I suppose it is a bit odd for me having been blogging for a year now. So much has happened to me since I started to blog, good and bad, with new threats to my sanity and new challenges to my good opinion of humanity always being met with the punch in the face of the kind only Straw Hat Luffy can provide. I am not Straw Hat Luffy, and my arms cannot stretch like a Gum-Gum Fruit suffering cursed wonder, but I was given the blessed curse that was the condition I was born with to work around as a theme for how I percieved anime and manga, and occasionally video games.
I’m going to think about what I say before the weight of history spills from my brow in sweat over wondering if people would actually care about reading my words, and my articles here are seldom as read as the ones on my home blog, but it’s worth sticking around here because you guys gave me the support I needed at a time when the Old World of Anime Blogging had disbanded. The New World was approaching, like a thundering giant from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya raining down blows on an unsuspecting landscape. Ours was a world that was rapidly changing. There was the distance between the fansubbers and the licensed anime watchers, the rift that almost tore our community apart, but in the end… who gives a flying flaming rubber chicken who watches what which way?
It shouldn’t be the way we watch anime that separates us as individuals, it should be why we watch different shows. I watched the new Haruhi same as everyone else from a fansub, because there was no way in hell I could watch it any other way right now. All the same I still buy and watch licensed anime DVDs which sit on my shelf as a record of the shows I have either yet to complete watching or a chronicle of conquest, moving from one anime show to another almost at a drifting pace, as real life gets away of the surreal hobby many of us share. Real life changes, and sometimes our hobby changes in taste, but for years it will not change too much.
The new Haruhi was a renewal of my faith that anime had not lost its way. It’s still as crazy and insane as ever, with the madness that lurks beneath the cultural context of Japan writhing under the depths. The same madness that gave you the talking toaster scene in Welcome to the NHK!, the same unhinged nature that allows giant robots to emerge from the head of a child in FLCL, the things I admire in a good anime show made after the 1980s, were all there in the new Haruhi. I remember the apostasy of some who had lost the faith in their hobby. My old blog boss Blissmo? I’m not sure what motivated her to stop watching anime. I haven’t talked to her in a while. And I miss her. Then again, new faces turn up to replace them.
I lost my way in High School and got too close to Faerie when I read too many fantasy novels, but I found a rooting back in Earthland once I located a place in the world which was just as dreamlike in some cases, just as seemingly absurd, just as terrifying as the throne of Oberon where Titania sits by her side. Japan is something which is an elemental force in this world. It crawled out of the cruel sea, and was isolated for many years. The isolation of Japan, it seemed, was not too much unlike the isolation of a hikikomori, but it is unclear who truly played Saki-chan to Japan’s Satou-kun. It’s never the same Saki-chan who tried to open Japan-as-Satou to the world, to everybody’s eyes. In any case Japan is a place many of us want to visit but few understand truly. The way I see it? It’s a place where I would probably get my arse kicked by rigid societal expectations, to conform to the norm. This paradox has been at the core of modern Japanese rebellion, fresh ideas emerge from a society where it is socially acceptable to remain in one employed job your entire life as a salaryman.
Anime fandom is a hard road in Australia because it’s hard to get people to accept you for who you are, but better that than to be accepted for who you aren’t.
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figma Nakano Azusa / 2,266 yen / Max Factory
Misaka Mikoto / 4,695 yen / Good Smile Company
Vivio / 6,630 yen / Alter
My fandom for anime have never died before.
Even though it’s not as great as it was back then (2006 was an awesome year for anime), it’s still in me.
In 2006, we were blessed with anime like Ouran, Death Note, Kanon, and of course, Haruhi among lots of great anime that year.
As time pass by, those anime are replaced with new ones, whether it’s better than the previous ones or not is another case.
But I still watch it because I enjoy it.
In other words, as long as anime exists, I’ll still enjoy it.
There might be other factors that will affect my fandom for anime, such as the lack of time and other responsibilities.
But it doesn’t change the fact that I like watching anime.
Try to imagine yourself not watching television anymore, it’s pretty much the same as not watching anime for me.
And I watch anime way more than I watch television, or any 3D shows for that matter ^_^
On the other hand, I seldom play video games lately (despite doing so for 10 years).
Most probably because the lack of good video games nowadays, in my case, the lack of good RPGs.
Hopefully the same thing won’t happen to the anime industry.
Still waiting for games like Unlimited Codes, Dissidia, Agito, Persona, and Birth By Sleep for the PSP though.
Other than that, I don’t know what to expect in the future.
And the fact that I don’t own any of the next-gen consoles doesn’t help at all ^_^
Anime fandom is the same anywhere as long as you keep it to yourself.
Then, no one will know about it and people will treat you as if you’re not an anime fan.
Well, unless you’re bothered by that, you’ll be fine.
Anyway, I hope you’ll still continue to watch anime.
Haruhi is back, so there’s no excuse for you to ditch anime now ^_^
I guess that’s kinda of true cause I only started out three years ago on my fandom for anime, but sometime i find it hard to talk with my peers as we do not have a common topic(it’s hard to talk when u r the only one that understand what yourself is talking about) ,but I have no regrets, this is who am I, Just like you said.
Fortunately, there is a livelier community here in S’pore even though a certain company had attempted to ruin things.
Anime watching still remains in the realm of “cartoons” and big “manly” collecting “dolls” still remains oddly looked upon but at least there is an accessible community with businesses supporting the hobby.