Anime – The Casual Otaku

Growing Up Without Growing Out of Anime: 30 Years of Fandom

When I log into Crunchyroll to watch the latest anime while pointedly ignoring the 30 or so series that I will eventually catch up on, I’m reminded of just how easy it is to watch anime these days.

The anime landscape was very different when I first started watching 30 years ago.

Streaming wasn’t a thing, and if you missed the latest episode of Sailor Moon on Toonami and didn’t have it recorded, you just missed it. By “recorded,” I mean on a VHS tape, not downloaded for later viewing.

Let me back up for a moment, this isn’t going to be a “back in my day” post where I tell you everything was better when I was younger. I’m also not going to argue that older anime is automatically better than newer anime as that’s entirely subjective.

More Than Cosplay: Why My Dress-Up Darling Resonates With Me

If there’s one consistent thing about me, it’s that I have a handful of passions that I always seem to come back to. Some interests come and go, but others become part of who you are. On the anime side of things, nothing has had a bigger impact on me than Love Live!, a franchise that’s been a constant in my life for years as I wrote about in another post.

Over the last couple of years, though, another series has quietly worked its way into that same conversation: My Dress-Up Darling. When I first heard about My Dress-Up Darling, I honestly didn’t think much of it. My anime watchlist is always several series deep, all competing for the same limited amount of free time, so it takes something special to jump to the front of the line. Somehow, this series managed to do exactly that. What started as “I’ll watch a couple episodes” quickly turned into binge-watching the entire first season in a single day. By the time the credits rolled, I completely understood why so many people had fallen in love with it.

Trading Traditions for New Adventures

For me, the Fourth of July has usually meant one thing: Anime Expo. With the exception of the pandemic years, I’ve attended every year since 2007. Some years were fantastic, some made me question why I kept coming back, yet somehow I always found myself buying another badge the following year.

It was tradition, after all, but this year is different.

Instead of braving the crowds at the Los Angeles Convention Center, I’m sitting at home attempting, and mostly failing, to make a dent in my never-ending anime backlog.

Fanime 2026: A Much-Needed Escape

There’s something about a convention providing a much-needed break from real life, and for me, this year’s Fanime was exactly that. Yeah, this recap is about a month late, but let’s just say life has been a little challenging lately…the details aren’t important.

After taking last year off, I returned to Fanime with a full schedule…who am I kidding? Much like most conventions these days, my plan was to wing it and see what looked fun. My main goal was to spend time with friends I don’t get to see often and maybe enjoy a few adult beverages (narrator: many adult beverages were consumed).

So I’m Planning a Solo Trip to Japan (Send Help… or Pocky)

Japan.

The land of the rising sun, ancient temples, neon-lit cities, and the birthplace of anime. For a lot of us otaku, it’s less of a vacation and more of a pilgrimage — the kind you spend years saying you’ll take someday.

And after more than 20 years of saying “someday,” it finally looks like that someday might actually be happening this year, which means, naturally, I’ve decided to plan the entire trip myself.

Because apparently I enjoy stress.

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