Relatable Culture

Japan Collectively Spirals After Realizing '20XX' Is Now 25% the Past

A daughter's innocent question about sci-fi year notation sends Japan into a gentle nostalgic crisis.

· 3 min · Togetter

What's going on

In Japanese manga and anime, writing "the year 20XX" has long been a reliable shorthand for "the near future" — specific enough to feel imminent, vague enough to age gracefully. Audiences have accepted the convention for decades without really thinking about it. But one dad's daughter recently raised a question nobody had quite sat with: we're well into the 2020s now, which means "20XX" covers years that are already behind us. A full quarter of the decade is past.

The observation landed online and set off a wave of gentle collective reckoning. People started doing the math. Franchises that set their stories in "199X" — once comfortably futuristic — now feel definitively historical. Others rushed to check which beloved sci-fi series was still safely set in the actual future. The mood landed somewhere between amused and quietly unsettled.

Comments

My daughter: “When something says ‘in the year 20XX…’ I can’t tell if it’s the future or the past.” …she’s right, you know.
Wait WHAT, “20XX” can now refer to years that already happened?????
Well, we’ve already passed 2000, so…
Oh right. The future already arrived, so some of it is now the past.
So there’s a 1 in 4 chance it’s set in the past… man, I’ve gotten old.
25% chance it’s the past…
Who decided time even moves toward the future anyway
It used to be “19XX” originally, y’know.
Even “199X” just reads as ancient history to me at this point.
We live in a world where “199X” gets treated as old news now.
I remember seeing “201X” back in 2019 and thinking — if it hasn’t happened yet, that means it has to be THIS year.
That kind of notation was only acceptable until 1999.
Back when I was a kid, even “199X” was definitely the future… (elderly)
I’m an old guy, and even though we’ve been past 2000 for a long time, “20XX” still somehow feels like the future to me.
Wait? Both “199X” and “20XX” are the future, right?
At this rate, even when it’s 2098 I’ll probably still think “20XX… must be a story set in the future…!”
To me “XX” notation just means end-of-century, so “20XX” is still the future as far as I’m concerned.
Same feeling I had as a kid when I found out Ultraseven (a landmark 1967 Japanese tokusatsu superhero TV series) was actually set in 1987 lol
The original Mega Man games were set in “199X” (the Mega Man / Rockman franchise, first released in 1987, set its early games in a vague near-future) and even back then I was like, that’s way too optimistic about how fast tech would advance.
Mega Man X is set in 21XX, so that one’s still safely in the future. We’re fine.
Doraemon was wise to set it in the 22nd century. Truly a visionary franchise.
If we’re talking about a certain end-of-century conqueror (referring to Fist of the North Star, the classic 1983 post-apocalyptic manga originally set in “199X”), someone should let her know that the series quietly updated its setting from “199X” to “200X” to “20XX” over the years. Even the apocalypse has been chasing the future.
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (a 2000s absurdist gag manga/anime) is set in the year “300X,” so it’s guaranteed to stay in the future. Honestly kind of comforting.
The times have caught up with us, haven’t they. The future we used to dream about is still somewhere further ahead.
The bright, optimistic 21st century that people imagined during Japan’s postwar economic miracle (roughly 1955–1973) has already passed its first quarter — and yet human worry and suffering shows no sign of letting up.

My take

*"In the year 199X, the earth was engulfed in nuclear fire. All living things seemed on the verge of extinction. But mankind was not destroyed."* — you know the one. Reading this thread, I found myself quietly reciting that narration and then stopping cold: 199X is just... the past now. Time really is moving, and the future really is getting closer. There's something quietly galvanizing about that.

Comments loosely translated for tone.

Source https://togetter.com/li/2689504