What’s the Attraction? - Anime’s Cool Factor
More than a year ago, I was on a corporate retreat, and after a ferry ride around Lake Geneva a coworker’s wife asked why her husband and I liked anime so much, what made it a great form of entertainment. I stumbled through my answer, randomly mumbling about mecha, character designs and story lines. She wasn’t convinced. Anime can be everything and anything. But its strengths reside in the common mind of the adolescent male. The animator can sometimes also be the fan-based audience, and he knows what he wants. What is fun to create is even more fun to consume. Giant robots, nubile girls, and the fantasy worlds of anime are a great escape from reality. "I am the pilot of that robot, I am that princess’ boyfriend, I am the savior of that world." Any otaku waits through his day job and the drudgery of the real world to go home and be distracted by his favorite anime. The more tangents followed from real life the better– thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours spent on video games, video tapes, fact-finding (of fiction) on the internet, toys, models, and film-books to admit the least. It doesn’t resemble a healthy life, but that’s not what we’re asking. We want something new and cool and something alien to suprise us into bliss. It would not be feasible to hold an attraction to anime because of any superiority to western cartoons. This is a misconception held by many lesser fans. Technically, many anime series are little more than slide shows that showcase underwhelming character designs that are meant to distract you from the thin storyline. So the next time you’re sitting on the couch salivating over some new release, take inventory of those around you. Is she reading a magazine? You might want to reassess your dazzled attraction to the smoke and mirrors of anime. I still haven’t provided a stable answer for the attraction and/or obsession. I don’t know if it is something that can be rationalized. The irrational explanation is a sad hanging-on to what made a geek happy when he was twelve. This seductive immaturity can ruin many attempts at socializing, but provides an empty satisfaction only known to the otaku.
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