ObscusionMania XV: The Märchen of Wasure Works

Man, has it really been five years since I wrote something for the blog's 10th Anniversary? Yeah, after 10 straight years I decided that I'd only do more of these every five years, and that time has come. The last time I did one of these I was 34 years old, and now I'm half a year away from hitting 40. That sure is wild to think about, since I was 24 when I decided to ditch making (extremely poor quality) YouTube videos & go to the written word, a medium that has sadly only become (seemingly) more & more irrelevant to the masses over time, though there are plenty who continue to put in the good work in this field. Over the course of these 15 years I have seen the rise of talented people, the fall (or, at least, disgrace) of those who were once big, the sudden stops of those who were once on the rise (especially over in the "AniTube" community), and the continued existence of others who are simply in it for the love of the game (both figuratively & literally), and if there's one thing I can say without a shadow of doubt when it comes to my place in all of this... it's this:

I will have contributed little to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Get it? Because a 15th Anniversary is represented by crystal?
Also, I finally read all of Sailor Moon (& Sailor V) this year.

I know that's something that some do not want to read, hear, or see others say about themselves, but it is a simple truth of the matter... and I'm absolutely fine & content with that. Back in the 10th Anniversary piece I wrote about the concept of "legacy", and how there really won't be much of one at all for The Land of Obscusion, when all is said & done. That's not to say that there's been no value at all in what I've done by writing about obscure & forgotten anime/manga/gaming/media/etc., & the occasional bit of history that others would never focus on, as I have had people (both those who I've never met & those who I have the utmost respect for) tell me that they enjoy what I've written & that I do provide something that is sometimes clearly needed, i.e. a unique alternative to what's usually focused on. However, at the same time, the moment I finally decide to put my figurative pen down & leave this blog as nothing more than a time capsule of an era in my life I know that nothing I'll have done here will have made any real, true impact on English anime fandom. My writings here will live on, at least until Google ever kills off Blogspot/Blogger wholesale (but there's always the Wayback Machine, to some extent), but there's really nothing that any of what I wrote about will have changed fandom, overall. As I've stated before in prior anniversary posts, I'm more or less just posting into the void; plus, I'd rather come off as self-denigrating than act as though I'm doing anything even remotely groundbreaking.

Now, to be fair, in the five years since the 10th Anniversary I have had some amazing opportunities come my way. I was able to contribute a single-page write-up for the Super Robot Wars series in Hardcore Gaming 101's stellar A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games in 2021, & I actually got to do something else more recently, but that's still on the down low... so keep it a secret, OK? I was allowed to write a piece about Hareluya II BØY for Anime News Network in 2022, due to that show actually getting licensed, & it had always been a bit of a bucket list wish to write something for ANN. I was asked by Star Fruit Books to contribute a piece for the first issue of their Comic Bright manga magazine, though due to the tragic passing of founder Matt Haasch earlier this year who knows if that'll ever get published; it was about Team Astro, because Matt gave me free rein to pick a subject. I was even offered the chance by Right Stuf's "Dark Lord" Shawne Kleckner in late 2021 to record a commentary for the Blu-Ray re-release of Dirty Pair TV that he was about to launch a Kickstarter campaign for...  which I actually turned down due to my relative unfamiliarity with the series, but considering the mess of a production that thing wound up becoming (Crunchyroll purchasing Right Stuf & Nozomi Entertainment in mid-2022 certainly didn't help things, but it was also partially self-inflicted due to feature creep) I honestly don't regret it; I do feel like I let down Shawne, sure, but I don't regret it.

Hell, I was even invited to attend Anime Boston in 2022 as a "Featured Panelist", which meant that they paid for my badge & even hotel room; it's the closest one can get to being a "Guest" without actually being one! Not just that, but I was even invited to do a panel at virtual convention Casa Con later this month; it'll be about Hareluya II BØY. Without a doubt, the past five years have allowed me to do things that I never thought would ever be possible during the blog's first 10, so clearly I must be doing something right. However, in the end, I still know that in the long run I'll just be some nobody that barely anyone knows about that did nothing of any real value when it comes to how people enjoy stuff like anime, manga, video games, etc. I've certainly made some minute impact on individuals in one way or another, and I've made some cool friends & acquaintances along the way, but that's all on a micro level, i.e. individual people. On a macro level, i.e. larger groups, I'm just some dude who knows what dude he is, and that's OK.

