No seriously, why do we like what we like, and how can that total weeaboo over there actually enjoy something like that?
The anime fanbase is probably the most divisive, controversial, contradictory, and passionate community I’ve managed to make myself a part of. This is probably due to the infinitely broad range of niche markets the anime industry as a whole caters to, combined with the fact that if you’re an anime fan in the US, you probably know how the internet works, and the first thing you do when you watch something is to share your experience online. And when that guy passes your favorite show off as pseudo-intellectual, otaku-pandering, mindless drivel, god damn but shit is gonna go down.
OH NO YOU DIDN'T
It’s one thing to see a show as complete garbage, but it’s another thing entirely to find out there’s an army willing to defend that show to the death–defend it in a scientific, literate, intelligent way. How could anyone intelligent enough to weave such arguments together possibly see redemption in this waste of pixels? After all, real anime fans would only watch what I watch.
It’s a topic I’ve spent many a minute pondering on the toilet, and in class. It’s something Gene touched upon in his last post, and was elaborated upon in the comments. Clashing tastes, and why it pisses us off so much when it happens.
How do tastes develop? Arguably, taste is an inherent trait of ours, and can only be brought out, not developed. We can’t suddenly like a genre that we hated previously. Or can we? To explore this, I present to you my 5 Stages of An Anime Fan.
Stage 1: Oh god, anime
Will anime bully me? ;_;
No one just starts anime and accepts it as a perfectly legitimate art form that everyone should embrace. In fact, I’m willing to bet many people start just because someone else told them to (it took some incessant prodding from one of my friends in middle school to hook me on).
Oh god, girl cartoons. What are you, 6? Who watches this shit? Why are their eyes so friggin’ huge? How is that middle-schooler firing lasers from his nipples? Oh man, this is so lame. In fact, I’m gonna watch the rest of this, but only to tell you how abysmally terrible it is. What? What do you mean, you haven’t finished it? Now how are you supposed to feel bad about yourself when I tell you how unrealistic the plot was in episode 18? I watched that episode like 4 times just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating that garbage!
And eventually, we can’t deny it any longer. Fine, maybe there is something to this anime thing. I’ll watch some more of this. Got any good recs?
Stage 2: ANIME IS AWESOME
ANIIIMMEEE WHEEEEE JDAFSJR;23RJ;KLASD
There’s so much anime, and it’s all so good! Imma marathon Naruto, and Bleach, and Fullmetal Alchemist, and Rurouni Kenshin, and oh god it’s like 3 in the morning. How did I live without this stuff? Too bad all of my baka gaijin nakama don’t see how kawaii anime is. Aww man, I reached my 72 minute limit on MegaVideo again. Guess I’ve got some time to kill. Hey, there’s probably an awesome community online that I can share my experiences with, right? I bet everyone on the internet loves Naruto and Ah My Goddess as much as I do! I’m sure they’ll be a real friendly bunch!
Stage 2.5
…oh.
Stage 3: The Elitist
This character is clearly a reference to Suigintou from Rozen Maiden. Not that YOU'D know. Casual.
And after one too many hours browsing through anime forums, we become disillusioned with the state of anime. Why is everything nowadays garbage? Only a few shows now are actually original and thought-provoking–everything else is some derivative work attempting to ride on the coattails of success. Look at these moe girls doing moe things. God, it’s so disgusting. There’s no plot, no character depth, no complex themes. And it’s so unrealistic. Nobody would do that in real life.
What, you’re recommending me a show? Pssh, this cover art and premise are pretty uninspiring. Look, it got an average rating of only 6.7 on this review site. And I’m pretty sure I remember this forum criticizing it for its budget animation and rushed production. Besides, it’s probably so predictable. I bet the main character’s some oblivious idiot, his childhood friend secretly loves him, and someone dies of animAIDS in the snow. I’m not going to watch this. I don’t NEED to watch it to tell you how horrible it is. This is a terrible show, and you should feel bad.
You’re clearly not a true anime fan for enjoying this drivel. For such an educated viewer as I, only true, intellectually stimulating masterpieces are worth my time. Enjoy your terrible taste in anime; I’m going to rewatch Evangelion to remind myself what real anime is like.
