Archive for the Now This Is Only My Opinion Category


Female Intimacy and Slice of Life Anime Article on ANN

October 24th, 2023

You may  remember that this past spring I was extremely ill with Long COVID. During my recovery I turned towards slice-of-life anime in an attempt to feel engaged by something, anything. Struggling as I was with concentration and focus, these anime helped me relax and find myself again. And, in watching them, I discovered something else…powerful stories of intimacy between women.

This motivated me to write up an article and Anime News Network kindly gave me the space to discuss these anime. I hope you’ll enjoy The Joy Of The Everyday: Emotional Intimacy Between Women in Slice-of-Life Anime. If you do, please leave a comment on ANN!





I’m In Love With the Villainess and ‘The Talk’

October 17th, 2023

Welcome back to Reality in Anime Week. ^_^

We’ve already discussed The Power of Hope ~ Precure in Full Bloom~‘s honest look at adult life. Today we turn once again back to I’m In Love With the Villainess, for an episode that many people hope will change anime for the better. (And some people threw tantrums about, but that’s a different conversation.)

In Episode 3, Misha turns to Rae and says, “Are you what they call ‘gay’?” In Japanese, the word used is douseiai (同性愛), homosexual. Rae then answers this with honesty. At which Lene mentions that gender isn’t really the issue and Rae explains that gender does matter for her. The English dub is radiant here, with a line about “love is love” is not wrong, but gender does matter for those people for whom it matters. Ironically, we had had this very conversation the night before on the Okazu Discord. ^_^

I’m going to take a second to digress here and say that the English dub for this series is absolutely outstanding and I recommend watching either or both. Hannah Alyea as Rae is brilliant and Lindsay Shepphard is incandescent as Claire.

I spent most of yesterday reading the comments for the sub and dub (which turn out to be different! Why, Crunchyroll?) and people were positively glowing with praise for the frankness of the conversation. A few people were moved, many were surprised (I guess they haven’t been reading my reviews. ^_^;). Some folks inevitably mentioned that this has never been done before in anime – that is not 100% true, but this scene definitely broke some walls and of course anime fandom memory doesn’t go very far back as new fans never know what they missed.) I want to assure people that these walls were broken with intention – this series is not done providing realistic commentary about both queer lives and social and financial inequality. This is a show that I expected to knock people’s socks off and so far it has not disappointed.

Given that King Records thinks this series Blu-ray will sell well enough that they already have opened pre-orders, I think this may be a real moment of changing tides in an industry that has regularly utilized queer content, without accepting the people whose stories it tells. Media companies in general are conservative, and otaku are often, weirdly, also very conservative.

In a year where Kadokawa (a company that regularly profits from fannish pairings of same-sex characters and manga that portrays queer stories) backtracked on the relationship between Suletta and Miorine …a relationship witnessed by viewers worldwide, no less… this is a story that Ichijinsha is giving room to be exactly as queer as it wants and needs to be.

That’s worth celebrating.





“I’m in Love With the Villainess” Translation Controversy – What Does it Mean For Readers?

March 19th, 2021

UPDATE: Seven Seas has responded to this issue:

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Those portions of the text were removed during the editorial process at the time, but we have since changed how we edit these books to make sure important lines are not lost. We’ll be revising the ebook within the next few weeks to add the cut portions back into the book, and the revision will also be reflected in all future printings of the paperback.

Thanks to everyone who wrote them politely.

SECOND UPDATE: Someone on ANN Forums asked a couple of questions about this post. I have clarified those comments on that forum, if you are interested.

THIRD UPDATE: Setting aside editorial choice for the moment – typographic errors are not a personal attack. There are a lot of moving parts in publishing. There’s no rational basis for assuming either that a company cannot be trusted because a typo occurred OR than there was intent. I read three books this week. I found three typos. I wrote one company and privately told them about the typo, in case it can be fixed. One was in a Japanese book – they have typos, too, and the third was not important enough to care about. I have found errors in books for which I know absolutely more than5 pairs of eyes went over the copy. Typos happen. Being angry about them is just not healthy for either you, or fandom.

****

What a day! I woke up this morning ready to face an AMA on reddit as part of a Women’s Month celebration with my publisher (the thread is ongoing, feel free to drop in). I had a review lined up. 

