Ask John: How Can Otaku Stay Enthused About Anime?

Question:
As an anime veteran, how do you, John, try to keep anime fresh and interesting in your mind without resorting to nostalgia colored glasses?

Answer:
I don’t want to present myself as a unique exception, but I do honestly believe that my experience with anime affects my perception. I’ve been watching anime long enough that I’ve come to realize, through experience, that I don’t know everything about anime, and that anime always has the ability to surprise me. Countless times I’ve sampled a show and found it better or more engaging than I expected it to be. Thus I’ve tried, as best I can, to stop pre-judging anime. I think that a sense of optomism is vital to sustain a lengthy appreciation and enjoyment of anime. As an anime fan, I always want to like anime; I always hope that new anime will entertain, surprise, and impress me. Furthermore, I try to never forget that anime is a Japanese medium for Japanese viewers, so I have little right to complain if an anime doesn’t satisfy my particular American expectations and demands. While I, as a veteran fan, may have watched dozens of harem or mecha or ninja anime, I remain conscious of the fact that every new show in a familiar genre may be a new fan’s first introduction to the genre. Furthermore, anime production is a business, so if an anime gets produced, it’s being produced because it has a Japanese audience. So, once again, it’s highly presumptuous of me, a foreigner, to complain that Anime X is the 99th harem anime of the decade and therefore redundant when there are thousands of Japanese fans eager to watch the show.

If every moé anime, harem anime, slice-of-life anime, magical girl anime, and mecha anime was practically the same, the anime industry would have stagnated fourty years ago. We’d have no need of any new anime after shows like Tetsujin 28, Mazinger Z, Mahoutsukai Sally, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Urusei Yatsura. But, thankfully, anime aren’t all the same. Even conceptual remakes like Angelic Layer remaking Plawres Sanshiro, Naruto remaking Sasuga no Sarutobi, and LoveCom remaking The Kabocha Wine still have unique characteristics. Harem anime may draw from a stable of consistent stock character types, but yet some harem anime are more popular than others because they still manage to inject distinctive creativity and identity into their formulaic narratives.

Ultimately, the trick to liking anime is simply wanting to like anime. A fan that constantly bemoans redundancy and expects nearly every new anime to be bad will invariably eventually find enough evidence to convince himself of his sentiment and become disillusioned and bored with anime. The optomistic anime fan sees each new show as a new possibility, a way to put a new spin on a familiar trope, breath new life into a tired genre. Every new Japanese TV season I make a conscious effort to watch an episode of every new anime series I can. I do so not to show-off, but rather to educate myself, and I do so with the hope that each and every new anime I watch will become my new favorite show. Of course, inevitably I won’t become enamored with many new anime, but if I approach new shows expecting to dislike them, I have to ask myself why I’m even watching anime in the first place. If we assume that every new anime in a tired genre will be an uninspired, uninteresting rehash, we’d overlook anime like Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, Lucky Star, Evangelion, Toradora, OreImo, Futari wa Precure, Lyrical Nanoha, and Madoka Magica, which would be a terrible misfortune.