Otaku Blossay

I chose to take this anime film class because of my interest in Japanese culture. I study Japanese and practice taijutsu, a form of Japanese martial arts and I have enjoyed anime and manga for years. While I was growing up I played card games based on anime, and I still play video games based on Pokémon and some other anime. I believe anime culture like any other hobby can be fine and can even be good for making friends, but if taken too far it can cause problems in many areas of your life. So, while I do not consider myself an otaku, I do enjoy some aspects of the culture.

I started watching anime through Toonami when I was a kid. Toonami was a part of Cartoon Network that showed action-based shows, mainly Japanese and American cartoons.  Some of the shows I watched are Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and YuYu Hakusho.

In Dragon Ball the main character, Son Goku, is a kid and the series is more comedy oriented. In Dragon Ball Z Goku is grown up and it is more of a fighting show. I think the fact that the shows followed the same character, and as he got older had a more mature theme, helped them to keep their audience in Japan. Here Dragon Ball Z aired first. What I liked about YuYu Hakusho was that it had a good mix of comedy and action. It also touched on civil rights issues with the relationship between demons and humans.

Later I started to watch anime like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. These anime all have male main characters around the middle school or high school age. This allows boys to identify with the characters. They were all action-based shows and that is what drew me to them.

I have also always liked Miyazaki anime films.  Miyazaki was the main director from Studio Ghibli and gave us Princess Mononoke andSpirited Away. I have liked every Miyazaki movie that I've seen. They are entertaining and have important messages in them. If I had to pick one, I would have to say my favorite is Howl’s Moving Castle. I found it’s anti-war message impelling. 

I have been to the New York Comic Con four times, with a few friends (www.newyorkcomiccon.com). We decided to go because we are interested in the things that they have there, such as anime, comic books and video games. Thousands of people attend Comic Con. There are a lot of things to do and some interesting things to buy. You can also learn about new anime that have come out. Some people at Comic Con dress in cosplay outfits but I have never cosplayed.  
 

One time one of my friends and I went to Castle Pointe Anime Convention in Hoboken New Jersey (www.castlepointeanime.com). It is put on by the anime club at Stevens Institute of Technology and a lot of the kids were dressed in costume. I don’t really have any interest in cosplaying myself but it is cool to see all the different costumes and how much work is put into them. They were really into it.

While I like aspects of anime culture, I don't really consider myself to be an otaku because I'm not that into the culture and I don't collect a lot of things from the anime I watch. When I was younger I bought cards and toys from some of the shows that I watched. My friends and I liked to collect Pokémon and Yu-gi-oh! cards and play the games that they were used in. I also played a lot of video games based on anime such as Naruto and Pokémon. I do still play the Pokémon video games, because I still find them fun to play.

My friends and I have played strategy card games – mainly Magic the Gathering, but recently we have tried Naruto because we collected the cards when we were younger. It is actually much cheaper than Magic and surprisingly fun to play.

More recently I mostly have been reading manga, because manga doesn't have filler episodes. Filler episodes are episodes that have nothing to do with the story and often are not very good episodes. Filler is usually used to let the mangaka write more of the story.

Otaku culture has some really cool features. It is easy to see why so many people enjoy it. There is a creative side that can be fun and exciting. But like anything else, some people carry it to an extreme. They get caught up in an imaginary world that is different than their own and use their imagination to replace real life experiences. This can cause people to stop socializing and lose touch with the world around them.

I do like some aspects of anime culture, especially manga and anime and the video games based on them, but a lot of people do. However, I do not get caught up in the cosplay and the collecting of anime memorabilia and so I would not describe myself as an otaku. I do not mix Japanese words in my English conversations and I do not wish I were Japanese, so I would definitely not classify myself as a weeaboo. My interest in Japanese culture is a broader interest in the culture and history of Japan and not limited to otaku culture.