Sometimes our first reaction to things doesn’t hold up.
When I was in high school, I first encountered Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. I found it to be a rather depressing slog of death and misery. On a whim, I revisited the series in grad school and found it to be a haunting, beautiful saga about life and potential. And then, some years later I read it again and thought “Tezuka doesn’t know how to write women.” Three different times, three different takeaways: miserable, masterpiece, mixed. As I grew older and matured, different aspects stood out to me.
I’ve wanted to start this for a while, and the new year seemed like a good opportunity to do so. I think it’s interesting to explore the ways our perspective on a work can shift over time. And so I invite you to take a piece of media – TV, book, movie, video game, music, whatever – that you haven’t explored in a while and write about how your opinion has (or hasn’t!) changed upon a revisit.
Simple enough? Some general guidelines, although since this is the first time I’m putting it together (and my first time putting together any kind of series like this) I welcome feedback from y’all to help shape what this can be:
- I’m not sure the best cutoff in terms of time. My thought would be to pick media you haven’t touched in at least 5 years – time enough that you think your opinion might be different compared to what you used to think.
- That said, I’m also open to arguments for things that are more recent if you want to make a good case for it. Maybe there’s a movie that you got caught up in the zeitgeist of and want to re-review with more clarity and perspective?
- This doesn’t have to be only the second time you’ve engaged with something. It can be a favorite series from childhood you watched countless times, a book you used to reread every year, or what have you. The more important piece I’m interested in with this series is how your perspective on the media might have changed, and what did or didn’t resonate with you on revisit compared to what did or didn’t in the past.
- Beyond that, what you write or how you structure it is totally up to you!
As for posting a piece, just make sure you’ve requested to be a publisher, and follow the posting walkthrough. Set your review in the appropriate category, and use the tag Second Look as well as the following depending on what you’ve selected (full disclosure: I adapted this list from Late to the Party):
Anime – Anime
Books – Book Reviews
Comics – Comic Book Reviews, Comics
Games – Game Reviews, Video Games
Manga – Manga
Movies – Movie Reviews
Music – Music Reviews
Musicals – Musical Reviews
TV – TV Reviews, Classic Coverage
Interested? Please sign up for a slot here. Posts can go live at 12 pm Eastern US time on Mondays. We’ll get started on January 20 with a review of The Colbert Report.
What am I forgetting? Have any questions? Tag me @TheSoSoGatsby:disqus (my Disqus display name is Cordyceps)