The Power of Nostalgia

[sintzu]

NO.

They weren't all bad but for the most part they were below average and as a dub fan Funimation's Kai is the only way to watch it in English.

[TheGreatness25]

I'm extremely nostalgic for the FUNimation dub. But then again, I'm nostalgic for the entire series. Sometimes I feel like if it weren't for my nostalgia, I wouldn't be interested in the series to begin with a an adult.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I can agree, to an extent, that nostalgia can be a bad thing if someone lets it take them too far down and they're unable to take off the rose-tinted glasses and see that, maybe, what they used to like isn't perfect or that good to them anymore. But if someone is able to temper that feeling? In that case, nostalgia can be a great and fun thing.

Staying with Dragon Ball for example, I still feel pretty nostalgic remembering watching DBZ when it was practically all new to me (though I'd read all about everything beyond where we were at the time online) on Toonami after school as a kid. Looking back, the dub was far from perfect, but that doesn't mean my memories of enjoying it are any less valid. It's part of what makes watching Super feel so great too - while I'm also just plain enjoying the new material for the most part, it definitely channels that old feeling of having Dragon Ball to look forward to after school, and that's a great feeling for me to revisit.

On the opposite end of the spectrum though, we have for example, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. I'm still able to enjoy it for what it is, but...man...if watching it is not some of the most trying viewing I can do nowadays, for something I enjoy anyway, then I dunno what is. I'm still able to sit back and take it all in, especially the episodes I specifically remember seeing as a kid, but it still doesn't make it feel any less painful when I see an animation mistake, or something just plain stupid (and not in a funny way) is said or done.

It all comes down to how an individual is able to handle the nostalgia. Sometimes a person is truly feeling nothing but nostalgia, especially if they haven't actually re-watched what it is they remember loving in recent years; sometimes a person just actually truly enjoys something that others just don't understand why.

[90sDBZ]

I have tons of nostalgia for the old Funimation inhouse and Saban Ocean dubs, and to this day they remain my favourite versions overall. I can still watch and enjoy Kai and the Japanese versions plenty though, and can appreciate them for different reasons. I'm fully aware that some of the old Season 3 performances weren't great, but to me Team Faulconer's score and the fact that most of the actual voices still suited the characters was enough for me to look past the flaws. I know a lot of people hate the dialogue too, but that's something that's never really bothered me. In fact I still like Goku's heroic portrayal even if it's not how Toryama made him.

And I'll just say that even though Schemmel started off doing an awkward impersonation it didn't take very long for him to drop that and make it his own. I still enjoy listening to his "It's done" speech even now.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

You might condense Kunzait's comment to "Nostalgia is something you feel, not something you stoke". If you make an earlier life stage out to be better than it enough that you try to drag behind you into the future, that is time, energy, and potential contentment you are not spending taking stock of your present and making new memories and milestones.

The funny, if awkward thing for me is that thanks some more recent friends of mine and the new material of the last three years, Dragon Ball is a tad more potent in my life now than it was in the early 2000s- but then fresh connections and new material can do that. I watched the Toonami broadcasts haphazardly, then more regularly (Buu arc is a trip when you're in the target demographic), enjoyed some of the early 2000s video games, and have a couple shared memories with friends from the time, but really the biggest surprise was going back to it, between the Dragon Boxes and Battle of Gods' release and finding something of merit. Even if Super has done a great deal to question that conclusion.

The old dubs? Oh, I'm inoculated. No problems here. Though I certainly would not let them loose on anyone new to the series without a disclaimer.

That being said, I do have a fondness for some of the crazy lines in the old dub ("Thank you Goku I accept this bean without hesitation!")

[spoiler]https://youtu.be/8tAj1HmYC40?t=234[/spoiler]

Truly.