That's not to say that I went into all of this back on December 1, 2010 (or even the year+ stint on YouTube before that) with any intentions (or delusions) of becoming "popular", "influential", or "relevant", and in fact I honestly would rather never want to be any of that; I mean, have you seen what any of that does to people over the past 15-20 years?! But I also won't act like I didn't have at least some delusions that I could maybe, possibly, provide some sort of service by way of what I was planning on doing with The Land of Obscusion. As someone who was only 1.5 years out of college at the time this blog started I was definitely still just innocent & naïve enough to think that maybe, just maybe, if I wrote about the lesser known, forgotten, & outright obscure stuff then there could possibly be an off chance that someone in the industry would be reminded of a title I wrote about & it could one day get licensed, either for a re-release or even for the first time ever; after all, the entire point is to get others to check out (most of) the titles I review & cover. Needless to say, I quickly came to understand that such a hypothetical was more or less impossible, so instead the focus became mainly to just allow various lesser known, forgotten, or outright obscure titles be given some sort of recognition, even if barely anyone would actually read whatever I wrote.

And, to be fair, the only time an anime ever got licensed that had even the slightest non-zero chance that it happened due to me bringing some light to it (not saying that I definitely played a factor, but maybe it was a 0.000000000001% chance)... it was given that first-time opportunity in English by a company that seemingly didn't actually care about it in the first place, doing just barely more than literally nothing to promote it at all, and effectively leaving it to die in streaming purgatory; in other words, I guess it got exactly what it deserved from having me be the one who highlighted it. If nothing else, that's what can feel the most annoying about what I've been doing for the past 15 years: The feeling that the response from others is simply pure apathy, because it's something they're not already familiar with. For so long I have occasionally heard something along the line of "All of the best stuff has already been licensed & released" (it used to be said more back in the day, but even in just the past few years it's sadly come up again), and if there's one thing that I hope can be realized through this blog across the past 15 years it's that there are still plenty of good, great, excellent, stellar, or even just "interesting" titles that have either not been given a second chance after so long or simply have never been given a single chance at all; there have been some bad stuff I've covered, sure, but I think it's mostly been more good. And in today's English anime industry, where it's become so corporatized to the point where there are literally only three independently-owned companies still putting out physical releases on the regular (Discotek, AnimEigo, & Media Blasters), and for two of those companies the releases themselves are literally made by the same production house (MediaOCD), I feel like there's little real chance for those lesser known & obscure titles to be given a real opportunity now, especially physically. Sure, in the end it's all about the business side of things, but I can't help but care about the stuff that others normally don't.

In the end, the adage of "If you don't it, then who will?" still applies here... so let me tell you all a story from a couple of years ago, but today it's nothing more than a märchen, a literal fairy tale that could never happen.

I truly entered anime fandom in 2004, during what was essentially the peak of the 00s anime bubble in the United States & Canada, and since I got into it via a mix of fansubs & official releases it didn't take too long to start to remember some names within the industry. The likes of David Williams, Matt Greenfield, John Ledford (all from ADV & later Sentai), Shawne Kleckner (Right Stuf), Gen Fukunaga (FUNimation), Hideki "Henry" Goto (Geneon & later Aniplex of America), Robert Napton (Bandai Entertainment), & Lance Heiskell (FUNimation) all became people within the industry that I knew of by name, due to either their willingness to engage with the fandom online, constant appearances at industry panels at cons, news articles & press releases, etc., and every now & then there would be a fan who would talk about why this show or that movie or those anime never get licensed. Most would respond in more general terms, while others would be a bit more blunt (costs relative to notoriety, risk vs. reward, etc.), & others still would give legendary non-answers ("I can neither confirm nor deny" & "All good things come to those who wait"), but Lance always had the best response of all: "If you want it that badly, then maybe you should license it yourself". Now, to be fair, during the 00s bubble that response was obviously sarcastic due to the sheer amount pretty much any anime would cost to license back then (in 2012 ADV's lawsuit with Sojitz would tell all... and it was kind of absurd), but after that bubble crashed it was admitted that costs had dropped to something more reasonable, and once simulcasting became a regular thing costs would rise again, but primarily for brand new shows.

