Anime columnist Ryo Koarai, who watches about 100 anime a week (including reruns) and also serves as an advisor for revitalizing towns using anime, is bringing his column "Ryo Koarai's Thoughts on Anime" to a close after about 10 years of history. In this final installment, we asked him to look back on the trends in the anime world over the past 10 years and the history of his column.
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This anime column, which began in 2014 and has been serialized monthly, will be coming to an end today. This column has touched on anime-related topics for over 10 years. With this final installment, I would like to take this opportunity to look back on my journey so far and memorable events. There will be more self-talk than usual, but I hope you will bear with me.
Looking back on the history of this column, for a while after it began, I often introduced anime-related culture, such as cosplay and 2.5-dimensional works, which were not as common at the time as they are now, based on my own experiences, to people who had little exposure to them. This was an approach that was only possible because it was a series on MANTANWEB, which has a wide readership that is interested in pop culture in general, not just anime fans.
After that, the public environment surrounding anime changed dramatically, and the direction of the column also changed, undoubtedly after the social boom of "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Kimetsu no Yaiba" that occurred around 2020 and the spread of video streaming services during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, since then, rather than introducing little-known, deep anime culture, I have increasingly begun to explain the social excitement surrounding anime that is occurring one after another.
However, such recent social phenomena do not suddenly occur without any warning. When providing commentary, the accumulated knowledge gained from continuously observing anime-related topics in this column since the 2010s has been of great use in considering the causes and background of these phenomena.
This column has been running for over 10 years, and on a personal note, it was actually the first time I've ever had a serial publication, so I've learned a lot about the know-how of column writing from the editor-in-chief who has been in charge of me since the series began.
One thing that made the biggest impression on me, and that I still use as a personal guideline when writing, was the approach of "not making anyone the bad guy." For example, when some kind of dispute or conflict occurs related to anime, it's easy to incite people's anger or sadness, name-drop the individual or one side of the conflict that is believed to be the cause, and blame them in your anger, and sometimes articles like that get more views online. However, through this series, I learned that in such cases, rather than making one person or just one side the bad guy, it's also possible to take a step back and write about the whole picture of the incident or conflict from the perspective of both opposing positions and opinions.
That may sound like a nice thing to say, but especially now, in an age when online flame wars and debates are endless, I would like to continue to cherish this perspective as a guideline when writing my own columns, which are based on the original purpose of conveying the enjoyment of anime.
The most distinctive feature of this column is that, given the author's age and gender, there has never been another anime column that has continued to look at the anime world for the past 10 years or so. In fact, looking back at the early content, the now-obsolete term "hidden otaku" and the now common phenomenon of "there may be more anime based on social games in the future" were recorded in real time at the time. Although these records contain a lot of the author's own opinion and prejudice, I think they have some value as a little history of anime since 2010. If there is a chance someday, I secretly hope that I can compile them again and publish them as a book... What do you think, Editor-in-Chief?
In any case, the reason I've been able to observe and record anime-related events for over 10 years is thanks to MANTANWEB, who gave me the opportunity to serialize, the editor-in-chief, everyone who made that connection, and everyone who reads my column and my beloved anime. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude. Thank you so much for everything so far. I'm sure I'll continue to write my anime column as usual in the future, so I sincerely hope to see you again somewhere.
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Koarai Ryo: Affiliated with KD Entertainment, he is currently enrolled in a doctoral program at the Graduate School of International Media, Public Relations and Tourism Studies at Hokkaido University. He watches over 100 anime shows every week (including reruns and streaming), and has been posting his impressions of all the shows on his blog for the past 10 years. He also studies and researches anime from an academic perspective, and teaches at universities and vocational schools. In addition to writing a serial anime column, he also participates in program production as a program commentator and anime information supervisor.
