Forum - View topicWhat is the American equivalent of anime culture?
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Elsydeon
Posts: 2 |
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I'm curious to know how the average person in Japan views anime fandom, in comparison to how other types of fandom is perceived within America (or elsewhere).
For example, is it sort of like how Star Trek fans are viewed in the States: people here understand how passionate they are about Star Trek, but usually don't mind them? Or is it equivalent to, say, furry fandom, in which most people think its an odd hobby to get into depending on the age? |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Well, I don't exactly know what Americans think about anime fandom but I see how it's in Poland.
Usually people don't mind if you are Trekkie, Otaku or RPG fan if you don't isolate from those who don't share your hobby and you don't try to convince everyone else how wonderful your hobby is. Apart from m&a I like Star Wars and LOTR and never anyone told me that I'm childish or laugh at me. When I brought all my Star Wars stuff to my school and had a little talk about "Hero with a thousand faces" most of the people were surprised that SW is such a huge franchise. Next year I brought my m&a collection- lots of my schoolmates couldn't believe that Sailor Moon manga was black and white. I don't tell my schoolmates that I'm sick when I go for a convent, if they want, they know what I like. But there was a boy in the same age who was really crazy about m&a, ready to attack everyone who told that he don't like it (he was a bit like Darth from 6teen- he was just talking about convents, cosplays, how manga is better and deeper than anything else etc.) Even I couldn't stand him. What about japan- well, haven't you seen Otaku no Video or Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu? |
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RedSwirl
 Posts: 344 |
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According to what I've heard, anime & manga culture in Japan is kinda the equivalent of comic book culture in America.
That's just my random guessing though. |
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Blackpeppir
Posts: 234 |
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Well anime culture in Japan is looked at pretty much the same as Comic culture in the states so there's always that comparison. But one could also argue that trekkies are the state side equivalent of otaku. But then again we have those here as well so I'd say that the US equivalent anime culture is Anime culture in the states. Other than that, as I said before, your only choices are really nerds, trekkies and comic fans.
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8499 Location: Penguinopolis |
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NASCAR nation, of course.
There's a real cult following in Japan for overweight Midwesterners turning left for hours on end. |
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Olliff
 Posts: 550 |
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While I can see the connection between anime and the American culture surrounding the comic book culture on the surface. When you look deeper, there are stark differences. Today, anime is far more mainstream that the comic book industry. Anime lines entire sections of store of department store and manga litter row after row at many of the larger bookstores, Comics are becoming significantly more spare than anime and manga. And unfortunately, that is not saying much, the comic book industry has been in decline at the very least for the last decade. While a very small hardcore following of fans still exists it pales into the comparison to the number of people who are into anime.
Just a few weeks, I attended A-kon, the first convention, that I have ever been to and I was presently surprised to see so many people there. The few comic conventions that still exist are significantly smaller -by a factor of 20 to 30 in most cases. Those who would in the past be the target audience for comics are now playing video games, playing fantasy card games(magic, yugioh) or watching anime. A portion of anime fandom even connects Original English Language Manga(OEL manga) with an automatically lower standard of quality - which furthers worsens a portion of anime fandom's view of comic books. At the convention, I attended several panels with Bruce Lewis, one of the first people to popularize the OEL manga trend with Gall Force and and Project: A-ko. During the first panel that I attended, he stressed the migration from American comic books to Japanese manga among the average geek. Lewis also talked about the trend of the average otaku to favor Japanese voice work in Anime over the English dub. He sighted the desire for the fan to be surrounded and whisked away by a foreign culture and see the work in its purest and most untouched form as to why most fans prefer to see anime in its original Japanese. His arguments proved interest although he never addressed the issue of quality even when it is was directly asked of him by a fan. However, a portion of his bias may lie in the fact that he is also a part-time English voice actor. Hmm, while anime fandom is still markedly more obscure, anime culture is becoming more and more similar to the culture of the gamer. Both cultures capitalize on the escape element of the hobby. Drilling down within the gaming culture I believe that the competitive gaming is similar. Likewise, competitive gamers are much likely to be more favorable of Japanese culture like anime fans, as Japan remains a leader in game production. Of course, these two cultures are not without a lack of differences. Competitive gaming being a the much more involved of the two cultures and more elitist - though the anime culture has no absence of elitism in itself. |
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Blackpeppir
Posts: 234 |
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Oh how true that is, I remember four years back in grade 8, when I was still fooling myself into thinking I had a future in the anime industry, a friend of mine came out and said he wanted and said he wanted to be a pro gamer because they make like 200k a year. Now this was all because we stayed in one weekend and he managed to go a significant portion of friday night without being beaten in online Halo. All I said was "are you sure you have the chops? Some of those asian kids are bred specifically to excel at video games." Y'know as a joke, to which he flipped and went full on attack and cursed me out saying "[Well at least I'm not some gay [expletive for sex][expletive for gay person]! If you're not going to support me then I don't even wanna see you!" and stormed out of the room. I might add that this was in the middle of science class. He wouldn't talk to me and never did let me apologize and I haven't talked to him to this day.
