This is actually a topic that has been on my mind since I became an anime fan, I just never got around to writing about it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, so I would love to hear other anime fans’ comments about this…
Though anime has gotten way more recognition and respect during the past few years, it’s still more or less an unknown genre to the general public. Most people may have heard the word, but know little or nothing about what anime really is. It seems, from my experience at least, telling most average Americans that your main interest or passion is Japanese animation/anime would more than likely get a raised eyebrow rather than an acknowledging word. This is due to the fact that, sadly, most people still have the ignorant conception that anime is either one of two things; obnoxiously popular “kiddy” fads like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and DragonballZ, or obscure pornographic “hentai” cartoons that are overly sexual and/or violent. Despite the fact that there are many different anime series’ besides “kiddy” and “hentai” ones released on DVD in America and airing on American TV, not to mention the sheer variety of manga and anime books and magazines to be found in most book stores and libraries, people still choose to remain firm in their belief that “cartoons” and “comics” cannot possibly be judged on the same level as other forms of entertainment, and that anyone who dedicates all their free time to watching these “pokey-man porno” cartoons must be, well, some kind of weirdo.
Anyway, my reason for writing this is to give satisfaction to and hear comments from other anime fans like me who feel more than a bit awkward when asked what their hobbies/interests are and having to deal with the skeptical looks and ignorant remarks from people who don’t have a clue about anime. I’m not saying that everyone who’s not an anime fan is the kind of ignoramus I mentioned above; I’ve told many people about my interest in anime, and although they don’t know much about anime, they’re at least neutral towards it rather than negative, and have a little interest in learning more about it. But sadly, too many people share the same stereotypical narrow-minded view about animation. Unfortunately, I think most people would rather be sure of their ignorance about something instead of risk learning about it and discover facts that contradict their earlier views.
Maybe I’m just paranoid about expressing my passion for anime openly to most people because I was made fun of a lot for it during my years in middle school. Well technically, not for being an anime fan, but rather for being a Pokemon fan. I know nowadays Pokemon is one anime that most fans like to pick on and bash, but there’s no denying it was the franchise that started many fans’ interest in anime and even the overall popularity of anime outside of Japan. Luckily, once I got into high school, I finally met other people who shared my interest, though most people were still ignorant. But now that I have a job and am going to college, I’m much more exposed to the “real world” and the views about anime of people in general. That was one of the things I had in mind when I first started to work on my main web site, AnimeYume.com, over 4 years ago. I made all the extensively written anime information pages on the site with the idea to educate not only fans who want to learn more about anime, but to show people who don’t know much about anime that it’s way more than it appears to be. Since then, I’ve shown my site to many of my friends, family members, and even teachers, and I’m happy to report that I’ve definitely educated them and changed their views about anime ^_^
But anyway, back to the topic at hand, if someone asked you what your main hobby/interest was, and you said something like sports, art, literature, politics, movies, computers, etc., pretty much anyone would just say “oh, that’s nice” and not give it a second thought. But if you said “anime” a lot of people probably wouldn’t “get it” and would wonder what the heck is with this older teen/adult who’s so interested in watching “cartoons.” It’s a shame people like that have no way of knowing(at that moment at least) that saying “I like anime” is pretty much like saying “I like TV/movies” or “I like books”…as any fan knows, that’s how much of a variety of anime and manga series’ there are. Saying “I like anime” is not “I like dumb kiddy shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! and DragonballZ” nor “I like perverted porno cartoons.” “I like anime” is saying “I like action, drama, fantasy, comedy, romance, sci-fi, and pretty much all genres of TV shows, movies, and comics, that happen to have Japanese culture and ideals directing them rather than American ones, and also happen to be animated by people rather than performed by them.” Wouldn’t that definition give a whole new outlook on anime, and maybe even animation in general XD
But anyway, I guess I’ve made my point pretty clear ^^,,, So, if you’ve had an experience at school, work, with family members, or any situation with people that you’ve conversed with and you felt awkward or embarrassed talking about your interest in anime with them, by all means, share it ^^ I think talking about it with other fans will make you feel better about it. And hopefully one day, anime will get the recognition it deserves and become common knowledge, and if you tell someone you love anime, they’ll immediately think of you as an intelligent and open-minded individual with a unique and respectable hobby, and not just some weirdo who plays Pokemon and watches porn all day =P
If the person asking is a close friend, I go ‘anime’. If not, I go ‘dunno’. Either way though, majority of my friends either like or understand anime (mostly asians) so it’s no big deal. Also, pokemon is indeed the first anime i ever watched, but i then went without anime for many years, since i never attributed pokemon as an anime (yes, i didnt understand anime either at the time). The anime that really got me into anime was Neon Genesis Evangelionm, and remains as my favourite series. Even the non-for-kids animes i saw before then never caught my attention, as they were usually on tv, such as Bubblegum Crisis, Inuyasha etc.