Stage 4: Tsundere
Fine, I'll watch another episode of K-ON if you want me to so much. D-don't misunderstand, i-it's not like I LIKE this garbage
…And once within the confines of your own private room, shutters drawn and door locked (and barred), and computer monitor facing the corner of the room, and with your headphones on (so as to prevent any sound from leaking out of your room), and with plenty of firewalls active so nobody on the internet can ever possibly know it’s you, you pick up the latest episode of Kampfer. Which you’ve been diligently following since its release.
I’m only watching this because it’s terrible. It’s just laughably bad. I don’t enjoy any of this. Every minute I spend watching this trash is making my IQ go down. I’m just watching this so I know what I’m talking about when I chew this show out later on my blog. I don’t think any of this is actually funny. I don’t like any of these characters at all. Nope. Not me. I’m too classy for that. *snort* Oh Natsuru, you’re so silly. *cough* I mean, one-dimensional and shallow. God, you’re such a waste of animated organic matter.
…I’m not enjoying myself, am I…?
Step 4 Stage 5: Acceptance
This is a beautiful sunset, and I will never get in your pants. And I don't care.
Somewhere along the line, we shed that fake online personality we’ve maintained to avoid prosecution. We forget that we’re not supposed to be enjoying mass-produced anime in the name of superior taste. And we stand up and say “I have terrible taste. I love shallow girls doing pointless things. I love it when the little sister in my eroge calls me ‘Onii-chan.’ I love this mass-produced moepop anime band.” And we play Koe de Oshigoto at full blast with the windows and door wide open and the bass turned way up. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why.
One of the things that confused me most about anime fans (myself included) is why they so actively hated people with “inferior” taste. If they love Bleach and Strike Witches and Kampfer, and they like cosplaying as little girls, that doesn’t affect us in the least, so why? Why are we so driven to hate everything about them? And I think I have an answer.
It’s because no matter how hard we try to deny it, they represent a part of us. The anime industry pumps out gallons of this stuff every season because they know us better than we do. Somewhere deep inside, we all like this sort of stuff. But we feel like we shouldn’t, that it somehow lowers us as an anime fan.
We hate those people not just because they have crappy taste, but because they dare to have crappy taste. They don’t care what you think, or what the internet thinks. They can watch their “terrible” shows and openly enjoy them. They can do what we, as “superior” viewers, secretly wish we could do; they can be honest with themselves.
Am I saying that secretly, everyone has shitty taste? That K-ON! really is the best show ever, and if you don’t like it, you’re lying to yourself? Absolutely not. Your taste is yours. But I refuse to believe that anyone hasn’t seen a show that they enjoyed for no apparent reason. Everyone’s got a weakness, something that drives them to watch a show no matter how derivative, shallow, mass-produced, and budget-cutting it is. And how much you compare your taste to others is really a measure of how well you can own up to this fact. Because if you know what you enjoy, and you can proudly enjoy it, it shouldn’t really matter what anyone else watches, because they should do the same. That’s what being an anime fan is.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got several gigs of hentai to marathon.
Responses to Enjoying Anime, How The **** Does That Work?
Daniel · May 26, 2011 at 11:36 am
I thought this whole post was awesome, especially the pictures.
I guess I never really followed those stages: My brother was flipping channels a long time ago and we saw Naruto and we thought, “Well that looks interesting,” and so I ended up watching a lot of that. Yeah, as surprising as it probably is, that was about the extent of my anime experience prior to coming to Mines. And then I was never one to really admit my own tastes, even to myself, so I skipped through 2, and then I was never one to comment on other people’s tastes, so it didn’t really matter if I was in stage 3, and now I’m just floating around somewhere between stages 2 and 5. That or I’m out on stage i on my own complex track.
Grant Walker · May 26, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Horrible post. If your taste doesn’t reflect mine you’re probably a terrorist.
/topic
Gene · May 26, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Gene’s totally a 4. Not that any of you care or anything. I don’t run this club for you guys or anything! I just have some extra time on Wednesdays and thought you guys would like this stuff! That’s all. I watched kampfer for the plot.
Also this article is hilarious and Grant is a funny guy.