If you wanted to license old catalog works then prices seemed to be stay more reasonable, and Discotek Media (as well as Sentai Filmworks, at least early on) certainly looked to take advantage of that when "Mr. Discotek" would license seemingly anything he could get his hands on, no matter how "unviable" they were deemed previously. Obviously, this didn't mean that licensing anime was now "cheap", since it still likely cost upwards of thousands, & more likely tens of thousands, of dollars for even something that was less wanted &, therefore, cheaper. I'm certainly no businessman, so the idea of actually licensing an anime & giving it an official English release was something that would always sound interesting to me, but was constantly an impossibility. Still, I won't deny that I'd sometimes just think of the idea, of being able to work on an anime release to the best of my abilities & give it the chance that I know others wouldn't necessarily be willing to give it. I wouldn't be in it in an attempt at "making money" (though, to be fair, most would tell you that going into the business for that reason is a fool's errand), but rather I'd be in simply for the love of the medium, as a sort of way to give back to the industry for everything it's given me, both as a fan & as a (for lack of a better word) "critic". Hell, I once sent an e-mail to Dentsu USA back in around 2009 or 2010 (it was definitely after I graduated from college, I know that) as a lark, faking as though I was starting a company with some friends to license anime... and they responded back with a PDF of their licensing catalog, no questions asked, so I had a feeling that there would be at least one licensor out there willing to give some nobody a chance; no, I don't have that PDF or the e-mail response I got anymore.

And then one day in 2024 a friend of mine asked if I was interested in licensing anime during a car ride.

For the sake of privacy, let's just call my friend "Taro". Compared to me, Taro definitely knew his stuff when it came to "business". His family operated one of the various shops found in Penn Station in New York City, i.e. the train station right below Madison Square Garden, and while in college he worked there & eventually had some form of a managerial position that he was good at. He later also was able to purchase two small homes on the same road I live on & still rents them out to tenants, doing what he can as a good landlord for them, so he certainly knows how to handle things like expenses, collecting what's owed to him, making repairs (i.e. "grunt work"), etc. Simply put, Taro knows how to handle both money &, from a sense of the word, "business", and money was something he had to work with (& I could certainly help out with). It was during that car ride when he simply asked "Would you be interested in licensing an anime?" to me, and needless to say I was taken aback. I, understandably, responded with "Are you serious?" & when he said that he was I figured that I might as well accept, because even if nothing would ultimately come of this I should at least see how serious Taro was about it. I have no idea why Taro brought this up to me suddenly & out of the blue, though I do wonder if part of it (even if only a small bit) was due to him being a relatively new father; his baby boy was in the back seat with us during this trip, so maybe that played a factor of some sort.

Regardless, we started talking & (after both this initial car ride convo & a couple of later conversations) we more or less had a lot of the same general ideas behind how we'd handle this. First, we both agreed that this would be something we would do on the side, as neither of us were planning on dropping our day jobs for this. This tied into the second idea, which was that our goal was simply to offer titles that the other companies no doubt had absolutely no interest in, and that we weren't planning anything "major" from this. Our goal was to be a small operation that, in essence, would compliment the bigger names, not actively compete with them; our mere existence would be competition, sure, but that'd simply be passively. Third, while we would obviously start with only a single title to get our feet wet & acclimate to the procedure of producing a physical release (as that was always our end goal), we agreed that an ideal production pace in the long term for us would be, at best, no more than three to five releases per year; streaming was something we acknowledged, but physical was our focus. Fourth, if we were to license rescue something then we'd naturally include an English dub if one was available to include, but for titles that had previously not been given an English release then it'd be sub-only, as we both fully understood how expensive dubbing would be. Fifth, we were going to keep our print runs low as much as we could, because we knew that (more than likely) we wouldn't be selling all that much; if we were to potentially sell out then I imagine we would have done another print run, though. We were going to go into this knowing that we likely wouldn't make money from it, hence why we were planning on doing it on the side, while we continued our day jobs. In essence, we were aiming to be more akin to something like Anime Midstream (only minus the dubbing) than something like Discotek Media, and that's pretty much why I felt Taro was the guy I could potentially do this with. Sure, he was a close friend, but he also seemed completely reasonable in his goals.

Of course, eventually we agreed that if we were going to seriously do this, & wanted to start contacting potential licensors, we would need a name for what we were planning to do.