I almost instantly found myself facing links to a thread on the J-Novel Club Forum, about a potential problem with Seven Seas’ I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 1. I’m not quoting the thread here, because after some conversation, the OP calmed down a lot, so I don’t want to make it seem like they are still spitting angry. You can click the link if you want specifics.  The thread title is a fanwank, Seven Seas is not in trouble. I am aware there was a recent issue with a translation that they did and human nature being aligned to pattern-recognition, caused some readers to recognize a pattern. (I’m of the belief that you need three things to form a pattern, but that’s me.) So instead of a review, we’re going to talk about this.

To summarize, there is a passage in Volume 1, where Rae speaks about internalized homophobia from LGBTQ representation in Japanese media, and, as a result, overplayed her love for Claire as hyperbolic comedy.  It was a good passage, and the OP was incensed that it had been deleted. Of course, whenever a fan shouts “censorship!” there’s always a mob of people ready to pull out pitchforks and torches.

I’ve written to Seven Seas to see if they would like to have an official, on the record, response to this, but in the meantime I have a few thoughts I want to share. These are in reverse order to their appearance in my responses on that same forum thread, with some thoughts from Twitter interspersed. Before we talk about appropriate responses to this issue, let us understand the issue itself. Since I never read Volumes 1 or 2 in Japanese, I am coming to this the same as you are.

The OP was comparing the Japanese Volume 1 with the English Volume 1. I pointed out that we, the readers cannot truly know where the disconnect was. It may have been Seven Seas who deleted the scene – which frankly makes no sense to me. GL Bunko may also have sent Seven Seas a bowdlerized copy with that scene deleted, as there has been a serious crackdown on Japanese media freedoms and, while it is hard to imagine that the Abe government would care about a US published edition of a web novel-based light novel, maybe someone at GL Bunko thought it sensible to remove the line.

Secondly, we do not know what decisions were made at Sevens Seas or why. The passage seemed to me to clearly be discussing “representation” like Hard Gay, which was hyperbolic and extreme. If one wasn’t familiar with that sort of “comedy” the passage could be misunderstood. It might have been removed to avoid confusion – if indeed it was removed by Seven Seas.

To be clear – I hope this was a fixable mistake. I thought the missing passage made sense and clarified some of Rae’s early choices…and I genuinely enjoy every glimpse we get of Ohashi Rei in the story. But we may never know what happened, because we may never be able to know. Being fans of a series does not grant us access to the contracts. Unless we are involved in making this particular sausage, we might never know what goes into it. 

We may not know why this happened, but there are something that are 100% under our control. We can always control our response to the controversy. Here I am going to quote from my own comment on the thread:

…ascribing any changes to malicious intent is not all right. Of course you are welcome to not read anything they sell, but what good does that do? Then you don’t get to enjoy the rest of these wonderful books. Tantrums are not the way adults handle problems. Hateful rhetoric leads to hateful behavior…we do not want someone taking their frustration to a KyoAni level. We cannot allow that.

Take moment and write Seven Seas a polite, firmly worded email expressing the problem. Ask them to restore deleted passages. If they get enough feedback, they might (probably will) change their position. There’s no guarantee, but there’s a much better chance than if you rant on a forum. When Viz made some decisions that in aggregate seemed very trans- and homophobic, I and a lot of folks wrote them and asked for the decisions to be fixed…and they were. They even fixed an issue that had hurt someone for decades, when their deadname had not been removed from a credit. THAT is how we make change, not harmful rhetoric. We know where that leads.

There is no place in Yuri fandom for hate of any kind.

So I’m asking you all, as another fan of ILV, don’t speak of this as an attack on you or on fandom. It’s a very unhealthy way to think of anything. We don’t need to be angry. We can be disappointed and let Seven Seas know.

Yuri fandom must remain a friendly, welcoming and intelligent place. If I have to physically wrangle individuals back from a ledge, I will. ^_^

Additionally, some well-meaning person tagged the creator on Twitter and dragged them into this mess. Please don’t tag creators when you’re posting about unpleasant stuff. It’s so hard being a creator, it’s a terrible feeling to have someone dump some problem you can’t do anything about in your lap. I hate getting a notification that says, “Hey @OkazuYuri, what do you think about this?” What do I think? I think the person who tagged me is a jerk, frankly. Is it my problem to have an opinion on? Can I do anything about it? Do you do this in real life? Why? Are you 12? “Hey, Jim, what do you think about the argument two other people are having in the bar?” Don’t do this.

