When I think of where my anime fandom originated, I know that it started with my obsession with Pokemon back in the late 90s. However, the roots of it go back further than that – perhaps the origin of my eventual anime fandom can be traced back to how I related to all the fads I ever went through as a kid…
Just about every kid loves cartoons and the thrill of collecting things such as toys, dolls, trading cards, and the like. But for most, by the time puberty sets in, the starry-eyed love we used to get from these childhood things moves on to others such as relationships and careers, the latest in “adult” pop culture like the newest Hollywood movies, reality TV shows and sitcoms, and the latest popular music. So what is it that keeps that old “nerdy” love of cartoons, games, and collectibles going for those of us for whom it eventually lead to anime fandom? Is it something ingrained in us from an early age that we have little control over? Or is it simply the result of growing up in an environment that never discourages us from casting away our “inner child”?
To illustrate what I mean by using myself as an example, I was very serious about collections even when I was a little kid. For all the fads that were popular when I was young, from Power Rangers to Beanie Babies, I always had to “collect ’em all,” or as many as I could anyway. Even for something seemingly trivial like McDonald’s having a new kids meal toy collection that happened to be for a movie or show I liked, I had to keep buying kids meals in order to collect one of each toy from the set or else I wouldn’t be a happy camper. I remember having a sticker book for The Lion King that required you to buy sticker packs that would have the stickers you could use to fill up the appropriate pages of the book. The only problem was that the stickers in each pack were random, like with trading card packs, so you’d constantly be getting repeats. But regardless, I was hardcore about collecting all those stickers (much to my mom’s disdain, as she was the one buying me the stickers). Even for some of the smaller fads I was into, like Littlest Pet Shop and Beast Wars, I still had that serious collector’s mentality when it came to completing sets of toys, stickers, cards, or whatever.
By the time kids get to middle school, the last fragments of interest in “kiddy stuff” like this fades in favor of teenage/young adult stuff. However, middle school was the time I got into Pokemon, so rather than my “childish” interests changing like they did for the majority of my peers, mine actually deepened; while all the other girls were ogling the latest boy bands, Hollywood actors, and fashion trends, I was busy getting all the Pokemon games and cards, watching all the movies and episodes, and pretty much holding onto that serious nerd mentality I had as a little kid. And that passion continued until it eventually became the anime passion you see today.
So the question I’m pondering is, what is it that made me hold onto my so-called childish passion while it faded for everyone else, despite us growing up in the same time and place? One reason I could come up with is simply personality. The reason I described my early childhood interest in collections was to show that I’ve always been like this – always been a “nerd” if you will. What I’ve been nerdy about has changed over the years, but from childhood to adulthood, I’ve always been “into” some kind of completionist hobby that involved “collecting all the merchandise” or “watching all the episodes.”
But besides personality, another thing that could determine whether our so-called childish love for animation and collecting things continues past childhood or not, is our environment. Like I discussed in a past post, peer pressure is probably the main thing that transforms people from children to teenagers in terms of what they like to do and consume. I feel like only those with the most self-esteem and passion will continue to hang onto any childish hobbies they have when their peers put them down for it, since teenage years are when kids are most sensitive to how others view them. This usually comes from a school environment, but home environment plays a role too. If our parents are continuously discouraging towards that nerd mentality, even going so far as to ban certain media franchises they deem unacceptable, sometimes we can’t help but go along with it, which causes our passion to fade. But I’ve known passionate anime fans who prevail in their hobby despite parental disapproval, so that’s not always a huge factor. This is probably because it’s hip for young people to rebel against their parents, but like I said, how they appear in the eyes of their peers is a different story.
But in some cases, parents can actually help encourage our hobby-centered interest to continue past childhood. Some parents, usually fathers, have a “man-child” interest in things like Star Wars or The Simpsons, and share that with their kids rather than encourage them to only like grown-up things. Or they could just be encouraging towards whatever their children like, even if it’s something atypical like anime or another nerdy hobby. My mom is an extremely non-materialistic person and never had any nerdy hobbies, but she sees the good points of my anime passion and encourages it, just as she nurtured me in everything else I liked as a kid. Is that worse than forcing a child to grow up quickly and be one of the crowd, casting so-called childish interests aside?
