The first topic of the Secret Men’s Business Anime Round Robin is here, and it’s time for us guys to talk about Anime in the manliest way possible without being sexist. But what is the topic?
ANIME CLUB
The way I think about Anime fandom for myself is a hobby that I keep separate from my home life. You do not talk about Anime Club, just like you don’t talk about Fight Club. Anime Club became the reason to interact with a culture your parents have no idea you’re into, though unlike Fight Club, where the scars are evidence you’re up to something, the tucked-away volumes of One Piece manga and Osamu Tezuka art prints are the sort of “scars” that denote my membership of the secret society I call Anime Club.
In Australia where I live, guys who watch Anime are either considered immature or quiet geniuses who are dangerous because they know more about things than other people do. As for the latter category, this may have been someone you’ve known for years, and when this buttoned down little nerd is triggered by something like “Naruto is such a good show”, you better run and hide before he starts telling you that there was a man called Osamu Tezuka who not only created Anime as an artform, but produced things a thousand fold better than anything Naruto can be proud of. When the shock of all this is over, the nerd nods, and everything, including the conversation, changes back to normal.
Anime Club is the reason for many to bone up on their Japanese, but it’s not always the case. I always struggled with the lackluster assistance I got in my Japanese class, to the extent that I dropped it as a school subject. But Anime gave me the chance to take another look at that language and culture, in a way my Japanese teacher only gave me a glimpse of, watching the subtitled version of Spirited Away in Year 9.
What goes on during Anime Club and what goes on during your everyday life, you’re pretty much a completely different person. You don’t tell anybody about your hobby not because you’re insecure about it, it’s because there are certain implications of that hobby that may cause people to distrust or fear you. Sure, you have the occasional person who knows what you’re talking about when you bring up Miyazaki, but other than that the people you know are unaware that you’ve got at least ten Anime box sets hidden behind the clutter of books you might own, right next to your Manga and Graphic Novels.
But what has this all got to do with masculinity? Well now, here’s the kick: men often have secret hobbies or interests they don’t talk to anyone about, for a number of reasons they don’t tell a soul. Billy Elliot is a movie about a boy who wants to become a ballet dancer. It’s not Anime, but it illustrates a point. Ballet for Billy is considered “effeminate”, and likewise with Anime, Anime is considered “immature” for a young man to be interested in. Yet it exists, in the underground of social society, like a sort of Fight Club nobody talks about to people other than their own kind. The need for men to have private gatherings has existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and Anime is one of those things that is often enjoyed in secret.
Because it is a controversial and sometimes even subversive hobby to have, lots of men I know who enjoy Anime keep their yaps shut about it. You can spot the signs of Anime fandom subtly with these people: large headphones worn on their heads akin to Neku’s in The World Ends With You, a large collection of J-Pop on their iPods, and justifying their searching of information about the creator of Dragonball by saying they are doing a Visual Arts case study on him (which is more than likely to be the truth rather than a falsehood, Anime Club members mix work and pleasure on a cunning level of ingenuity). When you notice the kind of music they listen to, don’t ask “is that techno” but instead “Is that J-Pop?”. However, this method of greeting a fan of Anime who listens to J-Pop doesn’t work on people who actually do listen to techno and electronica, who may also wear headphones like Neku in The World End With You.
But if you can find Anime fans in Australia, you can meet some interesting people with interesting motives for their fandom. One Anime fan I met enjoyed Anime because of how it was different to what society was used to. And why not? It’s a subversive hobby to have, why not rebel against authority with Astro Boy instead of with emo clothes and Dashboard Confessional on their mp3 players? It may seem a commercialised subculture to be part of, but why is it that people don’t feel like average consumers as Anime fans? Perhaps because Anime fans are an entirely different breed of counter-culture than some think it is.
And that’s the next topic, for another day: “Is Anime too commercialised, or is it something entirely different to mindless consumerism as society understands it?”. Until then, keep it manly everybody. Unless you’re a girl, which is perfectly acceptable.
Geek Philosophy, Nerd Profundities 