Lastly, please consider this:

We can and should approach media critically, not with an angry, entitled attitude.

So, what does this deletion mean for us, fans and readers of I’m in Love With the Villainess? It means, we have the opportunity to show ourselves as the best, most thoughtful, kind and loving fandom. We can write Seven Seas, politely, thank them for their LGBTQ content and express disappointment and concern that some content was left out of Volume 1 and if at all possible, ask if it can be restored in the Kindle version and future printings.

That is what we can – if you feel strongly about it, should – do, whenever you feel that there is an issue.

 





Your Story, Our Story, My Story: When and Why Queer Representation Misses the Mark

January 3rd, 2021

Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago, a few devoted fans of anime sat hunched over their computer keyboards. The sound of the modem was loud and screechy, but it signaled their journey to Usenet, and groups where they could – for many, for the first time in their lives – talk with folks who had similar interests as they did. Among those fans were a small group of folks who were interested in characters who – it seemed to them –  were, androgynous, or butchy or otherwise queer.

Back in those days, when a new character showed up who definitely, probably had a crush on a character of the same sex or even more rarely a couple who were clearly a couple, this group would rejoice! We are represented! They would celebrate with fanfiction, and music videos and art and cosplay and other rituals.

As years passed, we were given more of this; more couples, more characters who represented the things we looked for in media. But the more we got, it seems, the less we’re satisfied. This is true not just with anime, but with every media. Why is it that attempts by media companies at representation now feel so flat and stale when formerly it was so exciting?

 

Your Story

Over the new year holiday I was reading articles about media franchises that were/are not for me, and the reactions of those various audiences….and thinking about how much work we, as fans, put into a franchise to make it our own.

Trans and queer kids read Harry Potter and felt the story about a kid who is othered by his family spoke to them, personally. It makes perfect sense that they did, of course, and their love for the series that validated their existence was fierce. Which made the ongoing betrayal of that fandom by the creator just that much worse. Molly Fischer’s Who Did J.K. Rowling Become? seeded an idea in my head.

Following upon that, I read Andrew Tejada’s Representation Without Transformation: Can Hollywood Stop Changing Cartoon Characters of Color?  and I saw the exact *same* questions being asked. As media does a better job of diversifying stories…why are we more unsatisfied than when we had no representation at all? I thought back to those Usenet days, when a character might appear on screen for one episode and still become a Yuri icon.

Because we had less representation, we were more easily satisfied with what we could get.

The gold area in the target was bigger- merely seeing someone like ourselves on screen or on the page…or even someone whose issues we could slot into our own….was enough to be cause for celebration. A gay character in a movie who wasn’t predatory, murderous or mentally unstable was a triumph. Something that showed a non-straight, non-cisgender person in a positive light – even if they were played by a straight actor, or the portrayal wasn’t perfect – was significant. The bullseye was easy to hit, because so few companies bothered even trying to shoot at the target.

Creative studio CLAMP was given endless amount of queer cred, simply because they had same-sex characters who sometimes touched, or had obvious affection for one another, even if it was often unspoken and invisible. They were not queer creators writing about themselves; they were a creative team giving us a glimpse of how they’d like to see us. We accepted it as how they thought we’d like to be seen. This is Your Story, they said, and we accepted gratefully.

 

Our Story

In 2013, Adachi and Shimamura (安達としまむら) was a light novel series in Japan. The first volume had come out 2012 and by 2013, there were two volumes. I read the first and was unimpressed. Over the years, as the series progressed and picked up fans, my initial review would on occasion receive unsatisfied comments, because I had failed to anticipate how the series would progress over 8 years.  ^_^ In 2013, some Yuri fans in Japan were delighted by this series which contained a reference to the author’s previous work and evolved into a romance.

By 2013, I had already seen Yuri go through a number of shifts and changes. We’d had Aoi Hana / Sweet Blue Flowers, for almost a decade by then. We were in a boom of Yuri, with three manga magazines, a handful of out creators, a lot of queer fans online.  Straight fandom was happy enough with another schoolgirl story, but queer fandom was already asking where were the adults?  Where were the lesbians? Where were the queer people in these queer stories?