Compared to when I was growing up in the 90s, the Internet of today has made it easier than ever for kids to indulge in childish hobbies and find like-minded friends online. Perhaps that will actually encourage more of them to keep their inner child well past childhood. It’s a bit too early to say yet. But anyway, I believe that the roots of our anime, video game, or whatever fandom can often be traced back to how we were as children, both in terms of our personality and our home and school environments. So now I’d like to ask my readers, could you see traces of “nerdom” back in your childhood that eventually matured into anime or whatever fandom you have now? Did you prevail or falter in your passion due to home and/or peer pressure? If not, is anime the first thing you’ve ever been nerdy about?
I was sometimes called a nerd back when I was at school, but only because I tended to be very introverted and was seen as something of a ‘teacher’s pet’ – I don’t think anyone really knew that I had a serious anime hobby. I would describe anime as the only aspect of true ‘nerdom’ in my life, although looking back, I don’t think I’d be able to say why I was drawn to the medium. I know that I loved Sailor Moon before I knew what anime was, and that I’d get fairly obsessive about making sure I was always home to watch every episode. I got into anime on a conscious level during my early teens, which I suppose I prevailed in despite the fact that nobody else I knew was into it. Both of my parents still see anime as just another form of fairly mindless cartoons, and I didn’t make any friends who liked anime until I moved out and attended university. That was about the same time that I started seriously participating in fandom as well, so the two came together quite nicely.
That’s interesting that anime has been the only “nerd-ish” hobby you’ve been into. I also loved Sailor Moon years before I would come to know what anime is. Sadly I wasn’t able to watch it everyday because it aired early in the morning and for a while we didn’t have a VHS recorder that could tape the episodes when I couldn’t be home. The anime that eventually took its time-slot, Samurai Pizza Cats, I was able to tape however :3
That’s too bad that for a long time you didn’t have any friends to share your hobby with =( I had to go about two years feeling like a weirdo among my classmates for liking Pokemon in middle school (though I did have a couple of friends outside of school to share it with). High school and beyond however, I made lots of friends. It’s a shame your parents still think that way about anime though. Have you ever showed them good anime?
I haven’t really tried to show my parents any anime as such, because I know they’d just dismiss it as being like any other cartoon, which they also wouldn’t watch. I mean, it’s true that anime is a cartoon, but to me watching anime and watching a cartoon are two different kinds of experiences. But my parents aren’t even the type of people who would want to watch adult-orientated cartoons that are commonly on TV, so I don’t think showing them good anime would make them think any differently.
I see. Well, I think if you somehow got them to take the time to actually watch a few episodes of a good anime – like Cowboy Bebop or something depending on the genre they like – or even a Studio Ghibli movie, I can’t imagine them not being forced to change their opinion at least slightly. I’m certainly not saying it’ll make them like anime, but it may at least make them respect it a bit more. My mom doesn’t particularly like cartoons either, but I cherry pick anime to show her based on what she likes, and she’s grown to respect it over the years. A lot of that is also due to the fact that, as my mother, she wants to share in the hobby I love so much. But yeah, the trouble is getting someone who’s totally not interested in anime to actually sit down and give it a chance.
I can trace my interest back to DBZ before I knew what anime was, but Rurouni Kenshin, .Hack//Sign, Toonami, and Adult Swim, before they removed Detective Conan and scaled back on their anime, was what solidified it. However, I would not really call myself part of the anime nerdom. After all, I would probably put that in my interest of computers, considering I even majored in computers in college and learned a lot on my own right up to the programming and creating publicly accessible server stage, which came after finding out how to customize Debian-based Linux distributions.
Toonami and Adult Swim didn’t play a huge role in my anime fandom because I didn’t get cable TV until 2006, when I was already in college and very much into anime. But it did play a small role because friends of mine in high school would record anime on VHS from cable channels for me to watch, so I did manage to watch shows like Tenchi Muyo! and Inuyasha that way. Only got around to watching four episodes of Rurouni Kenshin though. I was all set to start watching it when I finally got cable in 2006, but they promptly took it off the air =/
In terms of anime, Cartoon Network has the biggest hand in starting and influencing my fandom. Pokemon, Toonami, all that good stuff. Then later in middle school, Clamp was a huge influence.
For video games, my roots lie in Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts. Just Square Enix in general.
Everything else, it’s Disney, Nickelodeon and Harry Potter.
I was already in high school in the early 2000s, but I can see how those years for you would still be considered “childhood,” and stuff like Harry Potter, Kingdom Hearts, and Toonami were certainly influential =)
Just curious, what year did you first watch Pokemon? I first watched it in 1999, when it just began airing on Kids’WB (first episode I saw was “The Problem With Paras”).
