Vocab word of the day: "eucatastrophes": "a sudden turn of events in a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible and probable doom.", via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucatastrophe
I never would have connnected Miyazaki with Tolkien.
> The writer J. R. R. Tolkien coined the word by affixing the Greek prefix eu, meaning good, to catastrophe
From the New Oxford Dictionary
> Catastrophe:
mid 16th century (in the sense
'denouement'):
from Latin catastropha, from Greek
katastrophé 'overturning, sudden turn', from
kata- 'down' + strophe 'turning' (from
'down
strephein 'to turn').
Everyone who is into animation knows about the Akira bike-slide, but I have a hunch "Lupin leaping across the rooftops" from the first clip is referenced surprisingly often too. For example thirty seconds into this One-Punch Man animation by Murata:
Yeah there are some similar shots in Evangelion and the second rebuild movie (specifically the fight with Sahaquiel, the one falling from space they have to catch).
I don’t know if both your example and mine are pulling inspiration from the Lupin film intentionally or if all 3 are referencing hurdling. There definitely seems to be a Superman style, heroic sense of “leaping tall buildings in a single bound.” The Lupin clip and your example seem to play it for laughs, contrasting these extreme feats the characters are performing with why they are actually trying to perform them (e.g. in the OPM case, moving at incredible speeds and jumping great distances just to try to get a good deal on groceries) while Eva plays it more straight (emphasizing the power and speed of the Eva’s and their effects on the built and natural landscape).
The two movies the author had never seen were two of my favorite films by Miyazaki that I watched in my formative years. Of course the acclaim always went to Nauiscaa, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke, but I've always adored Porco Rosso. The atmosphere of those tiny Adriatic islands and interwar Italian cities makes me nostalgic for a place I've never visited.
The sense of time and place in both movies is tremendous. Kiki's city is the kind of bustling, walkable place urbanists dream of, in its own era of can-do optimism mirroring the protagonist herself. Porco's setting is a little more melancholic, its picturesque villages bearing the memories both of simpler times and of past war, with the reconstruction of Porco's plane serving as a microcosm of the world around it.
The Castle Of Cagliostro is a fantastic movie. Inspired by a recent Miyazaki thread, I recently watched two TV series directed by him:
- Future Boy Conan
- Lupin III (partly Miyizaki, partly Takahata, partly other directors)
Lupin III was ok, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it (the TV series, as mentioned the film is excellent). But I would wholeheartedly recommend Future Boy Conan (also known as "Conan, The Boy in Future"). I thought this was every bit as good as his movies, with the bonus that it's almost 13 hours long in total.
There's a reason that Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, the anime about making anime that made a New York Times "Best TV Shows of 2020" list[0], references Future Boy Conan as the original inspiration of one of the main character[1][2].
Also, Future Boy Conan apparently just got a new 4K release[3]
One of the best animes I have ever seen. Celebrates the inherent deep joy in making, set in a low key solarpunk world. A breath of fresh air.
No surprise Masaaki Yuasa was involved, his latest movie Inu-Oh gave me similar feelings of ecstasy by combining off the walls psychedelic animation with a 14th century historical Noh theater inspired rock opera. So good.
Future Boy Conan - renamed “Adnan wa Lina” (Adnan and Lina) - was (and still is) one of the most popular cartoons in the Middle East and North Africa. It and UFO Robo Grendizer (and a bunch of other anime) were picked up by a Kuwaiti dubbing studio and blew up all over the region in the late 70s and 80s. If you ask anyone who grew up in the region from the 70s to 90s, they’ll very likely know these two shows.
Mirai Shōnen Konan ... I watched this with my kid when he was 7-ish ... man was that series great, my kid was addicted ... and yeah, it lasts for ever even though each episode is short.
> There’s a lot of this in Miyazaki’s movies: the drama and delight of work
Unsurprising given Miyazaki's famously fierce work ethic:
> "...he is an intense workaholic, and resents anything that takes him away from his work. His producer and friend Toshio Suzuki told me that in the early days of their studio, Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki would work from 9 a.m. to 4:30 a.m., and that in recent years he has mellowed somewhat and goes home at midnight.”
