pontifus:

Which is to say that, while I never really feel the need to justify my preferences that much (my mantra being “be critical of what you like, but never apologize for it”), I think that insisting upon the rightness of my dislike or dissatisfaction (and, by extension, the wrongness of someone else’s satisfaction) would be an exercise in futility, if not simply meanness. Any exceptions I make are, generally speaking, intended purely for the sake of entertainment, and should be taken even less seriously than my only semi-serious standard would suggest.

This graph also concedes that my writing about things I like in a certain way does amount to a kind of justification, if we count my wanting people to see what I see in things I like as “justification,” and I guess we should.

Indeed, it’s something I’ve come to terms with as an advocate of anime and my favorites in it. 

1. You can’t expect people to accept your advocacy/recommendations uncritically.
2. It is unsatisfying when they do.

One of the pleasures in writing about anime and manga is when readers discover something to enjoy in what you enjoy (therefore recommend). 

However, the nature of attacking what you enjoy, belongs in another dimension of fandom. See the terrible behavior of the Gundam fandom in all its retarded ugliness in Ngee Khiong’s raegquit post.

A sterling example would be the massive hate directed at the release of the Perfect Grade Strike Freedom Gundam kit, which has little to do with the quality of the toy but has mainly to do with hatred for the pilot of the Gundam in Gundam SeeD the anime.

You’ll also see this in the hate for shows like K-ON! and Code Geass. There’s an inauthenticity to this behavior, and it’s something we as hobbyist writers are loath to deal with. It sucks our energy because we are expending so much on something as you say, is just about entertainment.

It is the interests of entertainment of some fans to participate in this kind of “criticism”, inasmuch as blogging your heart out for the shows you like and love is for you.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Holyland by Mouri Kouji is the best fighting manga I’m been reading. Yeah, and I read Vagabond too. By fighting I mean in a general sense. Characters fight in duels.

The premise:

Yuu is a high school kid who doesn’t really fit anywhere. To find a place he can belong, be accepted, he will do anything. However one thing leads to another and he is forced to fight to keep his place, his holyland.

This Tokyo has its violent streets. No one really gets killed, but kids like to fight. Holyland doesn’t have the best illustrations, but it makes up for it by really, really, really getting into the dynamics of the fights.

It doesn’t really even fetishize martial arts and its techniques so much, but rather the intricacies of the fight itself, how every movement, every strike counts. I love it for that, it may just be for you.

Battle Royale 93: This is beyond lame. Kiriyama is a high school student who is Resident Evil’s Nemesis meets Cell from Dragon Ball Z. I’ve gone too far to raegquit now, so I’ll just have to see this thing through.