We were no longer as satisfied with media crumbs as we had been. When in 2015, Yuri fans got a new gateway Yuri series, Bloom Into You, it had both lesbians AND adults! (This is exactly why I’d like to see more adult role models in teen lit. For a lot of queer teens, seeing one adult who is open, happy and out can make the most extraordinary difference.)

Yuri as a genre had already left girl-meets-girl stories behind, here we were able to see something that looked more like our story. But, even as we got closer, many of us were waiting impatiently for queer Yuri to become more widely available. When folks began to identify with Yuu as aromantic or asexual no one argued that they were wrong. What we said was, “this may be Our story, but it might not be Your story, so don’t be surprised if Yuu ends up not aro or ace.” The odds that the series might miss that mark grew, even as it hit other marks in the gold. Because the targets had become more specific, it became less likely that all of them might be hit.

Because we had more representation, mediocre representation fails to satisfy us.

We wanted more. We wanted what all marginalized groups have wanted – to be represented in our media. If this story is ours, we argue, then we should be involved. Valid criticisms of Disney’s movie Soul argue that they missed opportunities to make the story as authentic as they might have. Intentions aside, some folks felt it was praiseworthy for aiming in the right direction, while many critics saw it as Disney handing out another Your Story. I had a similar reaction to watching Kinky Boots, a story many older straight women had told me they enjoyed. I mostly saw all the old, tired stereotypes. This is “Your Story,” the straight audience was saying. Look, how happy it is!

 

MY Story

Fans aren’t always looking for specific reflection of their selves. Obviously not, as so much of fandom has been built upon media created by and for and, most especially about, people unlike us. We’ve been happy enough following Frodo and Sam and Luke and Han, and Kirk and Spock. It’s just that after decades of that, some of us want stories that make space for people like us.

The closer media comes to representing us, the higher the emotional stakes are for us.

Now, in 2021, when we see media that purports to represent us, we’re looking at, not just who it is for, but who made it, who is in it – who the cooks and servers are, as well as who is at the table. It’s not that we don’t believe that someone outside whatever we define as “us” can’t possibly tell a story well, it’s that we’d really just like to be included when our story is being told as a bare minimum. Without me in my story…is it really my story?

Even worse, if the so-called representation fails to hit the mark, there’s more emotional risk and, in some places, actual physical risk. If a mainstream media shows say, femme lesbians as good and butch lesbians as predatory, that could have serious real-world repercussions. Which is why you saw gay men angry about gay representation in The Prom. It might be their story…but the guy playing it wasn’t them. Worse, it annoyed the hell out of folks who thought an opportunity for a not-tragic gay story was missed.

When the shot comes close to the gold, but fails to hit it, for some folks, it might as well have missed the target altogether. When I watched the trailer for The Happiest Season, I thought, “Well, this may be Our Story, but it’s not My Story.” It’s a story that spent a lot of time in the unfun stereotypical pain of being closeted and very little time in the joy of being in love. I do not in any way object to other people enjoying it – but it’s not for me. At all.

A Yuri story in which no one is gay or there is no recognition of the couple as a same-sex couple from characters around them; where there is no society, they have no friends who are gay or a community…or media…or a functional Internet… feels obviously inauthentic at this point.


Hitting The Gold

For decades, we’ve accepted corporate entities and straight creators telling us “This is Your Story.”

Now, we are even getting Our Story told in a lot of media. And as we get more, sometimes, I might even get My Story and you get Yours. Certainly, in this day and age of crowdfunding and social platforms, there’s nothing at all stopping any one us from telling our own stories exactly the way we want to. And yet, I am still not quite satisfied. ^_^ Today, as I look into the next decade and the next century of Yuri, I plan on pushing myself and the media I consume towards one goal:

I want media that actively models the world I want to see for people who have not yet imagined it.

This is a real limitation of looking for our reflections in media – we’re looking to see who we were, and who we are. I want media that tells both us and those who are not us, who we can become.

When the media we create and the media we consume represents us in a way that expresses and models how we want to be seen and be treated, then we have queer representation that hits the mark.