Started watching in either 2002 or 2003.
My parents have always been supportive in whatever hobby we have taken up. No rejection, or weird objections, so that has never been an issue. I have always been a “nerd”, and “geek”, but I do not think my attraction to anime comes from just that. I think I was attracted to anime simply because it is different (ok, being different falls on the nerd/geek category I guess), even back in the 80s, when I saw Robotech (which is pretty much Macross), I knew that it was different. There was no internet back then so I could not research it, but I always remembered it, and was never able to get the same feeling from other animated programs. Western cartoons can never capture that kind of feeling that anime can portray.
So yeah, I guess the different, exotic aspects (simply other facets we are not used to) is what attracted me to anime. Ok, so it is from my nerdish/geekish side, but I don’t mind :P
Anime is not my first “nerdish” outlet though. I’m a computer geek, and have been for a veeeery long time. Still am. I do not think there are other things though. Never was one to collect stuff, or get much into sports. But I did go out to play with other kids a lot. So anime and computers are it for me I guess.
I was also attracted to anime years before I knew what it was; when I watched Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats, I never got quite the same feeling as with other cartoons. But also like you, I did have other nerd-ish hobbies even as a little kid – I loved video games and collecting things, as I described in the post. I enjoy computers too, but mostly because of my anime hobby =P It’s hard to be a worldly anime fan nowadays without also being computer savvy.
Up until I discovered manga via Ranma 1/2 in intermediate school, I had pretty ‘mainstream’ hobbies as a kid, following the seasonal trends such as Neopets, collecting stickers (I had a hoarder’s mentality towards that, similar to your collection compulsion), ‘home-made’ Beyblades, marbles, etc etc. I think by the time we approach our teenage years we become more clear about the things that we like as an individual, so it’s little surprise that our tastes end up differing from our peers’ around that time.
As for my parents, they didn’t give a fig what I liked as long as it didn’t interfere with my studies LOL. Typical Asian parents. Aside from my yaoi manga, I don’t bother to hide anything from them – even with the yaoi I only make a half-assed effort, since I still put them on my bookshelf albeit half-concealed behind a picture frame or something like that, AKA the hiding-in-plain-view strategy. I simply rely on the fact that my parents have no interest in manga themselves so they wouldn’t be able to tell yaoi from the rest of the manga on my shelf. Seems to work well enough.
Hah, I remember Neopets! XD I was never that into it (I was already in high school by the time it was popular) but I did have one pet and logged onto the site from time to time.
I actually feel that our teenage years could go either way; either we want to individualize ourselves regardless of what our peers (and parents) think, or we become more sensitive of what our peers think of us and decide to “follow the crowd” and all the latest trends in order to fit in. Obviously I went the former route =P
Heh, that’s funny that you keep your yaoi books hidden. If I had any, I’m not sure if I would since my mom and friends wouldn’t care. I would only hide them if someone I didn’t know came into my room XD
On the side of inborn personalities, an interesting thing to consider, is the eerie similarity between the Asperger syndrome diagnosis, and the stereotypical nerdy behavior. “Fixated interests that are abnormally intense or focused”, “Adherence to routines”, “Deficits in social communication and interaction”, etc.
That’s a bit controversial to bring up, because I’m not the first one to notice this connection, so the syndrome became infamous for every nerd trying to diagnose themselves with it, that was silly, because the whole point of a disorder is to select out the DISFUNCTIONALLY abnormal people, not millions of socially awkward people with quirky hobbies.
But even if as far as psychology is concerned, all functional people are healthy, I wouldn’t rule it out that the neurological patterns that cause autism, and in a milder form, Asperger, are the ones that in an even milder form, inspire good old nerdiness.
For example, it’s interesting, that many “nerdy” mediums, video games, anime, comic books, are based on drawn or animated characters, with stylized facial expressions, and/or a mechanical construction of narratives and tropes. Sounds like the ideal entertainment for people with “deficits in nonverbal communication”. Maybe the average person would dismiss anime just because live action is easier to identify with, but there is a type of non-neurotypical people for whom a bit of stylization just makes it easier to identify with, compared to the real world that is a bit “too realistic” for their brains.
I’ve also noticed these similarities, too; I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome by a psychologist at around seven years old.
Also, the first two sentences in that last paragraph you typed summed up my thoughts perfectly when I first started to examine the parallels between “nerdy” hobbies and the tendencies of people with Asperger’s.
