Bobbierob’s History With Anime

08 Sep 2011 9 Comments

by bobbierob in Serious Stuff, Uncategorized Tags: about me, History with Anime, pseudo-deep introspection

Foreword

So, a foreword, shall we? At the time of this writing, (and this post has been spontaneously written, rewritten, and revised), I am about three five months late in finishing this post. For this, I apologize from the bottom of my heart. Looking on the bright side, though, writing this “History with Anime” post has taught me many things about blogging, and even writing in general.

Anyways, this post is in response to Nopy’s “My History with Anime” project. If you own a blog yourself, please do check it out. It is pretty interesting, and I found it a fun idea to get involved in.

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Unlike many others, my first encounters with anime weren’t really that exciting. Sure, like all of my fellow 8-and-9- year olds, we all watched Yu-Gi-Oh!, collected Pokémon cards, and battled each other’s Beyblades on the playground. Still, as everyone knows, anime isn’t just limited to little kids’ entertainment, is it? It’s that, and so much more.

TAKECOPTA!

So, an explanation to the above image, shall we? Well, long ago, when I was 5 years old and in kindergarten, my next-door-neighbour (who was a year my senior) gave me some of his manga. Well…his mom did. We were 5 years old. That manga was the Chinese-translated version of the 22nd volume of the Doraemon short stories collection.

First manga. Kind of a relic….not really.

Reading this (with the help of my mom) instantly hooked me in. It had to be the gadgets that the futuristic cat pulled out of his magic pocket that intrigued me to such an extent. Perhaps I was born a sci-fi nerd.

Well, one thing led to another, and eventually (it took me about a year…) I figured out that this was the 22nd book in an entire collection of volumes. With that newfound intelligence in mind, I constantly pestered my parents, who in turn pestered my uncle, who ordered the entire collection of 45 short story volumes, plus 23 “gekijouban” long story volumes, and shipped them over to my house.

Needless to say, that summer, I got reading. It was only a while when I also figured out that there were movies and TV shows made from these books. So, what did I do? Spend my parents’ money again, of course. And in came the DVDs.

After a few years, my obsession died down. This was around the time when my family moved out of the big city of Toronto and settled into a quiet suburb. Sure, I still loved Doraemon, but it really wasn’t at the forefront of my mind anymore after reading (and practically memorizing) all the books, stories, and films. It got to the point where I just knew, the second I flipped to any page, what would happen next.

After switching schools, I began to have closer friends. Like, friends who would come over to my house, friends who I would talk to every day (not about anime….), and friends, who would eventually introduce me to video games.

That’s not to say I’ve never played video games before, Before this, I’ve endured years of getting my ass whooped by my cousins at Tetris. It’s just…this is a different kind of game. One you play with many other people. Introduce: Runescape.

To tell the truth, Runescape, (and Maplestory, and the 3 billion other Korean MMORPGs) never held my attention for long. My many year hiatus on watching what could be considered “anime” could be blamed on my Gamecube. Stuff like Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and Super Mario Sunshine grabbed my attention like no other. And I all but forgot about “anime”.

The reason behind that, really, is because I didn’t really view Doraemon as “anime”. It was simply cartoons. Yes, cartoons that I enjoyed quite a bit, but subconsciously, I simply lumped them together Spongebob, Fairly OddParents, Bleach, Naruto, and Yu-Gi-Oh. In fact, because I lumped them all together, I never thought of looking for more titles similar to Doraemon, only expecting the likes of 200-episode-long cash cows that make people in my class make strange hand motions when they have an intent to attack you.

2008. I’m in 7th grade. One weekend, one of my friends invited me over to his house. Once there, we did the usual video games, but he also recommended me to watch a little something called “Lucky Star”. Now, what the heck is this? I thought. I was a bit skeptical at first, but I went home and downloaded it anyways. Watched the first episode, and found it mildly entertaining, so I decided to continue.

However, that week, I had to go to a nearby university for some sort of summer camp, which interrupted my would-be marathon of Lucky Star. Without a computer to bring, I thought, why not just use my iPod? So there we go. One entire week of going on YouTube and watching Lucky Star in crap quality until 3 AM every night. Heck, who knew YouTube could drain an iPod’s battery so fast?