Where to Watch Yuri in English Online, Free and Legally – 2020

July 21st, 2020

So you want to know where and how to watch Yuri anime free and legally. That’s not a bad thing, but we’re in 2020, a year that has been outrageously written by crazed Albanian monks. The last time we did this round up, in 2017, there were a number of new services and a lot of companies were getting in on anime. Quite a number of previously free services have gone out of business, others have been simply absorbed by not-free services.  That 2017 post remains one of the most popular I’ve ever done, and it’s long past time it gets an update. ^_^

Before we begin, let’s set some ground rules:

My focus is on US-based or accessible services, because while I am dedicated to bringing you good information, my dedication still does not extend to working with proxies or VPNs in every major market to see if these services work in your hometown. Assume there are regional restrictions in place for some or all of these services. But feel free to use proxies or VPNs on your own. ^_^ If you use a regionally legal, free streaming site in a non-US country, by all means, please let folks know in comments!

Today we’re focusing on services that are legitimate and free. To be very honest, there are far fewer of them than there used to be. I will also touch upon a few that are not free, because they allow for extended trial periods and, if you and your friends pitch in, you can enjoy them for a very reasonable amount. And because without them, you’ll miss a lot of Yuri. I will not suggest illicit services and all comments suggesting them will be removed instantly. This is for legal services only.

 All streaming services have shifting catalogs. Video licensing contracts go in and out of use and every single IP holder is always on the lookout for a better deal and major ones are launching their own god-forsaken channels.  In fact, between 2017 and now, Funimation pulled all of it’s IP from other services and went on their own.  Another good reason to update this list periodically. I am checking to make sure things I mention are actually on the service where I mention them. Some of these channels can be accessed on channel-aggregation services like VRV or Hulu or Amazon Prime. I’m not touching any of those. Netflix also has a lot of anime and is both licensing and making more, so if you have a subscription to that, or any of the above, yes, there’s more stuff you can watch legally.

Region-blocks are still an issue, but less than it used to be. Streaming has had an impact on this stupid relic of the 20th century, but it still does exist, and licensing companies do usually not have much say on the issue. With all that in mind, here we go.

 

Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is pretty much the industry standard now,  with a good chunk of anime from multiple companies, which is it’s main appeal. Crunchyroll is my go-to, because their catalog is one of the most comprehensive, from Aoi Hana/Sweet Blue Flowers to to Yuru Yuri. (There wasn’t a good ‘Z’ title, but come on A to Y isn’t bad! ^_^) They often have simulcasts for subscribers and they are still honest-to-goodness free on a delay. They are partnering with Japanese anime companies directly to create their own content these days, which just means your money goes back into the greater anime ecosystem, which is exactly where you want it.

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search, nor is it listed as a genre (and I sympathize with that and agree as long as BL is likewise not included.)

Rating: A- It’s not an all-in-one place for everything anymore, especially as Sentai and Funimation have chosen other options, but they still have the largest and most varied catalog.

 

Tubi TV

Tubi has – to my genuine surprise – survived a few years now. They’ve still got a mostly random smattering of anime and a lot of it isn’t new or, sometimes, good. They have Valkyrie Drive, but they also have Vampire Princess Miyu.  They’ve also got a few other notable series, like Bubblegum Crisis and .hack/Sign. (This was a decade pre-Sword Art Online massive media franchise about a MMOPRG that didn’t exist.) Their catalog is worth a look, if you’ve got some time to kill and want to watch older, maybe less well-known stuff from before Yuri was its own genre. ^_^

Rating: B It’s worth looking at, but I probably wouldn’t subscribe. Their catalog still seems random, They have Bubblegum Crisis, and AD Police, but not Bubblegum Crash. No idea why.

There is no Yuri tag in search. Their search isn’t really good, generally.

 

RetroCrushTV

RetroCrushTV is new since the last update and I haven’t watched it at all. But is it is genuinely free, ad-supported anime and RetroCrushTV has Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash, as well as Project A-ko, which is nuts and you should watch it.  It has Devil Lady dubbed, which I should point out is a thing you ought to note – some of the series are dubbed, others subbed; they do seem to be labeled appropriately.

RetroCrushTV specializes in older stuff, obviously and it has a “random” button which will give you some random title. I found it charming as heck and I will totally use this!

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search. Their search is meh generally.

Rating: A-  I really like the “love for classic everything” that shows through here. For free, it’s an absolute delight.

