There were definitely kids naruto running and doing kamehamehas at recess, but by high school, if it was ever known you watch even some mainstream ass anime, kiss that social life goodbye. Other anime nerds went way too weeb with it, so the only option is to hide your enjoyment and never make any references to anime in order to have some kind of normal experience. These days it’s super normal to watch anime because it was our parents generation that didn’t grow up with it. Now everyone is familiar with it.
The older generations “other” it by calling it by its foreign, non-english anime. Our generation that grew up with it just calls it “cartoons”, and it’s normal.
I got yelled at recently for saying I was watching what I thought was an anime. Can you help me understand the difference? Is it just if it’s originally made in Japan?
Yes. Anime is just the word Animation used as a loanword by the Japanese, but Japanese animation itself has become associated with the word outside of Japan.
Honestly, there’s no specific definition everyone agrees to. If someone yells at you for your definition they’re probably an ass.
The most common one is yes, everything that was originally made in Japan. So “Pingu in the City” is an anime. But some people consider the artstyle first so they count stuff like ATLA too.
I feel it’s same way with people that enjoy series for example, different strokes for different folks, I grew with dbz it was huge where I lived to the point kids would skip classes to watch it, so watching anime grew from that, I don’t enjoy shows like Game of Thrones or things like Family Guy, but there’s others of the same genre that I do watch, again preferences do matter, maybe you won’t enjoy an anime series but maybe you will just a movie something like Redline, Spirited Away…
What I’m trying to say is don’t feel pressured into liking it, do you.
Im gonna suggest two slightly different anime from everyone else. Black Lagoon and Saga of Tanya the evil.
Black Lagoon is basically a show about some mercs in south east asia during the 90s, and the weird shit they get up to also it can be rather melancholy at times.
Saga of Tanya the evil is about some poor bastard who picks a fight with a god and promptly gets reincarnated as a little girl in WW1 Germany, where they proceed to succeed downwards into a frontline role when they just want to be a rear line officer. Also they commit technically not a warcrimes.
You probably aren’t autistic enough. The way anime is directed, and more often then not the main content tend to be quite autistic. I especially always found romance in anime to make no sense, but after seeing autistic people in my social circle get into relationships it was almost identical to what I was struggling to understand. The cast of cutesy characters in anime of that sort almost always have a few characters that are autistic. Key for example had a semi non verbal girl in one of their works, and the recurring chuunibyou has gotten a “holy shit that character is me as a kid” from a few people with Asperger’s that I know.
No but seriously, besides your use of those terms you’re not wrong. The characters in a lot of anime don’t act like regular people (I get it they’re in non realistic situations). Especially in romance, it’s one of my pet peeves actually. You helped this girl up from a fall/defended her once/said something nice about her/is your childhood friend once, whan yall were kids and now she’s in love with you and wants to marry you forever. It all stems from the nature and target audience of anime, they’re aimed at kids/teens mostly and have to be relatively simple and they have to repeat key info relatively often which makes them seem autistic sometimes. I’m not saying all anime is like this, just most of them plus I’ve noticed it’s been getting better and better since I graduated high-school a decade ago.
I’ve been into Anime since the 90s, always had friends and wasn’t ostracized for it. Some people asked questions about tentacle hentai and Akira, but since was I never found any intereet in either all I could talk about was stuff I’d seen and I’d just tell em that.
I guess the closest thing to a real negative reaction was my mom walking in on the opening scene of Ranma 1/2 Movie 2, where Ranma, having been at the beach as a guy, was now running around topless as a woman. She didn’t accept “that’s really a guy who just got splashed with water.”
Funny thing is, the whole subculture is called “Itasha”, which literally translates to “Pain Car”/“Cringe Car”. They’re cringe, they know it, and they’re proud.
I have a family member with a kid about to enter middle school who is very likely going to end up being this guy. We’ve been trying to de-weeb him, but it’s not going great. I think when the ninjutsu sinks its kunai in at such a young age, it’s a lost cause. My only hope now is to just make sure he knows how to run properly.
Dude so many of the wierd nerdy subcultures are mainstream now! So many of the things that made me uncool when I was in school are now trendy, and trends that appear to be here to stay at that!
For me the one that feels the weirdest is electronic music, whenever I hear drum and bass in a commercial or some mainstream video game or something it just feels wrong. For me it was something deeply counter-current that involved a whole lifestyle and philosophy and placed you in fringe of society, and now I just saw doctor who raving it out in the last Christmas special, a family friendly household show. I don’t necessarily hate that it’s happening or anything but it’s just bizarre haha.
Everyone that likes anime is still weird, IMO. I’ve never met a person who’s into anime that isn’t off-puttingly weird. And all of that is valid online too.
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