Why do you watch anime or read manga?

[Kyubey]

I figured it's time for some introspection.

Recently, I've had to rethink my views on the medium, how it's changed around me, and what it means to be a fan of it in the first place, and throughout that process, this question has come up, again and again. And so, I'd like to open it up to you. Considering that we're, well, on this site, it can be reasoned that anime and/or manga is a fairly big part of your life, or has some meaning to you that's greater than most. Why is it that you personally partake in it? What, specifically, is it that's so worth your time? What's there to it that other mediums don't provide? And what sensations do you get out of it, that are of most value to you? Opening up the question further, I'd also like to ask, how, if at all, have your opinions of anime and manga changed from when you first got into it? Have they changed for the better, or for the worst?

Since I'm also aware that there are people here that aren't really into the medium anymore, I'll adjust the question slightly: what did it mean to you when you did like it, and what made you come out of it?

As per the tradition of this forum, I'll post my own thoughts later on. For now, feel free to respond in whatever way you'd like.

[Mise™]

Entertainment. That's all.

[Morcombe]

I've simply always loved comics in general since I was little, I mostly read kids comics from newsagent shelves, here in the uk we had Beano, Dandy, simpsons comic, spectacular spider-man (by Panini, marel stopped themf rom publishing anything new years ago though), sonic the comic and lots of other random stuff.

then of course the greatness that was Dragon Ball Z hit tv and everyone loved that, I then discovered a shop that sold DBZ toys, i had been going to this shop for 4 years buying action figures and then one day in 2003 I finally decided to take a look at what else the stor actually sold cause i always headed straight for the dbz toy bit, gotw hat iw nated and left and never really took a look around, i discovered the manga section and saw dragon ball and dragon ball z book sitting there I was like holy crap i wnat them and that's how I started my manga collection lol. Dragon ball Z Volume 6 was the first volume I ever owned,they didnt have volume 1 at the time and i didn't care about getting them in order since i already knew the story but when i got home and read the booka nd seen Vegeat swearing in it and chopping Guldo's head clean off I was stunned cause thatw anst in the tv broadcast lol

The dbz books had advertisements in the back for other manga and I decided to give them a shot starting with Yu yu hakusho and by the time 2005 started iw as reading DB, DBZ, Yuyu hakusho, Rurouni kenshin, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Shaman King, naruto and of course the legend that is One Piece.

haven't looked back since.


Just like with manga I got into anime in 2004 but I had to pick and choose what I wanted as each DVD cost £20 and only came with about 3 or 4 episodes, if you foudn one that had 5 epsiodes then it was a steal. people nowadays here in the UK complain about paying £25 for a complete 12/13 episode season or £40 for a complete 24-26 episode season and I'm just like you guys have it so good now back when I started if youw nated a 12/13 episode series it woulda been on 3 or 4 dvds and cost you £80 now its only £25 shut up already. The Original FMA series was released on1 3 single dvds with 4 episodes the last one having 3 all of em cost £20, that's £260!! compared to FMA Brotherhodo which i got for £45 for the whoel series. I just wanna slap the complainers nowadays. lol got off topic.

but yeah due to the pricing i didnt get many series so i was slow to start with anime, I didnt truely start follwoing anime until fall 2009 when i discovered that Anime actually aired in seasons in japan and i've been follwoing em ever since since i discovered fansubs and simulcasts and such. some of teh first anime i bought were Fullmetal Alchemist, Hellsing, Love Hina, Bio hunter, Street Fighter II the Movie, Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D and Chrono Crusade (av never watched the final episode of this even after 10+ years cause I like how episode 23 ends and it give syou hope for Rosette and Chrono lol)

I regret not buying more anime as tracking down all the stuff i wanted from ADV and BEEZ (bandai) is a real pain nowadays although i did recently managed to get all 10 volumes of GetBackers for about £25 which woudla cost me £200 back in the day. But I've got many more old series to track down! up next the Guyver anime from 2005.