 

Viz

Viz doesn’t have much Yuri anime, but you can still watch all of Sailor Moon here, for free. While you are there, you can watch all the big Shonen Jump series and read sample chapters of manga for free, or get new chapters as simulpub – this includes Yuri titles like How Do We .Relationship and Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow.

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search. Their search is meh generally.

Rating: B Obviously, they only carry their own titles, but those are some of the biggest titles in the world and they make it pretty damn easy for you to watch and read for free and even get simulpubbed new manga chapters for free.

 

Funimation 

Funimation has Funimation anime exclusively – overwhelmingly I think that is for the birds. But, then, my antipathy towards Funimation’s attempts at streaming go back a decade and at least their website works, even if I think it gets in its own way all the time. Which is actually a huge improvement over previous years of barely functioning nonsense. I will never forgive them for their mobile app zippering open. Gawd.

Funimation offers a free trial and most series have the first few and most recent episodes streaming free so you can watch a whole series as it comes out with, predictably, ads suggesting you subscribe to Funimation’s service. They’ve got recent favorites like If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die and they’ve got Revolutionary Girl Utena, which surprised the heck out of me.

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search.

Ratings: B+ No complaints, honestly. You don’t even have to register anymore to watch stuff for free. And if Funimation’s titles are your jam, it’s competitively priced.

 

HIDIVE

HIDIVE is Sentai Filmworks’ and Section23’s streaming service. Since Sentai historically licenses a lot of Yuri, you’ll be able to see Bloom Into You and Kase-san and Morning Glories here, along with older titles like Flip Flappers and the amazing fantabulous live-action movie Arch Angels (!!! You should all go watch this immediately!!!). They’ve got a pretty amazing selection of queer-friendly and queer-adjacent stuff. I do like that their trial is 30 days long, not a week. They offer subs and dubs pretty clearly labeled.

I don’t much care for the fact that they don’t make at least some of their episodes free, especially as some of their titles are also available on Crunchyroll (just not the ones we want.) It seems a wasted opportunity. (Update, they have pulled their titles from Crunchyroll, so that’s that.)

There’s no “Yuri” tag in search.

Rating: B I hated their fullscreen mode when I was watching anime on their site. Why should I have to exit fullscreen to increase/decrease the volume?!? I remember bitching about it every time. Their search is sort of organized by topic, but I still cannot find what I want easily.

 

2020 Takeaways:

1) Overall, the sites where you can stream Yuri anime are good, they are simple to use and, if you know what you’re looking for, it’s easy enough to find stuff.

2) The search on these sites are crap.  If you’re looking for “Yuri” welcome to 2000, because none of these sites know what you’re talking about. All these services have bleh search, which focus mostly on searching by title. A few attempt genre or topic, but tags are inadequately and inconsistently applied. For instance Crunchyroll has shojo, shonen and seinen, but not josei. Go figure. Hire a librarian, folks. Your taxonomy is terrible, series aren’t tagged appropriately and there are a lot of catalogers out of work right now. Quick, someone build a decent anime search engine taxonomy and sell it to all the streaming sites.  Or, heck, let viewers suggest tags and just have someone clean up the messiness. User-generated taxonomy would at least give viewers a chance.

3) Fullscreen mode is crap. I want a fullscreen mode with a disappearing toolbar that comes back up with mouse movement that includes volume, etc, and a click-start click-stop. It’s shocking how few of these sites have this.

4) Episodes should be free to watch on your site, especially if they are free to watch elsewhere…Sentai. Go ahead, pound us over the head with “subscribe now” ads and make some money on my eyeballs with other advertising.

5) There is no reasonable excuse for fansubs or scanlations at this point and should you encounter anyone who is arguing that the companies in the industry are damaging the industry, quick, block and report them because that is – at best – nonsensical.

6) There is an industry-wide problem of poor pay for folks doing translation, subtitles and all production work. This needs to stop. Fans, pay for services you use and companies…pay people who do the work.

Last, we’re in such an amazing place regarding streaming anime so my last thought for this update is this…

Look how much free stuff you can try out! Watch a different episode 1 every night, hit that “random” button and watch Twilight of the Cockroaches. Sit down and crank through Haikyuu!, finish that series you meant to get to. Find out why I rant endless about how amazing Devilman Lady is.

What are you waiting for?  Go watch a lot of anime!