How Japanese young adults feel about anime and fans (at least from my experience)

During my trip to Japan a few weeks ago, I spent most of my time with Japanese college students (between the ages of 18 and 23) who I stayed with at the dorms and who took us out during our sightseeing. I was curious how Japanese people my age would feel about an American female anime fan like me…

I was definitely not going to hide the fact that I love Japanese animation, and by the time I left Japan three weeks later, all of the 30+ Japanese students I had spent a good amount of time with knew of my obsession.

I did notice a few interesting things when I talked about my love for anime with the various students. For a lot of them, and for most Japanese people as well, when you say you like anime, the first thing they think of is the mainstream and most famous series in Japan, i.e., One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball, Pokemon, Studio Ghibli movies, and the less international Doraemon and Sazae-san. These are family series that everyone in Japan, young and old, knows about, with fame similar to The Simpsons and Peanuts in the U.S. As you go further down the line towards the lesser known and more otaku-aimed series however, the number of people who know about these series decreases. Just about all of them knew Evangelion and Gundam. Most of them knew Full Metal Alchemist, Inuyasha, and Bleach. And a handful of them knew Haruhi and Lucky Star, usually the ones who are hip on current Japanese pop culture (at least they’d heard of Hare Hare Yukai). But just one or a few people (most of whom liked anime themselves) had heard of Clannad, Shakugan no Shana, Code Geass, and Higurashi. But beyond the really famous series, the only anime that your average Japanese person will probably know about are the mainstreamed, popular, long-running family series, some of which, like Doraemon, Chibi Maruko-chan, and Sazae-san, have never made it big beyond Japan.

Thus, I absolutely amazed all the Japanese students I met with my knowledge of the animation from their country. They were totally shocked when I named off anime series they had never heard of, when I told them interesting facts about particular anime series, seiyuu, and j-pop singers, and when we went shopping and I could identify so many more anime shows and characters than they had ever heard of.

Another thing I noticed is that some people tend to interpret liking anime and liking manga as more or less the same thing. Many times I had to emphasize to them that I don’t read a lot of manga and basically just watch anime. As was discussed recently on one of ANN’s Hey Answerman! columns, while both anime and manga are still niche genres in America, manga is much more widely accepted in Japan than anime. Saying you like manga, no matter what your age or gender, is nothing unusual, since the amount of manga stories and genres in Japan is enormous. While I was there, I saw manga aimed at businessmen, housewives, and just typical adults in general, not to mention the numerous manga aimed at kids too. As I was told a few times, “Everyone in Japan reads manga.” As various as anime series and movies are, they can’t compete with the sheer diversity and enormity of Japan’s manga industry. Therefore, being an anime fan in Japan beyond the well-known mainstreamed series is just as nerdy as being a fan in America.

While I don’t know exactly how all the students I talked to felt about me and my obsession, none of them made me feel weird or embarrassed about it. They all seemed very accepting, and at times, pleasantly amused with my unusual hobby. No one said anything demeaning or mocking about me or anime, at least not while I was present. The two times I went to Akihabara, the students who took me were very kind, helpful, and patient with me when I took a long time choosing what to buy. Of course, 30+ college students from a very liberal and kindness-advocating organization like Ashinaga is probably not a good sample of Japanese young adults in general, and I’m sure if I talked with random young people off the streets of Teramachi or Shibuya, they would have a more negative opinion about me and my hobby. But I think, even if my hobby seems strange to Japanese people at first, once they hang out with me for a while and see who I really am, they realize that not just stereotypical creepy, anti-social geeks can be anime fans. I think many of them realized that there are all kinds of anime fans, not only in Japan but overseas as well, and I hope meeting me changed at least some of their views about the subject =)