Get a load of this guy.

[MonkeyFunk]

I was looking around and I found an old essay about anime:

http://www.cjas.org/~echen/articles/fall99/11_13a.html

All I can do is hope that the author was writing with his tongue in his cheek. A few excerpts:

To become an anime fan is to step into a larger realm, a world the rest of society only glimpses indistinctly through its video stores and sanitized television pabulum. Anime fans are those who have gathered to worship at the temple of some concept, some thing greater than themselves which somehow makes their life more worth living.

Isn't the time ripe for a religious upheaval to rival the founding of Christendom?

Should the revolution succeed, will the otaku be seen as those who guided the people to a more enlightened age?

[starlac]

It is always a strange thing when something that is talked about as "cult" is talked about in this way. What a lot of anime and manga fans seem to miss is the huge difference between what they perceive as the Country of origins cult status and its reality.

Not to long ago I had a look at Tokyo TV's website to see what was showing during it weekly schedule, the anime was neatly divided into what I see as children's slots (it covers about the same timeline as the UK's TV children slots) and the occasional movie slot (not always anime).

People seem to have this idea that anime imparks the whole culture of Japan. They miss that while the manga industry is read by thousands (if not millions) of Japanese people a year, anime is often more isolated and usually dependent of the success of the particular manga it's based on. A huge percentage of what is printed on manga is never translated into anime.

Anime, while certainly very popular and part of the overall culture, is not the start and end of Japanese entertainment that people in the west would like to think it is.

In fact the only huge successes that I can think off over the pass few years have been the films of Miyazaki, Hamtaro (the first toy line to overtake Pokémon) and the 2003 remake of Astro Boy, the first episode of which I believe broke Japanese TV viewing records for a new program, although this last one has more to do with the popularity of the characters over history than most.

[P.C. Unfunny]

.................I,...I,.....wow...

[athena]

umm... wow.



Brad Bird once said something along the lines that animation isn't a genre... it's a medium that has within it many, many genres... and styles... and sensibilities. I think you can push this to anime too... you can't stand Hamtaro next to Akira and tell me it's all the same thing...

[lupercal]

Never mind. Try to imagine this didn't happen.

[Thalia-is-Crazy]

if... if you could see the expression on my face right now...
...
I...
...just...
.......don't like anime any more.

[Konan]

if... if you could see the expression on my face right now...
...
I...
...just...
.......don't like anime any more.

I don't like anime either, but I love Studio Ghibli's work; they just transcend the medium of animation.