Jiji · May 26, 2011 at 3:29 pm
I love that you wrote this and in the way that you did. It needed to be said. It really needs to be stickied on /a/, but let’s not go there… However, you kind of imply that in stage 5 you pretty much like anything that’s out there. Whether one wants to admit it or not. I don’t think that’s quite true, but it’s a fine hair to split.
What I *do* think is partly playing into all this screaming about “taste” is that when we make a decision about liking or not liking something, we have worked out reasons for it in our own heads. To one degree or another, perhaps even subconsciously. When someone comes along and *dares* to have differing taste, they have violated those carefully worked-out reasons in our heads and what kind of idiot would go against what is clearly the most logical and best reasoning we could come up with at the spur of the moment in a completely emotional reaction about something we saw at 1:28 a.m. in a cheetos-fueled haze?
In the end, I think your point is spot-on: we should all make peace with the fact that people like things we hate. To mangle the old adage, “I may not like your shounen drivel filler crap, but I will defend to the death your right to drown in it’s insipid plotline until it’s no longer profitable for Shonen Jump.” Or something like that.
Chris · May 26, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Yeah, my thoughts in Stage 5 could have been better worded. I’m basically saying that we might not like everything (and indeed, we may find we really do hate some genres), but we’ve come to terms with the fact we might like some “garbage,” and we’re okay with displaying it openly. In essence, we have come to understand ourselves.
I’ve definitely called people out on “poor” taste before, but I’d never question someone’s right to poor taste. I might argue with them about what’s good and what’s not, but I will argue as equals.
Hmm…by my own scale, I’d have to call myself a mix of 3, 4, and 5. I certainly parade out the elitist attitude from time to time (particularly at showings), but usually, it’s in jest. And, as you’ve probably all picked up from the less-than-subtle Freudian overtones here, I’ve come to accept that I don’t hate silly, moe, trivial slice-of-life shows as much as thought I did.
Daniel: Yeah, the stages I put here are a pretty broad generalization, and it’d be unfair to say everyone goes through them. I wrote them mostly for the lulz, and partly because I think most of us can painfully relate to at least one stage. And Stage i…is that like some zen state in which you exist outside of all anime and thus know all? Aha, I knew it, that’s the secret to all of your abilities!
Grant: ohyou.jpg
Chris · May 26, 2011 at 4:17 pm
@Jiji
Yeah, my thoughts in Stage 5 could have been better worded. I’m basically saying that we might not like everything (and indeed, we may find we really do hate some genres), but we’ve come to terms with the fact we might like some “garbage,” and we’re okay with displaying it openly. In essence, we have come to understand ourselves.
I’ve definitely called people out on “poor” taste before, but I’d never question someone’s right to poor taste. I might argue with them about what’s good and what’s not, but I will argue as equals.
Hmm…by my own scale, I’d have to call myself a mix of 3, 4, and 5. I certainly parade out the elitist attitude from time to time (particularly at showings), but usually, it’s in jest. And, as you’ve probably all picked up from the less-than-subtle Freudian overtones here, I’ve come to accept that I don’t hate silly, moe, trivial slice-of-life shows as much as thought I did.
Daniel: Yeah, the stages I put here are a pretty broad generalization, and it’d be unfair to say everyone goes through them. I wrote them mostly for the lulz, and partly because I think most of us can painfully relate to at least one stage. And Stage i…is that like some zen state in which you exist outside of all anime and thus know all? Aha, I knew it, that’s the secret to all of your abilities!
Grant: ohyou.jpg
Karura · May 26, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Love this post! It’s all so true. I don’t know what stage I’m in any more, I didn’t have time for anime for a while thanks to the inconvenience of real life and now I just drift around watching whatever takes my fancy.
chronolynx · May 26, 2011 at 4:25 pm
I love Stage 2.5. That is all.
Shannon · May 26, 2011 at 4:44 pm
If your first step wasn’t Toonami, you don’t know SHIT about anime.
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 3:40 pm
I didn’t have cable, I had to borrow VHS tapes LOL.
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 3:40 pm
@Shannon
I didn’t have cable, I had to borrow VHS tapes LOL.
Joan · May 26, 2011 at 5:11 pm
I think this article is pretty accurate.
But my step 5 is that I don’t watch anywhere near as much anime as I used to.