Miyazaki is a fascinating person to read about, because of his combination of luminous creativity, clarity, and lightness with plain ordinary hard work, grumpiness, and pessimism. His two books of essay-ish fragments, Starting Point and Turning Point, are well worth looking out. The documentary film "The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness" is rather good too.
For me the stories are so so. As in I can't even remember most of them, but the art oh man...for some reason, it has left a permanent mark. Like if I am admiring the trees after the rains, flowers moving in the wind, water leaking out of a pipe...my brain goes straight to Miyazaki scenes...so much beauty captured in the simplest of things.
A couple are quasi-picaresque, nearly plotless. I'm thinking of Kiki's Delivery Service. It feels cozy and injects little in the way of tension, compared to most animated family movies (that I've seen). Seems like an underrated approach but probably hard to pull off. In contrast, Princess Mononoke (admittedly, not for kids) has more going on and doesn't lack drama.
Some titles like Nausicaa have more of a traditional Hollywood script, with bad & good guys, some big tension and epic storylines.
The rest, and on my opinion the best ones, are like the author described: the plot runs on kindness, friendship and discoveries, which may feel “static” when you’re used to frenetic disney movies but makes for much more inspiring movies.
My introduction to Miyazaki was on a bus ride from Sasebo to Nagasaki. Watching Castle in the Sky while Japan passes by had a strong impact. I yearn to return to those innocent and youthful days.
Maybe I was biased as a stranger in a strange land. Blind to Japan's less savory side, if it has one. Being stationed in Japan as a young Marine changed me immensely. Such a beautiful country of beautiful people.
Regarding Japan's less savory side, [Shogo on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/c/LetsaskShogoYourJapanesefriendinKy...) seems to be fairly measured and insightful in his videos on "Japanese traditional culture, tips on traveling to Kyoto, and social problems in Japan". Though they're only one viewpoint so take it with appropriate caveats.
I'm absolutely no authority but I get the feeling that Japan is a great place to live if you fit into one of the traditional societal roles, but otherwise can be very alienating. Luckily for the gaijin amongst us, one of those roles is "polite tourist", so expect to be welcomed and treated very well. Just don't expect the same wonderful experiences to continue if you try to put down roots.
> Just don't expect the same wonderful experiences to continue if you try to put down roots.
Eh? It’s still a very nice country if you put down roots. It’s certainly one of the best countries in terms of social cohesion/structure.
Japan doesn’t cease to amaze me even after 10 years.
Today I was put on a sort of medical gyroscope and made to drink burp and glowjuice as part of a yearly medical checkup, after which the guy proceeded to yell instructions at me in half broken english, while he presumably took multiple x-rays of my stomach and throat. I didn’t even know this existed, but apparently all men 35 and older do it once a year as a matter of course.
To balance that, Japanese people have a fairly different idea of what constitutes ‘normal’, and that is hard to get used to. For example, everyone considers me a deviant for just wanting to start my day with cereal and milk, and not wanting to eat a (warm!) multi-course meal for breakfast.
> everyone considers me a deviant for just wanting to start my day with cereal and milk
My ideas about breakfast were turned on their head many years ago when a German friend (his typical breakfast: rye bread, cheese, cured ham) remarked that he "can't understand how you can bear to eat sweet food first thing in the morning".
I suppose most of the world's breakfast traditions evolved from whatever is left over from the previous night's dinner. The idea of a custom synthetic breakfast food is quite an American thing.
I stayed alone in Munich once at was blown away at the amazing variety of meats and cheeses and bread and crackers at what was, fairly, just about the cheapest hotel in town.
I've lived in japan for 5 years and your post strongly resonated with my experience. Japanese are generally very polite and educated. You will be treated very well if you are a tourist, but expect to feel alienated if you actually live there. Basically impossible to make friends if you live away from the big cities. At most, you'll have some work acquaintances that reach to you when they need something.
I was a huge sucker for Japanese culture and stuff but after living there and experiencing feeling so lonely and alienated by their culture and their world view (being treated like a nuisance that's coming into their country to disrupt their jobs or "take their girls") it totally fizzled out for me.
Studio Ghibli's films sure opened my eyes to the beauty of Japan's country-side and sea-side towns. I would like to visit some of them some day, if/whenever that becomes possible.
Miyazaki seldom based a movie location on any single real-world place, though. They are always combinations of several places.
