the hopeless contrarian

11.21.25

so where's my veteran's discount

Before the release of “Devilman Crybaby” in 2018, coming across any online discussion related to its predecessor was rare, if my memory of 2016 can be trusted (hmm). Through my rabbit hole explorations on Tumblr dot com, I found out about “Devilman” before its Netflix adaptation brought the work back into the pop culture spotlight.

The 1973 manga and its two direct-to-video anime adaptations that followed exploded my twelve-year-old brain. Its reputation (at the time) as a niche, weird and fucked up Thing From Japan swayed me to click on many dubious links to read and watch it. After that, I would post about it incessantly alongside a small group of other Tumblr users.

i understood that reference

There’s a sense of entitlement that comes from “being there first” with media, usually movies, tv shows, video games and other nerd shit. While I hope most have some awareness that this is stupid and doesn’t mean a whole lot in practice, it's a feeling that still affects how people interact within online spaces. Internet communities get especially territorial over their favorite shiny objects when new waves of fans uncover it.

Though audiences of the 20th century would probably scoff at me for claiming this, I still felt that I was part of the in-group who was smoking Devilman among other Go Nagai joints before its spike in popularity during 2018. Enjoying what seems like lesser-known media can give fans the impression that they have an ownership over a work, even a duty to protect it from other people who want in.

It’s a misguided belief, but I think it comes from a place of respect. Trust that teenage me was soldiering deep in YouTube comment sections, valiantly correcting people about how Griffith, Guts, and Casca of “Berserk” fame are actually derivative of Nagai’s totally original gay-hero-girl trio.

Of course, no piece of media is 100% original. We know this. There’s no single person responsible for a given concept, as creatives are subject to all kinds of influences that stem from different contexts. Works that are assigned as the “first” of their kind were certainly inspired by bits and pieces of other media and personal experiences.

Despite this, my “erm actually” compulsion to identify earlier examples of trends and archetypes (especially when a subsequent work is wrongly attributed) was reeeeal.

you experienced that wrong

The hater in me aside, I’ve also been on the opposite side of this exchange. I was in love with “Revolutionary Girl Utena” before I’d heard of “Rose of Versailles” and the Year 24 Group. I was a fan of “Silent Hill” before “Twin Peaks” was even on my radar (somehow, i also played motherfucking darkseed before watching twin peaks. not sure what that says about me but it’s probably not good).

It’s a lot more exciting to feel like you’ve “discovered” a work that has potential to be better than what it inspired. It seems that coming to a work from that sort of naive perspective can put you in hot water with the more chronically online crowd, though.

While I’ve cut down on my visible participation in digital spaces over the years (employment), I’m always on that damn video essay. I don’t believe that the internet has become more hostile or anything like that, but the content machine for drama and discourse would have you believe otherwise.

I’ve also been thinking about how easily a bad experience on a forum or reading a few edgy comments can damage one’s perception of a piece of media. Many such cases where its quality has nothing to do with the fans it attracts, yet its value is diminished because of the type of person it becomes associated with.

I still haven’t touched “Neon Genesis Evangelion” because of this. Hello. What the fuck are those guys doing over there. Insanely hypocritical of me, but I think that’s what I’m getting at. I'm somehow on both sides of this situation and have zero justification to show for it.

womp womp

Our memories have an influence on how we perceive media, positive or negative, whether we’ve actually set aside time for it or not. After untangling my thoughts about this for a while, I don’t think it’s possible to completely separate it from how we interact with a text.

There’s terrible works I’m always going to love because of the time in my life that I found it in or the friendships it helped to create. Another work might be the most inspiring cultural touchstone of the century, but I’ll never give it a second thought because I associate it with a bad experience or an annoying person on my computer.

Memory can be a pretty powerful deterrent and catalyst. No matter how self-aware of this I might be, I can’t force the subjective into an objective mold.