The stages of my anime fandom

Inspired by a recent post from ghostlightning, I started thinking about how my anime fandom has changed over the years. Though I’ve been a fan for roughly eleven years now, my relationship to anime has certainly changed over time…

After giving it some thought, I can divide my fandom into three major stages. During each stage, my tastes, thoughts, and relationship to anime is different.

Lacking cable TV, high-speed Internet, and good video sources, I was mostly exposed to dubbed kids anime during my early years of fandom. I followed the dubbed versions of whatever kids anime I came across on local channels and was only vaguely aware of the more mature titles that existed. I was fascinated with how American companies would censor certain things in Pokemon, Digimon, Cardcaptors, and other dubbed shows I watched. I dabbled in a few Japanese words related to these shows, but it would be years before any thought about seriously studying the language would cross my mind. Besides diligently watching these shows on TV or time-recording them on VHS, my fandom in these early years consisted of about 80% Pokemon-related things (going to leagues, collecting the trading cards, playing the video games, watching the episodes/movies over and over), and 20% of things related to other anime, such as slowly starting a collection of Cardcaptor Sakura VHS in Japanese subbed in English, collecting Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and Digimon toys, and scrounging out some Japanese episodes of Sailor Moon and Mon Colle Knights when I could.

Being still a naive child fresh out of middle school and starting high school at this time, and being exposed to many dubbed anime aimed at children, I simply thought that most anime was for kids, but had more “maturity” than American cartoons. I thought of anime as a “higher class” of cartoons in comparison. Since I’ve been an animation fan my whole life, the world of anime was just so new and exciting at this time, I actually didn’t even stop to think about my fandom or to fangasm about anything (also I was a young teen at the time and critical thinking about myself wasn’t something I did yet) – I was just endlessly engrossed and craved more.

My middle stage here is probably my most important. During these years, I started being exposed to all kinds of anime, not just kid shows, via my high school anime club and friends from school who had cable TV and watched the anime on Adult Swim and Toonami. I went from watching just kid shows like Pokemon and Digimon to shows like Cowboy Bebop, Utena, and eventually Evangelion, within just a few years. Suddenly anime became even more amazing to me, opening me up to a vast social network of fans and a variety of titles I had never known before. Towards the end of my “awestruck” years, I had gotten a glimpse of more mature anime by watching Jubei-chan and Princess Mononoke, but I had no idea about the sheer variety of stories and characters that existed. I finally started taking the time to really think about my feelings for certain shows/characters. Thus, during these years I went through obsessions with many different anime and crushes on characters. Fangirling became a common thing for me (though not to the extent of many others), and when I started my website in mid-2002, my early writing was full of me placing certain shows on pedestals for being so creative and kawaii-ploding over certain characters for being so cool or cute. Towards the end of this stage, I took my first Japanese class and got my first exposure to fansubs. My fandom during these years consisted of phases of obsession with Tenchi Muyo! and Evangelion before finally settling into Inuyasha for the longest time, all the while downloading pictures and music from all the new anime I watched, spending hours updating my web site, and even reading/writing the occasional fanfic.

My relationship to anime at this time was quite different than it was in the years before – I now understood that anime was more than just Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!. I also started to understand what it was like to be a true fan by becoming so involved in the story, setting, and characters of each new series I encountered and letting my mind play around with interpretations of shows like Evangelion and Trigun. My main goal during this time was to watch as much anime as I could without access to cable TV or fansubs, and to examine each one before moving on to the next. But the main difference between this stage of my fandom and the upcoming third stage is that, while I knew what it was to see anime as an artistic, intelligent form of entertainment, and to fangirl over it when I felt like it, I never took a more academia-like approach to it or thought critically about my own fandom.

Towards the end of my second stage of fandom, I started getting a glimpse of how anime fandom was rapidly changing with the flourishing of fansubs and blogs, and the beginning of the “moe craze.” As soon as I got a better computer and Internet, I started downloading fansubs of many anime that had not been released in America, thus exposing me to an even greater variety than the mainstreamed shows. However, I resisted moe shows a little at first – after watching the first episodes of Lucky Star and Manabi Straight, I didn’t want to continue watching them. Maybe they seemed strange to me, not being kid shows but not being shonen/shojo either. But it didn’t take long before I realized they were just another type of anime and I learned to love many of them.

Besides simply watching more anime at once via fansubs than I did in previous years, and formally studying Japanese at college, the main defining part of this stage of my fandom is being able to take a step back and think critically and objectively about anime fandom in general. Most of this is thanks to starting up the blog you see here, as well as inspiration from other bloggers. The topics about anime fandom I’ve discussed in this blog are topics I never would have thought about in the previous two stages. I still love anime more than ever, but I’ve also become mature enough to look at it under a microscope and think about its impact on me, Japanese culture, or other things in the world. This has necessarily led to another major change during this stage – I now consider a lot of series I watch each season to be dispensable. Back in stage 2, I treated every anime I watched as a gem worthy of much of my free time to fangirl over. Nowadays, perhaps because more anime is being produced than ever before, I watch more anime at one time now than I used to, I’ve developed better thinking skills, or some combination of all three, I’ve become more critical of each series, considering only a handful of new shows to be gems. My writing on my site has also reflected this, losing a lot of the fangirling tone (and complementary happy emoticons =P) I’m still a relatively non-critical fan who loves all types of anime and fangasms all the time, it’s just that my relationship to anime has simply matured.

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To sum things up, being a kid new to anime in stage 1, I was very fascinated by it and wanted to learn and watch more and more. In stage 2, I branched out from kids anime to mainstreamed action/adventure anime and shojo titles while starting to develop true fan love for particular titles and characters. And finally, after being exposed to the final part of anime – fansubs of shows that may or may never be released outside Japan – inspiration from the world of anime blogging helped me develop the ability to think critically about anime fandom, and thus about myself.

When, if ever, will stage 4 of my fandom begin? Only time will tell.