Anime Central

I have a love-hate relationship with anime (this statement will seem ironic since my first few reviews are going to consist of glowing adorations of two anime series, but they represent exceptional pieces). My particular grievances will probably be expanded upon in future articles, but they are essentially lamentations of the negative effects created by an insular community feeding off an amalgamation of detritus from another culture (one with pretty backwards sex politics to boot). 

I commonly hear the argument that anime is a medium, not a genre. It's true that anime certainly isn't a genre. The breadth of settings, themes, and intended audiences extends, at least in theory, across the entire range of entertainment media. The notion is still mistaken, however, because the medium of anime is not itself anime. Anime is embroiled within the larger context of all animation. A simplistic correction to this is to designate anime as animation produced in Japan, but this is clearly problematic because anime does not limit itself to either the nation of Japan nor the medium of animation (if we're not mincing words, you'll accept that at least our western conception of what defines "anime" extends pretty clearly to at least comics and video games). To call anime a style would be problematic too, as anime encompasses a vast wealth of visual styles, tropes, character archetypes, and sub-designations. Think of the differences from Miyazaki to Watanabe to Gainax. Even the signature "anime eyes" are hard to nail down across all works. If most of anime tends to be pretty same-y, it's more due to the fact that there is such a huge quantity of it produced and a strong willingness for creators to copy art styles and character types from one series to another (arguably a very stereotypically Japanese thing to do).

 The most accurate way to describe anime would be to call it a pedigree. You can draw an unbroken line from any anime, through its various inspirations and influences, to Astro Boy and the import of American-style cartoons to the newly modernized post-war Japan. It was a strange sort of schism in the development of the art of animation. There occurred a sort of speciation brought on by a transplantation of a developing medium followed by cultural isolation to prevent interbreeding. I could go on a tangent about how the phenomenon of anime is perhaps a prime example of memetic, cultural evolution mimicking genetic evolution through bottlenecking effects and what implications this might have, but I'll save it for later. The point I've been getting at is that the conception of anime is interwoven in an intricate mesh of influences. As such, a realization I made is that Anime Central isn't really about anime, but something that is at once more fundamental and more modern.

Now, I'll admit I'm being somewhat melodramatic for talking about an anime convention. Also, I figure that what I have to say on the matter will ultimately come as little surprise to die-hard con goers who have experienced this sort of thing first-hand. However, my goal here is to speak to anyone here who has yet to attend and either wonders whether its really their sort of thing or scoffs openly at the idea. Also, I think that the phenomenon itself is fascinating enough to have significance to people beyond the individuals who happen to devote much of their time and money to these hobbies. Mostly I'm just excited that I went to my first anime convention and I want to tell you guys about it.

I could say that the con is about "nerd culture" and leave it at that, but I'd be doing the subject a disservice; not only because "nerd culture" doesn't quite describe it, but because "nerd culture" deserves a more involved definition. When I showed up at Acen I was expecting people dressed up as anime characters. What I wasn't entirely expecting was the full gamut of "nerdy" media being represented far beyond any intersection with anime. Some of the costumes I saw originated in popular western video games, obscure indie games, western animation, popular youtube videos, flash games, webcomics, even personifications of internet memes and bizarre abstractions, and, of course, furries. There were also people who weren't dressed up as anything in particular, they were walking around in cat ears, or clinging to swords, or wearing whatever impractical outfit they happened to have designed.

Two things became immediately apparent to me: (1) people weren't trying to fit into the anime theme, or necessarily any theme at all, they were wearing whatever the fuck they happened to think was cool and (2) as my good friend Mike put it "the things I like aren't nearly as obscure as I thought they were." These two things together explained to me exactly what the con really was.

I think we've all seen horrifying "anime club" videos, or we're at least familiar with the idea; dreadfully awkward teenagers pantomiming a reality that they aren't a part of, and drastically so at that. We see children who've clung tightly to marginalized media and without the sort of socializing education inherent in conventional media they flounder in society. They're maladjusted, but its not that they've attempted to adjust to our society and failed, it's that they've adjusted to a social etiquette that doesn't jive with the reality they have to live in. A young girl might attempt to fashion her hair in a way that gravity disagrees with, may believe that pawing at her friends and mewing "nyah" is a socially acceptable greeting, but it's all because her socialization originated with a media that represents a world where she doesn't live. Other girls her age were watching high school dramas and MTV spring break reels and adjusting accordingly thanks to a media that depicts and shapes the world they'll grow up in. The reason we don't find their actions so strange is because they've been taught by media that's mainstream enough to become what we've come to expect. The mainstream defines the social reality.