[Kunzait_83]

Something that's always continually creeped me out about the whole nostalgia thing is that so many people are experiencing it younger and younger and younger now. People who get to 18, 19, 20 and who up until then have barely actually lived much of a life at all yet are becoming ever more increasingly prone to opining and yearning wistfully for dumb shit from when they were a child - and through said-dumb shit a longing for actually BEING a child... which was sometimes less than a decade before then.

When you get to your early 20s, you've only just BARELY become an adult at that point. There's SO goddamn much to the world that's only JUST opening up around you now. You should be overwhelmed (in a good way mind you) with exploring new things, ideas, and possibilities that were either unavailable to you or that you'd otherwise never even heard of or considered exploring before. You're only just now REALLY starting to develop into who you really are as a person. The earliest onset of adulthood should be one of the most exciting, experimental, and adventurous periods in a person's life. But instead, time after time after time now, more and more people it seems are looking at it and thinking "Nope, I wanna go back; all this new input scares me too much".

Without going TOO far down this rabbit hole just yet, I definitely think that an over abundance of excessive sheltering in a child's earlier life can certainly play a significant role in this. Children who were heavily sheltered about the realities of the world for too long most of their adolescent life and who aren't ever raised to fully understand and comprehend the bad along with the good aspects of real life can grow up and become not quite prepared for what the world is actually like, and the anxiety and fear can become too much for them to process. And that's HARDLY the worst or most damaging effects it can have on a kid. Its definitely a parenting style I've long ago become VERY, very viscerally opposed to, and I think that parents who shelter their kids are ultimately only doing great harm to them in the long run by stunting/handicapping their growth as individuals in trying to preserve this insane and largely imaginary sense of "purity" in a kid.

Kids who are raised to think that the world is all largely nothing but sunshine and rainbows for so long that when sobering reality finally, inevitably hits home, it becomes too much to handle all at once (since they've never been allowed to ever be truly educated about it too deeply before) and they retreat and regress within themselves mentally & emotionally: and when prompted as to why they like to live and dwell so much in the past, they'll talk about how the world today is "getting so much worse than from when I was a kid" when the truth of the matter is that most of the world's worst problems have been ever-present since long, long before they were born and all throughout their rose-tinted and sterilized childhoods.

I'm thinking of a LOT of the people I'd come to know for much of the last ten, eleven, twelve years now: and frankly speaking a LOT of people from this very community and today's anime fandom as a whole. Its something that's contributed a LOT to my issues with this fandom and why I left it in a state of quasi-horror some time ago (and is a central theme around that giant thread comparing fandoms of different generations that I'd been long, LONG putting off now). I won't name any names of course, but I remember my time spent in the Daizex/Kanzenshuu IRC Chat culminated at one point with a notable Kanz user confiding to me that "Honestly? I truly wish I could go back and be 8 years old again forever". This was quite far from the first or only instance of such a similar sentiment being said to me with the utmost sincerity by people from this site, but it was certainly among the most plainly and directly stated.

A BIG signifier of a certain large swath of geek culture today are people who are almost pathologically terrified of things, ideas, feelings, and senses that are new to them, who would much rather do nothing except wallow in and play with relics of their earliest childhood years that offer them the most comfort and familiarity instead of getting the fuck out there and exploring and engaging with the world. Its their decision to make obviously, but its beyond tragic and heartbreakingly depressing to witness on such a relatively large scale. You're ultimately only cheating, depriving, and harming yourself in the end.

It can I think in some ways also have some wider damaging social consequences: for instance it leads a lot of people to have INCREDIBLY, terrifyingly skewed and warped perspectives on aging (something that society has already historically had huge, HUGE problems with in the first place), with more and more people genuinely believing that "I'm getting too old now" at absurdly, stupidly young ages like 23, 24, 25. At any given point in your 20s (and 30s for that matter) you're still well deep within the prime of your life and your youth, but there's so many people I've known throughout those years of my life who've been trained to think that they're already genuinely over the hill now that they're not a hyperactive elementary or middle school kid playing with Pokemon toys anymore.

