So considering this is a site called theOtaku.com and aside from the other obvious tip-offs about me, it’s easy to see that I love anime/manga, both as an art form and an entertainment medium.
Most of us can say that we were not always fans of the genre, and we all have our individual stories as to how we discovered this realm of fandom. But the thing about my story that has made me wish to share it through this challenge, win or lose, is just how far away from a “fan” I was in the beginning…
I was about as far from a fan as anyone can be - I was an anime hater…
Yep, a HATER, no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.
My disdain for the genre started back when the fandom really was starting to seep out everywhere…when basically no matter where you went you couldn’t get away from it, mainly due to the fact that "Pokemon fever" was sweeping the nation (and later, similar franchises like Digimon and Yu-gi-oh!) DragonBall Z was huge too.
And there was one thing I knew – I hated these genre giants.
I hated the art, I thought the characters were annoying, and the acting was horrid, and so in my “ignorant” youth I condemned all anime to be the same judgments as the few that I had been exposed to. I didn’t understand the attraction at all.
So naturally I was rolling my eyes when our cable provider finally got Cartoon Network, and I found out they had an entire airing block of anime, some play on words called “Toonami” with a dumpy little robot as the host on a spaceship.
“Great…Dad’s gonna be all over that…” was the thought that went through my mind.
- Hold the phone, wait what??? Yes, I said my dad, not my sister, not my brother, my old man, my DAD.
See, He had been an anime fan from way back…literally a fan from basically the dawn of Japanese animation itself.
In a way it was almost “in the blood”, that he’d be exposed to anime. He’s half Japanese, in Japanese-American terms, he’d be called an “Issei” – He was born In Japan, and lived there for about the first 3 years of his life, and so when my grandfather (Dad’s American side), a former B-29 crew chief during Korea and tech sergeant in the USAF brought my grandmother and my dad back to the US from good old Nihon, I suppose it was natural for my grandma to let her children watch the then-new series coming over from her homeland, like Astro Boy and Gigantor. And the fondness of anime Dad gained as a little boy didn’t fade even into adulthood.
Anyway - flashback over, back to present...or more recent past...or something like that - I was right, he was quiet happy to find this “Toonami”…
And I found it annoying, just as expected, and remained stubbornly blind to how much individual anime series can differ from one another…for a while…
Then one day I found him watching a new series…or at least one that wasn’t in the lineup when we got the network…this one was different…sure it had giant Robots, but it wasn’t Gundam…or Robotech…these robots looked like animals…I like animals…
So I convinced myself that I would just stick around “just because it was on”, because the machines were “kind of” cool, and I eventually learned the name of the show was “Zoids”.
I warmed up a little to it over time, I at least admitted that the machines were cool, not just “kind of cool”, but it took me a while before I dared admit that I was defrosting to the characters and that I was feeling something oddly similar to fondness for the artistic style…
It wasn’t gorgeous…but it certainly wasn’t the hardcore masculine DragonBall Z look that I so disliked.
The show slowly chipped away at my ice queen visage, until I finally had to admit it, the impossible had happened, I liked an anime; a mecha anime by the name of Zoids: New Century Zero.
But despite how Zoids had found a special little place in my favorites, I still remained obstinate to basically every other anime out there, including all the other shows on the Toonami block.
Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, I turned a cold shoulder to them all after giving as little as a single short glance. I still was determined to NOT be called an anime fan!
Even if I did like Zoids and it had turned out to be the biggest ice-breaker between myself and my best friend (who is still my best friend since those first few Zoids-based conversations almost a decade ago), one show did not make someone a fan of an entire genre.
I stayed like that for a long time, maybe a year or so, until yet another “new” show appeared on Toonami.
This one was again, different, from the few other animes I had seen. This one had swordsmen in traditional costume…kind of like Tenchi Muyo…but Tenchi had a bunch of wacky futuristic stuff in it too, it wasn’t actually traditional.
This one looked to have a more historical setting…and the art was…well…it was kind of nice.
I still convinced myself that I was indifferent to it, that I alerted my dad to the new series simply because he might want to watch it, and not because I was curious...because I wasn't, not in the least...right??
The day of the new show’s airing came and we tuned in, well, Dad tuned in… remember, I was the passive observer; after all, anime was the still the devil!...except for Zoids...
But after a little while, as much as I might have denied it in my own head at the moment, I watched just the same. One thing was for sure, this one was REALLY different…
It was kind of pretty…and surprise, surprise… the main character wasn’t annoying, or self-centered, OR immature…he was nice…heck he was a total sweetheart.
And somehow the drama didn’t bug me, I could get behind these characters, I liked their motivations. I liked this show…
But only after the first episode??? No, sorry, I wasn’t going to make a decision that fast.
I decided I would give this one a second look, and that I would tune in for the airing of the next episode…but this time was different from when I started watching Zoids, this time, I made the decision to watch on my own.
It's not that my dad disliked the show, but the way he put it was that it was that it reminded him of a Japanese soap opera, like my grandmother (his mother) watched, it wasn’t really up his alley as more of a Sci-fi/Action fan.
I watched the second episode - this time with my sister, another anime-sceptic at the time - then the third…and the fourth...
Finally, I had to admit it, I didn’t just like this show, Rurouni Kenshin, I loved it…and the weirdest thing?
I didn’t care.
I didn’t care that my preconception of anime was defeated, I didn’t even look at it as “defeated” it was more like a discovery now.
I had stumbled upon a whole new world and from then on I was ready and excited to explore it – I had no reservations anymore about giving all the new animes I came across a good chance, and in turn I found even more shows I enjoyed.
So, it was official.
I was an anime hater no longer, in the course of roughly two years, I had turned a complete 180, I was an anime fan...and I liked it!
