Forum - View topicA prisoner's quest to watch anime.
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Andy26
 Posts: 68 Location: Flippin Arkansas |
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The internet seems to be catching on. Last I heard, most people had it but have you ever thought about how you would watch Anime without it? Is there an Otaku store in town you could swing by to pick up a few episodes of your favorite series in case of an emergency? What would you do then if you were not allowed to leave your house for 20 years? In fact combine your kitchen, bedroom and bathroom into one room now shrink it to all be about the size of your bathroom. This is where you live now and can not leave for two decades so how you gonna get some Anime around here?
I am lucky enough that my prison allows us to purchase televisions. I have a beauty too, 13 inch screen, no remote, no sound bar, a real deal at $160.00. We have cartoon network so the majority of my Anime comes from the Saturday night Toonami block. I have been a faithful viewer of theirs since 2008. There was also a little spell around that time where the SyFy channel also showed some Anime which really helped lock in my addiction in even further. Those were halcyon days for this inmate, seemed like everything was in my favor. Unfortunately Anime disappeared suddenly from SyFy. There was no warning, it just stopped airing. It was a blow but I still had my Saturday nights. Later on I would make fast friends with another inmate here and I introduced him to Anime. It was actually one of the times Adult Swim had rerun the original season of FLCL (I discuss my love for this show as well in a prior post). After watching it he was hooked as well, I had made a new convert. This became a fruitful friendship as he later got a job here in the prison department responsible for airing TV shows and movies on the institutional channels. When we buy food and other groceries from the canteen they charge a tax on these items and it is from those funds that our recreation equipment is purchased, including the shows they buy. As you may have guessed I was able to parlay my friendship with the man in charge of ordering shows into a secure route for more Anime to come to my television. Of course there are restrictions, we're not allowed any rated R movies or shows with adult ratings so the selection of shows we can get is limited, but there are a few good ones that fall under these guidelines. My last means of Anime input comes from the device I'm using to write this very message. A couple of years ago the prison started a partnership with a company to provide tablets to inmates. The tablets are on a closed network with no internet access or!direct connection to the outside world. You can set up an email account and if your friends and family want they can download an app that will allow you to email back and forth. Most emails take at least a day to deliver and longer ones such as this can take up to three days. My only means of getting a message like this out. So on these tablets you can rent movies and TV shows and after multiple requests they finally put some Anime movies and shows on here. Some Ghibli classics like Totoro and Howels Moving Castle, a few Naruto movies and recently they just added the movie Belle on here. Its up to $10.00 to rent a movie and once you pay for it you have 48 hours to watch it. They also have three Anime series on here: Naruto, and Bleach, both only have the first seasons available, and last month they added Sailor Moon. The first 23 episodes at least. $3.00 an episode, same 48 hour limit applies. I really wasn't interested in Sailor Moon though I didn't actually know anything about it. Judging a book by the cover I just assumed it was something that pre-teen girls would love and there would be nothing of interest to me. Then again I can't get any other Anime, I've already seen Bleach twice all the way through and Naruto once so curiosity got the best of me and I grabbed the first episode. What a pleasant surprise this turned out to be. I found it to be really well done, hilarious at places, and actually very rich and dark in others. I'm hooked and the previously mentioned friend of mine is hooked as well. We take turns renting episodes and discussing them as we walk laps on the yard. Imagine, two convicted felons in a maximum security prison laughing and carrying on as they discuss a magical girl and her talking cat. Neither one of us does drugs, we just getting our Anime fix! So there are some challenges here to be sure but true fandom finds a way to get by. I have subscribed to Otaku USA for years, prior to that it was Shonen Jump before they went digital only. I have been learning, well trying to learn, Japanese as well, very difficult without any native speakers around but I feel like I'm doing pretty good with it. I can at least read most of the signs that don't get translated by Viz. It is indeed a different path I have to take to get my fill of Anime. I pray no one reading this ever has to go through anything as challenging in their lives. I would like to take a second here to thank the moderators who get these posts into a human readable format, I appreciate the extra effort and hope to be able to repay this kindness with my own services when I get out. To everyone who has commented on my prior posts, thank you so much for showing an interest in what I put out here. As humans we all seek out validation by our peers, your simply acknowledging me has been amazing !BTW 348 days to go ! |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24177 |
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Hey Andy26 - that is definitely a tough path to get your anime fix. Man, once you're out and able to access anime normally it's gonna... blow! your! mind!
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