Post #4048306

2026-07-23 22:54 UTC

We had a whole complex of curious insights yesterday, partly from the inspiration of watching Macross for the first time. A curious aspect of the Pnictogen Wing's lengthy relationship with Daria is how we fall on either side of a great transformation in U.S. pop culture: the great victory of #anime over the American animation. I knew anime already--from exactly two examples, Akira and the film of Ghost in the Shell that I only saw a piece of. #Caltech had an anime club and it was like three or four people; they could all fit into a small entertainment room anyway, and I was not interested. Knowing Caltech...it's probably just as well I never interacted with those people. The "Caltech Coffeehouse" in the basement of the South Houses had a few manga titles and I got to read maybe two volumes of the Akira manga. But the lion's share of their comics collection was U.S. superhero stuff. (cont'd)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 22:59

But Caltech knocked me for six and sent me chasing after new things to study and new entertainments, which in my case meant mostly old entertainments: I felt strongly that I needed to get myself up to speed on the "Western canon" in a big way, and I was really into plays for a bit. So when we fell in love with Daria and started going together, I got to learn about a lot of stuff that was going on in pop culture while I was burying my nose in books and old movies. I'm pretty sure that if I'd been able to see Macross or Mobile Suit Gundam or Legends of the Galactic Heroes while I was at Caltech I would have instantly fallen for it. I was impressed enough when I finally got round to #Gundam series thanks to Daria: when I was a teenager I was desperately craving solid sci-fi movies written for a grownup audience and Gundam was all over that shit. (cont'd)

Open ##4048419