I dunno if that was being elitist or if I just said something wrong, but really both fandoms have their extreme cases |
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Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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Are you talking about Japanese anime/manga fandom? Or are you talking about Japanese Otaku culture? Because there is a pretty big difference there. The first being relatively mainstream, and the latter viewed somewhat as a disease.
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David.Seth
 Posts: 453 Location: near SF |
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Wow Redlight, such an insightful first post! *sigh* anyway, I was thinking that one of the American equivalents to anime culture would have to be cinema culture, which has its very own otaku, known by many simply as "movie nerds". You know the type, ones who visit aintitcool or chud or dark horizons or any other of the many sites that give geeky up-to-date news on titles in development. Then they get off by telling everyone they know about it with a sense of superiority, yet are "shocked" when you dont know/care:
They are the ones that go to IMDB or Wiki and learn all the useless trivia tidbits, as well as memorizing all the continuity errors to Empire Strikes Back (When Leia is briefing the Rebel pilots, some of the men behind her change position between shots). The same ones who saw The Dark Knight more than twice because they had to get in every last detail of such a cinema achievement. I know this isn't exactly comparable to anime culture as a whole, but close enough in my book. edit: Honestly, Im describing a lot about myself in that post, as well as a few of my friends. And I did actually go around work telling people about the Short Circuit remake to anyone who had a shred of interest 
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_Earthwyrm_
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They tend to be referred to as 'Movie Buffs' where I'm from, which is pretty positive. Short-circuit is getting a remake?!? J... J... Johnny Five? |
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Teriyaki Terrier
 Posts: 5689 |
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That reminds me of a story that happened a long time ago. For three years straight, my friend kept saying he would go to Japan. However, even though I asked him over 100 times what he would do in Japan, he never gave me a straight answer. So two years later, I get his new phone number and ask him about if he went to Japan. Apparently, he gave up on the whole idea because of amount of money and lack of understanding Japanese. My guess is that he wanted to make his own anime show, but after he learned how difficult it would be to do that, he gave up. Now he was always a great friend and such, but he often talked about these "big plans" and almost none of these plans ever happened. Now my friend learned how hard the work was and gave up, but I don't understand why some people think its easy to become a prominant figure in the anime business/video game business without realizing how difficult it truly is? |
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Animeister
 Posts: 8 |
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movies.
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Blackpeppir
Posts: 234 |
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I've always wondered the same thing, I mean sure there was a time when I thought I could do it, in 8th grade none the less. I guess everybody goes through that stage where they think their art is good enough to be professional, or that they have come up with the next Harry Potter or Pokemon. But in reality isn't the chance of actually breaking into the industry and succeeding something like 2%? Regardless, I'd have to cast my vote for Video game culture. I ran into a hardcore FF7 fan, I like to call em Jenova's Witnesses, at the library who was looking for the graphic novel to Advent Children. Aside from the fact that to my knowledge one doesn't exist, he was under the impression that IDW Comics published it and it was drawn by an american artist. He went into a rant when I said I liked 9 and 10 better than I liked 7 and threw a fit that got both of us booted from the library for the day. Now I don't know if that qualifies as s gamer or an otaku but either way it was disturbing. I've encountered console fanboys and they're eerily similar to anime fans in their obsessiveness. |
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AU_Gundam
Posts: 54 Location: Cebu, Philippines |
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Well, if you had to put things into comparison like that, there are actually quite a lot of equivalents in american culture.
To name some there would be the american comic culture (As the medias covered would be similar and that the Comic Culture also seemingly encompasses the spin-off live-action movies and cartoons made of comic guys), the gaming culture (A lot of the genres encompassed by both are similar and both share similar attitudes on certain things), the western animated culture (As this is of a similar and wider scope as compared to the comic culture), and sci-fi culture (If only to consider the amount of detail grabbing and nitpicking that some anime fans of series such as Gundam and Macross is in being similar to those from Star Trek and Wars). |
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