Dman's Blog
Welcome to my new blog page! Here you will find more personal thoughts and opinions or short writings about things that interest me. The blog page will replace the former news section which was on the about page. For archival purposes I created a page when you can still find all the old news messages. CLICK HERE
#2 - June 4th 2026 - NHK World is my favorite propaganda channel
Something you probably don't know about me is that I like to collect and watch IPTV channels. My interest in IPTV goes all the way back to my childhood. Before I was an internet kid, I was definitely a television kid. Growing up in the 90s without an internet connection, television was my window to the world. Looking back I had a somewhat obsessive interest in television. I have old notebooks from my childhood where I would list all the channels we could receive. I even role-played having my own TV channel and all the things I would do during a day, like playing with Lego, playing with action figures or even having dinner, were all TV shows on my channel. I have been pondering on which exact mental disorder this behavioral qualifies as, but for now I will leave it at having a lively imagination.
My parents used to have friends who were satellite TV hobbyists. I remember loving to go to their house to watch the satellite TV. They also had a waterbed which they let me play on. They could just switch the position of the satellite and receive hundreds of channels from all over the world. I asked my parents for a satellite dish but they didn't see the point of it (in retrospect, they were right). When we went on holiday abroad. The first thing I did when arriving at our hotel or apartment was turn on the TV to see which channels they had. I spent afternoons with my sister watching cartoons and commercials in a language I did not understand. Somehow it didn't matter.
A couple of years ago, when I finally became a full fledged adult with their own house and all, I remembered the satellite thing and started fantasizing about having a dish again. Of course a lot has changed in 30 years and satellites for the purpose of watching foreign television have become entirely redundant. IPTV is cheaper, hassle free and gives you access to a lot more channels potentially. So I bought myself an set top box of the brand Formuler which runs Android and started fiddling around with it. Another thing you probably don't know about me is that I hate paying for stuff, so I don't take subscriptions to illegal IPTV providers. These shady businesses give you thousands of IPTV channels, usually for a monthly or annual fee. My style is looking around on Github where people share their IPTV playlists for free. I compose my own playlists using notepad with a minimal amount of coding, upload the document as an m3u file to my IPTV software and we're ready to go!
The thing about IPTV channels is that many of them don't remain online for very long. Copyright infringement matters and all. The exception to this rule are so called free-to-air channels. These are channels, often tax funded, which run without the immediate purpose of making money. In many cases, these are news channels and those channels are the backbone of my IPTV playlist. No matter how long I'm gone, I can always come home knowing that CNN, BBC World, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera and the likes will be waiting for me. My favorite free-to-air channel is without a doubt NHK World. The international arm of Japan's public television network is a breath of fresh air. In addition to bringing the latest news about Japan in English, they constantly run programs from regular NHK, often subbed or dubbed into English. NHK World is a weird kind of slow TV for me. Some of my favorite shows, like Document 72 Hours, Somewhere Street, Railway Journal and even the Sumo tournament highlights have meditative qualities. I love the narrators voices, the little 5 minute clips of nature they use to fill in the gaps between shows, even the song they play during the weather report is easy on my mind.
Of course, the ultimate purpose of a free-to-air TV channel does not go over my head. NHK World is essentially a propaganda channel that wants to convince me of what a great country Japan is. In the same way Russia Today and CGTN try to do this for their respective countries. Still I often find myself tuning into NHK World when I had a stressful day and need to unwind.
#1 - June 2nd 2026 - Watching Ranma 1/2 in 2026
I've been watching the original Ranma 1/2 for the first time on Tubi and the experience evokes all kinds of thoughts and emotions in me. As you might know I spent a lot of time on archived Tokyo Geocities pages over the last year and the amount of Ranma fanpages was really surprising. Maybe it suprised me because Ranma never got aired in The Netherlands, unlike Dragonball, Gundam Wing and Sailor Moon. Based on the amount of fanpages Ranma is only outnumbered (by a street length) by Sailor Moon. When I watch Ranma, to be honest, half the time I'm wondering if there is even a point to this show. The episodes are very, very slice of life. The characters seemingly don't have much of an arc and its sitcom style approach ensures that whatever lessons are learned at the end of an episode will be all but forgotten on the next one. The stories and gags are often repetitive as well.
Ranma's strength is its colourful cast of characters. There is also plenty of typical Japanese humour which I have grown to appreciate over the years. There is just something inherently funny about Ranma's dad turning into a giant panda at the most inconvenient times. There is also a painful irony in Akane not noticing Ryoga unless he turns into a cute little pig. Ranma also does a lot in terms of nostalgia for me. From the animation style, to the casual nudity, to the 'rainy summer evening' soundtrack. When I watch Ranma I can't help but feel a bit sad for a bygone era. But also, the longer you watch Ranma, the more you will find that there is character development going on. People gradually learn to accept one another, even love another and most of all, people learn to love themselves.
People like to discuss whether or not Ranma is a queer show. Author Rumiko Takahashi has always denied this, even going so far as to say that her stories are about relationships between men and women. Critics are very mixed in how they label this show. Some calling it conservative and confirming of traditional gender roles, while others point out that the show was probably as queer as mainstream media outlets would allow in late 80s Japan. The impact that Ranma 1/2 had on 90s Western queer teenagers, however, is undeniable. Ranma was the first character appearing on television that they identified with. Perhaps even the first character that allowed them to think of themselves in non-binary gender ways. I too lean toward the opinion of Ranma's queerness being unintentional, but at the same time I believe it does not matter one bit. Isn't the beauty of art that people can find meaning in it beyond the artists own intentions?
I would even go as far as to say that the unintentional queerness of Ranma is its main strength. Especially when you compare it to today's media landscape. Where studio executives try to shoe-horn gay or trans characters into shows because it would do well on test audiences. Truthfully, an openly queer anime would have bombed on mainstream TV in the 90s. Ranma's subtle, beating around the bush approach, was as good as it got. Takahashi wasn't trying to make you feel anything in particular and that is why you feel something sincere when watching this show.
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