Personal Fandom Musings

I tend to think of myself as something of a “middle of the road” otaku.  The strange thing is, I recently started thinking of how and when I started down this road known as “anime fandom.”  After listening to some podcasts, and reading some blogs, I realized that I was fairly self aware as a newbie fan.  Lots of fans declare they got into the fandom by watching Dragonball Z, and they didn’t even know of anime then, just that it was a cool cartoon.  I started with Pokemon early in the morning, as a high school student, and I knew that Pokemon was anime from the beginning.

How did I know that?  I thought about it for a while, then I remembered.  Before I was an anime fan, I was heavily into comic books.  I had a subscription to Wizard magazine, and I think I must have read some articles on the subject, as well as in the newspaper, strangely enough.

If you’re asking “why Pokemon?” the answer is simple and twofold.  I grew up on basic television, no cable, which means I didn’t have access to Cartoon Network until college.  There was nothing else to watch that early in the morning.  The other choices were the news, aerobics shows, and infomercials.  Also, given the choice between something entertaining and anything else, I will pick the entertaining show 4 out of 5 times.

So it’s a typical/non-typical start.  Quite a few of the fans I come into contact with are quite a bit younger than I am, so I feel out of place quite a bit.  It doesn’t help much that the con scene here in Kansas City is still quite small, so it seems like the grand majority of attendees are usually high schoolers.  Plus, I’m quite shy and I tend to avoid people.  Lately I’ve come to the somewhat uncomfortable realization that I’m somewhat of a hikkikomori, or shut-in, except I do leave the house regularly to go to work.  Since I started up with twitter, however, I’ve been able to follow a much bigger variety of anime and manga fans, and it’s been great.  There’s a lot of fascinating discussions and I’ve been learning quite a bit lately.  Enough to realize there’s a lot more to learn still, but also to realize that I’ve been steadily learning all this time anyway.

Granted, I hardly ever participate in the discussions.  I’m still more of a casual fan who watches anime mostly for enjoyment.  It’s always interesting to sit and write a review, though, and figure out exactly what it is that might have bugged me about a particular series, scene or character.  That’s mostly why I decided to blog.  Plus, I wished to work on my writing, see about keeping a schedule eventually, and dabble in a little website design if possible.  I like to do a little of everything.  That old saying is very true however: jack of all trades, master of none.  I believe this can work for me though, so I’ll be doing my best to prove that it will.

I don’t forsee an end to my anime fandom at present.  What I see possibly happening is that I simply change my focus.  At present, for instance, I don’t really bother to keep up with current releases, although I will admit it’s easier than ever with around half of each season being streamed.  In the future, I may keep up more with current releases, or I may still stick to my focus on older anime that I believe I should watch.  Perhaps I will abandon the chronological approach and focus on specific genres (like romance/slice of life) or properties (like Gundam).

This is more of a “I wanted to post something” than a post with a specific emphasis.  I was computerless for two weeks, so I feel that I will be catching up for a while, but I’m still here, I’ll be doing maintenance for a while, and I’ll still be posting.