Interesting post.. most of us probably share the same problem. The idea is to surround yourself with like-minded people but sometimes, you have to exit this shell into the real world. So you could either a) get a fake hobby or b) tell it like it is. I find a being a lot easier but rather sad.
>> Mabye anime WILL get its recognition soon enough, it seems that its becoming increasingly popular with more and more very quicky. :/ It seems that even though DBZ, Pokemon and Yugioh were the ones that puished off the anime market mostly here in america because of the TV stations, most still think of it as just that, or hentai which you said mostly comes up on any google search if you type in anime..which kind of reinforences the belief in that which is not..very good really.
Last month, one of the girls in my Bio lab saw my Galaxy Angel zipper pull and asked me if it was Pokemon. I didn’t think that happened to people anymore.
Yea, I do feel awquard when I’m asked about the kinds of things I like, but then, I feel awkward around people in general. Most people seem to love ignorance. My very first anime that I ever saw was Sailor Moon, it was playing in spanish, because I was liveing in texas at the time, but I was intranced. I had no clue where it was from or what it was saying, but I loved it. Saddly, I didn’t get the oportunity to watch it again except on extremely rare ocation. I latter saw Pokemon, also in spanish, and received equally few oportunities to watch it. Only when I moved to Germany, when it was truely starting to gain popularity did I ever get to watch Pokemon in English, and I maintain even now that the Pokemon theime is one of the, if not the, best theim song ever. But I guess I’m biased since it was the first anime theim I’d heard.
I noticed this site seems to be rather active, maybe I’ll visit again.
Also, it seems my online spell check isn’t working, so I’m sorry about my terrible spelling.
Actually, I’ve never had that problem. All the kids in my old and new school know *a little* about anime. Not like they watched it or anything, but they ackonowlaged that I liked some form of animation, and they were OK with it.
I’m glad that anime is known to a lot people in my school. I guess the manga in our school library helped them with that. (They have Jing, Rayearth, Gundam, DBZ… Oh yes, definantly Naruto.) Of course there’s always going to be people that think I’m a childish freak whenever I respond: “I like anime.” Not that I blame them since stereotyping is what a lot of people do… But you think that they should know better than that since, after all, America is the ‘salad bowel’ of different races and culture. Those people can at least accept the fact that anime is Japanese animation, an oriental counterpart of American cartoons (a lot of them with questionable content as well…). It’s getting pretty annoying, and it’s not just anime too. I’m getting very sick of people that go up me and ask: “Hey, is this Chinese? Ching chong bing bo!” Gr! Okay, I’ll stop there or else I’ll start ranting again.
people who steoreotypes against other people’s hobbies is just plain. s.t.u.p.i.d. they’re the ones that has the issue. we like what we like. that’s all there is to it.
Luckily at my school there are alot of people who know about anime and love reading manga (and theres quite a few otaku wannabes as well belive it or not! and the only anime they ever saw is whats shown on TV.) So I never got teased about it or anything like that.
But when i’m outside of school I still come across people who think anime is for kids or they don’t even know what it is. I was talking to this one lady that worked at the grocery store and I told her that I liked anime, then she asked me what it was. I tried to name off some popular anime series (that wheren’t made for kids) like InuYasha and Fullmetal Alchemist be she just stared at me with a confused look, unfortunateily I had no choice but to use Pokemon, Dragonball Z, and Yu-Gi-Oh as examples, THEN she knew what I was talking about. It also annoys me when I tell people that I like Sailor Moon(which was the first anime I ever really got into and I still love it today), they give me a strange look and say, “You mean you like a kids show?” then I have to explain to them that it wasn’t ment to be a kids show in the first place. To make matters worse almost all of the cartoons they make in the US nowadays for kids are all anime-like, so thats another reason why people still think anime is kids stuff.
On the plus side, I had a subistute teacher for my spainish class one day and he saw my folder which was covered with pics from my favorite anime series, he saw the one picture from Tsubasa Chronicle and asked “Is that Fullmetal Alchemist?”……well, at least he didn’t ask if it was Pokemon.
Wow! I’m so glad you wrote this article! It was really nice to know that me and some of my friends aren’t the only ones who go through being stereotyped for loving anime.
Every time someone asks me what I like I usually answer anime, among other things. This gets me either a strange look, or embarassing questions. I’m sure you’ll agree this gets old really quickly.
Also, like you, I too was made fun of for liking anime in middle school. A mean boy in my class knew I liked anime/manga, and everytime he saw me reading manga he would come up to me and say “Reading pokemon?” or “How’s Pokemon?” Needless to say, it was incredibly irrating, especially when his friends got a good laugh out of it. I have to say though, I was lucky enough to have friends that either liked/were neutral about anime, so I could ignore the jerks.
