Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is It Now "Cool" To Be An Anime Fan?
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Treeborn
 Posts: 729 |
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Here's the thing - anything can be cool, as long as you present is with confidence. If you're talking to someone about anime, and you look uncomfortable and embarrassed, whoever you are talking to will see it as something embarrassing. But, if you're talking about anime with confidence and as though it's something really cool, other people will think its cool too (just as long as you don't go overboard).
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3186 |
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Kim K! Cool news! DARLING in the FRANXX is great!
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Stampeed Valkyrie
 Posts: 826 Location: PA |
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Sorry Answerman.. but TLDR
I guess to directly address the question.. who cares? I've never measured my self worth by what other people think of me.. or their opinions.. no real shock there. Cool to me was what all the other "sheep" are doing.. and sometimes that was my style and more often it was not. Using ANN terminology I am a "Beardy" at this point and with age comes reflection.. and the general answer of just be you.. cause your the one who ultimately matters. 
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Panoptican
Posts: 160 |
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Overall, anime's coolness stature is lifted when various celebrities enjoy it. However, I don't think that necessarily raises watching anime to the level of cool. It does if you're Michael B. Jordan. Him watching anime? Cool, because he's cool. Random anime fan watching anime? Not necessarily cool. It basically goes with what Treeborn said.
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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Is Kim Kardashian really an anime fan, or did she just see an anime girl with pretty hair in Akihabara on her visit to Tokyo?
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Yune Amagiri
 Posts: 932 Location: France |
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Exactly, let's be honest we, Otaku, was and will never be seen as decent people even more nowaday with all these recent incessantly feminazi talks and others who can't accept more than the mainstream stuff. But whatever others think it musn't obstruct the things we are fond of, as long that one is true with itself and DON'T DISTURB others life, then this one is living a wonderful life, meanwhile, those living while complaining about them are living a pitiful life ( even more if the thing they hate aren't real ) and could be seen as people with inferiority complex Last edited by Yune Amagiri on Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:05 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sakura Shinguji
Posts: 190 |
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The thing that struck me about the Kim Kardashian thing is that, unless I missed a key bit of extra context, she didn't specifically self-identify as a fan of Franxx at all, or even show specific awareness of it. She simply said she was an anime fan (which is pretty nebulous) and then posted a picture of 002 to identify her inspiration. That doesn't mean she actually knows or cares what the character even is, it only for certain means that she thought that piece of fanart was cool.
Which, by the way, is perfectly fine. I have no issue with people liking a piece of art without being 100% into the thing it comes from. I just think it's weird that people took the big leap from a couple of vague tweets to "Kim K. loves Franxx!" and then used that as ammunition to either associate positively since they're Kardashian fans, or to decry Kim and anyone who associates with her for being the latest thing to ruin anime. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1113 Location: Puget Sound |
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I have been in a variety of niche fandoms and hobbies, inside nerd culture and out, for decades... And none of them had this eager puppy desire for mainstream acceptance and validation, nor to become "cool", that anime fandom has. Many of them, if the fandom was sufficiently self aware to consider it, desired quite the opposite - that they stay out of the spotlight and out of the mainstream. The main reasons were to a) keep the big corporations (and their focus on income and profit) as far away as possible, and b) to prevent the fandom/hobbies object from being watered down to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Nor did they have the almost cultish desire to proselytize the masses and convert them into fans either. I just don't get any of this. To touch on another thing Justin mentioned... Yes, anime has moved (mostly) out of the "only for kids" ghetto. But it's moved into the "mostly for fart jokes and weird shit" ghetto. It's in a better position than it was pre-Simpsons, but only by comparison. |
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SailorPluto1313
Posts: 118 |
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I think instead of cool, anime is just more accepted. With this acceptance came more people that choose to watch it, making it more of a common thing. Pair that with the fact that when most people hear the word "anime" nowadays they don't necessarily jump straight to thinking that it is either p*rn or kiddie shows.
14 years ago when I was in elementary school, nobody knew what anime was (or had the wrong idea about it), and now I talk about anime casually in college and a lot of people I wouldn't have expected to watch it, do. (albeit mostly mainstream, but hey it's a start). So I guess "cool" isn't really the word I would use to describe the current trend of anime in the mainstream, I think it's just more accepted among the common people due to more exposure. But hey, that's just my two cents. |
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GoldCrusader
Posts: 1021 |
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Heh ever since like 2010 or by the end of my high school life anime had already pretty much became cool. Shows like Naruto, Bleach and Death Note were watched by a bunch of people. The only thing that really mattered was how you talked about it. If you sound like it's shameful then sure it wont cool to talk about it with you.
