Tag Archives: anime fandom

Growing Your Anime Fandom

Posted on by

I go to anime conventions for many reasons, but when it comes to attending events within the con itself, my main focus is on panels. Industry panels, fan panels, history panels, I’m there to learn and I enjoy doing so. However, I know that in the grand scheme of the con “scene,” I am in the minority. At cons across the nation, the best ways to attract an audience are through masquerades, AMV contests, J-Rock concerts, and to a lesser extent con raves.

It would be very easy to lament that not more people are attending panels that could potentially expand their knowledge and scope as anime fans (or geeks in general). “Look at this sad state of affairs! Don’t these supposed anime fans care at all about anime?” But the answer is that they do care about anime and the fandom that surrounds it; they just choose to take it in different directions.

How do you develop your fandom? When someone reads up on anime history or when they go to informative panels at a con, they are trying to grow the “knowledge” aspect of their fandom. Here, a fan tries to become a greater fan by learning more about the subject they love, and that is certainly a valid way to do it and one I subscribe to myself.  But when someone joins a specific forum of like-minded individuals, attends group panels to celebrate their favorite series, or even calls for FREE HUGS, they aren’t simply being “shallow anime fans” who don’t care about being fans of anime, but are instead choosing, consciously or otherwise, to grow the “social” aspect of their fandom. They are already fans, and they want to find kindred spirits who will understand why they are the way they are without explanation. It’s the desire to belong.

Growing your anime fandom isn’t simply limited to “knowledge” through study and “socialization” through outreach, however. Although there’s reading about anime, there’s also watching as much anime as you possibly can, to broaden your “direct experience” within the medium itself. There’s “self-expression,” the desire to show your fandom to the world, whether through fanart or fanfiction, cosplaying or creating AMVs, or, heck, writing an anime blog. Even seeing these things is in itself a way to affirm one’s own fandom. And it’s not even like these areas are rigidly separate from each other. Socializing with fans can bring you knowledge through an exchange of ideas. Gaining more knowledge can put you in better positions to talk to other fans, to learn to understand others.

When you get down to it, there’s a most fundamental part of being a fan, something that I think everyone can relate to even if they don’t agree on how to get there. I’m talking about that feeling of truly enjoying something and loving every moment of it. At that point, whether we want to have more of it or share it with others or any number of paths, we know at that point that we are truly fans.

Ogiue: The Bond Which Transcends Space and Time

Posted on by

A few days ago while doing my routine “Ogiue” keyword check on Twitter, I noticed that someone had created an Ogiue Bot on Twitter which sends Ogiue catch phrases every so often into the wild.

The creator of the Ogiue Bot also has a Twitter account of his own, and unlike me and my shameful Avatar-based betrayal, he sports an Ogiue icon.

When I saw it, my first reaction was, “Ooh, that’s a nice Ogiue.” My second and more important reaction, however, was, “This looks oddly familiar.” After a bit of memory-jogging and browsing old sites, I realized just how familiar it really was. That Ogiue drawing up there is one of mine.

You may remember a few months back when Anime News Network got their current Answerman that I sent in an Answerfans response where I talked about my communications and befriending of Ogiue fans in Japan. The above oekaki is from that period.

I have to thank Soramugi, as I had all but forgotten that image, and I’m especially grateful to him for liking my drawing so much. It was kind of an unreal experience just seeing a drawing of mine being used like that, and I know Soramugi is just as surprised that he got to meet the artist behind his icon. He even posted about it! You can also see our correspondence, albeit in Japanese.

I’ve got a good feeling, the kind of feeling you get when you know you’ve earned a comrade.

As an aside, I thought it was pretty cool that I was actually able to recognize my own drawing style.

The Otaku Diaries Take a Look at Careers, Escapism, Hobbies

Posted on by

The Reverse Thieves have their fifth Otaku Diaries entry up, leading off with a beautiful poem by Hisui. Aside from the poem though, I recommend you check it out and the rest of the Otaku Diaries entries, as I’m a fan of fan analysis (no pun intended), and even with the limited sample size I still think it provides a lot of interesting windows into trends and behaviors among otaku.

Two things jumped out at me in particular with this entry, the change in trends from mostly people interested in computers being into anime to anime reaching a wider demographic, as well as the concept of anime used as an escape.

As someone who went through an arts program in college, what I noticed is that among my peers few were into anime to the extent that I was. You could still find people who enjoyed anime to be sure (some of my art school friends and I decided to marathon all of Evangelion in one day Freshman year) but most of my classmates did not treat anime as something worth looking at for any extended period. When I remembered that the same classmates for the most part had never even watched The Simpsons, I began to see the extent to which those who had chosen this path had dedicated themselves to it at the expense of other things. That’s not to say they were mistaken in their decision, but the idea that they had almost no exposure to things which I considered to be common knowledge made me sense a palpable difference in mindset and what we valued. A lot of times it didn’t even occur to them to take a look at anime at all. I was also the only art student I knew of who even attended the school’s anime club at all (though I had to stop going after sophomore year to give myself more time to get work done).

Contrast this with my friends in college who were mostly computer science majors (with some chemistry, business, and other types mixed in), and I would have to say that the majority of them enjoyed anime, video games, things which tended towards the nerdish side. They weren’t solely into nerd hobbies, as some enjoyed sports and weightlifting and playing guitar and such, but they always seemed more ready to accept anime, even if I couldn’t necessarily convince them to watch Cardcaptor Sakura. Why the stark difference between the two groups?

