When looking back on the role that anime
has played in my life, it is difficult to define my interaction with anime as
one specific relationship. I have been anime watching from when I was five years
old up through my present time in college, so I have found that it has played
many different roles for me throughout my life. Starting from the beginning of my history with
anime, I would assume that it is not that different from many other people in
the United States who are the same age as me and like anime. After coming home
from Kindergarten each day I would turn on the television, eat a cookie and
watch Pokémon and Sailor Moon.
Sailor Moon
While almost everyone I know who is the same age
as me was a fan of Pokémon when they were in Kindergarten, the series which I
really think contributed into my getting into anime was Sailor Moon. I remember
in second grade running around with my friend on the playground pretending to
be the different sailor scouts. I think the aspects that really drew the show
to me as a child were the magical transformations and the art style which was
different from American style cartoons. Due to the similar art style I also
found myself watching Cardcaptor Sakura when I was younger. During this time
period, I would go to the bookstore with my parents every weekend and one day
my mother pointed out to me that there was a book version of the Cardcaptor
series. However, as I was only in second grade the right to left nature of the
manga was confusing to me, so I didn’t really give it that much attention. During this time period I didn’t know that
this art style was something which fit under the genre of anime but this changed
in third grade when I saw a girl in my class looking at a Sailor Moon book. She
introduced me to a manga called Tokyo Mew Mew which is another mahou shoujoseries similar to Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura. It was at this point when I discovered that these comics and cartoons were of
Japanese origin and that there were many other shows like these that had more
detailed art and a continuous story. As someone who didn’t really watch any
shows that weren’t cartoons when I was younger, stories with more detailed and
continuous plot were an improvement when all of the other cartoons on were
mostly comedies that didn’t really follow an ongoing story.
Tokyo Mew Mew
The discovery of
anime and manga also brought a social aspect with it. My friends and I created
a Tokyo Mew Mew club amongst ourselves in 5th grade and traded the comic around. Around this time period the main focus of my friends and I
seemed to be manga rather than anime because we could bring it to school to
exchange with each other. It was also a lot easier to find manga at this time
period when anime DVDs were expensive and companies had not yet realized that
putting anime up online legally with good quality was a good endeavor. Nevertheless,
I mostly remember watching anime series which were based off of the manga I
read with my friends, at my friend’s birthday parties with series such as
Fruits Basket, D.N.Angel, and Full Moon o Sagashite.
(There was an anime version of Tokyo Mew
Mew released on U.S. television as Mew Mew Power; however, many content changes
were made which did not exactly fit into how I thought the series should be.)
Lovely Complex
In middle school, I
spent a large amount of time online and reading forums with recommendations of anime
to watch, and I found two of my favorite series, Lucky☆Star
and Lovely Complex. As someone who is pretty shy I didn’t really talk about my
interests in anime and manga to other people in my class except for my friends
so I didn’t get looked at strangely, however my friends who liked to draw in an
anime style and talk about it in class were talked about by some of my
classmates in a negative way. I distinctly remember a kid in one of my classes
talking about my friends who were in another class at the time saying “All they
talk about is Bleach, Bleach, Bleach. They are so crazy, they must drink
bleach.”My friends were looked down
upon for simply liking and talking about anime during the school day, which in
retrospect was quite tame compared to some underclassmen at my High school who
came to school for picture day wearing cosplay wigs and tails. My family on the
other hand was quite supportive of my interest in manga and anime, buying and
suggesting to my grandparents to buy me these things for birthdays and
holidays.
My mildly excessive collection of manga
It was probably in high school when my interest in anime was at
its highest. Anime was on Cartoon Network dubbed with a loyal translation every
Friday night after midnight. I remember straining to keep myself awake through each episode of Fullmetal
Alchemist after a week of schoolwork and little sleep. In 10th grade
I would invite my friends over to watch the shows with me. One thing we used to
do, which is a bit embarrassing looking back on it, was film ourselves acting
out what was happening on shows where we didn’t know what was going on and then
laugh about how badly we were able to act out the scenes as they happened. I
watched the series Code Geass and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in High
school with my friends when they came over to visit as well. In looking up the
voice actor for the series Code Geass, my friends and I discovered that there
was an anime convention which was only a half hour away from where we lived. We
went to the convention without buying tickets ahead of time and were lucky
enough to get the final four tickets that didn’t break the fire code for the
building. While at this convention we mostly spent our time in the dealer’s
room looking at products to buy. We went a second year as well and spent most
of that year watching panels on different subjects. However, we did not spend really
any time talking to our fellow fans at the convention.
Code Geass
My senior year of high school was quite busy and I did not get to
spend a large amount of time on anime, however, my interest in anime helped me
to make friends in my first week of college. I do not have time to go to
bookstores as much as I did in high school so I do not really read any new manga these
days, however whenever I am on break from school I usually watch a 12 episode long
anime. Looking back on the series of anime that I tend to watch, I have found
that the anime I watch by myself tend to fall under the shoujo genre, however
the series that I watch with my friends tend to have more action or fall under
the shonen genre. I think this is
because I really like the character development which occurs in the shoujo genre
and can pay attention to it when I am by myself. When watching other genres
with my friends I don’t have to pay much attention and have time to joke
around. I don’t know if it would be accurate to call myself an otaku because I have
many other interests as well. Anime and manga do not completely control my
life, although they have played a big role in it. In addition, my friend just
recently told me that she wants to watch the entirety of Naruto with her, so it
seems that whether I want it to or not, anime will continue to play a role in
my life for a long while.