i have no special reason for liking manga and anime, I love battle anime, teh fights in aniem are the best in any medium, the dumb comedy, romance and harem stuff always make me laugh, i dont acre if its unoriginal or any of taht crap as long as I find it funny, sports anime like Yowamushi Pedal, Kuroko and Major are awesome and I just like to get lost in fantasy worlds that can be shown to me unlike novels where you have to imagine everything yurself.

one thing i do hate is people that hate a certain genre but watch it anyway and then post all teh tiem about how much they hate it, this is primarilys een in ecchi shows, why are you watching them if ya dont like it, it's right there in the genre's. some folks were complaining about how boring Ore Monogatari was and I'm like wtf is wrong with you people, it's cute, adorable, funny, sweet, romantic and doesn't fall into needless drama fests like lots of other Romances, if you wanted Drama then look for one with it in the Genre.

ah well av followed anime and manga since 2003/2004 and I don't see myself ever leaving the medium.

[CJ]

It’s taken me a while to write this because I wanted to give it some good thought.

It all started out when my parents bought my sisters and me Kiki’s Delivery Service. I had no idea that this movie was a Japanese film. I liked it for what it was. It truly was my first introduction to anime. It’s a movie that I truly treasure even now. It cracks me up because this being my first anime movie is somewhat ironic, especially considering one of my parents’ involvement in trying to remove anime in my later childhood years.

I got interested in cartoons, like most kids, with the heavily Japanese influenced programming like The Powerpuff Girls. I was also interested in Pokemon, Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon. Even then, I had no idea that this was “anime.” It wasn’t until a friend introduced me to a “Sailor Moon comic” that I learned the truth for myself. I purchased the second volume and the third volume of a series called Saint Tail. In the back of the volume, the author wrote a fun section describing her life in Japan, which was my first exposure that these “comics” were much more than I realized they were. The thing that struck me the most was that there was light gore and nudity in the Sailor Moon manga versus the censored anime. Unlike most programming I was exposed to at the time, this manga took me seriously as a reader.

In all honesty, I became most interested in manga and anime because, for the most part, these stories respected me as a viewer. They weren’t like the Disney Channel shows my peers adored. They challenged my morals and beliefs. I didn’t realize it then, but amongst the crap like InuYasha that I adored, there was content like FLCL and Ghost in the Shell that keep me thinking even to this day.

As some users here know, my mother wasn’t very receptive to my interests. She is essentially on the emotional level of a toddler. For example, she once said to me that she “can’t relate to Harry Potter because the characters use magic.” I asked if she could relate to any of the characters’ relations at all and merely see the fantasy as a catalyst for the story. She couldn’t.

She eventually threw out most of my manga (but left behind Fullmetal Alchemist and Death Note, laughably. Sailor Moon and Christian inspired Saint Tail are evil though!). I was also banned from reading manga online, forcing me to do so in private. Of course, this only proved to make me more interested in manga and today I own more than 300 volumes of it. Pro tip: if you don’t want your child to like something, get into it yourself and make it uncool. Don’t try to ban it or you will only increase their desires.

I guess I like manga and anime because it’s such an alternative to everything else. Cartoons show us imagery that is impossible to achieve with real life actors. This is not to diminish live action content at all. It’s just that cartoons can accomplish some things better like fantasy and the surreal. Anime and manga have their weaknesses, like the prevalence of otaku culture and the lackluster production of many releases, but I do enjoy being part of this medium.

[Kyubey]

Since both Morc and Ceej have given a good amount of history in their explanations, I think I'll follow suit. Now, keep in mind that it's not like I was recording this stuff as it happened, and this is entirely from retrospect, so I may have gotten the exact timeline of things wrong, or omitted details entirely. But this is mostly how I became a fan, and more importantly, how I became the fan I am now.