These days every time I attend my college classes I always put my phone out beside me with my MHA cover showing and 9/10 I get a person to talk to me about anime. It's easy folks. |
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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The anime viewing climate has changed from even just half a decade ago and especially from a full decade ago.
A viewer has the option to actually watch a good chunk of recent anime on LEGAL streaming services. That said, no matter how well written or animated in themselves there still is the pervading mindset in the majority that "they are still cartoons" in that somehow if a media isn't live action with a modern well known actor it isn't as "mature", this is certainly different from say the early 2000s or earlier when by default if you were an anime watcher it was a guilty pleasure regardless of content. The crux of the matter is actually "who" finds it cool, any long term anime fan (which can always be subjective) wants to find OTHER long term anime fans and not just "kids that will watch Dragon Ball or Attack on Titan until they are out of High School because it is 'cool'". |
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rizuchan
 Posts: 975 Location: Kansas |
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Having graduated high school in 08 I also never experienced being laughed at or bullied for liking anime. I can't say it was "cool", but the "cool nerds" (including the goths or other misfit types) all liked it or had friends that did.
But I also have always had a secret hypothesis that there are a larger than average number of people with "nerdy" interests out here in the boonies. It seems counter intuitive, but there's not a lot to do in the country, and video games and spending time on the internet (no matter how slow it is) is much better entertainment than... stealing trash cans, or cow tipping, or whatever it was people did for fun around here before the internet. |
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Crext
 Posts: 211 |
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I think we're into a second generation stage (early adopters).
The fact that you see so much meme magic and it having severe impact on stuff like politics will also force some to "at least know" what it is about. With such power comes respect, and the question about it being cool or not will become completely irrelevant. |
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xchampion
 Posts: 370 Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho |
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Kanye West been has known to be an anime fan for a while now. My educated guess is Kanye's love for anime probably rubbed off on Kim Kardashian since they have been together. It's kind of hard to keep that away from your significant other, especially if you watch it quite a bit. Of course Kim could have liked anime before she got with Kanye, but since she was been a public persona for more than a decade and she has only just now mentioned anime recently, I highly doubt it. That's just my guess, but it's a very likely hypothesis.
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2421 Location: Germany |
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Anime won´t become "cool" until such films can make 500 mil. to a billion. Or such games drives video game sales. Or when anime songs top song charts internationally. That day may come or not and anime "lookalikes" as Avatar fill that niche perfectly fine too. The current anime scene certainly has a better reputation than in the 90s or even the mid 00s. Back when such shows failed to work as primetime TV.
I vividly remember 3 female classmates walking up to me to ask about the manga i was reading. I made the mistake of showing enthusiasm for my Kenshin adventures and some of the worst treatment I even go as a human being was my reward. Such were the days. Thank god for broadband internet and streaming/piracy as we now have a community of our own! That´s enough for me. Anime and manga aren´t really cool in Japan in the same way MCU films are cool now though. Seinen/Josei manga still cap off at reading age 30 unless they go on for decades. Books, films and certainly TV doesn´t do that. So Anonymous set us quite the ambitious goal here. What i will say though is that manga/comics have NO chance of being cool again. People really don´t read anymore and it is sad... DBZ certainly inspired a generations of boys/teens to this day, as FighterZ is currently outselling established fighting games! I frankly don´t believe that Kim Kardashian saw more than a YouTube clip of FRANXX but having stars call out some anime/related property is nothing new as Justin said. My recent highlight was Ezra Miller dressing up as Edward Elric during an internationally streamed Comic Con panel for JLA. Berserk is currently getting one power-metal homage after the other for some reason, so the shitty anime reboots make have advertised it after all. Kill Bill and the Matrix further went all out on making anime cool. Remember them you all? Miyazaki still got that Oscar and his lifetime achievement award too. The absolute mainstream peak of anime in my eyes. Good luck Mr. Robert Rodriguez and you all better prey that Megan Fox won´t find some brain-dead producer to make her Sailor Moon as she once threatened. Forgot: A Kardashian may have been in an anime once, as parts of Boondocks was animated in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nRzNRtlRr8 |
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