Its getting psychologically sicker and sicker now, and at times its even rubbed off on me: I've been called "old man" and "grandpa" to my face in person very much unironically and un-jokingly by far too many people on FAR too many occasions to count now since as early as 24/25 years old: and I've always typically tended to look around 4 or 5 years younger than my real age to boot. I've caught myself, even recently, thinking in terms like I'm FAR older than I really am.

It used to be that we've socially over-fixated on over-idealizing our teens and twenties as the best period ever in a person's life, but we're devolving to a point now with all this nostalgia shit to where we're honestly starting to send the collective message socially that a person's best prime years are when they're single digits, or at most a tween, and that everything from high school onward is all nothing but a steady drop downhill. This can only be the polar, diametric opposite of socially and psychologically healthy.

A little healthy reminder of something you hadn't thought about in many years that brings a warm smile of remembrance to your face once every so often is one thing and can be perfectly lovely. But when you're 22, 23, 24 years old or whatever (and god help you beyond that) and your personal life largely and more and more worryingly often revolves mainly around repeatedly consuming the same kinds of things you consumed at circa age 7 (which can very oftentimes be indisputably brain-rotting garbage, lets not let anyone kid themselves otherwise) while wistfully longing for that period in your life again and routinely ignoring or passing by opportunities to enrich yourself with something that's genuinely different and new to you... you're not a healthy or balanced individual and this can most certainly be an indicator of MUCH deeper psychological problems that are probably plaguing you on some level.

At 21 years old and onward (hell, at 16/17/18 years old and onward), you should be positively overwhelmed and overjoyed with with further growing and expanding your knowledge and horizons and with exploring the world and creating fresh new "best time of my life" memories for yourself to look back on with fondness: not recoiling away from life in stark terror of it (either because there's ugliness to it that you were never exposed to before or whatever other reasons) and instead over-romanticizing and idealizing a time in your life where you were probably just ignorant, over-insulated, and kinda stupid.

There's a thin, thin line where nostalgia becomes a pleasantly warm emotion one feels every so often and instead becomes a social & psychological cocoon that's almost entirely self-inflicted and that's blocking you off from really discovering what kind of person you are and can become past the developmental stage of a child. At a certain point you're only showing a hostile fear and reluctance towards personal growth and becoming further enlightened both intellectually and personally: generally all under the guise of "never losing your inner-child" without understanding that there's a colossal fucking difference between simply being "young at heart" and just being eternally childish, the latter of which is nowhere NEAR as charming or desirable as a lot of young people today genuinely seem to believe it is.

And I always, always, ALWAYS find it ENDLESSLY fascinating at how counter-intuitive these fears and behaviors that are so-ever present in today's fandom run against so many of the "Shonen ideals" that today's fandom also in the same breath likes to throw around and tout as the most charming and warm-hearted shit ever. "Life is a great big adventure and the world is overwhelmingly large, vast, and rich with possibilities and new experiences: get out there and explore it all!"

There's a reason why I shit talk the majority of Shonen (post-mid 90s Shonen in particular) as a worthless waste of time: I find it FAR better and more productive to actually just LIVE those ideals day to day, in whatever way I can (albeit in a FAR infinitely less Oda-esque Joker-grinny way of course) than to hoist them up through fiction as these insipid Hallmark sentiments to wallow in while deep down really being genuinely fearful of what they can actually mean when applied to one's real life.

[ABED]

There's a thin, thin line where nostalgia becomes a pleasantly warm emotion one feels every so often and instead becomes a social & psychological cocoon

But what you're describing isn't nostalgia. It's a fear of the future, the unknown, failure, etc. It's not really a longing for the past. That's a pretense.

