Identity crisis?
To put it bluntly: What kind of fan/otaku/fangirl am I?
I have read these 2 very, very good articles of Jpmeyer, which is why I find myself now reflecting on how this hobby actually says about me. (I write about myself! Oh noes!)
I’m not responding on these articles though, because I wholeheartedly agree with him – with the exception of my antipathy against anything shônen-ai.
By the way, I will add Nekketsu on my blogroll… his writing really is gorgeous.
I dislike shônen-ai though. I never liked it, and although I find it very cute to imagine 2 of my friends getting together one day *hrr* I don’t enjoy those ‘plot, what plot?’-manga about unrealistic homosexual relationships – the only shônen-ai I liked was Love Mode, and that’s exactly because the manga stands out for its realism (it’s relatively realistic, if you ask me… it’s still thousands of miles away from Kiriko Nananan). So basically I think that real homosexual relationships are a lot more interesting than manga relationships and I’m even sad about the fact that most of the shônen-ai is just pr0n.
But I guess I have fangirlish characters… I wouldn’t say that I’m obsessed, but I get pretty much enthusiastic about anime/manga. This is very probably because I get easily enthusiastic about everything I like (people included *g*).
Oh and one thing about comment no. 16 on this post… I have never known anime as a niche, it’s rather surprisingly and annoyingly popular and I find nothing more annoying than standing before a manga bookshelf and see the other people grabbing bad manga. Honestly.
Putting aside whether I think I am attractive or not, but I don’t think personal attractiveness has anything to do with the hobby of watching manga/anime. I read manga and watch anime for exactly the same reasons I read books and watch movies: Basically it’s all about consuming artistic and intellectual products of other people in order to enrich my own intellect and/or having fun. Not more and not less. I have never even thought one second about ‘escaping’ into anime.
This reminds me that I recently had a conversation with Jona whom I told that I’m currently reading more than 200 series and have read more than 500. Obviously I read more series with fewer than 3 volumes than those endless Naruto-ish series, but all in all, it’s pretty much a lot. Since I’m reading less manga than I used to, it’d be interesting for me to see how much I actually have read *hrr*
PS. Here you are, the “statistics” of my scanlations:
- 165 short stories
- 305 series finished, dropped and/or burnt down
- 151 on-going series (on PC)
This 305 is a pretty vague number, because I might have miscounted – and there are also a few on CDs I can’t reach right now. Let’s say it should be correct with +- 20 series. But you get the idea, right? *g* So in the end, if you count the manga on my bookshelf and the ones I didn’t read as scanlation, I could easily claim that I read more than 500 manga series. Scary.
Hehe, and you end up saying less than I expected.
Well, the most interesting aspect about this post is the thing about using anime (or anything else) to escape the real world.
I don’t think it’s that uncommon, and I guess I’ve done it myself a lot. Generally, I am interested in Anime and Manga because of the same reasons as I am interested in Movies, Music, and so on. Just like you.
Coming back to escapism, I found myself to listen to music often if something stressful or potentially exhaustive is coming up. It became a ritual somehow. I don’t do this always, just when a lot of stuff is coming up and I need to relax first before I’m able to start with something else. More like a break. Whether that is already escapism or not, I’m not sure, but I guess if I’d extend this behaviour way more it will in fact become escapism. Strange to think about it that way, right? Because it’s a common thing, often referred to as ‘relaxing’. Kinda… Err…
Oh yeah, I mostly do that with music (hearing AND playing myself) or videogames. Anime, Manga, Movies, Literatur or Comics in general don’t work for me that way, because most stuff I read or watch demands some degree of attention. With music and videogames it’s a lot easier to switch off, because it’s easy for me to not listen to the lyrics that much, because that may demand some thinking as well, a kind of thinking that would remind me of reality, and thus, the ‘relaxing’ aspect of this would be void.
Ah, so, I think I said everything I wanted. Hope it’s understandable enough. XD *continues to play guitar*
Vincent
27 Jun 06 at 12:54