't necessarily make public; one doesn't need it, but one also has no control over it.

(That being said, I'd likely also be humble if something like that happened to me, though I would never consider it "not a big deal")

But who am I speak, right? In that regard, I've self-sabotaged this entire endeavor's chances at becoming anything noteworthy from the very beginning, 10 years ago. I chose to leave the world of making YouTube videos right as that was starting to really fire up & start back up as effectively text-only (I originally only used title splash images in my reviews!), which has more or less become a niche, unless you write for a major site like ANN or Crunchyroll. I mean, even Chris Beveridge, whose site The Fandom Post covers more than just anime & manga, is on the verge of closing his site down for good. At the same time, podcasting was also starting to bubble up & become what it is now a pretty hot commodity, but while I have since gotten somewhat used to hearing my own recorded voice, I never really had any interest in producing a podcast. I went to university to learn to be a journalist, so it only felt natural for me to go into writing a blog; "wrong" time, "wrong" place, with the "wrong" method. Of course, all of this is kind of moot simply because I purposefully chose a direction that, obviously, would never be considered the "right" subject. Obscurities are unknown & forgotten for all sorts of valid & legitimate reasons, and while some certainly have fun dipping their toes into that vast ocean on occasion, either because of pure curiosity or because they want to have an easy joke (though, sadly, it tends to be the latter), there's no logical reason for anyone to make that their forte, as effectively "no one" cares about that kind of stuff. The person who would decide to make obscure & forgotten anime/manga, the equivalent to the non-existent 10th level of Hell, their forte would have to be some sort of insane maniac who'd be fine with never drawing a mill, let alone a dime.

All that being said, I wouldn't change a thing about this whole endeavor. Yes, it often feels like I'm just throwing out long, detailed writings about stuff that simply just gets lost in the digital æther, but I'd be lying if I was to say that this has become boring, lackluster, or rote. Sure, not everything I write about is some lost gem that's simply been buried under the sands of time, some of them have been downright torturous, but a lot of it has either been fun, cool, interesting, amusing, or even truly a gem that few (if any) even know of. In last year's 9th Anniversary piece I brought up my feelings on potentially putting an end to the blog, if only because 10 years felt like a good stopping point. Of course, this has always been nothing more than me weighing myself down, and it's something that I will likely always have to deal with.

I put it on myself to put out new writings with some sort of semi-consistency.

I put it on myself to think that there has to be some sort of reason or "point" to me continuing to do this blog.

I put it on myself to feel that I could possibly have anything even resembling a "legacy" by doing this.

I put it on myself to have some inkling that what I choose to do here should have some relative importance, even if only minutely.

I put it on myself to consider that, should I not follow through on any that, I should then just put a stop to it, because of some self-conceived concept that I need to "succeed", in some way.

None of that style of thinking is healthy, and I should prevent myself from thinking that way; there's challenging yourself, and then there's just being dumb. So what if I never get a pull quote? So what if I never get an opportunity to contribute in any way to an official release? So what if I wind up being the "right" guy in the "wrong" place at the "wrong" time with the "wrong" subject? This is the path I've chosen, I have no regrets in doing so, and there's no doubt that it's allowed for so much to happen to me. This blog has resulted in me meeting & befriending so many different people, it made me want to start doing panels at anime cons (which I managed to do once, virtually, this year), & this blog even resulted in fansub group Orphan contacting me for help with their effort to fansub AWOL Compression Re-MIX, as the translation they used was sourced from the AWOL TV VHS tapes I watched & recorded to DVD for that review. I even got tagged by the Video Game History Foundation twice in the same month this year! Really, all I'm trying to say is that I have no intention of putting an to The Land of Obscusion at the moment, though should that ever happen I do promise to put out a "final farewell" of sorts.

I expect much rejoicing at this news.

That being said, there will be some changes starting in 2021, the main one being the possibility of fewer "traditional" reviews. Taking into consideration the Anime Secret Santa review coming this Christmas Eve, I'll have written 257 reviews, and those will be given less focus from there on out. I'll still be writing them, but I also have plans of doing write-ups of various series & parts of franchises, ones which will combine multiple productions into a single piece, instead of reviewing them individually, like I would in the past. For example, I've long wanted to cover stuff like the original One Piece TV specials, the Locke the Superman anime productions, & even Weiß Kreuz (hey, I can't cover the OVAs we never got without covering the rest, right?), but wasn't into the idea of having to write 11 separate, in-depth reviews for that, but doing three general overviews for these makes more sense. I'll also be looking into writing more thematic overviews, like writing about the two 3D anime released on the obscure VHD home video format in the 80s. Meanwhile, segments like Demo Disc, Retrospect in Retrograde, Obscusion B-Side, & any Twelve Anime lists will stay the same as they were. As for consistency, while I have definitely improved in terms of lessening the self-imposed load, I feel I can still lessen that feeling a bit more. Over the course of these ten years I have only ever taken a single, solitary break of any real length, which was the entire month of April 2019; I had considered a break this year, but (like a lot of things) the pandemic changed those plans. So if I plan to take another extended break like that, I'll make that known ahead of time.

Anyway, for this month you can expect three main things. First, in just four days, I'll be celebrating the first review ever done on this blog as I give Haja Taisei Dangaioh the Retrospect in Retrograde treatment, 10 years TO THE DAY after the original review was published. After that there'll be the return of the "favorite posts" list, this time covering both 2019 & 2020. Finally, as mentioned previously, there'll be a review put out in time for the Holidays as part of All Geeks Considered's (formerly Reverse Thieves') yearly Anime Secret Santa. After that, I currently have a light January 2021 planned, as I put out two lists: One bringing up what I feel have been the best anime I have reviewed so far on the blog, and one covering the "most interesting" anime (because just covering the "worst" would be kind of boring). After that, we'll just have to see what comes to mind, though this may very well be the final Anniversary post for the blog; I mean, after ten years, what else is there to say, in this regard?

Regardless, whether you're a relatively new visitor of the blog or someone that has (somehow) kept up with this since December 2010, let me just say "Thank you so very much". While the comments aren't common here, they've almost always been positive, which is just something you don't really come across online; I've had the rare negative comment, which I don't delete, but even those are pretty tame. Across this decade, I've only ever outright deleted something I posted once, and that was because it was me being annoyed about something, and eventually I just felt that it didn't fit the (generally) positive & curious mood I want The Land of Obscusion to have; even when I cover something terrible, I try to find the positive, or at least the potential it had. I know that negativity is what tends to "sell" online, but I promise to always make this blog a place where one can enjoy themselves with a fun feeling of curiosity & discovery. There's so much out there than you'd normally never think of but sometimes, to quote now-defunct J-rock band Outlaw (from one of their very last songs), "Seen the sky? Seen the clouds? Have you even seen the blue sky?". For something to become obscure and/or forgotten, that means that the memories of those very things were tossed aside by others, but they will never actually stop existing and instead simply become part of the "great blue sky" of media history. All you need to do is take the time to look up & see for yourself. After all, to quote Outlaw once more (& from the same song):

"Memories, even if abandoned over & over, will still remain as memories. That's why you should relish & accept them, as that'll be the first time you'll truly understand them. Even though the daily repetition of life may tie our hands up at points, those memories will, sometimes, wrap us in a gentle embrace."

And some say Beet the Vandel Buster had nothing of worth to it...