“Fine Artist” and “Geek” do not stereotypically cross over much, and I think it has to do with the idea of right brain vs left brain, and that what brings enjoyment to one type does not apply to the other. All the more interesting then that there were a handful of people I knew who were actually Art/Computer Science double majors, and that out of all of them though, I felt that they more often than not tended towards their Computer Science side. I wonder if it’s impossible to be both in even ratios, and I have to also wonder where I myself fit, because even though I was not a computer science major I did not fit the Fine Arts mold entirely either. Another thing to note was that Geek and Illustrator tend to have much more crossover than Geek and Fine Artist, and the reason behind that lies in the concept that Fine Artists’s sense of aesthetics supposedly exists in a world different from that of the Illustrator, which is such a complex topic I’m gonna have to save it for another day.

Now with escapism via anime, and the active denial of using anime as such, I think it has to do very much with otaku trying to defend their shows or their status as otaku. It’s the idea that anime fans are using anime to avoid reality, whether it’s by moe shows, science fiction, pornography, whatever, no one wants to be told that they’re not living in the real world. In some cases, people will deny outright that anime is an escape, and in other cases they will talk about how escape isn’t that bad of a thing and more people should do it. Either way though, it does have this tinge of defensiveness, even if it’s completely valid to be defensive. After all, what else would you expect people to do if they’re perceiving someone’s outside comment as an attack?

Otacrates

Posted on by

Based on a number of factors, from columns in anime magazines to forum posts, from knowing people both online to talking offline, I realize that when it comes to understand the larger trends at work in something we might call “anime fandom,” all I know is that I know nothing.

There may have been a time when those willing to discuss anime are the ones driving the industry, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. That’s just how it is: the casual will always outnumber the hardcore, and there’s nothing wrong with this. I have a relative who reads manga and watches anime with some frequency, but I doubt I would ever see him discuss it on a forum or go to an anime chatroom. When you go to a con, what you’re seeing are those who are dedicated enough to make the trip, and it’s not even necessarily a dedication to anime so much as it is to the trip and the event itself.

To understand what anime fandom as a whole is like is probably the key to success for anime companies in the US, so I’m not going to even pretend to answer when many others with more information have probably tried. This is more a personal reminder that as much as I study and discuss and enjoy anime and its fandom in one or two or even a thousand directions, there’s still infinite angles.

I Know All the Anime!

Posted on by

Yesterday while hanging out with friends in a game shop, I overheard someone who was probably 17 or 18 at the oldest say, “I know all the anime!” Then he mentioned Code Geass, and I didn’t really hear the rest.

I don’t know if he was putting on airs or actually believed he knew “all the anime,” but it made me remember an earlier time in my anime fandom, back when I was already familiar with internet forums but they still felt pretty new to me. There was a thread, I don’t remember what it was about, where I decided to list as many of the shows that I watched that I could remember. Eventually the list was large enough that I felt satisfied to post it, thinking it was a job well done. “I’ll show these guys just how much anime I’ve seen,” was probably my intention at the time. I distinctly remember listing Gundam Wing as “Gundam W,” and this was before W began airing on Cartoon Network. Just the idea that I could start listing shows and act like I had done more than scratch the surface of anime makes me realize how naive I was at the time.

Years later I signed up for a myanimelist.net account (check the second post on this blog), and tasking myself with jotting down all of the shows I’ve watched, I felt overwhelmed. Even with this very convenient website which remembers things for me, I lost the will to just record every show I watched.

So I don’t know who that kid is, but I hope he knows that if he truly wants to know “all the anime” that he has a long journey ahead of him.

Cause, Effect, Necessity? Sci-Fi Fandom and Early Anime Fandom

Posted on by

Anime World Order recently posted an interview with what are the self-proclaimed “old farts” of anime, and they rightly deserve the title. Hearing them speak, and thinking back to an earlier comment by others in previous shows, such as Joey Snackpants and Neil Nadelman, I had to wonder just how much this has affected the flow of anime fandom in the United States. Though I personally have found some issue with those sci-fi fans who lament the status of anime today because it is not “sci-fi enough,” I cannot help but feel that their influence is hard to deny.

I am certainly not old enough to have experienced any of that early anime fandom, but in listening to those that had been around there is one message repeats constantly: to be an anime fan required obsession. This was before the internet was established, before google and youtube and digital fansubs and wikipedia, so to find any sort of information required the ability to search and research and to find collaborators so as to increase one’s chances of obtaining anime and anime-related paraphernalia. I imagine that either you had to be somewhat extroverted or at least have an obsession so strong it overcame your fear of other people to accomplish this task. And what better place to find those with powerful obsessions than in an already-established fanbase?

For that matter, who better to pursue this difficult-to-obtain treasure from the isles of Japan than those who already had spent time discussing and analyzing technology in their favorite shows, writing fanzines to pursue and exchange ideas? With this many people with the ability to obsess grouped together, and more importantly able to obsess over fictional works on television and comics, two forms of media long thought juvenile or at least unintellectual, it might be no wonder that American anime fandom in its infancy sprang forth from sci-fi fandom.

Of course anime fandom today is also largely the result of arguably bigger influences in the years after. Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and Pokemon came on TV early in the morning and introduced both boys and girls to a serial story where actions in a previous episode are not reset in the next. They targeted a much wider audience than older anime had ever hoped to, and rather than having their native origins obfuscated where introduced as something from Japan. Still, I believe even this part of anime fandom is influenced by those sci-fi fans of yesterday. Slash, derived from the pairing of “Kirk/Spock,” may have allowed its foreign cousin Yaoi to get accustomed to traveling on western soil. Sci-fi conventions may have given pointers to the anime fandom when it became large enough on how to congregate with like-minded (enough) individuals. In that sense, perhaps the actions of sci-fi fans in the 70s and 80s became a template for today’s anime fandom, who have shaped it to their own experiences and will some day become the old guard to influence others.