[Kamiccolo9]

Going off what Kunzait was saying, when I got into college, it was a whole new experience for me. I had a chance to get away from home, experience new ideas, learn new perspectives. Furthermore, I literally got to go out and see the world (I managed to get myself on the student study abroad committee, and was a student counselor for study abroad trips over spring and winter breaks.) In addition, I also have an academic background that routinely hammered any kind of personal bias (which nostalgia is most definitely a culprit of) out of me.

Nowadays, when I watch things from my childhood, I can enjoy them for their own merit, rather than because I liked them as a kid. Granted, that does mean that some things don't hold up (original Pokemon and DBZ dubs are almost unwatchable for me now), but I've also gained a greater appreciation of some shows than I ever had as a kid, like Batman the Animated Series and Gargoyles, which I can now appreciate as genuinely good works of fiction.

Nostalgia is an opiate. It may make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it dulls your critical thinking like any other kind of bias, and bias is death to legitimate discussion.

[ABED]

Nostalgia is an opiate. It may make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it dulls your critical thinking like any other kind of bias, and bias is death to legitimate discussion.

Only if you allow it to and I'm sorry, I don't believe for a second that you college of all places hammered personal bias out of you. Everyone has their biases, just be aware of them.

I'd like to make it clear, in case it's not, this isn't a thread about whether anyone likes the dub. It was a terrible dub, but I still look back fondly at that time, much like I look back fondly on my grandparents' old house. It's not just the memories and people from that home, it was the home itself even though it wasn't a great looking house.

[Kamiccolo9]

Nostalgia is an opiate. It may make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it dulls your critical thinking like any other kind of bias, and bias is death to legitimate discussion.

Only if you allow it to and I'm sorry, I don't believe for a second that you college of all places hammered personal bias out of you. Everyone has their biases, just be aware of them.

I'd like to make it clear, in case it's not, this isn't a thread about whether anyone likes the dub. It was a terrible dub, but I still look back fondly at that time, much like I look back fondly on my grandparents' old house. It's not just the memories and people from that home, it was the home itself even though it wasn't a great looking house.

College helped, but my career is what really did it, at least when I choose to engage in discussion. It's a bit difficult to be taken seriously as a historian if you can't be objective in your research and dissertations.

[Kunzait_83]

but I've also gained a greater appreciation of some shows than I ever had as a kid, like Batman the Animated Series and Gargoyles, which I can now appreciate as genuinely good works of fiction.

I think its probably even vastly more important in today's landscape to reiterate that people don't largely use their newfound adult perspectives to JUST continually revisit and reevaluate childhood favorites and see how they stack up. Once in awhile sure, all well and good, but for god's sake: GO INFINITELY BEYOND the restrictive walls of what your (possibly smothering) parents allowed you to watch at 10. The world of art and media is PROFOUNDLY denser and bigger and more rewarding that SOLELY just the Saturday morning kids' cartoon blocks from the late 90s/early 2000s (or the 80s, or any other era with shitty kids cartoons).

There's WAY too much critical writing and assessment from today's geek culture about inane, stupid shit aimed primarily towards either selling toys to small children or being inoffensively light and fluffy to large family audiences, and nowhere NEAR enough legitimate exploration of works meant to say something of genuine value to grown-ass adults. Even pouring over some of the absolute, apex-best kiddie material from 15/20 years ago up through to today offers not even VAGUELY close to the same intellectual and emotional riches as exploring more deeply the depths of what legitimately adult-aimed media can and routinely does offer.

Children's media, even at its very, very best, can only ever be permitted to go so far: your Bruce Timms and Brad Birds of the world are still not working on anything vaguely approaching the same level of depth and creative fullness as the Philip K. Dicks or Ingmar Bergmans of the world have touched upon. If the "best" and creatively densest/most challenging work that you're regularly experiencing typically comes largely from sources like Pixar or Nickelodeon, you're REALLY not exploring all that especially far from your comfort zone and you're not in any way, shape, or form pushing and challenging yourself. The rabbit hole of art goes way, way, waaaaaaaay deeper beyond your wildest imaginings. Art hasn't progressed this far to this point in history solely on the overwhelming creative might of shit like Digimon, Power Rangers, Toy Story, Hey Arnold, and Ed, Edd, N Eddy and the like.