Sadly, I moved when I started high school, so I’ve had to go through the whole meeting new people deal. Recently, during an American history group project, a girl in my group picked up my binder that’s decked out in anime stuff and asked “You like anime?”. I said “Yeah.” Then the predictable remarks started. “Really? Isn’t it cartoons? Well, I don’t like it at all. It’s really weird.” The worst part was, she showed my binder to the rest of my group who chimed in with equally rude remarks. I tried to explain how it wasn’t kiddy or dirty cartoons, but, as usual, I got nowhere.
Sorry, I kinda rambled. It just feels nice to share my frusteration with someone who understands.
RAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambled!
The first anime I’ve ever watched was Cardcaptors (The second was Cardcaptor Sakura), and it was so badly dubbed that I had to switch the screen off and heave. But it still got me into manga (I’m not too much of an anime fan), and everyone around me liked it too. We were all obsessed with one series and then another, and we all had fun talking about it.
But some people (like those in my classes in my new school) are convinced that all that likes anime are perverts that gets off on cartoons. It’s really sad when people say that, because manga and anime isn’t entertainment only, depending on the series (Like Angel Sanctuary) can really make one thing about controversial issues.
Still, it’s their loss, and my gain ;)
I’m so glad someone finally said something. I’m so sick of my brother ragging on me(he’s such a jerk). but now i can show him this and maybe he’ll be convinced.
I so agree! I love anime shows like Inuyasha! I also watch Bleach(Manga), Full Metal Alchemist, and i love love love love Harry Potter!!!!!1
I know how it feels,when I was in high school,the whole art class I was in was so divided and undecided about anything anime/manga that i just kept to myself and drew fanart in a solitary corner of the room.However there was a good discussion on evangelion in that art class between about four students so i guess it wasn’t all bad.However I feel like the most oddball anime fan there is.I like Deathnote,Full Metal Alchemist,Wolf’s Rain,ect. But I also like Pokemon,Yugioh,ect. So I feel like I’m not a good representitive of the anime fan comunity since my taste in anime/manga is so insane.I mean,I watch yugioh(hello,Yugioh)and that is not considered one of the greatest anime and it is bashed by most anime fans.So I just wanted everyone to know that I’m on both sides of the spectrum,the yugiohs and the deathnotes,the pokemon and the Full Metal alchemists.It’s a blend of everything I watch and it probally seems crazy.
All my life, I have drifted acroos India, Bangladesh and most of the SE Asian countries. Rather surprisingly, animation, as a medium, is much more widely accepted here than it is in the western world. I tend to believe that while living in world where real life is much too horrific comprehend, anime, with all its freedom is a welcome means of escape. This is very different from the “normal” reason, yet a compelling reason all the same. Anime, in India, feels like the voice of a man, forever denied.
Few, if any, people have ever heard of the Japanese anime industry. If you tend to ask them about popular ones, you rearely get a straight answer. Instead, describe it to them, and almost all have seen versions of Robotech, Shin-Chan, Astro Boy, maybe even Gundam or Macross. All this provide plenty of food abiout what anime truly is and what it represents…
Of course about 2 years have pased since this was posted but
I feel that when I tell people I like anime they finally understand what that means.
At my high school the particular Anime and Manga called death note spread like wild fire and when people asked “so do you like death note?”, if you did not know what it was the entire room would go “Uh-Oh” and then the super fans turned into anime lawyers making sure that the person in question would be completely interested in Death Note
the same can also be said about the american anime, Avatar-the Last Airbender
This was posted three years ago…but anyways, I’m in middle school and have been an official anime/manga/Japan fan for about one year. I’m labeled as “The Weird One” because of my interest. The kids in my class constantly pick on me for everything and are always taking my manga, skimming through the pages, and saying “You’re so sick. You read porn.” They’ll also crack jokes about the various anime pictures that I decorate my locker, folders, etc. with (for example, one boy saw a picture of Kallen from Code Geass and went on for about a week saying ‘She’s not wearing pants!’) They make me sick, but I feel good when they’ll ask something about Japan, manga, or anime and I can give them a good explanation (Example: I was reading the Death Note manga and most people would seriously and innocently read it with me or ask me questions about it.). But what kills me, is that there’s a boy in my class who is also an anime fan (not as big of one as me), and nobody picks on him and he’s one of the most popular guys among our grade and the upper grades. They also pick on me for listening to Japanese music and for trying to learn it (I’ve self taught myself to read hirigana and I am currently learning katakana.). What outrages me the MOST, is that they all think that it’s CHINESE! NOT JAPANESE! CHINESE! Even my parents think that! (‘Hong, yung, chung, bong?!’ they’ll say!) They can’t get over how I can remember the names, also. (My dad says, ‘Harahizu Sukimiya?’ when I’ll be watching Haruhi Suzumiya) Sorry for ranting, but I just wanted to say it to someone who understands.