So this is something that I’d thought for a little while, and thought it was fun to see Crunchyroll putting up something and looking at Wrestling as Anime. Figured I’d share here for any like minded anime/wrestling fans
less tentacles tho
I throughly enjoyed the video. It was very good!
Wrestling does remind me a lot of Anime in the sense you often get bored waiting for Namek to explode, become jaded, and then lose all interest. Question; is this guy getting paid by WWE? Calling the pre-02 company ‘WWE’ seems like a thing a fan wouldn’t do. It wasn’t the fans that dubbed it ‘Attitude’; that was a marketing campaign utilized by the WWF and claiming the fans did it is kind of WWE-speak corporate revisionist history.
I tried to sell my buddy on wrestling by pitching it as ‘live action comic book that takes place in the real world’ after seeing Spider-Man employ wrestling spots when he took me to see Civil War, so I can understand and agree with the general theme of the video, while not really having ever been a huge anime fan.
[shrugs] Not enough Mandy Rose!
Anime, Wrestling and Comic Books all share being long-form serialized shows which will never end. They can also be watched as a kid and grown into so they just become a part of someones life. I’ve been watching/reading all three since I was a kid and never stopped because they have just gotten better with age and weirdly seemed to line up well with the different periods of my life.
Kid
- Rocking era of wrestling with big over the top colorful characters that even had a cartoon and crossovers with GI Joe.
- Gundam, Macross and other cartoons with big robots smashing things were my thing.
- I was reading lots of re-prints of early Spider-Man comics. There were great Spider-Man and Batman cartoons.
Teenager:
- Angsty Attitude era of wrestling in WWF, WCW vs NWO and clips of ECW. Lots of scantly clad women for the horny teenager.
- Discovering more adult animes like Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop while I also could not stop watching DBZ.
- Comic books got darker with Image comics, the more grounded Ultimates, violent Punisher comics.
Adult:
- Just has fun watching or reading the best of everything whether its silly and funny, dramatic, mature, etc.
Your growth in each of these fictional spaces mirror my own so completely, it’s kinda nuts
lol. It’s probably a safe bet then that you’re age is in the mid 30’s like mine.
But I think it could work with most eras. If someone is younger than me then maybe their timeline is:
Kid - PG era of WWE is the most accessible wrestling.
Teenager - Start is CM Punk era, WWE starting to get a little more edgy again. Using the network they can go back and watch ECW and the Attitude era. Online there still insane deathmatch stuff from the indies.
College Student or someone in their 20’s - probably a big NJPW or RoH fan.
Guilty as charged, I’m turning 32 this year lol