It feels beyond stupid and ridiculous that something like this even needs to be stated but: you're not a kid anymore. You won't "get in trouble" or whatever for wandering into the adult section. Its okay, VERY crucially important even I would say, to leave the Toonzone shit behind you for some long stretches and see what else is out there. You'd be IMMENSELY surprised at what you'll find.

Nostalgia is an opiate. It may make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it dulls your critical thinking like any other kind of bias, and bias is death to legitimate discussion.

Very, very well put.

There's an old saying: "The person who sees life the same at 50 as they did at 20 has wasted 30 years of their life."

I honestly think we may be at or getting to a point where we might have to update it to: "The person who sees life the same at 22 as they did at 7 has wasted 15 years of their life."

[Kamiccolo9]

Well, I mentioned those shows due to the context of the thread. I could go on and on about my love for 19th Century Russian literature, the art of Raphael I grew to love after seeing it in person in the Vatican, my taste in food being completely changed after my first trip to Greece, etc.

But we're on a forum about what for most of us was a 90's cartoon, ergo...Batman and Gargoyles

[PsionicWarrior]

Nope, the first I ever saw as a kid were the french dubs then I saw the english dubs but once I saw the original japanese I could never go back.

[ABED]

There's an old saying: "The person who sees life the same at 50 as they did at 20 has wasted 30 years of their life."

I honestly think we may be at or getting to a point where we might have to update it to: "The person who sees life the same at 22 as they did at 7 has wasted 15 years of their life."

Completely different from nostalgia.

Art hasn't progressed this far to this point in history solely on the overwhelming creative might of shit like Digimon, Power Rangers, Toy Story, Hey Arnold, and Ed, Edd, N Eddy and the like.

No but I'll take Toy Story or even Power Rangers over most of the crap in modern art museums (e.g., Jackson Pollock). And I do think Toy Story 2 has a pretty damn important message that I'd put up there with a lot of great art.

It feels beyond stupid and ridiculous that something like this even needs to be stated but: you're not a kid anymore. You won't "get in trouble" or whatever for wandering into the adult section. Its okay, VERY crucially important even I would say, to leave the Toonzone shit behind you for some long stretches and see what else is out there. You'd be IMMENSELY surprised at what you'll find.

And I think it's a mistake to think that just because something is for so-called adults that it's better. No one will think the worst of you (at least no one that matters) for liking kid's shows.

It's a bit difficult to be taken seriously as a historian if you can't be objective in your research and dissertations.

Seriously by whom?

[Kamiccolo9]

It's a bit difficult to be taken seriously as a historian if you can't be objective in your research and dissertations.

Seriously by whom?

Peers. Mentors. Other historians. Students, even. If I can't be objective from a position of authority, why should they bother trying?

A biased historian is as useless as a blind and deaf movie critic.

[Hellspawn28]

I have nostalgia for the old Ocean voice cast dub from 1996-1998, but I can admit that it was not very good. I still find the 1999-2003 DBZ dub from Funimation to be terrible. Unless it's Kai, I can't watch DBZ in English. People these days hate on newer English dubs, but act like the dubs from the 90's are so much better. Besides several dubs from Animaze and Streamline Pictures, most dubs from the 90's did suck. Manga UK dubs like Angel Cop and Americanize style dubs like DIC's Sailor Moon did give dubs a bad rep and still gives them a bad rep today.

[Zephyr]

You can synthesize the opiate of nostalgia with critical thinking.

I'll commonly use nostalgia to brainstorm massive lists of what my favorite video games, television shows, films, albums, etc. are. From there, I can gauge which ones evoke more intense feelings of nostalgia and which ones evoke less intense feelings of nostalgia. Once the list is whittled down to a reasonable level, I can go back and re-consume each piece of media to determine how well it holds up.