It was at that camp where I met someone else who enjoyed anime for the first time. We were just making small talk, when he asked me “Do you know Lucky Star?”. It came out of nowhere. Perhaps my iPod background gave it away. Who knows. We became friends, and I suppose it’s safe to say that he’s a first friend I made as a result of a common interest in anime.

So after I got home, I rewatched Lucky Star. In slightly less crappy quality. By then, I was addicted. To this show, and to finding more shows that are similar. For the first time, I was consciously aware of the existence of “Japan” and “Anime”. I started noticing Lucky Star referencing other anime, mainly Haruhi, Code Geass, and Full Metal Panic. So what did I do? I got my dirty little hands on them and marathoned them all.

I don’t really remember that well how I got to know about and eventually watch each anime. All I know, was that after I signed up to www.anime-planet.com, I used their recommendation system quite a bit. And, I had a little bit of a side-quest to watch every KyoAni anime ever made (there weren’t THAT many…), which probably got me into the romance/drama genre (the Key visual novel adaptations). Those, coupled the recommendations of a couple of my friends, kept me busy for quite a while, especially over the summer of 2008.

In the middle of my little KyoAni craze, I stumbled upon a little something called K-ON! That show is probably the one that got me into anime music and j-pop. Not to mention, I loved K-ON! immediately after watching it.

In fact, my first forays into anime music wasn’t the K-ON songs. Putting my iPod playlist into “latest to earliest date added”, you could find “Hare Hare Yukai”, the ED of the first season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu at the bottom. During a vacation overseas, I put that song on loop for about 9 hours during the flight.

Needless to say, music became a big part of my appreciation of anime. It was a way to reminisce about shows I’ve watched, and later, something to discuss about with other people.

I got into anime at a point where bittorrent and fansubs were already popular. There were many fansub groups out there, sometimes even subbing the same show. Every time, I would just simply hop on Google and search links for the show I’m looking for. A while later, I was introduced to sites like BakaBT, Animesuki, NyaaTorrents, TokyoTosho. Those sites became my main source for anime for quite a while, right up until to when I started following seasonal, ongoing shows.

I forget when it started. It was probably “To Aru Kagaku no Railgun”. I had watched the first season of To Aru Majutsu no Index previously, and a spinoff featuring the full-of-awesome Misaka Mikoto as a main character was too good to pass up. Searching up download links turned up nothing. It took me quite a while, but it finally occurred to me that perhaps that this series was only just announced, and not yet aired. Some searching on Anime News Network (another one of the sites I frequent regularly…..but just for the encyclopaedia) confirmed my suspicions. So then, after some more aimless wandering, I headed over to AnimeSuki and discovered a list of fansub groups that are planning to sub the show. And thus began my following of ongoing shows. It has continued, every season, to this day.

Only my railgun can shoot…

In the summer of 2009, I attended my first anime con. It was called “Anime North” and it is held in the month of May near the airport in Toronto, Canada. This place is probably the only place where I was able to meet, in person, so many other people who were interested in anime in the same way I was. Meeting total strangers who shared my passion for anime was a fresh and new experience for me, and I must say it was one of the more enjoyable ones. Unfortunately, I am limited to my local city of Toronto as far as conventions are concerned, but I hope to visit places such as Anime Expo in Los Angeles, or even perhaps the Tokyo International Anime Fair one day.

My exhilaration of attending a convention could be attributed, perhaps, to my lack of friends in everyday life who shard my interests. It was all just video games, movies, and perhaps the occasional J-RPG that was discussed amongst us. Starting high school, however, I was enthralled by the fact that somebody at my school is running a “Manga Club” for people who are interested in Japanese anime and manga. Of course, this was a no-brainer for me. Finally, I get the chance to meet people who I can talk to about anime outside of a con, and on a regular basis. However, that was not to be. After attending a few meetings, I became painfully aware that the people in the club have absolutely no idea what I am talking about 90% of the time. For them, it was just Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, and most other shounen franchises that are licenced and readily available in the bookstores in my region. I’m not going to rant about this situation, but let’s just say that their interests did not coincide with mine, and going to the club stopped being appealing to me. There were a senior there who was not exactly the nicest person to me, so that may have had something to do with it.