While I'm not fully sure how often my buds actually read this blog, as I only bring it up to them on rare occasion (usually in reference to "What anime have you been watching?", since the majority of what I watch is in relation to something I'm writing about), Taro did remember it & wondered if we could call ourselves "Obscusion Entertainment". It's a name I've joked about using on social media a handful of times, but I've honestly felt that it wasn't all that appealing as an actual business name. It's definitely unique, which is imperative in business (just look at what happened to Azuki, which recently had to chance its name to "Omoi" due to brand confusion coming from other companies with the same name), but "Obscusion" was always something I came up with on a whim & just wound up sticking with over time. Also, I didn't want to give off the feeling that this whole thing was solely my idea, since Taro was the one who asked me, & I didn't feel right using a nonsense portmanteau word (that itself was referencing a song by Genesis) that only I use. Plus, I've had more than enough people be confused over the word by either confusing it for something else (like "Obfuscation", despite that word being about making something more obscure, not less) or mispronouncing it (it's "Ub-skew-zhn", not "Ub-skuh-shin"), and I didn't want to deal with that on a "professional" level. However, in thinking of a "proper" name for our hypothetical company I managed to come up with something that I felt worked really well, fit out goal of bringing over titles most wouldn't think of, & had tons of multiple interpretations that could be taken from it: Wasure Works.

In Japanese, the term "忘れ/wasure" has a common message behind it. "Wasuremono" refers to something that's been left behind or forgotten. "Wasureru" refers to the act of forgetting something. "Wasureppai" refers to someone being forgetful. "Wasurekakeru" refers to the act of starting to forget something. "Wasurewareru" refers to something becoming forgotten, or even slipping into obscurity. A "wasurebana" is in reference to something being a late bloomer. However, the term can also be used for the opposite meaning. A "wasuregatami" is a keepsake, souvenir, or memento from someone has since passed, and in some ways (possibly older ones) can even refer to an orphaned child. Meanwhile, "wasurerarenai", "wasuregatai", "wasure'enu", & "wasuremoshinai" all refer to something being unforgettable, in some sense. And the one that got my attention the most would be "wasurenagusa", the Japanese term for the flower Myosotis, better known by its colloquial name, "forget-me-not". There's also the "wasuregusa", which is the tawny daylily, a flower known for lasting only a single day; apparently "wasuregusa" also once referred to tobacco, amusingly enough. Admittedly, at the time I was only really thinking of the "forget-me-not" symbolism, but looking back the tawny daylily looks to symbolize things like passion, enthusiasm, joy, rejuvenation, & positive energy in general, and it just reinforces how strong (& alliterative, which is always a plus in my book) I felt the name "Wasure Works" was.

In short, Wasure Works was going to be the company that would remember the titles that others had forgotten, the obscurities that are late in finally getting their official English release, the orphaned titles that had been left behind... and (ideally) some of them would be simply unforgettable. My idea was that we would be "The Forget-Me-Not of the English Anime Industry" bringing over "The Titles You Never Knew You Wanted"; OK, that second quip is admittedly really cheesy, but I kind of like it.

I love this image (& message), and am always
happy whenever I see someone share it on social media.

Sure, going with a Japanese word like "Wasure" for our American company sounds a bit weebish, but the English anime/manga industry is no stranger to that concept when it comes to company names (AnimEigo, Sentai Filmworks, Nozomi Entertainment, Yen Press, TokyoPop, Azuki/Omoi, etc.), & since our focus would be on anime I felt that fans would be able to quickly understand what the goal of a company like "Wasure Works" was by its name alone. Taro initially didn't want to immediately agree on a name, but eventually admitted that "Wasure Works" really did work, so for all intents & purposes that's what we agreed on. Admittedly, in retrospect, "Wasure Works" could have simply been a label name, similar to how Discotek has Eastern Star (for anime), Nihon Nights (for live-action), & Toku Time (for tokusatsu), but let's move on. Regardless, I really did feel that "Wasure Works" was the perfect name for an outfit whose entire goal was to give titles that were forgotten with time a chance, whether it was for the first time or once again. And, as I said earlier, my intention was never to compete with other companies when it came to licensing titles, so hypothetically if we were to inquire about a potential title to license & were told that another company was looking into licensing it then I'd simply move on to something else; maybe if that other company was to never actually put it out then we could return to it. Again, competition was something I didn't want to engage in, because I felt (& still feel now) that there is still more than enough anime out there that actively competing shouldn't be a thing... unless you're working with simulcasts, i.e. brand new titles, but that wasn't going to be a thing for us at all.