Personally I've always preferred Takahata's work over Miyazaki's (whose output is still world class...). Only Yesterday is severely underrated in my opinion.
Fortunately, one doesn't have to choose! I love both Miyazaki's and Takahata's work. Recently (?) there was an influx of Ghibli movies on Netflix, so I finally watched "Only Yesterday" and... I loved it! I strongly recommend this movie.
Of course there's also his powerful "Grave of the Fireflies", but I think that one is well known by all anime fans and needs no recommending.
Don’t confuse “relatively unknown” with “underrated”. It is very highly rated: “The film received widespread critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 100%”.
We can all agree that Sprites Away and Howl's Moving Castle are timeless masterpieces that won't be surpassed by anything...
But if you really are curious about some hidden gems, I can't suggest enough Mary and the Witch's Flower. The vibes, the settings, the girl's feelings... That work of art literally takes you to another world, among the clouds, to the Endor College to be exact :)
Mary and the Witch’s Flower isn’t Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli. It’s by Studio Ponoc, which is mostly ex-Ghibli people, so it retains a lot of the same style. Unfortunately, while the style is definitely there, I don’t think the film holds a candle to the storytelling that Ghibli does so well.
it's certainly better in term of storytelling than some of the worst Ghibli's like Howl's moving castle, Tales from Earthsea (to be fair Hayao wasn't involved with the second).
In general, I'd place it in the middle, not as good as the greatest movies but still quite good.
I'm curious - I already know I disagree with you, but why don't you like Howl's? I always hear it highly regarded online, and I'd be interested in knowing why you don't like it.
Actually, this thread has prompted me to find some time to rewatch it but I remember finding the plot meandering and slightly non-sensical unlike Chihiro's or Mononoke. I thought it was beautiful (like most Ghibli's movies) but it's the movie from Hayao Miyazaki I least enjoyed (also the only one I've only watched one).
For reference, my two favorite movies by Ghibli are Only Yesterday and Totoro and my top three movies from Miyazaki are Chihiro, Totoro and Nausicaa (with Mononoke coming close behind)
I kind of understand why it doesn't get as much attention as other Ghibli films (gentler pace, not Hisaishi (though still great music), mildly questionable storyline for a US audience at the time)...
But damn the dry sarcasm and subtle savagery in the English dub is delightful.
I always thought that was sort of intentional, putting the viewer in the shoes of the hapless hat girl who was swept up into a world of power and intrigue that she had no context or experience to help her interpret what was going on.
Yes, the whole "war" plot was confusing and grotesque- but that is how Sophie would experience it, right? The backstory with the witch of the waste is clearly incredibly consequential to Howl, but it's had to figure out until the end. But that's also Sophie's experience.
The plot doesn't make a lot of sense. If you read the book it's based on (by Diana Wynne Jones) you will at least get how all the pieces fit together, but Miyazaki took it in his own direction. But I'd say all of the individual pieces are pretty amazing, even if the through line is weak.
Mary and the Witch's Flower was an utter disappointment for me. They clearly were giving nods to Spirited away and trying to capture its magic, but somehow it all felt very shallow. And those scenes when some action things happen under exactly the same musical motif... the third time it happened, it felt super lazy. Like, mr movie director, did you run out of music samples?
The theme that captured me the most was Mary's self-esteem. Since the beginning she was introduced as clumsy, insecure even when she gained those powers she doesn't really believe at what she can do.
It's just after a character development through all the movie that you can finally see the beginning of some confidence in herself.
It reminded me of all of us with the impostor syndrome, we don't really believe in ourselves and when something good happens there must be something wrong with the world :)
It's that newsletter guy who likes Theodor Kittelsen again!
A good time to mention: Kittelsen's fairy tale/ fantasy illustrations get all the attention, but he was also a visual satirist, a sort of proto comic artist, with a great deal of humour and self-irony (he once drew a self-portrait where he's passed out in a hammock, a half-finished painting on his easel, and a pig rooting through his paints box, for instance)
He published a book of newspaper-style single picture comics called "Har dyrene sjæl" ("Do animals have souls?") with anthropomorphic frogs, snails and insects of various kinds. The frogs look a lot like Miyazaki's in "Spirited Away"! I wonder if it was a direct inspiration.
