Mainichi Anime Yume
In addition to watching niche anime marketed towards fans, I also enjoy a number of children/family series that are marketed for the general Japanese public, from the massive, long-running hits like One Piece, Pokemon, and Naruto, to shorter and newer shows like Tegami Bachi and Kobato. Since I started watching kids anime over a decade ago, it never ceases to amaze me how vastly different the characters are compared to American cartoons…
Although anime makes up about 90% of the shows I’ve been watching since the early 2000s, I’m a big fan of animation in general. However, while I still follow and enjoy American animated movies, I’ve been disappointed with American TV cartoons in recent years. But there is at least one non-anime cartoon show that holds a special place in my heart. So today I’m gonna take a little break from anime and discuss my most favorite non-Japanese cartoon of all…
Back in early 2005, I wrote a “condensed” autobiography of how I became an anime fan. It detailed all the stages I went through, starting from when I was a little kid watching cartoons, to creating my own anime web site and watching all kinds of series. I recently reread this old work of mine, and I have to say that not only is it outdated, my writing skills back then kind of sucked. Now, almost five years later, after watching much more anime and graduating college, I figured it’s finally time to rewrite my anime autobiography…
It wasn’t until I became an anime fan around 1999/2000 did I find out what anime really is. However, unbeknown to myself at the time, I used to watch some anime and anime-related shows on TV back when I was a kid in elementary school, despite the fact that I didn’t have cable TV back then (and anime like Voltron, Robotech, and Kimba were before my time). Lately I’ve had a wave of nostalgia these past few days thinking about and missing some old cartoons I used to watch. So I felt like sharing four of the old anime TV shows I used to adore when I was a little kid…
For some time I’ve been puzzled about the difference between “fandom” in America and “fandom” in Japan, not just anime fandom but fandom in general. It seems to me that the Japanese place more emphasis on having people become totally immersed and supporting fans of anime and other entertainment, while America doesn’t really offer the same kind of hard-core immersion in its shows and movies. I’ll illustrate my points further in this post, and I’d also like to hear your opinion as well…