Move forward a year to 2010. I have settled into my regular routine of watching ongoing anime, and occasionally pulling a marathon of previously aired ones (I particularly liked sci-fi ones such as Eureka Seven and Gurren Lagann). As well, I regularly read anime blogs to discuss with others episodes I’ve watched, and look for reviews and recommendations to watch new ones. It was fun to see what other people thought while they watched a certain episode, which characters they liked, if they like where the plot was going, and how their opinions compare to mine. Sometimes, they are exactly the same. Sometimes, they were so different I did not understand at first. But it was fun to see anime from someone else’s perspective. In short, anime blogs fascinated me.

For months, I tried to find a community for myself to talk to others about anime. There was a certain thrill involved, a certain inherent satisfaction when you discuss something you are passionate about with others. As such, I searched in forums, posted comments on anime blogs, and even ventured onto IRC. None of this, I thought, was enough. Perhaps I had some unreasonable expectations. Perhaps it was my jaded experiences with my Manga Club that caused me to think this way.

So, in a stroke of what could really just be considered bashfulness, I made this blog, The Kotatsu. On November 1, 2010, I jointly created this blog with one of my friends who agreed to come along for the ride. At first, I had absolutely no idea what anime blogging was, what it encompassed, what it required. My only experience with aniblogging was reading and commenting on others’ posts, and one or two rejected applications to prominent team blogs that happened to be hiring. Looking back at those applications, I could not help but chuckle at my past naiveté, and my inherent lack of understanding the difference between a blog post and an essay.

At the time of this writing (yes, this post is currently 5 months in the works), I think my blog has come a long way since I first began. For the first two months, I wrote a whopping total of two posts, both of which were kind of just “testing the waters”, to see if I could handle and adapt the blog format. For me, there really isn’t a format for a blog post, and my primary philosophy is “think about your reader will think when he/she reads your post”, and by extension, “make the post fun to read”. I would certainly love to get all investigative and such on this topic, but I’m afraid we must move on.

The months since I have created this blog have been busy for me. My amount of time available for just idling and mindlessly stumbling about the internet decreased to the point where it was negligible. This was because of several factors. One, the number of shows I follow per season was on a steady increase, since late-2009 until last season (Summer 2011). Two, blogging – watching episodes, taking screencaps, and writing posts – was much more time-consuming than I originally anticipated.

I only wish I had that ability.

In November of 2010, (or December, I don’t remember that well), I joined the SCCSAV livewatch group, a group of awesome people who organize anime livewatches over Skype and Teamspeak. This has also been a great change, in the way I talked to others about anime. It was an opportunity that I wouldn’t get anywhere else; to be able to discuss episodes while we are watching them (yes, I still do not have many friends who watch the same anime I do). But the big part, I guess, is meeting people who were interested in similar anime as me. To me, being a part of this is more important than one would imagine.

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I realized that the more a post meant to me, the more time I would spend on it, eventually leading to its never getting published. As such, I decided to finally get my act together about this “History with Anime” post and wrap it up while I still could. This post has been written, deleted, revised, reviewed and rewritten ad nauseum since April and I noticed that unless I do something, I will just set into this never-ending cycle and the post would never be published. As such, I have decided to conclude “My History” here, and continue living what follows.

Conclusion

What I originally intended as a fun and interesting way to participate in something a fellow aniblogger set up evolved (or devolved?) into an endless fiesta of self-introspection. While there were many small details I left out, all of the ones important to me have been told. I am still young in the online anime community. I am still inexperienced, and I was never a good writer to begin with. But, with all the introspection that came with writing the above post, I quickly realized why I blog, and where I want to go with it. So far, I’ve achieved part of my goal. I’ve met awesome people who share my interests, and even some other, more experienced bloggers from whom I may be able to learn from. Blogging has become as much a part of my life as watching anime itself.

Chase the impossible, because the journey there is what makes it worthwhile.

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Well, I thank you very much for reading all that. It’s not often I make a post solely about myself, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. There are many, many people who I wish to thank. First, Nopy for organizing this. Even though I have submitted my entry horribly late, I hope you will accept it, and I ask for your forgiveness. ExecutiveOtaku and Vuc for inviting me the the SCCSAV all those months back. And everyone else I’ve met on the internet, or in person since I’ve started this blog (and maybe even before!). Thank you.