So... did Taro & I have have any experience in the production side of things? Well, from a professional standpoint not at all (the most I did was some DVDs I made back in the mid-00s for myself, while Taro told me that he used to do some timing & checking on fansubs for a short period way back when), but I would imagine that's partially why Taro thought about asking me: Connections. Simply put, after 15 years of doing this blog & engaging with various people in the anime/manga fandom, some of which either already were or are now a part of the anime/manga industry, I think I knew enough people (or, at the very least, people who know people) that I could find ones to hire to handle the aspects of the job that Taro & I weren't as experienced in: I admittedly don't have a ton of connections, but I think could "friend of a friend" through things. And, truly, I was fully ready to start calling in whatever favors I could, if need be. While I certainly can't speak on behalf of Taro, I can speak in regards to what kind of releases I was envisioning for Wasure Works, at least in a general sense. First & foremost, I wanted Wasure Works to be a way to give not just lesser-known & forgotten anime a chance, but also talented people a spotlight.

One aspect I had envisioned would be that, while outright dubbing stuff would be a no-go, I was at least interested in producing English-narrated trailers for anything we would license. While this was obviously for the sake of simple promotion, I also wanted to give people who were looking to do voice work, but were new (or simply turned off of the industry itself, for various reasons) & therefore maybe wouldn't be given too many opportunities, a chance to at least do something that they could add to their CV & help showcase their talents, even if only in a small way. Ideally this would also potentially allow us to maybe have some fun with the idea, too, by going with certain people that might relate to the work in some way. For example, if we were to have licensed an anime based on a fighting game then maybe we could have had tried to ask a respected & known name in the FGC to narrate the trailer, for some of that cross-promotional fun. And, of course, I was fully intending on paying these people what they truly were worth, which is something that had always been a bit of a sticking point when it comes to freelancers in the anime/manga industry, worldwide. While Taro did mention using AI (non-generative, in this case) for stuff like assisting with subtitle timing by quickly finding spikes in the audio where speech was happening, though I'm pretty sure professional timers in anime still rely mainly on doing it manually (I think he was going off of the idea of doing that stuff ourselves), we were 100% against using AI for translation, captioning, etc.; quality releases are done by quality people who are paid accordingly, after all.

The other idea I had, though, was the one I had even more passion & interest in doing: Context Notes. If there's one thing I think anyone who's been reading my stuff can tell it's that I always do whatever I can to explain the backstory behind whatever I'm writing about, and that's mainly because it's something that is so rarely done by the companies putting these things out, or even some other outlets that write about this stuff. The best you usually get are maybe the occasional release that includes liner notes, but aside from maybe a company like Criterion or Arrow Video it's something that's rarely included, and especially so for anime. Discotek does do them on occasion, but it's still something that I really wish was done more often, simply because I always feel that offering proper context to something can help out a lot in allowing one to better enjoy something, especially if it's an older & lesser known work; everything has a history to it, because nothing just appears from a void. So that was something I really wanted to push for inclusion in any potential release from Wasure Works, and I felt that calling them "Context Notes" just made for cool marketing, as I wanted them to feel like more than simply "liner" notes. And, just like with the English-narrated trailers, my goal was to allow Context Notes to be a way to give people who knew certain subjects a chance to share their knowledge & experience in a way they likely wouldn't be able to otherwise. Anime about riichi mahjong, for example, is considered impossible to release in English (at least physically), but what if it included some sort of write-up for not just providing context to the show itself, but also helping give a general primer about how the game is played? That's just one hypothetical example I had in mind when it came to Context Notes, and it's the concept I was most interested in implementing. Since then I've been pointed out about the trickiness of the logistics of getting those kinds of things approved by licensors (translating them into Japanese, approvals, etc.), but I still would have tried to see what could be done for them, even if it was solely having them on a website, or something. For me, this was what I wanted to help make Wasure Works unique when compared to everyone else, because since we were going to deal with lesser known titles I felt it was imperative to let people know why they should watch these titles, & not simply if they should.