Anime and manga have both been in my life for a really long time. I find that in the vast majority of cases, anime fans started at childhood, and I am absolutely no different. Like CJ, my first exposure came through a Miyazaki film. Mine was the 20th Century Fox dub of My Neighbor Totoro. In a lot of ways, that movie has come up multiple times in my overarching anime experience. I guess there's just something about it that evokes the same feeling in me, no matter what age I view it from. When I first saw it, I think I was most impressed by how well it portrayed the emotions and thoughts of children, which definitely made it stand out from the other movies I saw back then. But Totoro wasn't what made me an anime fan.

I guess I could be best described as being part of the Pokemon generation. I'll confess, from the ages of about 5-7, I was absolutely insufferable. I couldn't shut up about Pokemon. I knew all the different pocket monsters, and all their attributes, and all the other facets of that universe, and I would not rest until everyone around me did, too. It's easy to see why that was the one I got most attached to, looking back. I was a fairly creative child, and the expansive, open, yet still classifiable world of Pokemon gave me enough material for me to imagine my own adventures. I grew attached to the various characters, played the games, and immersed myself in that fictional universe. One distinct memory I have came from some Pokemon VHS tapes I owned, that featured trailers for other similarly animated cartoon shows. One was an adaptation of The Dog of Flanders, and the other was some wacky martial arts comedy with heavy fantasy elements... Ranmo, I think it was? Probably not important. But I did wonder, since I clearly couldn't find them on television, just what were those shows? Who was watching them? And what were they like? I knew they weren't like Pokemon, or the other cartoons I was used to, so it was just enough to wet my curiosity.

A monster was born, then.

As I grew older, I discovered more stuff, mostly other Miyazaki films, along with Digimon and other children's anime that happened to air on network television (except Cardcaptors, I wasn't allowed to watch that). Of course, I was quick to figure out that all the cartoons that I happened to like had the same basic art style, and thanks to the power of me discovering the internet, I learned that they were called anime, and that they came from Japan. So naturally, I wanted to learn more, and see more. Whenever I would visit a relative that had cable, I was sure to watch Toonami, and sometimes Adult Swim if I was sneaky about it, and I remember liking most that all these stories were sequential, telling overarching, serious narratives, even if I seldom got to see all the episodes in order. My fascination grew, so I began seeking out anime from other sources, like Blockbuster, or VHS tapes from used bookstores. The latter was, coincidentally, how I learned what anime porn was. I had a fun youth.

My transition into full weeb came around 2003. I remember that year clearly, since it was when Viz unleashed Monthly Shonen Jump onto American magazine shelves. Having not really learned what manga was until then, I latched onto it immediately. As an aside, at the time One Piece wasn't even one of my favorites in Jump, that distinction belonged to Shaman King. I pursued manga with the same amount of fervor that I did with Pokemon when I was younger, reading it to an almost unhealthy extent. I was always kinda antisocial, and my family moved around a lot, so I suppose I could say that Jump was one solid constant for me. What manga I liked that wasn't in Jump, I bought the volumes for, as much as my allowance would let me. That wasn't much. What volumes I could afford, I would read over and over, until I had them virtually memorized. One series that I remember particularly resonated with me was Sgt. Frog, which I found myself strongly relating to in a lot of ways back then. Again, I was not a typical child. I also watched plenty of anime on top of my newfound manga fascination. In the town I lived in at the time, there was a small anime rental store in the back of a comic book shop, run by a perpetually bored guy in his thirties who was clearly aiming to sell to fans significantly older than me, but who was still nice enough to introduce me to classics like Ranma 1/2 and The Slayers. Around this time, again, thanks to the internet, I learned what an otaku was, and decided, hey, I wanna be an otaku, too! Yaaaay!

And then... something happened.