Very interesting thoughts. Now that you brought it up, I can see the parallel. I guess what would distinguish an otherwise normal person who just happens to have an unusual hobby that they’re strongly attached to, versus someone with some kind of mental syndrome like Aspergers, is the ability to function as a normal person in society. If we’re able to be an obsessive, passionate nerd, but can also put that aside and interact well whenever we need to be in social situations – lead a “double life” if you will – there shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, I don’t know anything about mental syndromes, so I’m only speculating.
What you said in your last paragraph is very interesting too. That could be a reason I enjoy animation so much ^^,,,
When I was a kid, I loved Pokemon, Digimon, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Yu-Gi-Oh to name only a few. Ya, I have a pretty good idea where my love for anime and my “nerdom” came from. When I was a fan of Yu-gi-oh (I think I was 10 or 11 at the time), people at my school liked it too, but it was most definitely a “guy thing”. I remember walking into a comic book store that sold the cards and sticking out like a sore thumb. Nonetheless, I still stuck with it because I just didn’t care and it was something I enjoyed. Also maybe for a year after that, it was probably the only time I didn’t obsess with anime in some form because when I was 12, that’s when I was introduced to Miyazaki, and my fandom for anime grew from there and never stopped. I luckily never had to deal with peer pressure and at home my parents have no interest in anime, but they don’t care that I do. The only thing I had to deal with was being the only one in my high school who cared about anime, but true enough, I had the internet to thankfully find people with the same interest as me.
That’s awesome that you stuck with Yu-Gi-Oh! and other anime despite “sticking out like a sore thumb” at times XD While I suffered peer pressure for being into Pokemon at the snobby private middle school I attended, when I moved onto a big public high school, things got a lot better – not only did I make a lot of friends who liked anime, the high school even had an anime club =D
My interest in anime stemmed from my love of Pokemon at the age of 8, although it didn’t really take hold until I was well into high school. Beyond Pokemon, there wasn’t much of anything else; I was a collector as a kid, but mostly of information rather than tangible things. This “data collection” is more responsible for my intense passion for sports, motorsports, cars, and (to a lesser extent) sociology than my love of anime, although it could explain my attraction to anime blogs and reviewing; I have always had a strong desire to sort out the world around me by gathering information – something that has done me good while writing many a paper.
As a kid and as a teen, I was not considered terribly geeky, but some of my interests were awkward to other people given that I obsessed over NASCAR and Formula 1 – especially in middle school – and still do to this day.
People who like sports and motorsports as well as anime are rare, so you’re pretty unique =) But the way you described it as “data collection,” I can understand the parallel. Usually people who like anime have “artistic” minds and tendencies, and they relate to sports that way too (whereas most people relate to sports in a more “entertainment” way than a “brainy” way).
I’ve noticed that there are few anime fans with my primary non-anime hobbies, too. Even though I like analyzing statistics, I also have some artistic hobbies of my own such as my interest in music, although my pursuit of those hobbies tend to have more of an analytical bent to them as well.
I watched anime since I was a very little child (3-4 years old), because in my country they often air old shows like Lupin, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon and similar series during the afternoon.
At that time I thought it as a way to pass time, but nothing else to the point of losing entirely interest as soon as I got to middle school. (just watched random episodes from time to time)
My fandom started for real late in high school when I randomly encountered some images of an anime series who was airing at the time (in the 2006 and it was named Inukami) and since then…well here I am! :P
I know I watched cartoons when I was 3-4 years old, but I don’t really remember any until I was in elementary school and watched Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats. But like you, at that time in my life, I didn’t think of them as anything special compared to other cartoons. It wasn’t until middle school when I got into Pokemon in the late 90s/early 2000s that things started to change =)
One of the earliest traces of my neediness was Pokemon I watched it back in 2000 when I was just 3 but I only started watching anime in 2008 when I was 12
the Internet was the main thing that expanded my fandom
I started collecting manga and figures later that year and my hobby is still expanding
I’m only 15 at the moment my parents support my hobby mainly my mother
My father does support it but he thinks that I should grow up
But I don’t care
Some of my female cousins laugh at me for having such hobbies
Unlike my friends which are one of the many reasons that my hobby is expanding we discuss episodes draw together and do other otaku stuff
Yes, anime is the first thing I was ever nerdy about, and it remains the only thing I’m really nerdy about. I don’t view it as a remnant of my childhood though, the way I see it, I just found my passion really early on.