But, anyway, we started to make small steps forward in these regards (having a reasonable goal in mind, thinking up a name/brand, knowing what we wanted to do for our releases, etc.), but nothing would really move forward until we actually made that first real step: Contacting a licensor. Taro more or less left the idea of figuring out how to do that to me, and my plan was to do it the old-fashioned way... cold calling e-mailing any licensor that had a US division; hey, it worked for Anime Midstream. So I looked up whatever company I could think of that licensed out anime & had some sort of US division, checked if they had either a "Contact Us" form or an e-mail address that was publicly available, and started looking over their catalogs to see what titles we might be interested in. I definitely wound up accumulating a ton of hypothetical titles, but I would whittle that down to something more reasonable, and especially since we both agreed that, ideally, we should start with something like a movie or short OVA series; we were not going to go straight to TV anime. Eventually Taro asked me to write up an introductory letter that we could send out to any potential licensors, to see if any would find the concept of Wasure Works interesting enough to want to enter proper communications with. In the end I had one specific licensor in mind, especially since their US division was based out of New York City (so, if need be, we could actually visit them in person to show how serious we were about this), but I held off on actually sending anything, as I wanted to make sure Taro was fully ready. Taro, being the business mind, was trying to figure out how to properly establish the company (whether it'd be an LLC, something else, etc.), so he was a little hesitant to send anything out before we were properly established. I understood that, especially since this was all his idea, but at the same time I felt that if we never send anything out then nothing would ever happen.

During this time Otakon was coming into view, so we decided to take a small break from preparing ourselves for any theoretical Wasure Works business & enjoy the con, for the most part. Taro, though, did want me to see if we could maybe get some advice from people in the business, and since I was the one with the connections it was up to me to pop the question, at some point. I more or less had a feeling what the answer to such a question would be, but eventually I managed to bring it up to one of the acquaintances I had spoken to in the past (admittedly not one of the closer ones I have, but one I at least have tons of respect for)... and they gave me the response I was expecting: A simple "No..." in disbelief, not sure if I was being truly serious about wanting to license an anime. I assured them that I was serious in that me & my friend were considering it, and after some admitted needling the next response didn't necessarily surprise me but it did disappoint me a little bit:

"But you'd be my competition!"

Now, don't get me wrong here. I wasn't so aloof that I didn't expect to get that kind of response, because in some way it was true. The physical release side of the English anime industry is a niche market within a niche market, despite anime being more "mainstream" here now than it ever had been previously. Part of the reason why the industry has become the way it is is due to simple economics that even I can understand, i.e. the bigger names have more or less all been absorbed by larger corporations (Sony, AMC Networks, Plaion/Embracer, Cineverse, etc.), and whatever remains for the independently-owned side of things more or less have to deal with the figurative "scraps"; and, baby, that's anime business for you (yeah, even I can throw out a Taylor Swift reference!). I eventually did manage to get a basic "You can contact me later" from them after bringing up that we'd naturally would be up for working with them in some way to produce our releases, but needless to say it was expected but still a little hurting. You look at the English manga industry & you'll hear about how new upstarts like Star Fruit Books or Manga Mavericks Books asked for advice & assistance before going public & actually getting it readily and without any hesitation, and though part of that certainly plays into how companies like them aren't inherently aiming for the same exact type of manga as the bigger publishers (indie manga, or working directly with mangaka, vs. big name publishers) it's still a noticeable difference in how welcoming of newcomers the two sides of the same effective coin can be.

However, in hindsight, the idea that someone like me was potentially seen right away as "competition" could also maybe be taken as them understanding that, deep down, me & Taro could maybe, just maybe, actually get it done. I mean, if we had absolutely no chance in hell of getting even a single release out then why even entertain that idea... right? Nah, I doubt that, too.

Anyway, despite how things went down, once Otakon came to an end Taro & I spent a good amount of the roughly four-hour drive back to New Jersey talking about our plans & ideas for Wasure Works, going back & forth between the kinds of titles we'd love to work on (not listing anything specific... because you never know), the kinds of things we'd like to try to include, and discussing the differences between our philosophies in how to get things done... and that was the last either of us ever brought up the idea of licensing anime. Again, this entire idea was started by Taro, so I never sent that e-mail to any licensors, and nothing about forming an LLC or the like ever came up from him ever again. To be fair, Taro has had another child since Otakon last year, so I can hazard a guess that his priorities in life have greatly changed following that; he probably felt he could still do it with one kid, but having two would make things too complicated. And, with that, we come to the end of "The Märchen of Wasure Works", a fairy tale that (depending on how you want to frame it) ended in failure, hasn't yet ended... or maybe even never got started in the first place. Remember, not every fairy tale necessarily ends with "And they lived happily ever after". To be blunt, what happened with me & Taro is something that I'm sure has happened to plenty other anime fans every year, i.e. stating intentions of "doing it themselves" but nothing coming of it, so this story is truly nothing unique in that regard. Still, I thought that it'd be a fun little story to tell for this 15th Anniversary, even if there's really no lesson, moral, or even point to it all.

