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The Battle Beasts never had their own cartoon series* but Killer Carp appeared in a commercial to teach kids everywhere that WATER PUT OUT FIRE. (*Yeah, they show up briefly in the Transformers: Headmasters show.) youtu.be/CL4zNgZPPHw

Now, as anime became more popular in the mid-2000s, anime parodies became more common, and with that came some of the nerd self-hating that dominated a lot of Internet humor. That's a story for another time, though.

So anime nerds made a lot of the older guard feel antiquated and uncool. And some of them were weirdly resistant to new things anyway. I remember one retro-game forum guy whose entire opinion of anime was based on the first ten minutes of the Escaflowne movie.

Some of this perhaps resulted from their encountering an obnoxious anime dork or two, but there was also a jealous undercurrent. Anime was a new nerd subculture, with a younger base and a larger percentage of female fans, and it came along when mainstream media grew less dismissive of nerds.

...nerds themselves: hardcore gamers, tabletop RPG enthusiasts, American comic/cartoon fans, overcompensating furries, or just self-hating dorks who were online too much. They were more likely to LOATHE anime (and its fans) if they weren't into it. And that loathing often got racist and homophobic.

In the late '90s and early 2000s, I saw that mainstream folks were only vaguely aware of anime as "big-eyed cartoons from Japan" with "porn" periodically tossed in. They didn't mock you for liking it unless you made it a constant part of your personality. The people who actually HATED anime were...

If you're blaming only Sega and Nintendo marketing for turning video games into an industry aimed at middle-school boys, you need to take a good look at PC gaming ads and media from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

I'm so very sickened.

If we're doing Wii titles for #randomgamesaturday, here's my favorite: Sin & Punishment: Star Successor! It's one of Treasure's best, and I refuse to call it their big closing number, because Treasure technically hasn't closed. Maybe, just maybe, they'll make a third S&P to resolve that cliffhanger!

Happy Science, a Japanese new religion with its own political party, was founded by Okawa Ryuho, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Buddha, various mythical kings, and the Greek god Hermes. At a 1991 gathering, he announced he was El Cantare, "the Law itself."

There's no rule in the book that says a dog can't pilot a Gundam!

Gotta get in some jokes about the XARX BROTHERS and XARXIST PROPAGANDA before everyone notices that it's apparently pronounced "Alex Zero."

This really cool! I like how the artists are listed. And I like this F1 Boy art by Yukihisa Fujita, partly because it helps me envision a world where every Game Boy title had "Boy" in it. Super Mario Boy, Final Fantasy Boy, Metroid Boy, Qix Boy, Battle Bull Boy, Stop That Roach Boy, Fish Dude Boy...

Has the dawn ever seen your eyes? Have the days made you so unwise? Realize you are... ARMADILLO RACING This is pretty cool! Maybe someone like @magictrashman.bsky.social can make a special trackball shaped like a rolled-up armadillo. (I joke, but I would not put it past him.)

There is debate as to whether its budget cleared $100 million, but I'm still going with Cutthroat Island.

Art by legendary mangaka Shigeru Mizuki

I was NOT part of the decision to nix that potential mascot. I would've wanted her to get a two-page comic each month just like Howard & Nester.

Unfortunately, I don't have any old media kits for Anime Insider. BUT this reminded me that the magazine once planned on having a mascot: a cybernetic catgirl with a computer mouse on the end of her tail. She never made it past the design phase.

This is especially lousy considering that Mischief Makers is a no-show for Switch Online so far. By the way, the game's unused graphics include an alternate opening shot of Marina and the professor, and it's...uh, worse. tcrf.net/Mischief_Mak...

It's interesting that a few illustrations on the second page are of Annet in the cutscenes for Earnest Evans. Was Annett Futatabi going to include some flashbacks, or did this layout just fill some space with those?