Manga - a loving fan community!

[otakiw]

Hi, I'm new to this forum but I was drawn into it by my fascination of manga. I love the idea of manga being so diverse - no matter what age/class/sex etc that you are there will be a manga for you.

Do you agree therefore that a community of manga fans can act as an alternative society to the one we live in? Surley diversity in manga can bring people together no matter who or what they are simply due to the shared love of manga?

What do you think? :p

[MadHatterGirl]

Are you talking about basically a city filled with only manga lovers? Oh, wowsies, that sounds pretty cool. otherwise I cannot understand the complexity of the situation. XP

[dieing25]

I am in.

[Fetal Fetish]

Wow, large and complex vocabulary you got there. xD But the more intelligent people here, the better. Anyway, I agree with the overall situation. I again applaud the fact that you just made my sister's brain hurt from reading your idea. lol

[sasunarubishoujo]

hmm a perfect society of nothing but manga and anime lovers living peacefully side by side sounds interesting but i perfer to live in our chaotic world where everyone seems to rebel against everything.

welcome to AF forum by the way please read the rules and have fun posting!

[otakiw]

Thanks for the welcome!

The point that I was trying to convey in my original post was that it's so nice that manga fan communities are so diverse. It seems that there are no prejudices, if you are young/old, gay/bi/straight, male/females or rich/poor, everyone seems to be accepted for who they are by their binding love for manga (whatever they personally enjoy).

What I was trying to say is that imagine if this idealistic situation could be the same for our own society. However, you made a very interesting point:


hmm a perfect society of nothing but manga and anime lovers living peacefully side by side sounds interesting but I prefer to live in our chaotic world where everyone seems to rebel against everything.

Why do you think this is? I know it sounds silly, but if you look at the punk movement I think that could explain the answer...

They were bound by an ideology (anti-sexism, regard for other sexualities and disregard for the class system) - sounds familiar? :)

Maybe a whole society consisting of a like-minded community may sound ideal, but i think you're right, maybe people need to feel part of an alternative community that IS different from the "chaotic world" that we live in rather than being part of a whole...

Hmmm... :eek:

[SGI]

While your view on anime fandom as a place without predjudice is rather pretty. Unfortunately, the idea of all anime fans and "otaku" getting along is rather idealistic and improbable.

There are some predjudice about anglo saxon fans of anime often being regarded as "Wapanese" (A person who wants to be asian or in particular 'japanese') or of having "yellow fever" (An accusation of said person finding only those of asian decent as being sexually attractive) and while this may be true for some people, it is often labled innacurately of many people. Even by those within the anime community towards others.

Another form of predjudice beyond racial is often labled on those (fairly and unfairly) who are fans of different sub genres. Those who are fans of yaoi, yuri, hentai, lolicon, guro amongst others often find themselves discriminated against.

Within the anime and manga community there is also distinct elitism. Those who have been anime fans for longer often look down upon those who are new to the scene. And some, rather than exposing them to the rarer and/or more thought provoking and interesting anime will often merely snub them.

And then there are those predjudices which are not caused by the anime sub-culture, but rather are from outside those circles. Goths and Emos, amongst other various sub-cultures may find themselves facing predjudice within anime circles because of the other cultures which they belong.

Like all of society, anime and manga culture is rife with various predjudices. I have pointed some of these out here. And I do believe that there are many other forms of predjudice within our lovely microcosm that I have yet to point out.

Thankyou for your time.

[Mugetsu]

I bet you had no idea it was gonna get this deep did you? lol

I honestly don't see it happening. Anime & manga are fun and all but there is a whole lot more that would be necessary to achieve the eutopian society that your looking for. We would have to get past all those social, economical, racial and philosophical differences that seem to divide so many.

Besides, pretty soon you'd have factions forming based on anime & manga series. Can you imagine the chaos that would occur if a bunch of hardcore Naruto fanboys/girls & Inuyasha fanboys/girls got together in one place at one time? It would make the Crips & Bloods look like best friends.

It hard for people to have that kind of peace. Even if they share something in common they always focus on the differences.