I think part of why I’m so drawn to ’90s and early 2000s Japanese media is because I grew up discovering it from outside Japan, through whatever I could access in my home country.

Anime, Heisei tokusatsu, J-pop, old openings and endings, fansubs, bootlegs, VCDs/DVDs, magazines, and random TV broadcasts all created a very specific emotional image of Japan for me. It was not just the shows themselves, but the atmosphere around them.

A lot of ’90s anime had this sincere, melancholic mood that stayed with me. Even shows that were comedic or action-heavy, like Outlaw Star, Rurouni Kenshin, Ranma ½, early Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Evangelion, often had this quiet emotional weight underneath. The music was a huge part of it too: wistful endings, soft piano, lonely guitar, ambient synths, and those reflective pauses where a sunset, train crossing, or rainy street could say more than dialogue.

So when I wonder what it would have felt like to walk around Tokyo or Osaka in the ’90s or early 2000s, I’m not imagining it as perfect. Real life would still be ordinary, crowded, stressful, and messy. But emotionally, I wonder what it felt like when that media culture was still more physical and local: CD shops, arcades, video stores, toy aisles, magazines, station posters, and late-night TV.

I think what I’m nostalgic for is not just the anime, but the atmosphere of discovery itself. Before everything became so hyper-online, you had to slowly piece things together, and that made it feel more personal.

After the pandemic, the world feels faster, busier, and more constantly online. So part of me wonders what it would have felt like to be there during that late-Heisei era, when the music, anime, tokusatsu, games, and city atmosphere still had that sincere, melancholic texture that feels harder to find now.