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.

Weekend musing – How I became otaku

I made plans with Mom today to go to her house and clear out some more of my stuff having moved out about 2 years ago.  Understandably, she wants to clear space and fix up the house the way she wants it.  To get on something of a personal note for just a little bit, she does have her problems.  Those have caused problems between us for some time.  Like the fact that the first hour and a half or so of the day was spent listening to mom complain about her boyfriend.  I realize though that she needs a sympathetic ear, and since that’s something I CAN do, I’m alright with it.

So.  We get to packing up some of my stuff.  I spotted two signed posters that I grabbed off the wall, and now need to find places for in my room here.  The posters in question I got from Wizard World in Chicago years ago.  That was the first convention I’d ever gone to, and it’s focused on western comic books, not anime or manga.  I realize that anime and manga can be found wherever now, but that was our focus going.  I started out as a fan of western comic books, and eventually came across anime as more of a visual style than anything else.  I liked the visual style, so I started watching whatever was on, which happened to be Pokemon and Sailor Moon.

To be honest though I think the first anime I’d ever seen was Teknoman and whatever else ran on UPN years ago.  *goes to google*  Apparently the other show was called Space Strikers, and it was based on the Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  I remember enjoying both, but finding the flashback scenes of a little sister running along the beach and laughing to be annoying.

I took a few minutes from this post to try and find some kind of image or video for Space Strikers to post here, as I remembered that one of the crewmen was quite literally a giant dog, and I thought and still think that that’s great.  No luck.  No images, no video and I’m too lazy to do a really thorough search right now.  It doesn’t even appear to be for sale anywhere, at least not on amazon or ebay.  However, Teknoman has been released in boxed sets here two or three times now.  That’s pretty odd.

So what brings on the whole comics angle?  Well I found a great deal of my comics collection today, and will probably be going through it soon.  I might try and weed some out to sell, but whatever I do sell is probably not worth much.  And if you ask the DC/Marvel question the answer will always be Marvel all the way, just because.  I’ve always been more drawn to the Marvel superheroes on the whole than the DC superheroes, and part of the reason for that may be those old Superman cartoons I watched as a kid.  I remember them being terribly boring, and something I didn’t want to watch.  Before you get mad, please take into consideration that I was around say 5 to 8 years old and a girl.  Although that never stopped me from enjoying professional wrestling, but that’s a whole different subject.

I wonder if my childhood of watching wrestling and westerns instead of cartoons is part of why I’m so weird now.  It might help explain my progression into anime fandom a little.  As fascinating a train of thought as this is, I think I’d better cut it short and call this good.  Maybe I’ll explore this more in weekend posts.