So, Theoretical 80s Nostalgia is a name I kind of just came up with on the spot (although I did not invent the term theoretical nostalgia) because I wasn’t that concerned about the name of the place where I post my nonsense. I just wanted to set up a space quickly to put up my rough translation of Freely written, The Time Étranger (in retrospect, I think I babbled on too much about my own experience with the movie for what is supposed to be a translation piece). Well, it was also how I’ve felt for a long time—and still do—about this stuff.
I never quite liked the impromptu name I came up with, and it feels a bit awkward to have 80s in the title and have posts about stuff outside of the 80s. I’d also rather not have numbers in the title. Don’t get me wrong; my intention is still to focus on the otaku culture from that time.
Why Heisei Etranger? Well, up to this point my entire life has been contained in the Heisei era—although that will be changing quite soon. However, I spend a bunch of my time looking at Shōwa era stuff. Given this, my perspective is that of a foreigner—étranger—both in time and place. Furthermore, translating that piece about The Time Étranger was the primary impetus by which this website came into existence. Since I have little to no creativity, the best I could come up with was Heisei Etranger (；´∀｀). I opted to drop the accent on the “e” because accented vowels are annoying to type (i.e. copy and paste). Since I’m a foreigner both in time and place, maybe I could have gone with Heisei Spacetime Etranger, but it feels unnecessarily wordy and too tacky—even for me.
I’m not really in love with Heisei Etranger as a title either but I like it better than the old one so I’m sticking with this for now. As for the subtitle, “昭和後期への懐かしい偽思い出” literally means fake nostalgic memories for late Showa—a nod to the theoretically nostalgic origins of this place.
Heisei Etranger 