At the end of middle school, start of high school, I underwent the most drastic move of my life. I was relocated from Washington state, and environment which I loved, to Tucson, Arizona, a hot, dry, featureless desert, in the state with some of the worst education in the country, and it showed. It was a place that I did not connect to in the slightest. Put into a place where I knew nobody, in surroundings that I hated, I withdrew into myself, only leaving my room when I was made to by someone else. And, naturally, that old friend anime was there, waiting for me, a contented grin on its face. I needed something to sate my boredom, and, grasping in the darkness, I found a series that was long enough and engaging enough for me to spend hours and hours on, on end, with full ability to shut out everything else. Of course, that was One Piece. My obsessiveness grew once again. I became one of those awful nerds one only hears about. I watched it, read it, over and over, taking in as much of it as I could, and occasionally I would remember to also watch or read a different series, or gain an interest in something unrelated. I'm happy to say, that this phase did eventually calm down, and I was able to open myself up to other activities, while still maintaining my interest in One Piece.

But, one series could not take up my full interests forever, and before too long I moved onto other stuff. Mostly what was popular at the time, or the things that I understood to have a certain importance to the medium. I bought assorted anime DVDs, collecting series as I could, and watching things streaming when I couldn't. Because I bought DVDs of shows so often, however, I watched a whole lot of dubs. Now, before I continue, I want to clarify that I had done some acting related summer camp kinda stuff and participated in the drama class at my high school before, so it wasn't like this was the first time I knew what acting was. In fact, maybe it was precisely because of that, that I found myself paying attention to the names on the end credits. Before long, I recognized, particularly in the Funimation releases, that many of these names were the same. I started following my favorites, and comparing their performances. I even picked up several shows specifically because J. Michael Tatum was in them. Wouldn't you know it, around that time was when I started going to conventions, and actually met some of them in person, and got to ask them questions. They even signed the DVDs I had been gathering for so many years. I accumulated quite a bit of these signatures, and was incredibly proud of every one.

At times, I still look at this stuff. Isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the girl? The girl who has everything? ...but who cares. No big deal. I wanted more. I wanted to be where the voice actors were. I wanted to see. Wanted to see them acting. Wandering free, wished I could be, part of that woooooorld.

So, around some point during my magical high school adventures, I was dead set on being an actor in anime dubs. I wanted that more than anything, it felt like. I joined a forum for online voice acting, that did audio dramas, fandubs, and the like, and participated in a few of those. I tried to find out how other voice actors got their jobs, and did my best to emulate them. It got to the point where, set on, somehow, winding up in the world of anime voice acting, I went into college specifically to study acting. And there I realized that I liked the stage better, and anime was not a practical industry to be a part of anyway, so that interest died.

But, even as I became more theatre kid than weeb, my love for anime still remained. I started watching shows less for their dubs, but just out of what interested me. However, I would come to find, so gradually that I didn't even notice until it had already happened, that a lot less interested me in general than it used to. There were still things I liked, but very little I could get truly passionate about, and a lot more that I started having actual problems with. My wide-eyed wonder turned to cold cynicism. Not to say that this was true for everything, always. I discovered both Legend of Galactic Heroes and Madoka during this time, both of which I got incredibly excited about, and I still picked up new shows often, but I started not liking more than I liked. Even One Piece seemed less cool to me than it used to. Not to mention, how many problems I was beginning to notice with my fellow fans. Don't even get me started on that. I'd hate to say it, but there was a time when I would easily have qualified as a filthy casual. I don't know how else to say it, I started seeing the majority of anime/manga as shallow.

And yet, this gradual shift out of the medium did not exactly last. Around this time was when my next big change as a fan happened, and I promise this is where I'm going to get to my point. See, I was a member of a particular forum, called mangablast, I don't know if you've heard of it. Anyway, since I was still watching anime out of boredom, and since I was finding shows that I found just interesting enough to talk about, I started a thread where I would write a few paragraphs about the various discoveries I found. I never intended it to become anything big or whatnot, just something to pass the time, and maybe to get something out of how I was wasting my time. But in doing that, I made a discovery. I really liked writing about anime. Looking at the various aspects of the shows I watched, examining them carefully, looking at how they fit together, and comparing and contrasting different series gave me a level of engagement I simply wasn't getting when I was falling out of the medium. So I went deeper. I began reading other reviews, and seeking out various viewpoints. I took a focused interest in the history of the medium, and the classic works and creators that shaped it. I started paying attention to directors, to studios, to all that behind-the-scenes stuff. It wasn't just that I was watching anime anymore, I was learning how it worked. And, in the process, I started watching more things, to the point where, for the first time, I was actually following seasonal anime. As luck would have it, it was not long after that two big things happened that took me even deeper. The first was the launch of Our Inked Obsession, which I began writing for, taking my newfound excitement for writing about anime and pushing it even further, to a wider audience. The second was the release of Jonathan Clements' book Anime: A History, an indispensable examination of the industry, that opened my eyes to just how big and how spectacular the world of anime truly was. After that, I was still a fan of anime. But I was a very different sort of fan.

