Heinzes 2010s Anime Cleanup Series 2 minor spoilers within consider yourself warned 660https://i1.wp.com/blackandyellowotakugamers.com/wpcontent/uploads/2017/12/animegatarisheader.png?fit=38402C2160ssl=1 Dont you want to have more fun talking about anime? Honestly shows that go this hard on metanarrative and intertextuality should be at the forefront as curiosities for industry and subculture admirers such as myself. And yet when this show first aired in the Fall of 2017 I watched the first episode enjoyed it well enough and then promptly forget about it. This is because as pointed out by my friend Anilist user and fellow reviewer planetJanehttps://anilist.co/user/planetJane/ that the series operates in disguise as a fairly standard schoollife comedy for the first half of its run. So ultimately the show selfsabotaged in terms of building immediate momentum with particularly timepressed and picky seasonal watchers like yours truly. With the benefit of hindsight the cat our mascotesque Nekosenpai I suppose is now out of the bag and we can take this series for what it is. Which is to say it succinctly a deft comedy which belies a deep love for its extant medium in all aspects good and bad that it contains. Its worth noting that while the show does develop a dramatic core in its latter half as the world itself crumbles around our heroine Minoa it never fully loses sight of its comedic pulse deeply indebted to industry injokes and formreferential sight gags. I think specifically of a very small yet evergreen gag in the 11th episode wherein Minoa walks into an onscreen subtitle and bumps her head on it very much the kind of thing you may see were you to watch one of the classic Chuck Jonesdirected Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes shorts maybe Duck Amuck. Moments like this demonstrate among all else that AnimeGataris is not only committed to lampooning the tropes of anime as we know it today but also fostering and expositing an understanding and appreciation of animation as a widespread global craft. In keeping with AnimeGataris position as a comedy all must end well and it does. The boundary between the real and the fictional collapses and everything falls apart yet our bubbly heroine is granted the power to set everything back in its place. A reassuring gesture that we can separate what is real and tangible from what is story and fiction. Though it must be said that fiction affects the real too be it shaping our own mindsets and worldviews or inspiring us to pursue our goals. Certainly for the anime club we follow in this series this is absolutely the case. Taking it further though I have to posit the question: What is the difference to us the viewer of the show itself and a dream or showwithintheshow? Does the difference matter? Are not all storieswithinstories just stories with some layer of obfuscation added arbitrarily? The film nerd in me wants to tell you that you should watch CloseUp. To wrap this up if you were to ask me to recommend you one example of metafiction in anime from 2017 well... I would probably go with Re:CREATORS over AnimeGataris. But where the former is a more bleak actionoriented examination of the creatorcreation and audienceauthor relationship AnimeGataris provides a light energetic and quite thoughtful love letter to an entire industry and medium that is an absolute delight to laugh along with. Final Grade: B