In step 1, I was a scoffer. Back when Sailor Moon first came over. “You have a Sailor Moon wand? You are such a dorky noob. Your parents bought that for you in Japan? What a waste of money. I have zero respect for you.”
In college, I was suck on step 2. If it was out, I’d watch it. I’d be hunched in my chair, headphones on, watching on fast-forward because all I had to read was the subtitles. I hated OPs, EDs, and anything that wasn’t the story.
And then all of a sudden — step 5. I just stopped. I spend all my time on cosplay now, and you can’t sew and read subtitles at the same time. Well, all except for Saki. I inflict Saki on everyone. Saki is the shoujo-bubbliest, yuri-hinting-est, high school tournament show about mahjongg ever made. (Y’all should watch it.)
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Saki was one of the first shows I watched with my siblings. They scoffed at it too but they still wanted to learn to play Mahjong.
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 3:39 pm
@Joan
Saki was one of the first shows I watched with my siblings. They scoffed at it too but they still wanted to learn to play Mahjong.
Sky · May 26, 2011 at 5:59 pm
This post here is just… beyond awesome.
Funniest thing I’ve read whole week. 😄
Looking forward to moar.
PS. I totally followed the steps you laid out here.
Jura · May 26, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Good thing for images and captions bellow them or otherwise I’d actually have to read this. Anyway nice blog entry.
g0rth0r · May 26, 2011 at 8:19 pm
I am so happy to read this. You’ve found/explained the conclusion I’ve been trying to reach for years while observing the online anime community. Great post and next thing I’m doing is to add your blog to my RSS list.
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Thanks for subscribing!
If it’s anime communities and stuff you’re interested in, you may like the post before this one. Or not. Don’t get the wrong idea! I j-just posted something similar to this and thought you’d like it!
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 1:57 pm
@g0rth0r
Thanks for subscribing!
If it’s anime communities and stuff you’re interested in, you may like the post before this one. Or not. Don’t get the wrong idea! I j-just posted something similar to this and thought you’d like it!
Axeman20 · May 27, 2011 at 12:06 am
I just watch it and dont give a fuck if anyone disapproves.
Anraiki · May 27, 2011 at 3:35 am
I am forever stuck on Stage 3.
I think I am.
But my taste may be complicated or hard to understand. Examples would be the all popular Madoka, which I absolutely hate, compare to Aoi no Exorcist, which is just as cliche (school settings, good vs bad) but I like.
I just come to a understanding with Akira Toriyama on his perspective that I don’t hate it, I just don’t understand it.
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Hey, nothing wrong with that. Sampled Mado and didn’t like it?
Gene · May 27, 2011 at 3:36 pm
@Anraiki
Hey, nothing wrong with that. Sampled Mado and didn’t like it?
randomness2376 · May 27, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Oh man, that was so beautiful. This post pretty much summed up how I feel about anime fans.
I reckon I’m in stage 4.5. I’ve pretty much come to accept what I like, though I still use my headphones for H rated stuff and have harsh opinions on most mecha shows.
steve · May 31, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Holy shit a ton of people are starting to post here, what the fuck happened (it’s a good thing). I need to be checking up more often I guess.
Awesome fucking post by the way. I think there’s a possible couple more stages in there based on the person and the method of introduction (ie VNs/touhou/comiket), but very well done. I’m definitely stage 3, and probably will always be because I’m like that (dammit HoN/Rift).
Gene · June 1, 2011 at 7:24 am
This post may or may not have been posted onto reddit and it may or may not have gotten 200 upvotes in its first day. Just saying. Maybe. I don’t know. Anything’s possible. It’s the internet.
Thanks for posting, I am also trying to find the source. I think it’s from a Amatorou doujinshi, but I’m still thumbing through his extensive artwork.
Gene · July 4, 2011 at 5:58 pm
@NINJAR
Thanks for posting, I am also trying to find the source. I think it’s from a Amatorou doujinshi, but I’m still thumbing through his extensive artwork.
Gene · June 1, 2011 at 7:24 am
@steve
This post may or may not have been posted onto reddit and it may or may not have gotten 200 upvotes in its first day. Just saying. Maybe. I don’t know. Anything’s possible. It’s the internet.
