So I recently did a rather silly team post over at Oi Hayaku! which Mark A. commented on:
Selective memory indeed. Nevermind the fact that so many U.S. otaku can’t name the various directors, animators, or even studios behind their favorite shows. Didn’t it used to be fandom de rigueur was a hunger to find out all the background meta data on your favorite works, and from there place them and their creators into a historical context?
which made a lightbulb ding on over my head with the sudden realization that “hey, other people think about these things too.” I like that feeling so I hope you’ll forgive me for being so arrogant as to write up an entire post in response to a comment on another of my posts.
Mark’s comment strikes a chord with me because that hunger he describes is my ideal approach to watching anime and reading manga. Not for any high minded reasons like treating every anime as art or for more tangible reasons like being a level 99 otaku (my knowledge is far, far too lacking for that and who would I brag to… the internet?).
No, it’s simply that when I watch something that impresses or moves me I want to know more. More about the director, the animators, the scriptwriters, the studios involved and every other part of production. Why bother with all this? Besides the fact that I don’t like how ignorant I still am about anime, it probably stems from the simple desire to be at least a little involved in the whole process. Sports fans get to cheer for their team, I memorize names and hoard creator interviews like squirrels hoard nuts.
Is this desire to learn more about anime unusual nowadays? Although I have no hard evidence to back it up I think that Mark is right and that most U.S. fans do not care how a show is made. Nor do they care about the history of anime or manga. I say this because I have noticed that many people have a goldfish’s attention span when it comes to anime. They have no desire to talk about older anime or to find out how their favorite show was influenced by the ones that came before. If they don’t care about that I find it unlikely that they’d sit down and start researching production credits at all.
This laziness and apathy may very well stem from the idea that anime is disposable entertainment. Download it, watch it, delete it and never think about it again. I hate that but I can’t say it’s an entirely incorrect notion. There are so many shows which are clearly good for nothing more than a cheap (free, if you download fansubs) half hour of entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that and I myself watch anime to be entertained not to be a Serious Critic. However calling anime disposable is such a narrow view and moreover insulting to those few shows which rise above the masses and excel solely because of the hard work their creators put into them.
Still, I know why fans are inclined to view anime as disposable and it’s not that there is more mediocre anime nowadays. It’s just that we have more access to everything. With the internet and Bittorrent literally thousands of shows are at my fingertips and I can pump as much anime into my brain as I want. Of course if I want to be on the cutting edge and participate in the community I can’t spend too much time on older shows. I have to watch what’s out right now and with dozens of shows coming out every week who has time to figure out who is making what?
The days of getting together with a bunch of smelly guys to watch VHS tapes are pretty much gone forever. Now watching anime requires no more effort than a few clicks of the mouse and perhaps we’ve paid for that convenience by losing some of the passion and dedication that once used to be inherent in the term “fan”. If being a hardcore fan is not about knowing as much about anime as possible then what is it about? The number of 2D girls or guys you love? The amount of GBs on your hard drive? I really don’t have an answer.
I don’t want to sit around pining for the days of anime fandom which I’m too young to have experienced as that will get me nowhere. It’s just that I’m not entirely sure which direction the fans are moving in and if it’s even a direction I want to go.
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I tend to try to know the production stories behind the anime. I was quite entertained to find out that Project A-Ko was originally intended to be part of a hentai series and some scenes were already made.
They were able to use this in the bath scene (lulz!) of B-Ko.
However, I don’t know a lot of people who are like me, I am unique even in my viewing group. I do notice that there’s a lot of hate levied against creators and studios (GAINAX, Sunrise, and Gonzo are often whined about; at least in 4chan).
Background knowledge slowly comes as you get more and more acquainted with the fandom. I think part of being a fan is to want to get the most out of whatever it is you’re a fan of, and one way to get more out of that something is to learn more about it. I think too many people are jumping ahead of themselves and falsely calling themselves fans when they really only fall under “enjoyer” or “follower” or some equivalent term.
Ah nostalgia~ I might just be repeating what I’ve already said before, but anyways. Anime has become such an easy-to-get commodity that it’s really easy to take it for granted.
I’m sure there are still other fans out there who retain the “ideal otaku spirit”, and though we’re not sure what direction the current fandom is going, it won’t hurt to share about our idealisms, and hopefully be able to instill that in the younger fans. Man, I sound like a really old fart lol.
Hell, I almost never look at the production credits for an anime. I’ll probably know the studio and that’s it. i don’t feel compelled to learn more about the show than I really need to to be entertained; it’s not just with anime as an easily “disposable” medium of entertainment, it’s with any show in general. I can’t even remember the names of the half the cast of the Simpsons and I’ve been watching that show for years, having seen every episode of all 19 or show seasons.