Which brings me, finally, to why I'm still here. Because, as great and terrible a beast as anime can be, I still find myself loving every facet of it. It's really a medium unlike any other, both in form and in its creation. Its history is so rich, despite the medium being so young, that every new thing I learn about it gets me even more excited about it. And because it's such a relatively small industry, the different facets fit together in a way that's incredibly fascinating. What I thought of as purely shallow, I now realize is merely the end result of an evolving and deeply complex process, that can be traced as far back as anime itself. I love how movements in anime come and go, more often than not in direct reaction to one another, and in constant dialogue with the overwhelming force that is the audience. I love finding what influences animators, both within the medium and from the outside, likewise for the entire culture. Heck, even things like the fanbase behind Kyoto Animation's works, and how they shaped the industry at large, are compelling, even if I can't say the same about the shows they produce. Artistically, what appealed to me as a child is still, mostly, what appeals to me now. I like the strong emphasis it places on emotion and character and how it goes about conveying them. My favorite works often aren't the most realist in setting or even character, but still reveal truths that other mediums simply can't. Even the works that are more based in reality have the power to frame things in a way that's otherwise impossible, a fresh take on the familiar, if you would. That contrast in of itself can be striking all on its own, like the stark differences between Masaaki Yuasa's surreal, esoteric visions and Makoto Shinkai's ability to find the profoundly beautiful within the mundane. This can be said of all animation, but there's undoubtedly something in how Japan does it that sets it far apart from animation elsewhere. And of course, when all these elements blend together, like in the works of Studio Ghibli, the end result is, at least for me, incredibly moving.

There's also something I like in anime's ability to defy all expectations. Compared to other art forms, it feels unrestrained by conventions of form and genre, and many of the great works, if not all of them, freely play with both, while still recognizing the works that came before them. In a culture like Japan's, that heavily values uniformity and modesty, that's amazing. In many ways, anime is a lot more rebellious than we give it credit for. Just as one example, one of the first works I wrote about on Our Inked Obsession was Kill la Kill, a series that viciously attacked the concept of uniformity right down to the literal meaning of the word, as well as its own audience, in a style that's both incredibly modern and unique, while still recognizing the debt it pays to Go Nagai, who was writing with similar themes all the way back in the 70's. Even in the most mainstream works, this can be seen. Consider, for instance, the progression of the mecha. Starting with Tetsujin and Mazinger Z, giant robots were a frankly brilliant marketing tool for children, right up until Mobile Suit Gundam came along, taking the exact same concept, and using them to tell a serious war drama that appealed to an entirely different market. Then in the 80's, Macross took that concept and added idol characters and music, making something new out of what was familiar. Later on, in the 90's, works like Evangelion, again, took the idea of the mecha genre and shaped it into yet something else, for an entirely new market. Amazingly all of these examples turned out as explosive hits, and started new movements in their own right. In what other medium could a writer like Gen Urobuchi, famous for his dark outlook and existential storytelling, apply his usual style to create a traditional tragedy within the magical girl genre, and be successful at it? I think a big part of why this is is that, in many respects, anime and manga are still young mediums, and in turn, are largely meant for the young. The average fan of anime isn't old enough to be set in formal structure, and hasn't yet decided what's acceptable and unacceptable in storytelling. Anything is possible, and even the most ridiculous concepts can be made into something great. That's why I'm still watching for what's next, and that's why I'll keep watching in the future.

