My niche in anime fandom

One of the main awkward aspects of my personal niche in anime fandom is that, despite being a girl, my true favorites tend to be the “Akiba-kei” anime that have a much greater male following. But before I go further with this thought, I feel a bit of background is necessary…

Throughout my years of mandatory schooling, from kindergarten to high school, the only people I would call friends were female. I guess that’s normal for elementary school, but usually for middle school and high school when dating starts to take precedence, kids are more likely to have friends from both genders. In my case however, over the course of the first seventeen years of my life, I had made about fifteen female friends but only one male friend (and the main reason he became my friend was because our moms were best friends and they came over to our house every weekend). I got into anime during my late middle school/early high school years, and despite encountering a lot of guys who liked anime, I didn’t become friends with them like I did with the girls.

But once my five years of college started, things went the opposite direction. Right away in my first semester of junior college, I made two male friends, also anime fans, that I still have today. Despite making a fairly equal amount of male and female friends in my university’s anime club, I felt more comfortable fangirling around the guys. And as I’ve been making online anime friends more than ever in those same years, again the ones that I enjoy talking with the most have been male.

I’ve been trying to think of reasons for this and I would say that the main one would simply be that my taste in anime, as well as anime fandom itself, has changed. Back when I was in high school, there was limited access to anime besides the dubs on TV and the VHS/DVDs sold at stores. So if you were an anime fan back then, regardless of being male or female, chances are you liked many of the same anime, at least from my experience. During my time in college in 2006 however, I had gained access to fansubs which opened up genres of anime to me that I had never experienced before. Up until that point, I had mostly seen either action/shonen series like Trigun and Inuyasha, or shojo series like Fushigi Yuugi and Fruits Basket. The first “Akiba-kei” anime I saw – Higurashi, Rozen Maiden, Air, Haruhi, and Kanon to name a few – were unlike anything I had seen before and I just fell in love with that type of anime.

As with most hobbies stereotyped as “geeky,” the majority of anime titles have a male target audience (manga’s a different story), so it’s natural that there are more male fans than female to begin with. The Akiba-kei anime that I tend to prefer however, are specifically targeted for the hardcore male otaku, thus not many female fans get into them. There are plenty of girls who like Haruhi and Lucky Star, but fans who are as seriously passionate about them as I am are most likely to be male. Just as male fans tend to prefer anime with female-centered casts, female fans tend to be passionate about anime with a lot of (preferably attractive) male characters, whether in shonen, mecha, yaoi, or shojo/reverse harem series. I’m not saying this applies to everyone of course, it’s just a generalization that I’ve seen.

But even though I tend to gravitate towards the anime that have a greater male following, that’s not so in all cases. I like some mecha/mature/dark anime that have just as big a male fandom as the moe/slice-of-life anime, but I don’t usually get as into them as the latter. As I discussed in a previous post, there are typically two types of anime preferences for male fans and two types for female fans. In this case, despite being female I would say my preferences are most like Male Type A.

But! Then again I also love many mainstreamed anime like the big shonen trio and shows like Chi’ Sweet Home and Death Note, and of course my never ending love affair with Pokemon. Not to mention some of my favorite titles such as Wolf’s Rain, Noir, and Kemono no Souja Erin, wouldn’t fit into these categories. Having favorite anime that cover a variety of genres makes it hard to find even fellow fans to share in your interests. I could easily find male fans who love Haruhi, K-ON!, and Angel Beats!, but chances are they won’t care for One Piece and Pokemon. On the flip side, I could find plenty of fans, male and female, who love Naruto and Fullmetal Alchemist, but they probably wouldn’t care to share in my love for Hayate no Gotoku! and Kannagi.

To summarize, the reason I’ve made more male friends in recent years is because the kind of anime I happen to like the best have a greater male following. But even though I prefer the Akiba-kei anime, I have favorites that cover a variety of genres, which makes it difficult to find fellow fans to share in all of my anime interests. Loving a variety of anime has its good points in that it makes it easier to find someone who likes the same anime you do. But the bad point is that you probably can only share one or two of your favorites with them. That’s just how my own little niche in the fandom goes =P

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  1. rainboecrystal says:

    It seems like we have similar taste in anime =) Most of the anime you’ve mentioned I’ve watched. When I started watching anime, I remember thinking that more girls like animes than boys, because I assumed that whenever the main character is a girl, it’s to relate to other girls. So, I’ve watched a variety of animes without knowing that many of them are for boys, and enjoyed most of them. People may catagorize animes according to the audience they are targeted to, but as long as the animes interest you, no matter what it’s genre is, it’s fine to watch it.

    • Yumeka says:

      Yeah, especially nowadays there’s more anime staring female than male characters. It seems strange to Westerners that a male audience would want to watch a show with cute girls as the main characters, but it’s a perfectly viable genre for a male audience in Japan. Thus, anime like Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh are often mistaken for “shojo” (anime targeted towards young girls) when they’re actually “seinen” (anime targeted towards teenage/young adult males).

