(…no, I don’t mean I have one…)

Meta context: This was pulled out of my draft folder, so…I don’t even remember how old it is anymore. Based on the intro, it’s probably from 2018 or 2019.

Grand Blue and the Rising of the Shield Hero.

Aside from their male protagonists and the fact they both have source material they were adapted from, they don’t have all that much in common.

However, both started with a focus on alcohol consumption somewhere during their first episodes, even though that’s not what they’re mainly about.

Alcohol consumption has become such a social thing since the beginning of time that talking about it is like talking about culture and gender – there are so many factors influencing whether one should drink or not, when to drink, what to drink, experts in drinking and so forth. With a move to older anime protagonists (and older manga/light novel protagonists, which influences this), it’s getting easier to show alcohol being consumed in reckless or copious amounts, which can be dangerous for younger viewers. This is doubly bad because the current isekai wave facilitates the showing of Anglophone-style taverns or similar bed and breakfast-type places as lodgings – which is fine in and of itself, but encourages a bunch of anime characters to drink so hard they wreck their livers.

In Japanese works in particular (not just anime and/or manga), copious drinking is associated with host clubs and salarymen, so it’s not just a problem in fictional works. (Also note how those stereotypes are both men – hostess clubs probably drink about as much, but career women in Japan don’t have the same association of “drinking to socialise” because they’re probably raising a family and/or watching their weight.)

Of course, having worked in a place that sells beer and also having never been a big drinker, I’m probably not the best person to argue about alcohol consumption in fictional works, no matter where they come from. In fact, this is probably also really bad in Anglophone teen-lit like Tokyo Ever After, but at least when characters have a drinking problem in those (like Lister in Alice Oseman’s I Was Born for This), they are more likely to admit it, due to the whole emphasis on individuality and “speaking out for yourself and your personal boundaries” which has become more pervasive in recent decades.

Plus, the truth is (as you can tell from having worked in a place that sells beer)…I’m actually fine with other people drinking. In moderation.

Thus, it’s just the Grand Blue treatment – glorifying overconsumption of alcohol so hard, the resulting stupidity becomes a punchline – is what somewhat gets my goat. (The “lighting vodka on fire to tell it’s not water” thing though? That doesn’t require actual consumption of alcohol to do, so that’s hilarious.)

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This is a particularly evergreen issue over the end of year/new year holiday period…but I caught COVID at the start of the year and so the relevant vibes continued well into the new year.

If you’re looking for 2024 resolutions, I’ve kind of given up on those. After all, my goals right now are meant to cover pretty much the rest of my life, not just one year. As to anime-watching in general…I’m still in Amazing Race mode as I write this conclusion on the 12th of January 2024, because COVID isolation (and my mood) has mostly been bingeing recap videos of season 35, but due to the US season 36 appearing in March this year, I might not be back in the swing of things until June. Then again, no one out there’s reading these posts any more…right(?)