So yeah, I think that's basically the reason for me. Do I still get irritated with it at times? Of course I do. But at the same time, there's just so much to it, that I feel one could go on forever and not discover everything there is to be found, so I imagine I'll stick with it for quite a while in the future, even if, at times, those dang Love Live fans keep getting me down.

[Morcombe]

wow sounds like you've experienced a lot. In all these years av still never been to a convention.

I was a mad Pokemon fan too, I bought the dumb card game, I bought both versions of the games, hell I even completed a whole Pokemon sticker book the only one I ever completed and I used to love sticker books especially the ones for my countries football league.

Despite my love for Pokemon at the time I always got into the dumb what's better Pokemon vs. Digimon fight and my preference was Digimon because it was more serious and the threats were real compared to Pokemon, which just sucked you deeper into the show.

Gundam Wing started around the same time as DBZ so that was my first mecha experience, I had a weird love/hate relationship with that show, I liked the giant robots but I was far too dumb to understand the whole politics in play story line and those scenes bored me as a dumb kid lol, thankfully I rewatched the show a few years back and it has now become one of the out of print Beez (Bandai) titles I'm trying to track down, 5 outta 10 DVDs so far.

Anime porn lol, I remember how I first discovered it too. Just my usual visit to the local media store known as HMV with my Mum on a Saturday to spend my weekly allowance and there sitting in the anime section was this little collection of 3 movies in a little cardboard slipcase, the covers appeared to show it as a cool sci-fi, horror, action thing and the title was "The Darkness Collection", discovered what it was when I got home, first time I ever knew that anime could go further than the Chun-Li shower scene from Street Fighter II the Movie lol. Movies were "Alien of Darkness", "Idol of Darkness" and "Missions of Darkness" for those that wanna know.

One thing I hope never to become is one of those cynics that hate everything and complain about how everything is unoriginal or cliche or any of that crap. Thankfully I'm easy to entertain and even something that appears mediocre to most viewers I can find highly enjoyable like a show I just finished 2 days ago called Hidan no Aria, it is now one of my fav anime ever but most people seem to dislike it so screw cynicism and if I ever become like that then someone needs to slap some sense back into me.

I really hate how people watch something with a genre the know they dislike just to moan about it. If you don't like a specific genre then don't watch it!
I greatly dislike Psychological stuff, I never liked it in live action stuff so I've generally avoided it in anime, if thurs a psychological tag in the genre odds are I will not watch it unless you trick me into watching it by sticking a pretty girl with a giant sword on the cover and show some action scenes in a trailer, show I'm talking about is Chaos;Head which turned out to be pretty decent because I found it to be more of a mystery series than a psychological one. The cover was a huge spoiler as well, the girl pretended to be normal for 9 episodes but you knew she wasn't cause of the cover lol.

Anime can be special and when those shows come along it's brilliant but not every show out there has to be something exceptional or groundbreaking or thought provoking, I just want cool worlds, good fights, good laughs, a nice soundtrack and a fun time. every genre has been done and originality is extremely hard to find especially now since the anime world has expanded so much in the 2000s they never used to do 40-50 shows a season afterall and thuv been doing it that way now for over a decade so of course things are gonna blend together and be unoriginal, this is where being easily entertained comes in handy.

I'm not saying I ignore flaws or any of that stuff anime does have things that annoy me that I wish could be done better, the primary one being romance. I wanna see relationships develop not just throw the two main characters together at the end, I wanna see them together during the story as an actual couple and how it progresses.

and then there is bleach which ditched it's main cast and replaced them with characters that were to powerful for the villains and made the series unbelievably boring. Thankfully no other show I know of has ever done this and I hope they learn from Bleach never to do so.

I still love this medium as much as I did when I started 11/12 years ago. and if I complete another 4 shows this year I'll have my best year ever for followings eaosnal anime. My record is 23 for 2009 most of which came from Fall when I orginally started following by seasons.

[zaboozer]

Escapism.