The reach that anime and manga has had on western artists cannot be understated. It’s only now in 2020 that I’ve wanted to reflect on the role anime has had in my life.
I was primary exposed to anime through Cartoon Network and a lot of the localized shows that got placed on there. The thing that really propelled me into anime was my crazed obsession with Sailor Moon. Something in that show clicked with me so hard. I loved Sailor Moon so much that I made everyone in my house hate it. Loving Sailor Moon so much made me want anything that looked like it, which led me to anime . Until I found out it was called “anime” I just referred to it as the “ big eye character shows”. I still have vivid memories of being up past midnight reading Wikipedia pages describing the differences between shoujo and shounen.
Sailor Moon pretty much kickstarted my art career. When I was in elementary school I had that big dream of packing up my bags and moving to Japan to be a mangaka. I even specifically bought art supplies that had the word “manga” on them.
Back then for cartoons were mostly in three categories. You had really cartoony stuff like Edd, Edd n Eddy, action stuff like Justice League, and then you had adult comedies like Family Guy. It felt like anime was allowed to be all three of those things, funny action packed, and kinda rude sometimes. It really did feel like this special thing I had found.
However, I think towards the middle of high school I began to get bored. I was starting to catch on to all of the tropes and I was especially getting bored of drawing those things. It’s really crazy to think that the time that I found myself getting off the “anime” train, was right around the time that everyone else was getting on.
A lot of modern day anime fans started viewing anime in the early 2010s when streaming started. So whearas I was discovering anime like Yu Yu Hakisho on Toonami on cable, nowadays people are finding things like Sword Art Online on Crunchyroll and having that be their first anime experience. Geek culture in general has gotten so much bigger over the past decade. I realized things were changing when I went from not being able to find anyone who knew what anime was, to seeing Hatsune Miku in a YouTube ad.
And that brings me to modern day anime fans. There’s a reason “commentator with an anime profile pick saying something terrible” has become a stereotype. I didn’t realize just how bad it was until I made the unwise choice to start doomscrolling through Reddit anime communities. I came to anime because I felt like it was special and allowed to be something that American cartoons weren’t allowed to be. The fact that a medium that I went to because it felt special, deep, and artistic is now being treated by a lot of people as just a red-pilled alternative to all the “woke” media they feel is being pushed down their throats just makes me kind of sad.
I think at the end of the day I might’ve just outgrown parts of anime and manga. I tried going back to some of the shoujo manga I used to read and was promptly reminded of why I stopped reading them. Maybe the reality of it is just that I watched so much anime and manga that burned myself out on it. And there’s so many anime esque things around now (webtoons, anime-inspired western cartoons) I don’t find myself so starved for content as I used to. The simple fact that you can’t really ever enjoy things as an adult the same way you did as a child because you know too much is probably what stings the most.
I don’t think I can go back to that 12 year old girl who wrote Otaku Princess one everything, and maybe I don’t want to. I can’t tell some days. But I guess reconciling with the past you and the present you is just part of growing up. I don’t feel the way about anime and manga that I used to, but I can’t ignore what it gave me when I did feel that way about it.