Anime wa Bakuhatsu da!

Well, I don’t know about you, but reading otousan’s post on this topic, the similar top-10 post he linked to (you know, the one that wasn’t me), and realizing that this is August, which makes this the six-year anniversary of my friend finally magically convincing me to watch Cowboy Bebop which opened up a floodgate that led directly to where I am today, made me ponder the infamous question posed by Paul Gauguin. So, I figured, why not jump in on the “exploring your roots in anime fandom” deal?

It, uh, didn’t work the way it was supposed to.

I started checking my list for series that could serve as series that left a deep and impressionable impact on me, and discovered two things: one, there weren’t really a lot of them, and, two, the ones that seemed to leave an impact that resonates to this very day aren’t the ones everyone else attributes the same to. Cowboy Bebop is, of course, my first (and you never forget your first) and it indeed was pretty amazing (or else I had nothing better to do since I watched it all in one day, God help me) because I sobbed like a baby when Ed and Ein left, but revisiting the series later (in, admittedly, a terrible setting to do so) I was struck by the realization that I didn’t really understand why this was the work that got me into anime. I don’t know if it’s just that my tastes shifted, the fault of the setting in which I rewatched it (although I did grab Mushroom Samba that night and watched it, and was also much less amused by it), or the fact that I’m just delusional as hell and like to fabricate elaborate ways to not like things, but something felt missing. The same went for a lot of “classic” series that I jumped into at that point in time: I watched Slayers all the way through and forgot that I did so a year later, I suffered through a library-owned VHS dub copy of Ghost in the Shell and sat there and said “why do people like this movie?”, I watched (possibly only the vast majority of) Neon Genesis Evangelion in an entire day (I went to class that day too!) and wasn’t really moved to massive fanboyism or anti-fanboyism, and I found Princess Mononoke boring (that was another “I watched it dubbed” thing, though, so who knows). The fact that none of these really grabbed me in the way they grabbed everyone else baffles me as much as it does you, and is probably indicative of a taste deficit in my part, although, for the most part, I wouldn’t say I actally, physically hated any of above mentioned series–it’s more a lack of true, amazing, heartfelt devotion to one or all of those series. Not really apathy, but just “it’s there, and it’s good, and that’s it.”

[Short aside for the purposes of providing visual relief from text: The first time I was ever labeled a "pedo" (that infamous universally applicable and frequently totally inaccurate pejorative for anime fans) was when I declared to a friend that I thought Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV was constructed of pure awesome and win. The second time was when I told a different friend that Margie from Xenogears was cute.

She still is, damn you all]

What did seem to grab me? Totally random and bizarre things, apparently. I picked up Figure 17 fairly early on and loved it to pieces (even if I did suffer the Figure 17 Effect), and I do count it among the main series that I think showed me what I liked about anime and why I kept coming back for more. Kokoro Library is another one, although that attachment is more sentimental (and occupation-related) due to a massive catharsis while watching it. Beyond that, I really have no clue which series (especially series viewed early on) I can attribute to helping me solidify myself as an anime fan. I can rattle off a list of series I assigned 10s to and say it’s their fault, but I don’t really know if that’d work right. I don’t even know if I can really assign the reason as to why I’ve stuck around so long (when other friends of mine fell away, or have other interests that don’t involve animation but still involve Japan, or involve animation but not Japan, or involve neither) to any one specific group of series.

I almost want to say that what happened was that, simply because of my habit of getting interested in something and basically diving headfirst into it and starting to root for stuff evolved into a kind of holistic passion for anime. In 2002, when I started out, I downloaded anything and everything someone, somewhere, said was good. This is why I have Star Ocean EX CD-Rs and about 50 zillion others that sit collecting dust because I can’t throw them away because I might need them someday. It didn’t always work out with me in the right way, but, generally speaking, I enjoyed a lot fo what I did end up watching–and some of it stuck, and some of it I remembered existed only when I browsed through ANN when compiling my first collected list of series I’d seen a couple years ago. It’s always a weird feeling to go “wow, I forgot I watched this series and that it even existed” and remembering that you had fun watching it.

What came out of this insane, almost suicidal exploration (it could easily have backfired on lesser and greater men than me, resulting in early burnout) was, perhaps, not a passion for anime as a genre of media (or whatever you want to call it these days; I remember people arguing that it was a medium and not a genre years ago) but what I think is best described as a passion for anime as anime. It’s weird–instead of subconsciously comparing anime to other media/genres of media, as many people seem to do, I think I do the opposite, at times. It might not be a better position (I’m tempted to argue that it’s a worse position, honestly), but it certainly is a different viewpoint from the ones I’m used to seeing from a Western audience.

