The start of my anime adventure
The beginning of my anime journey was when I was 4 years old. My brother Casely, was about to start his first year of college. He decided that we needed to bond over something, so he decided that we would watch Dragon Ball Z together. At first I wasn't interested in the show, it wasn't like the stereotypical shows or movies I would watch; it did not have princesses and princes, but for some reason I grew to like the show. It might have been Goku's naive what kind personality, Vegeta's determination to one-up Goku, Bulmas’ intelligence, or just the fact that things blew up every other episode. But I grew to love the show as much as I did this bonding with my brother. By the time Casely left for college I would be watching every episode by myself. This started my love for anime.
For me as an otaku, I guess I never knew what an otaku was to define myself as one. I was just a lonely child who used tv to not feel so lonely. I was a;so very smart for my age , I was reading Harry Potter book 2 by the time I was in 1st grade. Anime was just a way to for my creative brain to process things. After my discovery of Dragon Ball Z, I would only watch that anime. Honestly, I thought it would be the only anime I would ever watch. However, I then discovered Sonic X. The show was in English dub, and would come on every other day. Sonic X was completely different than Dragon Ball Z, the show was more geared towards children, yet it underlying serious themes. The show made me understand the concept of death, how it was ok to be selfish because we were only human, how having a disability did not make you invalid and even more. It made me realize fat anime was not just one genre.
This completed my descent into the world of anime. I started researching online about different animes and realized I like the genre shonen the most. However, learning my favorite genre did not stop me from discovering more anime’s over the years. However because of the shonen genre of anime I discovered my favorite anime of all time: ONE PIECE.
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| Favorite anime of all time |
The start of fanfiction and ocs
By the time I was 10 I knew I had a strong love of anime, but I was also very picky about certain elements. My family members would call me out on how I would always call out the cliche parts of a movie or t.v show, say the character was too 1 dimensional or ranting about the plot holes that would occur in what we were watching. To them I was a little movie critic. My families call out made me realize that I wanted to rewrite several things that I watched. Especially with certain animes. I loved to write up epilogues for my stories, that never had concrete endings. But most of all I loved to write up my own characters. I would give my characters a whole background, a personality, and flaws. I would then write them within some of the anime I would watch. An example would be how I created two characters for the second anime I ever watched: Sonic X. I made the characters Sonia and Sunny. Two hedgehogs that were his little sisters. I did not know they were original characters or ocs as they were known by the fanfiction world until my best friend Maddy showed me fanfiction for the first time ever.
Fanfiction was my final descent into my Otaku lifestyle. I was introduced to it by my best friend, Maddy. It was completely by accident, to this day Maddy regrets introducing me to it, but I started reading it and I was hooked. Fanfiction led me to the world of fandoms, rewrite of anime’s, and ocs. It made me completely commit to anime. I would read One Piece fanfiction and revel in it. And when Ace died in the anime I would just read fanfiction where he was saved to soothe the pain. This led me to start writing some of my own fanfictions, as well as it increased my courage in accepting that it was okay to like anime. It also led me to joining creative sites like tumblr and deviantart.
Finally I started to buy thing related to anime from the store Hot Topic. Those things were t shirts that had anime on them, anime bracelets, plushie dolls, and posters, The items I got made me feel like a true fan, and to this day I still will buy some anime items, including DVDs and mangas. I still have never cosplayed or ever been to a Con but those things are part of my bucket list so I hope to go one day. Right now I am content with my fanfiction, fandoms, my purchased items, and my anime.
I enjoy reading your otaku experiences in your blog a lot, you seem to know exactly why you like some anime and how they influence you in some way! You mentioned that anime bring you a lot of thoughts that you can use in the fiction, I wonder if there is a specific reason for that. Also, do you see any pattern in the anime that you like? In general, very good post!
ReplyDeleteFor me I usually just like animes that have descent female leads, and good character development. I also do not mind some stereotypical happy ending stories.
DeleteHi Ashley. First off, I think it's cool that your brother 'got you into' anime, by watching DBZ with you as a bonding experience before he left for college. I find it interesting that you said you only expected to watch DBZ(seems kind of shallow at first), but then you found yourself watching Sonic X which was different from DBZ but still enjoyable. Plus, who doesn't like watching something that also teaches us valuable life lessons /and / or/ something that adds positively to our persona/character.
ReplyDeleteI also find it interesting. actually when i say interesting this time, i truly find this a bit stand-outish... anyway- when you say you like shonen anime the best. That statement stands out, not necessarily in a bad way. However, going beyond that, I absolutely respect that you also point out that although you prefer shonen animes, other anime genres/sub-genres are good too.
Two additional things I want to briefly comment on.
1- the fact that you say you were a bit of a movie critic. This isn't a bad thing, at least in my eyes. What is a bad thing, is blindly getting sucked into media and not critiquing it (obviously not you).
2- your bit on writing fan fiction and additional details that aren't covered by anime shows. I think this is cool, it's sort of like what we were discussing in class about the castle in sky... we were talking about the origins of the robot on Laputa and other animes with questionable back stories/after plots. Trying to fill in the blanks yourself is great.
Anyway, I think this type of thing is why I don't like manga. This is a huge u-turn from reviewing your blog, but I feel like anime has element of fan fiction from manga's in that the plot-depth and character-depth are greatly expanded upon. With mangas, I'm forced to think about fan-fiction type things, With animes it's optional if one really wants that additional bit of information.
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So my question for you is, on a spectrum of normal --> otaku, where do you find yourself? Are you a full blown otaku extremist?, or would you consider yourself to be somewhere in the middle. Briefly describe where you think you are on such a spectrum and why. Thanks.
I feel that I am not fully an otaku but I am pretty close. I still have never cosplayed. Nor do I have tiny figurines. It probably is because of my laziness but I never had the effort to do more.
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