Slop and guilt

Basil
2026-02-22T20:32:34Z

1

A few days ago I started watching "Hirogaru Sky! Precure", after seeing someone post a clip from it and being like "its funny how when they say the word white they instead say hwhite". I looked at the clip and was like yeah they do say "hwhite", after which I thought, "hey isn't this the magical girl anime where they have a magical boy?" I got curious, and after confirming that with some random wiki I found, I went and decided to watch a bit of it.

I pretty quickly learned how the show works, it's extremely formulaic. Each episode is 24 minutes long, but out of those 24 minutes probably at least maybe like 6 minutes, or one quarter, is spent on fully copy pasted scenes which are basically fully the same between episodes. The obvious ones are the intro and outro (which is pretty normal for anime), but there are also minutes long transformation sequences where the heroes transform from ordinary people into magical girl heroes by doing a dance while saying some random fancy words while a lot of flashy effects happen in the background. Each* episode also has a monster, that even has the same name every time even though its a different monster every time. Oh also the villain creating the monster has a copy pasted effect. And each of the main heroes has a spell that has a copy pasted effect when they use their special "move".

None of this is actually very important, I am just trying to say that the creators might be trying to go more for quantity over quality. Which is probably pretty obvious also because they are making literally one episode each week? And I do mean each week, I am looking this up right now and apparently the show has been running from 2004 and there have been 1067 episodes during that time, which according to my vibes based calculations means they missed maybe like 3 weeks on average each year. It might also be obvious from the fact that it's target demographics is basically preschool children.

Anyways what I am trying to say that this is slop right? Its kinda mindless, its the same over and over. Oh, but that first day I did watch 9 episodes of it in a row. From a big part it was because I really wanted to see the magical boy show up. But I also can't deny that I enjoy it. I continued watching it the next day, even after I saw the magical boy show up, after all. I think I saw like 15 episodes now (so no spoilers please, haha), and I want to see more. I've been feeling kind of down, hopeless, and without motivation for quite a long time, and the sort of naive positivity in the show at least sort of makes me a bit optimistic, at least very temporarily. And it also makes me almost (or not almost) cry.

At the same time I feel very guilty of liking it. And I've been thinking really hard about why.

The fact that it's kinda dumb is definitely a part of it, but it can't really bother me that much considering how many hours of my life I have wasted playing videogames mindlessly, or watching/listening to Youtube videos which might be even dumber, as an example I probably watched more than 1000 episodes of Northernlion playing the Binding of Isaac. It's kinda just inevitable that people waste a lot of their time, and there's nothing wrong with that really right. Well, when I was trying to fall asleep but instead kept on pondering my thoughts about this I did decide to go talk with my room-mate, which resulted in us talking about this topic, and life in general until like 2 am, I am really thankful that he's the kind of person who I can do that with. Our discussion didn't really come up with a concrete conclusion, we just kinda were like, "yeah life kinda sucks but it's better to not dwell on that, and oh yeah you probably actually kind of need to consume some lower quality media for the higher quality more thinky media to actually hit more" and then I went to sleep.

The second and I think bigger part is that it's literally made for like 8 year old girls. Uhhh, and there's kind of no way around that I think? Like that just feels embarrassing to watch for me. For context, I am kinda basically a guy even tho I am also probably more feminine than most (maybe it'd be fairer to myself to say that I am nonbinary, but you know, if you are nonbinary in a forest where no one can see you are you really nonbinary? yes? yes. but also I am just perceived as just a guy by most people so lets keep it simple.), it still feels basically illegal to like something like this as an adult guy. When I examine this more I do think it definitely shouldn't feel like that. If someone tells me they like Pokemon I don't really find it weird at all, even though it's theoretically made for preschool boys. Or maybe more similar is what I am guessing is My Little Pony, which I never watched, but which a lot of guys on the internet liked pretty visibly. I even met someone who I really respected who told me that he liked the show. And I did feel a bit iffy about that, but also when actually thinking at least somewhat critically I saw no problem with. I guess the same is for Precure. If I think about it, I just feel it's sort of weird, but also just kinda fine. I thought about how cool it'd be to make a cosplay of Cure Wing (the magical boy in the show), I've been getting into sewing, and I do think it might not be that difficult to make. And then I think how I could like be silly and try do some of those dances from the show in that cosplay. But then I immediately think how it's too much. And how embarrassing is that I am even thinking about that. I just don't really know.

2

Just a few hours before writing this post I saw a video by Jeffiot called Peak Art, Peak Slop. I'd recommend watching it, it's sort of related to what I wrote about here, but not really. Very, very, oversimplified it tries to somehow explain why something like Twin Peaks might be better than a Mr Beast video. It basically says that all the edges of Mr Beast videos are perfectly sanded off to make it as easy to digest as possible, which they succeed at very well, but it to really enjoy given closer examination, and so when you watch one you don't even really remember what you watched. While something like Twin Peaks breaks a lot of conventions that make things easy to watch, but which also makes it quite memorable. I do take some slight issue with that -- for example, because I can kind of think of what happens in some Mr Beast videos, for example I think in one he recreates Squid Game, though thinking about it I am not really sure if I even actually saw that video. And for example because I did watch all of Twin Peaks, but also can't really remember all that much that happens in it, though again when in the video Jeffiot mentions some of the things I did think to myself yeah I sort of remember that.

I am definitely taking this a bit too literally and sort of just wanted to try be a bit funny here. In reality I think it's just true that something like Twin Peaks makes you think more, and even though it's made in a way that isn't the easiest to watch, thinking about it is really interesting and makes it memorable. There definitely are parts I can think of immediately since they were so so so memorable -- for example episode 8 of season 3 -- even if I don't fully remember the specifics.

Which finally gets me to my point. Precure made me think a lot too. And I sort of remember what's happening in it, and even if I forget the specifics, I don't really think I am ever completely forgetting that I watched it. So I think after all this it might not really be slop, even though it definitely is a bit low quality, and a bit stupid, and made in a way to be easy to watch. It's sort of in a weird way where the context of me not really being the target audience (I think? like maybe I am being unfair here considering they did decide to have a magical boy after making the 900 episodes or whatever before it so maybe they wanted to expand the audience? I have no idea honestly) makes it be more interesting then it otherwise might be? I think? Like while it's definitely made to be easy to watch I did also describe why watching it makes me feel pretty guilty, so that kind of makes it not that easy to watch, right? Or maybe I am just making stuff up to make myself feel better about watching it.

Ok, this is besides the point but I do want to defend Precure (or at least the 15 episodes I watched, I guess I can't vouch for the 1050 others or however many there are) a bit more. I do still think it's better than something like Mr Beast, since it at least has a genuinely positive message and tries to make people be kind and think about what other people feel, which has to be worth at least something right? Meanwhile Mr Beast instead does basically the most parasocial things imaginable, I guess on the very surface he's giving out money, but like he's using the money that to bribe people to embarrass themselves, or even sometimes harm themselves. So I am trying to say that while both are probably slop, some slop is still better than other slop. Shrug.

I am not really sure which group to put this in? Maybe this should be somewhere else instead? Probably ~anime? Or ~tv? ~life? ~lgbt? Feel free to move this elsewhere, I don't really know.

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