Also I am certifiably crazy. Which I think we’ve established.

Also, because I didn’t quite think it needed its own post, but I wanted to mention it anyway, because, well, I mustn’t run away: I bought the thinpack of Neon Genesis Evangelion today, for no other reason than I hadn’t bought it in six years, and I figured that if I didn’t buy it while I was thinking about it, I wouldn’t remember to buy it for another six.

I think I need to join the Human Instrumentality Project now. Also I have listened to Cruel Angel’s Thesis (残酷な天使のテーゼ if you’re a stickler for kanji you can’t read like me) far, far too much today. I don’t know why. It is, however, an awesome song.

(P.S.: Who the heck is Paul Gauguin anyway?)

Join Wang Liu Ming and I upon a fantastic safari into the deepest darkest jungles of complicated theoretical ideas! There might be lions! And tigers! And bears! Oh my!

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, as it always seems to me I approach anime from a fundamentally different positon than other people. I think, by far, the vast majority of anime fans, especially in the Western or non-Japanese world, grew up devoid of anime, and became interested in it peripherally to other interests, to varying degrees. There’s nothing wrong with this, as there’s something to be said for having broad interests, just like there’s something to be said for specialization.

The product of this “peripheral” interest, however, is that there is a difference in taste between any two given people. This is true of everything, so this isn’t news, or shouldn’t be. What happens, however, is that people form sophisticated taste before becoming exposed to anime. Technically, you start developing taste from the moment your parents start reading you bedtime stories and you start picking favorite stories for them to read, but sophisticated taste isn’t developed until much later in life, and–depending on whether or not the person is interested in fictional storytelling mediums–may not develop at all. This “sophisticated taste” would be, say, the realization that you do not merely like a piece of fiction, but you love it. You’re deeply moved by it in some way, whether emotionally or intellectually, or some other way. You progress beyond merely liking something, but not being too terribly impressed by it, as it was something to pass the time with, to loving something for being a great story.

I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley. (Wait a second…)

With me, this experience of discovering something that I really, truly loved was around 16 or 17, when I read Philip Pullman’s  His Dark Materials trilogy. What I found I loved about it was that it had something I had never really experienced before–a bittersweet ending. I do believe I cried when I read the last few chapters of  The Amber Spyglass, and nothing had exerted that power over my emotions before.

I really can’t remember much else that really impressed me in that manner until I turned 18 and started watching anime. Cowboy Bebop was my first (and, yes, I did cry to that too), but I don’t think it really clicked with me until I watched other things, such as Figure 17. Figure 17, of course, has one of the most heartbreaking endings ever, and I also remember being moved by it, even given how slow I watched it.

For other people, however, especially in the West, this “sophisticated taste” is created through exploration of Western works, with Western ideas of what is “good” and “bad” (which of course vary from person to person, since you’re not going to get too many people who like Lethal Weapon but also like The Time-Traveler’s Wife,  but there is clearly a defined set of cultural “good” and “bad” values that Westerners look for). It’s created through watching, say, a Stanley Kubrick movie, or reading a book by Arthur C. Clarke, or anything else under the sun, and, after that, exploring the wide world of fictional storytelling and cementing what you consider “good” and “bad” in fiction.

When someone who has generated this kind of Western-spurred taste prior to discovering that they’re interested in anime, they bring these preconceptions to the table when they sit down to watch a series. For good or for bad, their “sophisticated taste” becomes the benchmark by which they judge a series. The series is viewed through the lens of the West as represented in their own personal taste, and the end result is somewhat distorted from the context the anime was meant to be taken in. Not this this is a bad thing, or that your taste is somehow “wrong” or “incorrect”. It’s simply how humans operate.

If this post is starting to feel like the Apocalypse arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena, here is my admission of this fact.

With me, then, my taste explorations didn’t really start until after I found anime. The more I watched it, the more I found I really liked the kinds of things they did in it, and the more my own, personal lens became distorted from the Western standard and started becoming an anime lens. At this point in my life, I’d say that it might be practically impossible for me to completely remove this distortion, even if I simply stopped watching anime this very second. Since I’ve effectively “grown up” on anime, or at least come into maturity with it, it’s become part of who I am, and how I define myself. And, just like there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a set of clearly Western sensibilities in watching anime, there’s nothing inherently good about having an anime-shaped lens. It’s just how things worked out for me, and I can no more change that than you can change your lens. In some ways it limits me, and in others it frees me. And the Western lens, in some ways, is limiting and freeing as well.

