I’m eating lunch at Sizzling Pepper Steak when the group of freshmen college kids from Ateneo at the next table start talking about what classic movies they’ve seen. The list is absolutely disheartening to me: The Matrix, Gladiator, The Truman Show. These are classics now?

But their love for the movies despite their ‘age’ is great. One of the boys tells his rapt female audience about the plot of the Truman Show in loving detail, remembering little plot points like Truman’s father being written off the show as ‘lost at sea’. “But the movie is kinda old na,” he qualifies, “nineties pa.”

I remember talking about Star Wars with my law school classmates and one of the girls said, “All I know about Star Wars is like, Yoda. That’s the little guy with the lightsaber, right?”

So, little guy with lightsaber am I?

Indeed.

Is this how my parents feel when I refer to Godfather or Jaws or Star Wars as a classic? What about my grandparents and the stuff on Turner Classic Movies, like Prisoner of Zenda?

It got me thinking: how much of the anime and manga I like is ‘classic’ now? Urusei Yatsura for sure — it was already a classic when I started watching it back in the 90s. Leiji Matsumoto’s stuff too, like Galaxy Express 999. Ranma 1/2 and Oh! My Goddess and Maison Ikkoku and Orange Road and Evangelion — all classic. Otaku no Video itself is eighteen years old. Eighteen! That’s like… pre-moe!

I don’t feel old. I don’t even look old. Judges and other lawyers have trouble taking me seriously because I look like a kid. But I’m not a kid, I haven’t been a kid in a long time.

Should I start ‘acting like my age’? What does that even mean? Should I start resigning myself to calling new music ‘noise’ and calling every new thing kids go crazy over ‘the devil’? Should I limit my movement to the range that a pressed suit allows? Should I stop pretending to be into the latest fads, the newest gadgets? But I’m not pretending! Should I ‘grow up’?

How does something stop being ‘passe’ and start being ‘classic’?

College kid at the next table starts talking about MJ with utter reverence, defending him against all the child molestation charges, the weirdness, and facial reconstruction. He starts talking about how sad and misunderstood the King of Pop was during his last few years. He starts singing Bad and Beat It to the chagrin of his companions.

Michael Jackson used to be a has-been, but now he’s classic.

Classics stand the test of time without having to pander to the changing fashions of the day. Sometimes people adopt older fashions and tropes as an act of parody, as Gurren Lagann Head Writer Kazuki Nakashima said about how hot-blooded mecha pilots shout catchphrases whenever they deliver their attacks, and how modern shows replicate this trope with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. But what if you dispense with the safety and distance of irony? What if you simply love something for its own sake, no matter how dated or anachronistic or out-of-fashion it seems to other people? What if, like using handmade paint splatter or rough crayon lines or mecha battle cries in Gurren Lagann, you bring these old tropes into the modern day with genuine love instead of mocking parody, with reckless enthusiasm instead of hip irony?

Things become classic because we love them no matter how much time passes.

Now if you excuse me, I’m going to rewatch Golden Boy.

(P.S. To all boys trying to make an impression on girls — keep talking, like this kid. His friends were trying to look cool and aloof but this kid got all the attention. He displayed a wide range of knowledge in a variety of topics, displayed his personality well, and wasn’t afraid of looking silly. In contrast, his friends kept sniping at him but would otherwise resign themselves to listening to him take over the conversation. All I’m saying is, cool and distant… only works if you’re staggeringly bishonen.)

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