Nit: Kiki’s Delivery Service is based on a novel [1], in which people are even nicer.
It's at the level where you might have been embarrassed as a cynical adult.
What Miyazaki added to the original was actions and excitement. The original was probably a bit too boring for his (and possible markets') taste.
Anyone with experience as to an appropriate age to introduce a child to Miyazaki? I imagine the dubbed versions are useful for this.
I'm about to have my first child, and have recently (in the last 5 years or so) revisited some Disney classics from my youth, and I'm not really thrilled with them.
I recommend "Ponyo". Because it's good :) I think this is possibly the Miyazaki movie for the youngest target audience of all his movies, but I don't know his early movies, only all the later ones that many people know.
Minimum age recommendations start at 0 (simply meaning no official limit, it's up to the parents) - depending on country - to around 5-7 years old for a minimum age for this movie.
The Cat Returns would be a great Ghibli film for children. I also would never show children most Disney movies as a lot of them have terrible take-aways.
Definitely do not show them Spirited Away as a young child. I was permanently scarred (emotionally) by the grotesqueness of no-face as a child (~5). It really depends on the movie, but the ones with more mature themes should be left until they are at least in their teens. As a blanket statement, I would not generally say Ghibli films are as suitable for really young children as Disney/Pixar films are.
All the movies Takahata made for Ghibli are good. Omoide poroporo is my favourite for its theme - it's about a young woman turning thirty reflecting on what she actually wants from life and looking back at her childhood while vacationing in the countryside.
I’m pretty ignorant on the whole matter but it doesn’t seem like a terrible spot to be in not being tied to the EU and lots of countries’ debt right now?
With regard to other aspects of Brexit, reading this Washington Post article it seems to have had some good parts and some bad parts and it is too early to tell?
> Britain has “taken back control.” But the government has struggled to show the benefits.
If there had been benefits, rest assured they had been trumpeted from the rooftops.
> Since Britons voted in 2016 to leave the E.U., the country’s per capita income has grown by 3.8 percent in real terms, compared with 8.5 percent growth in the E.U
> But the impact on the economy may take years to fully reveal itself. “I compare Brexit to a slow tire puncture versus a car crash,” Portes said. “It takes time.”
> But Britons who voted for Brexit because they wanted less immigration would be disappointed.
> Despite all these arrivals, the United Kingdom is facing a massive labor shortage blamed in part on Brexit. The country has struggled to bring in fruit pickers, hotel maids and truck drivers. The National Health Service in England is short tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and midwives, in what a parliamentary committee called the “greatest workforce crisis in their history.”
> Johnson’s government now says this arrangement [Northern Ireland] is tearing the kingdom apart, creating disunion and strife.
Brexit is far from done and the relationship with the EU is getting worse. The most likely new prime minister of the UK has been leading the charge to break the Northern Ireland protocol (which is linked to the peace agreement in Northern Ireland).
> Johnson’s government is pushing a law through Parliament to unilaterally overturn the protocol — a move decried by critics as a breach of international law.
I guess I was reading more context into the “we don’t know yet” parts and thinking about the current EU debt and inflation situation. Maybe Britain is in an equally bad situation, I don’t know.
The debt/central bank entanglement comes along with adopting the Euro currency, for which the UK had no obligation even within the EU.
The actual main consequences of leaving the EU are imposition trade barriers and barriers to the movement of people. Which were intended and desired outcomes for many, but so far seem to be rather negative economically and socially (nurse shortage, produce rotting on fields etc).
The UK had a political party UKIP, which was lead by Nigel Farage, he had been pushing for Brexit for a long time.
The right wing government in power was up for reelection, and UKIP said basically "we want a referendum on Brexit or we won't give you our votes and you won't get back into power"
So the prime minister at the time said "ok fine", thinking that brittons won't be dumb enough to vote for it.
So the referendum was called, and the remain sides campaign pointed out how crazy this would be and how much damage it would cause.
The leave campaign lied through their teeth and called the other side a bunch of nerds and fear mongeres. They told the boomers that they could get the old color of their passports back, and said the UK could get rid of the scary immigrants taking their jobs.
The vote went like 51:49... And the then prime minister quit as that was the deal.... In his place was a cavalcade of morons to replace him.