Overwhelmingly, what defined the sorts of things I saw at the con was marginalized media. Things that I had been made to believe were enjoyed by the relatively few, as they weren't the sort of entertainment that was embraced by society at large. It's still a faux pas to bring up a conversation about video games randomly with a stranger, but it's certainly alright to toss out a "how about them Bears?" The things I saw weren't necessarily for nerds, though the vast majority of the things I saw were. The defining characteristic of the represented subjects was that they were weird, quirky. They were exactly the sort of things you thought were too obscure to see someone else you don't even know put hundreds of hours and dollars into a costume to resemble, or if they happened to be something very popular, they were still the sort of thing you'd think twice about before admitting that you liked them to the bully in the school yard. Yet, while they were all somewhat disparate, seeing them all displayed together allowed me to see their interconnecting threads. Fantasy and sci-fi novels have influenced table-top games have influenced video games have influenced anime, and the flow goes just as easily in the other direction, or between any two points. These were all things that had influenced one another, they're marginalized but in this they've become woven into a culture of their own. This is the nerd culture, specifically the English-speaking nerd culture, that I've been referring to. It wasn't really until the con that I realized the overarching structure to the whole thing.

What surprised me, but what shouldn't have, is that a culture actually managed to develop. These are things that are nearly defined by their lack of acceptance and relatively small adoption rate among most people. Yet, when I walked into that con I became aware of a shared cultural experience with everyone there, one that I didn't share with the rest of the outside world. Returning to the subject of not approaching strangers about video games, I had the bizarre experience of finding it nearly as natural a thing to do as talking about the local sports team. Normally when I find myself in a situation where I have to explain to someone new that I spend a lot of time and money playing Magic: The Gathering I have to preface it with a lot of embarrassed disclaimers about how I'm not usually that type of nerd (this is a total lie), but it wasn't so there. At the con, I didn't feel that sort of inherent background judgment of the things I like. Suddenly what was the marginalized had become the mainstream.

Returning to the first of the two observations I made, I realized that the people there had dressed up almost as what came natural to them. It reminded me of avatars on an internet forum. They were displaying whatever was coolest, or funniest, or most adorable to them, and using it to represent themselves. That the displays were ostentatious or bizarre or not generally socially acceptable was of little consequence because they weren't any of those things in this new context. In fact, the connection to internet forums only solidified in my mind over time as I began to realize where I had felt this sort of nerd cultural harmony before. It was actually the same exact principle.

Which brings me back to my second observation, because what struck me more than any other sense was a feeling of belonging. It's actually, I believe, a pretty common feeling to have at a con, as I've heard it reported by people on more than one occasion. Of course, I was more than a little judging of the idea before I had experienced it; what kind of person feels more at home at a nerd convention than their own neighborhood? However, everything very quickly began to make sense for me. Because, the honest truth is that the place I feel most comfortable isn't my own town. The place I tend to feel most comfortable is with a collection of nerds on the internet. It's a place where we've gathered because despite whatever society at large may think of our micro-culture, we can coexist with it. The culture, I realized, wasn't limited to our small corner of the internet either. The nerd culture that I've been exposed to is spreading far and wide across it, and becoming a shared experience for all of us, and from here the structural backbone of the whole shindig was born. Being at the con was like being at the internet given physical form. It was like knowing what it would be like if the people from our forums weren't separated by a computer screen and hundreds of miles. It felt overwhelmingly right.

Back to our awkward little "anime club", here I saw them transformed. The same young girl with the unfortunate hair cut could get a wig that would enact the transformation for her. Mimicking the strange behavior of her animated role models was no longer painfully embarrassing, but appropriate and maybe even charming as she was simply being "in character". Walking down the length of the dealer's room you could find all sorts of resources devoted to transforming our reality into the theirs. Indeed, the devoted makeup work, sewing, and role playing of the con-goers has become incredibly convincing. I found myself wandering around with a goofy smile on my face the whole time while I witnessed reality being peeled back and something else being revealed beneath, something that I had no idea I had wanted.

Now, mind you, it wasn't a full transformation. Indeed, there were plenty of people who were still ill-acclimated, and while my attention was drawn to the most bright and excellent examples of cosplay and the like there were still plenty of individuals who remained either forlorn or deluded (and dressed in sloppy cosplay). There was still plenty of awkwardness to go around. Though, as my friend Patty put it, it was okay to be awkward since everyone else was too (at least in the real world).

I can't really make any sweeping proclamations about what it all means or whether this is some unique or recent development due to either to our increasing interconnectedness via the internet or the nature of the community that produced this con or whether this is simply the phenomenon that occurs whenever you have a group of people devoted to a marginalized sub-culture coming together like this.

The only thing I can really say with any certainty is, well, I want to go back.