Could the dream of Wasure Works ever get revived? Maybe, I have no idea, but I still do have the list of licensors & anime that I had compiled, as well as the introductory letter I had written & planned on sending out, so in theory I could always continue where I left off at (which wasn't all that far in, to begin with). Again, our intentions were always going to be rather reserved (we were no Anime Tube... remember that idiocy?), and we were never going to try to actively compete with the bigger names in the market, but at the same time the anime industry & fandom can always be a fickle & picky place. I've mentioned it before, but hardcore anime fans are notorious for being some of the most stringent when it comes to quality, especially when it comes to physical releases, and the "oldtaku" out there have seen more than their fair share of fly-by-night attempts at entering the market that wound up flopping hard. Hell, I even once did a convention panel all about "Anime Companies That Knew Nothing About ANIME FAN WANTS", so did I seriously think that I knew better than them, and was I ready to accept becoming one of those very examples if things went sour? I certainly can't answer that first part with any assuredness, but I can absolutely say that if things went awry & Wasure Works had to shutter then I would have taken the L & known where I stood, in that regard; it would have sucked, sure, but that's just how life be sometimes. As I said earlier I am not a businessman, so the entire concept of Wasure Works is something that I know I am incapable of getting started on my own, due to my lack of skills when it comes to things like operating a business; I think I can be a good producer/editor, but I know that I wouldn't be a good businessman/proprietor.

Coincidentally enough, the age I was when I started The Land of Obscusion in December 2010 was roughly the same age John Ledford was when he co-founded ADV Films in 1992 (literally just two days before his 24th birthday), and at 39 Ledford would found Sentai Filmworks in 2008... so the idea that I could have possibly co-founded a new venture at roughly the same age Ledford was when Sentai came into being is all sorts of weird.

And with that I think I've said enough for this 15th Anniversary piece. Had things gone in a different direction with Wasure Works I honestly would have been ready for 2025 to possibly be the last one for The Land of Obscusion. Part of that would be due to me wanting to give my full attention to Wasure Works, especially if things were to have moved forward into working on multiple titles, but another part would have simply been to avoid any potential conflict of interest, as it really wouldn't have been good to continue reviewing or even just writing about anime, especially ones that weren't actively licensed or have never been licensed, if I was also working on bringing over specific titles. I guess I could have simply switched over to exclusively covering manga, though (alongside Obscusion B-Side), but all of that is a moot point to consider anyway now, since The Land of Obscusion isn't going anywhere at the moment. As I've constantly said before things could always change depending on what happens in my life, but for the time being I'll continue to be chipping away, the same as I've always been doing for the past 15 years, and if I eventually make it to 2030 & celebrate 20 years of doing this (I'd be 44 by that point) then so be it. I may be posting into the void, but (in a way) it's my void and I've come to like it just fine.

As for what you can expect from me & the blog in 2026, that year will actually mark the 30th Anniversary of the start of the modern day late-night anime infomercial, i.e. the format in which like 95% of all TV anime is produced for in Japan today, so I'll be celebrating throughout the year by reviewing a number of early "modern" late-night anime from 1997 & 1998, some of which people may know but others they may not, including the one that started it all in October 1996: Those Who Hunt Elves. Beyond that I have other things in mind that I may or may not get to, depending on my mood, schedule, whimsy, etc... like finally finishing up the next part of The IF Neverland Reportage; man, am I glad I instantly put that on a "whenever it's done" schedule. In other words, to quote the great Mark Henry after he took off his iconic salmon-colored vest, "You think it's that easy? I got a lot left in the tank!", and while I know that very few will ever actually read the things I write about (the vast majority of my pieces average only around 100-175 "views" within their first week, at best, by this point) this is just something that I remain passionate about & want to continue doing until something forces me to stop, more or less.

So here's to 15 years of Obscusion, here's to the märchen of Wasure Works that never was, and here's to however much longer this blog will continue on for.