      You’re right that there are always exceptions – plenty of girls like shonen/seinen (myself included!) just as guys can like shojo. Even within certain anime with a specific target audience, the creators always throw in a few things that would appeal to another audience, for example, having attractive men for a female audience in mecha and shonen anime normally targeted towards guys.

  2. Bonesy! says:

    I think my niche falls under Male B, specifically in the mecha subset. My favorite mech anime right now is VOTOMS.

    I think the most unexpected anime that I’ve liked and stayed really into was Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. I watched K-On and the first 9 or 10 episodes of Shinryaku! Ika Musume, but I wasn’t completely into them and dropped Ika Musume and don’t really have a desire to watch K-On S2. I pretty much got snapped out of Male A pretty quickly.

    • Yumeka says:

      I actually went the opposite route as you. I started as Female/Male B, but that’s mostly because my access to anime was limited at the time and shonen/mecha was what I was exposed to. Once I got better anime access, I discovered that I personally enjoy the Male A shows better. And I did go through a phase of Female A, but that’s because I had a friend who was a big shojo anime/manga fan and she let me borrow lots of it XD

  3. Liza says:

    I can’t really figure out where I fall in the anime fandom. I’m one who can watch pretty much everything without much trouble(although harems are another story entirely). I have a pretty equal number of male and female anime friends. Depending on the gender, it changes what animes we talk about. With guys, it is usually about the action shows like Bleach, Fate/Stay Night and others like it but with my female friends we talk about yaoi, Panty and Stocking and others. However from what I have seen, with my female friends we talk about the action shows as well as the more female-aimed shows.

    • Yumeka says:

      That’s great that you enjoy a variety of anime amongst a variety of friends. For the female friends I have/had, we mostly talk about either action/shonen series or shojo series. So far my male friends have been the only ones I can talk to about the seinen/otaku-aimed Akiba-kei series that are usually the ones I’m most interested in, like Haruhi, Clannad, Toradora!, etc,.

  4. f0calizer says:

    Good post. I’ve always thought you had an even distribution of male and female anime-loving friends, but I guess we’ve only ever talked about the fellow fans you’ve met during your college years and after.

    In the past seven years of being an anime fan, I’d say that — and this is a generalization, of course — I prefer spending time with female anime fans than male ones. A lot of the hardcore male fans I know like to engage in what I call “otaku-up-manship” where they basically try to impress you with how much *more* they know about the details of a particular anime or some esoteric knowledge about this or that sector of the industry, blah blah blah. I like trivia or little-known details as much as the next person, but when someone uses it to show off, it gets on my nerves after a while. Also, these male fans also tend to watch a lot of the most current (by your categorization) “Type A, Akiba-kei” series, which I don’t follow a lot of, so there’s not much common ground anyway.

    The female fans I’ve met are much more open-minded and much more prone to “fangasm” about the series and characters they like, which I enjoy doing too. And by “female fans” I’m thinking not of the (stereotypical) hyper, bishounen-craving fangirl and more of people like you and a certain Neo-Shounen Fujoushi. =) I’ve also found that anime recommendations from female fans tend to be more along my tastes (for e.g. Angel Beats!, Black Lagoon), with one notable exception — I watched Noir on the recommendation of a guy whom I’ve since lost touch with, but he was pretty omnivorous when it came to anime. That’s also how I came to learn about ALI Project, so I owe him one for that too.

    • Yumeka says:

      Yeah, I had a lot more female anime friends before college. I had about five whom I got together with individually on a regular basis throughout my years in high school. I lost contact with three of them since, mostly because they lost interest in anime and that was the main hobby we shared. Of the two that I still see a lot, one of them isn’t into anime at all anymore, and the other is a little but not nearly as much as I am. The female fans I met at my university’s anime club were a fantastic bunch. But although I loved hanging out with them and they were all really nice, I still found myself gravitating towards the guys because they were the ones who were into the same anime I was.

      Trust me, I know exactly the kind of know-it-all male fan you’re talking about. I’ve encountered them at all the clubs, cons, and other big gatherings I’ve been to. Even though they know so many details about the fandom and about specific series, it seems like all they do is spout out trivia along with criticisms rather than demonstrate any true love. I can’t help but want to say to them “Do you truly enjoy anime or do you just enjoy pointing out its flaws and crushing other people’s fandoms that you don’t share?” ~_^ But since it’s pretty easy to see which ones are like this and which ones aren’t (since you can usually hear the former voicing their opinions from a mile away) I just avoid them and try to strike up conversations with fans who seem to be less about criticism and more about love =)

      I agree that female fans tend to be more open-minded and less ashamed to show fangasms. I’ve just had trouble finding ones that are into the same kinds of anime I am.

  5. H says:

    i guess i can relate to that but i have very few freinds but i’m trying to make more male freinds becuase i find that i don’t like girls very much… strange huh? Also it seems there is only a few anime nerds or otakus that i know of so…
    bye.
    –End–

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