Hmm, perhaps I be feeling an editorial coming on… when I’m not too lazy.
I became interested in the people behind the anime once I began to look for quality and steer away from the mediocre.
I think what’s happening is now that it’s easy to watch anime and be able to read many different people’s recommendations through forums and blogs, it becomes less important to figure out if a show will be good or not before it’s watched. Also, as long as fans watch stuff like Bleach and Naruto where the people behind the series is less important then the source material – I don’t think you’ll see fans caring about who the director, animation studio, etc. is.
I’ve been interested in older anime since I missed it the first time round but I don’t have any easy way to watch it. If I could watch older anime like I watch recent anime then I’m sure I would find series that I’d blog about and buy DVDs of.
I think America’s finally at the point the rest of the world was at years ago – which is that Japanese cartoons are something that comes on the TV or is otherwise watched like any other kind of media. Anime isn’t inherently anything different from your typical episode of Sex In The City or M.A.S.H. or Leave It To Beaver – an entertaining half hour, or a pleasant afternoon at the movies, or whatever.
If you choose to find out more about your favorite show, learn about the creative people behind it and other things they’ve worked on, that’s great. But there are millions of other viewers for whom this knowledge is non-essential to their entertainment experience.
I don’t know that people unwilling to learn anything about a show should describe themselves as “fans” of a show, certainly the word “otaku” is too strong for indicating a casual viewer. But there’s something to be said for the casual viewing experience, the freedom to enjoy a film or a TV series without any extra baggage.
Personally I’m glad that anime has become something that can be enjoyed or left alone – to be an anime fan in “the old days” meant a giant investment in time, relationships, equipment, money, and postage. Which makes for great stories years later, but is really quite a pain in the ass to have to go through, just to watch cartoons.
–Dave
@ghostlightning: Yeah, Project A-ko was going to be part of the Cream Lemon hentai series. I have no idea how I know that.
@tai: I don’t want to get caught up in who is a “true fan” and who is not because then you start making pointless elitist judgements. It should be all about having fun… but I do seem to have some expectations of people who call themselves fans.
@usagijen: Yes, I think we’re on the same wavelength here. That fanart is a pretty great blast from the past.
@omisyth: I myself tend to mix up the names of actors all the time so I get what you’re saying.
@thenullset: I’m also in despair at how much more difficult it is to watch older shows. I buy DVDs when I can but for shows that were never licensed sometimes fansubbers are a God send. For instance Live-Evil does a number of older shows.
@Dave: Thanks for the comment, you make some good points. I should have been more clear in that I was specifically talking about self-professed otaku who don’t even know anything about their favorite show. Naturally I don’t expect casual viewer to care since I myself don’t put the same kind of effort into regular television, movies or every single anime I watch.
I am also glad that anime is getting more mainstream. I wish it’d become even more popular so I could flip on my TV and have an entire channel dedicated to it. I guess I just hope that the burning fires of fandom* won’t be extinguished by all our modern conveniences.
*except in cases where the burning fires of fandom are too terrible to imagine, such as with 99% of fan fiction.
The “A.” is short for anal retentive.
Really though, painstaking, joyless research should be no prerequisite of anything except maybe a degree. The point I’ve been trying to make is that it used to be (and still is for a lot of people) part-and-parcel of enjoying something that you’d seek out as much information as you can find about it. The drive to do so isn’t a pointdexter-y academic impulse or “responsibility *mouth breath*.” You would look stuff up because it was enjoyable in and of itself.
It’s also not for the sake of accumulating trivia for the sake of trivia accumulation. Knowing who’s behind the stuff you like lets you seek out more of their stuff and skirt around the stuff you don’t like (”why is there nothing good out anymore?!”).
Of course, like many others have said before, it’s hard to begrudge the more mainstream nature of anime in the States today, and the more casual attitudes that come with it. But it’s hard to argue that in exchange for something gained, something hasn’t been lost.
(FYI it took me until the end of college to realize the anime works that formed my initial, earliest view of what anime is and what it is capable of were almost exclusively by Noboru Ishiguro, Mamoru Oshii or Masamune Shirow.)
Mark: I hope my post doesn’t make it sound like I do research on this stuff because I’m hoping to win anime jeopardy (which doesn’t exist but should). Like you said, I do it because it’s fun and for that moment when I get to connect the dots and see the bigger picture. As in, “hey the director for this show directed that other show I really love and holy crap he was an animator in this show too.” Then I find other shows said director worked on or was influenced by and suddenly I’ve got a bunch of new stuff to watch. Which is incidentally how I found out about Noboru Ishiguro in the first place.