So now the UK is suffering and its all because of this stupid backstory.
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
Sounds like rationalization of his own passion for content aimed at children.
As a writer and intellectual he certainly could shot back with heavy bullets at those who questioned his own mental maturity. But the question remains.
The majority of popular films have content both children and adults can enjoy. Mass market appeal is where the money is.
If the child-like moments of the show are sticking out to you, okay, maybe try to find the bigger picture in the story.
Complaining that you have to conform to what some girls find attractive (or what other guys say girls find attractive), is no criticism of the film.
If you want to otaku/weeb out on some niche anime, go find some uwu girl who likes that stuff.
I don't understand this view that every woman has to like everything you're into and be attracted to it. You're going to get into some stuff that fluxuates your 'attractivity' metric and it's just part of your life.
Pulling apart a motorcycle engine and spreading broken parts across the front lawn isn't so flash, but by golly, gee-willikers, it's going to happen if I want it to.
Well, I'm not the only one thinking this way. Your attractivity will go below zero if you mention that you like some anime movie. Any sucess will never be because of it but despite of it.
You're right that you're not the only one - this way of thinking is common, it's known as "fragile masculinity". As you've found, if you worry too much about people with very fragile masculinity, you won't be able to enjoy things you want to enjoy. I think it makes sense to just not worry about these people.
>Similarly, being deceptive is very unattractive; and more importantly, deeply bad for you.
On the contrary. The ability to be deceptive, to wear more than one mask, is an evolutionary advantage in my opinion and highly attractive even if people will never admit it because it's socially unacceptable.
Pfft. A five year old can be deceptive. A dog can be deceptive. Deception is easy, and often the easy way out. Being honest is hard - but it's worth it.
You only get one life. If you spend it lying to everyone, you'll end up not even learning who you are.
People with the built-in social surveillance software called "conscience" have a hard time to be deceptive without feeling bad about themselves. For most people it's way easier to be honest.
Not being deceptive is also an evolutionary advantage because people can trust you and you earn a position of respect in your group. Evolutionary psychology is popsci trash, you can invent just-so stories for any number of claims using it.
Anime is a very broad genre, aiming at small kids, teenager to young adults; and since some decades more and more also older adults. Ghibli for example is more family-orientated than just children. So it highly depends on which anime you enjoy and for what reasons, and what you make of it. Comparable here are Harry Potter-, Marvel- or Star Wars-Movies. Nobody would say liking these makes you unattractive, but most people would also not say it makes you attractive (fans of those franchises/genre are the obvious exception).
The actual thing is, you probably got it the wrong way. Not anime makes you unattractive, the lack of anything attractive makes you unattractive.
> Watching anime signals to a woman that you that you lack some important qualities.
I wonder how much this is true if you are Japanese.
Also, one of the most manly man I've ever known was watching anime and have been pretty open about it with people and as far as I'm concerned nobody was thinking about him to be too much of a dreamer.
I recommend stop visiting incel forums/reddits/PUA sites and figure out a way to build your confidence as a person.
That is not to say you can't find people of both sexes into anime. But, when I've asked at parties, unless it's specifically a nerd party, 19 out of 20 times people say they don't watch.
Back in the USA, at least at my age, it's frustrating being on the dating sites, in particular OkCupid, which has the questions "Would you date a comic book geek?". If I filter on that question it goes from thousands of people to just 3 in a 50 mile radius of SF. This dispite the fact that many famous people, especially famous movie and TV series directors are comic book geeks. Maybe the wording "geek" is enough to influence the result.
Another interesting one is "Would you enjoy a night playing video games". Just 2 women. This dispite the fact that the gaming industry says 45% of gamers are women. Either that stat is BS or else all the gaming women are in relationships.
Another one I find even more alarming and makes it feel like something fishy is going on "Do you like to wear a costume for Halloween?", just 3 women. But go to any Halloween party and it's fully mixed and seeing the Spirit costume shops all over the place someone is buying these costumes. Again one guess is that the people fun enough to wear a costume are not on the site.
Women have very sofisticated reasons for filtering out some attributes. I think you see the reality - geek women(since on OkCupid) would prefer to have a man which is not into this kind of stuff. There must be some strong evolutionary reasons for it to be the way it is.
