Josh’s Anime Blog

Continuing the discussion from here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, maybe it’s because I’ve only been watching anime for about 2 years, and don’t constantly hang out with other anime fans (Otakon 2007 was my first convention, and even then I went around to most things solo), but I’ve never met this seeming super-Otaku, who thinks that the world should bow to them because they watch anime and have 100 full series stacked in their bookcases.

That’s not to say that they don’t exist, I’m sure they do, but I wonder how prevalent they are. Before I got into anime myself, instead of hearing negative things about it, I hadn’t heard very much about it at all. I was vaguely aware that it existed, but I didn’t really know what it was. Maybe I still knew more than most people - I at least seemed to be aware that it was from Japan, and that people older than children watched it.

It could be because my roommate at a summer camp after my freshman year of high school liked Sailor Moon. He talked about it some, but not much. I didn’t really ask about it because, at the time, I wasn’t really interested. I’m not even sure I realized that Sailor Moon was anime at that time, but maybe knowing about it’s existence at one point made me decide to look something up about it, and I forgot the fact that I looked it up, but sort of remembered what I had looked up.

Again, maybe it’s because I consider myself more grounded, but I view anime as what it basically is: another medium through which entertainment can be derived. Like movies, or TV shows, or books, or music, or plays, or whatever, it’s just another method by which one can watch something that is entertaining.

I tend to like anime because it’s more creative than most things I see on TV, and of course that doesn’t mean that things that air on TV here in the US can’t be as if not more creative than most anime. I mean, I still like Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, the Matrix, among other things, many or all of which I would probably rate as better than 99% of the anime I’ve seen.

I’m sure as well that through my reviews and posts and whatnot on this blog, I’ve shown my disdain for certain trends in some anime series. Just because it’s anime doesn’t make it good. However, I take issue with the argument or idea that we should be hiding the fact that we watch anime like how Suguru has to hide his dirty magazines from Mahoro.

Does that mean you have to tell the whole world, every chance you get, that you love anime? Of course not, just like I don’t think people should do that for Harry Potter, Star Wars, or Star Trek (though obviously people will have a better chance of knowing what you talk about if you bring those up).

Now, my family and some of my co-workers know that I like it, if for no other reason than I had to take time off to go to Otakon, so they know that I went to it, though I have brought it up in the past for one reason or another, though I don’t really remember why now.

In any case, getting back on track, even if I chat online, the small minority have such a superior attitude, and most of the time they get beaten down rather quickly by everyone else. Of course, the vocal minority seems to define a group, almost regardless of what group it is unless it’s a very large group, or someone who, for some reason, thinks a particular group is stupid, will use that vocal minority to try to prove their point, even though it clearly isn’t applicable to the group as a whole.

But my thoughts are two-fold on that. First off, anime is such a sub-culture anyway that it hardly gets enough attention for the anyone, much less the vocal minority to even get much attention. Chances are if someone runs into a random anime fan, it’s going to be a “normal” one (for lack of a better word).

Of course conventions are different, but then again, it is a convention. People dress up at Star Trek and Star Wars conventions as well, and usually when a Harry Potter book comes out, you’ll see a ride range of ages dressing up as characters. The main difference here is that, of course, people know enough about those franchises that they realize that dressing up and the like is a special case and not the norm for fans of those series.

Maybe I’ll change my tune if I ever do run into someone who thinks ANIME IS TEH GR8IST THNG EVAR!!!1!1!! but on the opposite side, I don’t understand those who feel like that they have to hide their anime and manga stash away, seemingly at all costs, lest someone find out and expose their perversion to the world. My experience is that most people don’t even know what anime is, or if they kind of know, they can’t really judge because they don’t know enough about it to make a judgement.

If someone thinks I sit Saturday morning watching Pokemon whenever they hear I like anime, I’ll correct them. It’s as simple as that, and the fact that a lot of the anime that IS on TV outside of Saturday morning is what I could consider pretty mature and not the “bunny girls in bikinis” variety, that has to help dispel many misconceptions about the medium that people have.

In the end, I don’t really think the medium matters as much as the person anyway. If someone gets off by watching loli anime, then I may look down at them, but not because they’re watching anime. If they weren’t living their loli fantasies through anime, they’d probably live them through some other means.

Yes, it’s unfortunate that the chose a medium that I enjoy watching myself to live it through, threatening to give it a bad name, but this is more due to the person than the medium. I’m hardly an expert on “real” porn considering I don’t watch it, but I’m sure one can find enough material there to live whatever fantasy one wants to live as well, but instead of damning all live-action DVDs to hell for it, I pass judgement on the person.

Of course, not everyone does this, and they like judging by the group, but as I basically said in my last post, that’s rather their own problem, and people like that tend to have superiority complexes of their own.

I guess I kind of got off track of what I was thinking of writing about to begin with, but I thought I’d add to the discussion once again after sitting on it for another day. I guess if one has to boil it down, my view would be this: no, we shouldn’t think that we’re better than others because we like anime, but on the other hand I don’t really think there is necessarily a reason to pro-actively hide the fact that we are anime fans either.

The problems that inflict the anime community inflict all communities to one extent or another. It’s just that I think the anime community is more sensitive about it because it’s not really all that well known, and we’d much rather be introduced to the world via our good side rather than our bad side, and that is a legitimate concern. However, I think acting like anime is something that needs to be hidden or other thoughts along that line just make it harder for us to introduce the good side.