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A reason for doing what I do

I don't know if the moderators will let this be posted but I have to say it. I admit that a lot of times,I annoyed people on these forums,particularly when it comes to my interest in how the United States is portrayed in anime and manga. The reason for that was,for me at least,it's a fascinating topic. But,I wasn't trying to annoy people or be a bother to them.
You might say,I let my fascination with the topic overwhelm me and I did things or maybe had said some things in a way that many of you didn't like. For me,I don't always have a chance to see how this country is portrayed outside it's borders. Could I have said those things in a less abrasive manner? Of course.

But,my intention was never to be a bother to other people,never to annoy them. I let myself go crazy and perhaps I shouldn't have. My intentions were good but I let my interest consume me and I drove everyone crazy. One example was my "NGE:USA" manga post. Where that came from was that a lot of "NGE" manga coming into this country so I thought that it would probably be only a matter of time before someone in Japan got the idea to do a "NGE:USA" manga. I wanted other people's opinion on it so I posted it.
I didn't mean to cause any trouble. I wanted a discussion on the topic. I didn't mean to cause an argument or any problems. I have a great deal of respect for Japanese creativity and I seen stuff like "A Wind Named Amnesia" and "Gunsmith Cats,"stuff that was set in the United States.

Recently,my aunt and I had a long talk about what has been going on here. She thought I had gone overboard with what I'd been doing here. I hope everyone forgives me or at least try to see where I'm coming from here. Where it be my posts on the USA and how it's portrayed in anime and manga or my thing with italics and underlining,I want to let everyone know that I'm not trying to annoy people. I'm not a troll or anything like that. I had an interest and I guess I let it get out of control. I hope we can put the past behind us and start anew,ok?

Sure. Come here and give your onii-chan a nice bear hug.

Here's the thing Snomaster1. I don't really think the main issue most people have with you was that you kept bringing up America. That was a minor issue. However, it became a major issue when you refused to change your behaviour. That's the real problem though. You do things that annoy people and then when people tell you to cut it out you ignore them or just keep repeating the same thing over and over. It's good that you've finally realized that your obsessive posting about America was a problem. However, the fact that it took literally months of drama, a dozen different topics, you being put under moderation, and finally a "long discussion with your Aunt" for you to understand this doesn't really bode well.

For now, yeah, you've more or less addressed the two problems people had with your posts: You've mostly stopped with the weird formatting and you've acknowledged the America thing. That's good. If you keep that up you should be just fine in the short term. Still, I can't help but worry that it'll only be a matter of time before you start doing something else that bugs people and then we're back where we started. What you really need to understand (and I'm afraid still don't) is that when people tell you that something you're doing is annoying you need to listen and stop doing it.

Thanks for the reply,ikillchicken. I appreciate the post. Before the moderating thing took place,I was planning to do a post on "Deadman Wonderland." I haven't really begun it due to all this craziness. I have some private matters that I don't really want to discuss on the forum. The only reason I did this was to make people understand where I coming from.
As for the America thing and the italics and underlining,I never meant to bother people. I didn't. I didn't mean to be a pain in the neck or anything like that. I just hope everyone forgives me and I hope we can move forward.

The final straw though was the fact that the new threads you were making were not expressed in a well thought out and focused manner and continually neglected to begin with your own thoughts on the subjects.

A thread should never start out as
"I heard about this thing- what do you think?"
To truly start a discussion thread you have to make an effort to begin the discussion with your own thoughts.

This forums standards can be harsh but the regulars here come back regularly because the forum follows these standards.

BTW, did you see the Fathers in Anime thread Key opened after the ones you opened were closed? It shows that the topics weren't necessarily the fault (not to say that your annoying habits weren't also a factor), but the poor way they were presented.

And, as you didn't participate in the thread, it leaves me wondering if you really weren't interested in it anyways, or were just habitually opening another holiday thread. You really should have a real interest in the threads you start.

There are reasonable and serious issues about how America is portrayed in anime that might be discussed, but they weren't the subjects of your postings. Take, for instance, the portrayal of American militarism and our impact on Okinawa in Blood+ or Prohibition-era criminality in Baccano!. We could also discuss the depictions of African-Americans in anime which ranges from extremely racist portraits in, again, Baccano!, through perhaps somewhat less offensive portrayals in Eden of the East or the current Uchuu Kyoudai, to more balanced characterizations like Dutch in Black Lagoon. I could see having discussions about many of these types of topics, but they are rather far removed from threads about anime and Mothers' Day.