Nobody wants to hear it obviously since my internet points on this site are approaching 0.
> Watching anime signals to a woman that you that you lack some important qualities.
Either you need to meet better women, or—and this is more likely—you need to meet any woman. There are plenty of women who enjoy anime, and would be happy to share what they enjoy with their partner.
I would never be in a relationship with a man who couldn't find time to enjoy these films with me or couldn't find something to love in them. Neither would any of my current or past partners or close friends, I don't think.
These aren't anime bullshit with misogynistic crap, complicated giant robot plot-mechanisms that nobody can bother to follow, pedophilic male gaze crap, untranslatable humor, or the other things that plague a lot of Japanese comics and animation, they're quite accessible pieces of relatively pure art. The worst thing they have going for them is a mild obsession with themes of aviation, and some somewhat preachy subtextual political views (nature and harmony and people good, industry and violence and authority bad, mkay).
If you can't bring yourself to appreciate the art in them even a little, I would frankly question your emotional intelligence.
I disagree with the parent comment for other reasons, but I would grant him that saying "I like anime" is seen (injustly, IMHO) as a turn-off.
I quickly looked in Google Scholar and found this paper titled "Pale and Geeky: Prevailing Stereotypes of Anime Fans", and I quote:
> The social distance items suggest that anime fans are indeed stigmatized. For
example, non-fans indicated a willingness to interact with anime fans at a distance (e.g., neighbor, coworker), but did not wish for an anime fan to hold political power (e.g., governor) or be allowed into one’s personal life (e.g., relationship partner, roommate).
Anime has entered the mainstream for a while now, idk what you're talking about. You see the number of NBA stars saying they love anime? There's a video just a few days ago of wiggs talking about demon slayer, a ton of players love Naruto, etc. Don't act like a dweeb and anime isn't the turn off it once was.
Appreciated, but this is the first sentence in your citation:
> We examined the content of anime fan stereotypes in a sample of non-fans (N = 146). Self-identified non-fans of anime wrote about a prototypical anime fan and rated the prototype’s personality their desired social distance from the prototype.
I think we can both see where conclusions drawn here might fail. Replace any human characteristic and have non-fans of that characteristic respond, and you’re likely to get similar results.
I've only skimmed some the paper, but does it distinguish between _types_ of anime fans?
I think the people the non-fans are probably thinking of are more likely "weeaboos", or people who are so obsessed with Japanese culture that they completely reject their own (the ones in really cringey videos). However, there are so many more people now that are either more open to the medium or just openly enjoy it but aren't really as visible - I'd love to see a reproduction of this test with this distinguishing factor.
There's a type of man that has plenty of time to watch children's movies: a father. (Or you could just watch them because you enjoy them and not worry about what people think).
it's not about what others think of me. It is about what I think of myself.
Watching this kind of stuff sends the wrong signal to one's subconscious ... that one is still a "child"... and this will show up in one way or the other in one's interaction with other people.
Well it maybe true to some degree and I'm all for being the best version of oneself. But many factors influence what a "man" is and one of them is the opposite sex.
it's already not so attractive to watch TV and even less attractive to watch anime or other children stuff on it.
What it really comes down to is that you're too weak to be yourself.
This might hurt to hear, but you're a coward if you let gender roles stop you from enjoying something.
I sincerely recommend reading some theory on gender. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler is a surprisingly approachable introduction to the subject, despite not being written as such.
You could police your identity to make yourself attractive to someone that you need to hide yourself from for the rest of your life, but it's a tremendous waste of energy. Find yourself an anime girlfriend.
When you die, you won't be a man any longer. In fact, much of your constituent matter wasn't and won't be human for the duration of the universe.
So why care about being a man or any particular thing at all? Experience the universe in its rich fullness while you're still able. You're already dead in the limit [1]. Nobody's left to judge you.
([1] You can also use this perspective to shut down your experiences prematurely, but pro tip: don't. That's a minimization of potential.)
The saddest thing about this dismal comment is that you likely judge others negatively based on shallow opinions like this. I sincerely hope you are not in any position of authority over anyone.
Maybe you should go to the gym and lift heavy weights, do BJJ, or excel at some other sport.
I don’t care at all what others think about my anime habit.
I never would have connnected Miyazaki with Tolkien.