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Hey, Answerman! [2009-02-06]

Honestly? I don't really feel any sense of overarching community whatsoever, not even at conventions. The notion that "we're all united in our love for Japanese animation" is a colossal lie, and the reasons for this while numerous have a lot to do with the nature of the Internet combined with what Japan has been making for the last several years.

It's the same story whether you're in the US or Japan. In the formulative days of "anime fandom" the anime interest of fans was generally in conjunction with something else: usually SF film or literature on account that anime conventions and gatherings are an offshoot of SF fandom. If you wanted to meet or talk to other anime fans, you had no choice but to interact with the diehards for various other pursuits as well. But now we have our own communities, both online and offline. You can be a fan of just anime--like I largely am--without having to deal with other fandoms. There's no need to have to deal with things unrelated to your sphere of interest.

In and of itself, there's no problem with this; in fact, it's beneficial! But in the realm of anime fandom it's happened so many times that everything's sub-factioned into isolation. Things that were once casual sub-interests under the greater umbrella of "anime fandom"--cosplay, AMVs, fanart, fanfiction, you name it--now have their own dedicated communities where one can choose to reside in all the time exclusively with other people who share your same interests. What was once a side pursuit becomes a primary one. There's nothing necessarily WRONG about this, but it doesn't exactly foster a sense of overarching community. Indeed, there are several entire communities dedicated to single titles and the like such that the statement "I'm an anime fan" no longer implies any sort of common ground whatsoever; it's the equivalent of saying "I watch television" or "I watch movies." You might say this is a sign of anime's growing acceptance as an entertainment medium among English speakers, but I think the effect is more than just that.

In Japan, most of the anime that gets made is targeted towards the otaku market. But since the same thing is happening in Japan and there are so many interests becoming progressively more focused and specific, the otaku-targeted titles being made nowadays must now cater to those ever-narrowing interests, often at the expense of appealing to people without said interest. The most popular shows now have to be carefully constructed in a manner that they appeal to multiple distinct otaku groups at once (as a basic example, giant robot shows that also have fujoshi-targeted character designs...which itself encompasses multiple things of increasing specificity). The end result is that there's little sense of community even among fans who like the exact same show. The only real sense of community to be had is found within one's own Internet faction.

The only shows that don't universally follow this "gotta make sure to have something for everyone to latch onto" approach are the remakes of older titles, the fans of whom are now themselves a splinter faction of the whole. And even some of those have to update themselves in a grab for more viewers. So sure, without the Internet I never would have found thousands of other people that share my admittedly minority interests. But thanks to it, I might also actually be more isolated from other anime fans than ever before.

Greed1914 wrote:

I think Brian is right that Ranma probably wouldn't have made much of a difference. It's also true that because the demographic watching anime was wrong from the advertisers view, Adult Swim basically said, "Thanks for watching, but we don't value you that much." Which is extremely irksome when I'm in they're beloved 18-34 male demographic.

I may be misconstruing, but what they don't have use for is the 12-17 demo, not yours. Besides, Ranma 1/2 is not their type of show anyways, despite many viewers' calls for it early in AS' life. It's not enough of a hardcore action they want, nor the teenage-crush situational --and as Viz (in)famously put it-- sex comedy as the type their AS comedy viewers like.

And it is a slow starter (as notoriously were long series of its era, for various reasons), even almost got cancelled after the first season. And this coming from someone, as mentioned here before, whose Ranma 1/2 videos hooked an anime-oblivious dormhall (yeah, the same demographics AS covets, but they walked in during mid-season and tracked back only much later). So it wouldn't have worked out.

That new answer man banner looks nice. What anime/manga is that from?

What is Matt Kamen's Answerfans response from last week doing in this week's?

Also, a Lucky Star RPG (based on the OVA) would be heaven.....

Putting it simply, cons need to have the J-Rock fans show up, no matter the expense.

Wait, wait, WAIT. People go to cons to have sex? Shit, I've been going to all the wrong cons, then.

Wait, wait, WAIT. People go to cons to have sex? Shit, I've been going to all the wrong cons, then.