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Hey, Answerman! [2007-04-27]

And Jeers to flaking and discriminating against people who just want to have fun with names. It's no one's place to tell you what to define your life around, and if it's anime, more power to you. Neko-chan, remember that all they have are numbers and loud voices. The power and the glory are yours. I say throw it back at them. Learn how to insult cuttingly and make fun of the norms. After all, you're far more right than they are.

With regards to Beyblade, I cannot believe anyone would actually find the show good enough to watch, let alone get the dvds!

The Flake:

Ug...Its people like that that really kill me. Firstly, people who use Japanese word or prases are just so incredibly lame its not even funny. Even worse though are people like that who go around doing something like that that makes em look like a complete loser, but then they don't get why people make fun of em. Its just like the Naruto Otakin kid from a few weeks ago. If youre gonna be this lame fine, but at least realize that you are a loser and everyone is gonna make fun of you.

Steroid wrote:

And Jeers to flaking and discriminating against people who just want to have fun with names. It's no one's place to tell you what to define your life around, and if it's anime, more power to you. Neko-chan, remember that all they have are numbers and loud voices. The power and the glory are yours. I say throw it back at them. Learn how to insult cuttingly and make fun of the norms. After all, you're far more right than they are.

For once, I agree with Steroid. I can see why using Wapanese phrases and honorifics around people who hate them can be obnoxious and rude, but if you're just doing it with your friends, who really cares? I love people's double standards when it comes to this thing. Whenever anime fans start speaking random Japanese phrases in their sentences it's considered annoying and stupid yet when the Japanese speak random Engrish phrases everyone thinks it's cool and half of the time the Japanese don't even bother to pronounce the English correctly. They even use Engrish in J-pop music and attack names in anime. At least you don't see people doing that with Wapanese phrases. Like I said, as long as you're just speaking the random Wapanese phrases around your friends, who cares? It's their friends, not yours. If you don't like it, you don't have to hang out with them. I'm sure there's lots of quirky and annoying things that you do that we could make fun of but you don't see us making fun of you for it, do you?

Richard J. wrote:

(Though I imagine they're mostly men.)

I don't know why they'd have to be men,

Jeers to not releasing kid shows uncut and subbed. I'm not saying to actually press out a run of ten thousand and get them into the stores, but would it be so hard to take the translation, turn it into a sub file, make a master, and then sell copies online? I can't imagine it would take too many to defray the costs of making that master. I'm not interested in Beyblade, but I *would* have liked to see Pokemon subtitled, if for no other reason than to become familiar with the proper names for the characters. But if I wanted to see Beyblade in a manner that's A)uncut, B)possessed of the original audio, C)translated and D)legal, and I was willing to pay any price, it would still not be possible. Physically possible, but not economically possible. And that should never happen.

Moros wrote:

We must remember that Anime is an entertainment medium, and some fanboys just like having their private (but disgusting) fantasies "entertained", for lack of a better word.

Which is what I think is what some people fail to see over here, because they probably are not informed enough about the Japanese otaku movement.

The fact is that most Japanese women don't date, and most men don't even date in high school. Dating typically begins in college, because that's when they have succeeded in their parents eyes.

Women and Men actually in high school sit on separate sides of the classroom. One half of the room is made up of all guys and the other half would be all women. So imagine segregation of the sexes. In fact it's pretty much considered to forbidden to cross to the opposites sex. In most instances when a person of the opposite sex crosses to the other side, it's because of it's club related and it cannot wait.

Did you know that in a Japanese High School it's not uncommon to see a guy sitting on another guys lap. In fact they give massages to each other, while we find that "GAY", the Japanese find it normal.

When you hold hands in Japan with a person of the opposite sex, it means that they're more then friends. My friends that went to Japan in high school, said that people would stare at them if they hugged someone of the opposite sex, and that person had found it very awkward to hug someone of the opposite sex. It's considered a big no no, unless you're dating and it's serious.

So I don't believe that statistic is true for for Japanese women not being virgins.

But I think, if I may go off on a tangent, the loss of the traditional anime club has hurt a lot of availability for classic titles. As someone who has been active in various positions of clubs (anime and otherwise), I can understand a lot of people's reservations when it comes to joining one but at the same time, what you sacrifice is the diversity that a club can afford you. When I ran an anime club in High School, we tried to get as much diversity as we could from as many genres and time periods possible, even at times resorting to raw Japanese video cassettes. I've not been in a true anime club since I graduated High School but from the occasional thread about clubs that pops up across the couple of forums I visit regularly, striving for diversity of viewing material seems to have gone to the wayside. Things that are popular on BitTorrent fansubs are generally what's new and what's hot and even many classics available generate nowhere near the amount of traffic that many of these newer shows generate. Only a handful of dedicated groups concentrate on putting classic series out on the wire, where as shows like Naruto or Bleach routinely had multiple groups subbing their own episodes.

I used to wait impatiently to read the next Hey, Answerman ! every weeks. It's not the case anymore. The column was instructive and sometime smart.

Then the Flake of the Week section showed up.
It was slightly amusing at the beginning with some ignorant remarks that actually needed to be corrected.

Nowadays ? this is just a justification to make some rather nasty and condescending remarks about everything and everyone.

In a more general way, the whole column recently seems to go that way too. I have absolutely no more patience or pleasure in reading that thing trying to dig through tons of smartass remarks that amuses only its writer and humiliate anyone asking questions.

Rant Rant Rant! is the final nail of the coffin.

Zac should get back to the good job he was doing initially and remember that not everyone know everything about animation. If it's too hard to answer what he probably considers 'stupid' questions, then he shouldn't answer them. That will spare us a waste of time reading constant condescending remarks.

Dear Answerman,
Is there going to be any more outlaw star

No.