Very interesting,yuna49. Two posts I did plan to do before I was moderated was one on "Deadman Wonderland" but also a special Fourth of July post about the portrayals of America and Americans in anime. It's been my experience that the portrayals of this country can be safely put into three categories,positive,negative,and bizarre.
One of the most positive portrayals of this country and it's people was "Kaleido Star." There are both good and bad American characters in the show. They are not all portrayed as jerks. There is a balance between the positive and negative characters on that show and I like that. It doesn't paint the whole country as creeps as some other anime shows and movies have done.

One of the worst portrayals of America has to be "Spriggan." Not only are we portrayed as an evil country but there are also no positive American characters as a balance to that negativity. Not only that but the manga version of this had an Adolf Hitler clone as a good guy!!! I'd heard that some of the translators at Viz Media had a hard time with this one. I certainly would have. One of history's greatest villains as a good guy? For most Americans,that would be very hard to swallow. Imagine for a second that someone actually bought this manga. Then imagine that he or she had family members who either fought in the U.S. Army during World War II or had family members who survived the Holocaust.
I doubt he or she would like that,as would most Americans,so that's why I think "Spriggan" deserves to be in the negative portrayal category.

You mentioned "Baccano!" a couple of times. From what I've heard of it,it belongs in the bizarre category. You have gangsters summoning demons just as easily as they would use a tommy gun against their opponents. That's not your typical portrayal of Depression-era America so that's why I think it belongs in the bizarre category.
For me,I'd love to see how this country would be portrayed in stuff like "Sailor Moon,""Bleach,"and others like it. I'd also love to see those like Rumiko Takahashi or CLAMP do the same. I'd love to see how they would portray this country. For instance,in "Bleach,"the American Soul Reapers might look like angels and have wings and wear white clothing and work with the Quincys instead of being at odds with them. The Hollows might also look like creatures from the folklore of other countries. It also may show some American exchange students with strange powers,just like their Japanese counterparts. They could even have American Soul Reapers as being of Japanese decent.

The America that Rumiko Takahashi could create is one where folkloric creatures especially those from Japan,live secretly among the humans here. It's well-known,even in Japan,that the U.S. is a multi-ethnic country,so I can't see why that that could be done as well. CLAMP could do an America in which there's a secret underground where magic is performed out of the prying eyes of others. "Sailor Moon" could have the Sailor Scouts as exchange students in the United States who makes friends with an American who is one of the children from the Moon Kingdom and has to fight an evil that attempts to conquer not just the United States but the whole world as well.
I hope I've given you a good response,yuna49. I hope you enjoy it.

Ohhhh... so you aren not just focused on how America is portrayed in Japanese anime. It seems like you are in the same line of thinking as those American movie producers who currently have the rights to Akira. They are trying to make an American version of Akira by using "creative interpretation" to modify some of the details of Akira to fit an American crowd. I personally don't a problem with that, since that's how Hollywood works, but the true die-hard/hardcore Akira fans might be turned off by it. Those fans view it as kind of a perversion of the original work and not telling the story as the writer had in mind.

Well those people also need to calm down. I mean Gankutsuou, for instance, is really just the same thing occurring in reverse. It's an "anime-ized" interpretation of a very non-anime work, so it's not just "how Hollywood works", the honest truth is almost every artistic culture and sub-culture takes from others, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly.

There's no doubt that Gankutsuou is a "kind of a perversion of the original work and not telling the story as the writer had in mind" in the exact same way. There's no convenient distinctions here; it's really all just a matter of perspective and people need to calm down and start recognizing that and we wouldn't have these needless conflicts that seem to erupt around here. With Gankutsuou it's okay because the crowd here was the one being catered too so suddenly everyone was okay with what is essentially the same thing that they rail against other entities for doing to anime.

Perspective is a big deal because it defines how we see things, but sometimes people need to step out of that comfort zone and look at things overall. Far too many conflicts, particularly in this line of discussion, occur simply because some people just refuse to recognize that some things they enjoy are results of the same things they're fighting against with others; it's just in one case it was catering to them and in another it is not.

I completely agree with Keonyn above.

I have to say that Keynon did make a couple of interesting points about how things work in Japan and Hollywood. But,I don't think I made myself clear in my earlier post. I wanted the creators themselves to do this sort of thing. Like with the "Sailor Moon" idea I described,what I wanted from "Bleach" is for Ichigo and his friends to come to the United States as exchange students. And they can join up with the American Soul Reapers and have an adventure together. That's what I hope happens,if it does happen at all.

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Forum - View topicA reason for doing what I do

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A reason for doing what I do