I was sitting outside the Knight Library reading and a newspaper was blowing in the wind at my feet. While normally I would be content to watch it flutter about and cherish it’s picturesque look, straight from something or other I watched during my insomniac TV binges, but I saw the title of your editorial and dropped what I was doing to read it. I am a fan of anime. I have been since that fateful Saturday I woke up and turned on the TV and saw Dragon Ball Z flash across the screen. For more than an hour I was absorbed (they showed two episodes each Saturday) and I have been a fan of anime ever since. I understand your belief, though I don’t believe it. Two things prompted me to write you. Know that this is not something I normally do; I believe that no one can change another persons mind.
That being said, I will first make a comment about the article. As far as my knowledge of my own fan niche goes, neither Yu-Gi-Oh! (that dribbling piece of crap that kills children’s brain cells on a weekly basis) nor Pokemon started as a card game. Yu-Gi-Oh! started as a Manga and spawned it’s hateful brood from that niche of Japanese culture like an infestation of cockroaches or a swarm of Siafu. Pokemon started as a video game (of which I regretfully own the first version, “blue”, bought when I was working hard at being an anti-social AV nerd in the basement of my high school).
Secondly, I would say the writer is suffering from what I call “Bad Anime Syndrome”. This is, of course, a completely fictional malady that I have invented/discovered in my long search for “Good Anime”. I have only the words he wrote to diagnose him and for all I know he could be a frothing-at-the-mouth, balls-to-the-wall Otaku. I will, for the purposes of this response, assume that he is one of the many people afflicted with BAS. I often see sufferers of BAS. You can too. They are walking down every street in America. Their symptoms are often unnoticeable at first glance but engage them in a conversation about Anime and it will soon become apparent. Their only experience with anime stems from either a child, who only watches what the electronic babysitter his parents place him in front of when they need alone time tells him to watch. This being the miles and miles of bad anime. Or they contracted BAS from a partner (like an STD). Trust me, I know how hard it is to co-exist with an anime lover (I am one) and we can try the patience of even the most understanding of persons. This type of sufferer is often harder to cure (or even deal with, sometimes their annoyance of Japanese animation turns into an anti-anime fervor not seen since the “Red Scare” days of the Cold War).
I too used to worry about the fate of our country’s young anime watchers. I would see what Cartoon network was pumping out in the after school-programming block and sometimes I would feel like crying. You shouldn’t fear too much though. Once they watch “Akira” they won’t ever go back to DBZ. I have discovered the cure. It takes some doing, especially if you have to wait until they’re old enough to watch rated R films; but when they see the multitude of engaging, thought-provoking works of animated splendor that the world has to offer, they will turn around and look at the young ones of their generation and throw THEIR hands in the air and cry, “Will someone think of the children?” Exactly as the writer has done. Exactly as I have done. Exactly as every anime fan has done since Astroboy first aired in the ’50s.
If you have bothered to read this entire e-mail, instead of depositing it with the rest of the “Enraged Anime Fan” responses, I thank you for your time.
James Morin