Wash, rinse, repeat. Eventually, I have a solid list of my top ten whatevers. I can then pick out what objectively measurable things the different games, films, etc (gameplay styles, vocal styles, themes, types of humor, etc.). have in common, in order to pinpoint what it is that stands out about them and ultimately appeals to me on such a fundamental level that they both evoke intense nostalgia and hold up critically when revisited in the present.

This one of many means I use to increase my self understanding, which is one thing that I find to be incredibly important for personal growth and psychological development (I also find it to be an incredibly fun exercise in introspection, a sentiment not shared by my friends who I on occasion implore to attempt). By knowing what my own personal taste is like, I can make more informed decisions in the future regarding what I'm likely to enjoy. Sure, I can and certainly should branch out (if my interest in the given medium extends to the point where I'm interested in branching out), but it's also nice to know when you're likely to enjoy something, on a tier beyond surface-level intuition.

---

That said, just because you can use nostalgia as a tool for critical thought, doesn't mean that most people do, unfortunately.

[ABED]

It's a bit difficult to be taken seriously as a historian if you can't be objective in your research and dissertations.

Seriously by whom?

Peers. Mentors. Other historians. Students, even. If I can't be objective from a position of authority, why should they bother trying?

A biased historian is as useless as a blind and deaf movie critic.

And there are numerous academics and intellectuals who are sadly very influential regardless of their obvious bias. I know this sounds cynical, but sorry, being biased doesn't neccessarily mean you won't be taken serious.

Besides, it's not like we're talking research, we're talking something innocuous. Having nostalgia is perfectly harmless and in no way poisonous. The phenomena you and Kunzait are talking about is fear which isn't due to looking back too fondly on the past. That's a symptom.

[Kamiccolo9]

And there are numerous academics and intellectuals who are sadly very influential regardless of their obvious bias. I know this sounds cynical, but sorry, being biased doesn't neccessarily mean you won't be taken serious.

Besides, it's not like we're talking research, we're talking something innocuous. Having nostalgia is perfectly harmless and in no way poisonous. The phenomena you and Kunzait are talking about is fear which isn't due to looking back too fondly on the past. That's a symptom.

Depends on what you mean by "influential."

Publically, Bill O'Reilly's "historical" works have given him a decent following. Academically, he's considered a hack. These are different spheres of influence, and I operate in the latter one, therefore I have a different goal and outlook from discussion than someone who doesn't.

Academically, if you are biased to the extent where it affects your work, then you have failed as an academic. If you cannot be objective, then you are not in control over your own work.

[MetaMoss]

Ecclesiastes 7:10 (NRSV) - Do not say, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, ain't it? I can't say I've really had much nostalgia for Funimation's dub specifically as much as the story of the show itself and watching it with my family. I do have one VHS tape recorded from the week the final part of the Cell Games aired on Toonami back in late 2000, and that's produced some form of "warm and fuzzy feelings" when I've watched it, though I think a lot of that comes from my nostalgia for the Toonami block itself and its way of presenting things. When Kai started airing on Nicktoons in 2010, my family started watching it together like it was DBZ on Cartoon Network, so I didn't have any feeling of "old DBZ was better" or anything like that. I was just happy that DBZ was back on TV so I could watch it with my parents and sister. I had also discovered Daizenshuu EX about that time, and seeing how adamant Mike and Co. were about the superiority of the Japanese version inspired me to take a second look on that front.

For other things, I recognized several years ago that I had fallen into a "nostalgia trap" not unlike what Kunzait was talking about. I was barely a teenager, and I was already missing my younger years! It probably didn't help that I found middle school and early high school to be pretty miserable. The remedy for that was finding some good friends, growing up a bit, and discovering new things to enjoy. Here I am now, halfway through college, loving life and the new adventures it brings.