With an anime-shaped lens, however, this means I look at anime through the context of anime, and not through an external context such as “animation” or “film” or “theater” or “storytelling”. And I often find myself mystified at other people, who seem so eager to denouce I series I like for this, that, or the other reason, none of which make any kind of sense ot me, or, if it does, doesn’t really detract from the series as a whole. I shouldn’t really find myself mystified at this kind of thing, but I always wonder about the seemingly insurmountable differences between even two discrete individuals, even and especially ones that get along admirably.

The end result of all this is, of course, a large and varied fanbase, all of whom look at anime differently from one another. Lenses crisscross and overlap, but two never really match each other exactly. This, ladies and gentlemen, is The Human Experience, and, no, you cannot escape The Human Experience by watching anime. Unless you become a hikikomori, or a NEET, or some combination thereof. And even then, you’re still probably talking to people on the Internet, unless you truly are some kind of modern-day urban hermit.

I think this post had a point somewhere but it got lost in the process of actually writing it. Oh well.

The topic kind of came up in a conversation I was having in IRC, and I’ve been meaning to write up a little spiel about why I prefer anime to other kinds of filmed entertainments.

I was introduced to anime in 2002 (just before I started college, which I still haven’t graduated from) via a friend who really liked Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion. I had always been kind of curious about anime–I had visited my high school’s anime club a couple times with my friends, who all liked anime, and I ended up attending one of the meetings in which they showed nth generation Mahoujin Guru Guru VHS fansubs. I distinctly remember being the only person who wanted to watch more of it instead of watching Escaflowne, so this should tell you something about me.

Anyway, for about 4-5 months I’d been groupthinking about anime and thinking it was all REALLY STUPID and DUMB and CUTESY and all kinds of things. I kept chatlogs of my conversations back then, they still exist, and they’re hilarious. My 17 year old self would kill me if he saw what he turned into. Anyway, somehow, through an act of God, I managed to be convinced to watch Cowboy Bebop.

I think I watched the entire show in one day. Summer break, okay?

Needless to say, for some reason (looking back at Cowboy Bebop now, I wonder what the hell I saw in it that was SO AWESOME) I really enjoyed it, and promptly logged into ADTRW over on SA (this was back when ADTRW was actually intelligent) and downloaded just about every series that was on the first page. This included Azumanga Daioh, which totally threw my I DON’T LIKE CUTESY STUFF argument completely out the window.

I honestly don’t know what kept me around during those early years. I watched anything and everything someone said was good, even in passing (except the series I never got around to) and I watched a wide variety of series really early on. I think, if I have to chalk up my lasting interest in anime to any one show, it would have to be Kokoro Library. Sure, by any objective scale, it’s not exactly a groundbreakingly original show, even for when it aired in 2001. But I watched it at a critical juncture in my life, when I was totally depressed like I’ve never been before or since, and the show, simple as it was, taught me what catharsis meant. I absolutely bawled like a baby at episodes 11 and 12, and (although I don’t have clear memories of what happened during 2003, when this was happening) I remember I felt much, much better about things after a good ol’ cry, even a cry of happiness. I had cried before while watching anime (when Ed and Ein left) but I don’t think anything before or since Kokoro Library had actually had an impact on me. And this is why Kokoro Library is my favorite anime ever.

I think, unconciously at first, that a bond was formed then and there, between me and anime–it was a medium that actually could get me worked up into tears, and grandually I found that I liked that it could do that. As I grew older and more mature (and went back to school) I found myself exploring more and more anime, and consuming more and more series. I don’t know whether it’s just that I have broad taste, or if I’m just a harsh discriminator, but I rarely watch anime I end up not liking in some form or another. So I ended up watching a lot of things I really liked. I remember watching Hajime no Ippo and Revolutionary Girl Utena in my first semester back at school in 2004, and also keeping up to date with what was coming out. I’ve kept up to date on anime pretty well since then, and the older I got, the broader range of series I ended up liking. I thought I’d hate Monster; I ended up watching and loving it. I thought I’d be too creeped out by Mushishi; I ended up watching and loving it. I thought I’d hate Bokurano; I ended up reading and loving it. I still watch a relatively large selection of genres; my motto is, if it’s good, I’ll watch it (someday)

There’s a certain kind of power I find in anime that is lacking in non-anime mediums. SDS once suggested to me that anime and manga shoot more frequently for complex emotions, and I think he’s right, that that’s why I like anime over everything else. I can state with confidence that I’m in anime for the long term, that it’s not something that will fade with time. I can say this because complex emotions has long been a hallmark of anime and manga–I’m still powerfully moved by Rose of Versailles, and that’s from the 70s. I don’t think the complexity of emotions will change in anime and manga; it might take on different forms, but I’ll probably still like them.

You could say I’m this creature they call an “otaku”. I wouldn’t argue with you.