July 3, 2008

  • Anime Expo, the United States largest Anime and Manga convention is once again being held on the July 4 weekend. This time it's at the Los Angeles Convention Center, as this event has simply outgrown the places it was held before. Besides the fact I'm actually going to visit Anime Expo this Saturday as I have done many years now, I've got to say that I still have not gone back to being a huge anime fan like I once was. This coming from someone who used to be the President of an Anime club back in college over a decade ago, and was the primary "Anime geek" of all my friends at that time. I used to be "that anime guy" who knew more things about the genre than what should be normally allowed. I'm that anime guy who (still) could tell you the cultural and historical significance of why lots of anime has a plot revolving young girls piloting huge robots.

    I pretty much turned my back to what's new in Anime at the turn of the century. I'm starting to be an old man who only really remembers and loves the
    anime of "my time," and hardly knows the ones that are released
    nowadays that today's kids go gaga over. There are still some series / movies that I was able to see this decade however; like Naruto, Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex, Paprika, etc... but it's nothing like last decade when I was practically hungry to watch all the anime available out there. I believe that was the reason I gave up on anime. I've seen too many! I've seen so much, that a lot of the anime of today just come off as retreads of the series / movies that I've already seen before. People criticize Hollywood for releasing the same old same old movies, but in all honesty the anime industry is far more guilty of churning out the same thing everytime. There are so many similar anime out there, you'd think they had an exact scientific formula in making one.

    Although I'm pretty much ranting that "the Anime of today sucks!" I don't really mean it to that extreme of a statement. I am aware that lately more so than ever, there are more avant garde anime being released, like "Paranoia Agent" for example. So in a way it's my fault for acting like there's nothing good out there for me to watch anymore, when I know that all I have to do is look. The truth is that I simply kept exposure to anime at the very minimum, that I have now become the casual anime fan. The only way I'm probably going to catch an anime that I've never seen before, would be on TV; which I guess is one of the true signs of a casual fan.

    Me a casual fan? My anime fanboy self of ten years ago would be shocked!

Comments (2)

  • All possible human stories have been told.  Just because you throw robots or aliens into them mix, the basic pattern is the same.  I personally just read books (although the percentage of good books to bad are dismal too, there are a lot more books than other forms of entertainment)  these days and just occasionally watch TV or movies since truly groundbreaking ideas only come once in a while.

    Also there's a lot of free reading material out there that the MPAA wont come down on you for.
    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/monkey/index.html

  • You definately helped introduce anime to a lot of people at a time when only a handful of people here knew it existed.  I was one of the clueless ones until I met you.   I remember Ninja Scroll, Ghost in a Shell, Vampire Hunter D, Dragon Ball, Ah My Goddess, Ranma 1/2, etc... 12 years later, I even remember stuff like All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku (simply because the name was so catchy).  My personal favorite was Video Girl Ai (the video and the manga).  This was before it was pre-translated, so I was reading the off of a dot-matrix print-out that you lent me.  I know Orange Road was a favorite of yours, but i could never really get into it.
    Good times and many thanks!

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