The anime community is beautiful. Graphic courtesy of junior Jordenn Valle Gearhart.
Anime is a very popular medium among San Luis Obispo High School students. It’s easy to see why, it’s a very diverse genre with tons of action-packed fantasy shows like “Attack on Titan”, as well as grounded, character driven shows like “Your Lie In April”.
With tons of content, comes a lot of discussion.
The anime community is just as diverse as the genre itself.
“There’s a lot of great people who like anime, and there are so many different types of anime, so there’s a lot to talk about,” said junior Mars I. Souza.
Unfortunately, diversity is a double edged sword. While it’s true that there are great interactions to be had within the anime community, there are some parts of it that are quite off-putting.
“Some people are really weird about the characters, and sometimes people will get into arguments over the dumbest (stuff),” said Souza.
It’s very common for people to use these things as arguments against the whole anime community, writing everybody off as gross basement dwellers obsessed with having relations with fictional characters.
“So many people see a new female character and they think “Cool! Let’s sexualize her!”. People will still do it even for characters like Marin from “My Dress-Up Darling,” who is 16. They don’t seem to care. If people for avoid anime because of stuff like that, I can’t say I blame them,” said junior Bryan Ortega Lopez.
Although these people do exist in the community, taking a look at any mainstream anime forum will prove that they are only a small section of it. Strange things exist in every fandom, and it’s not fair to group everyone into the same category.
“There’s not much different about anime compared to other fandoms. Some anime are weird in general, so that can turn people off from it. But you could say that about a lot of (fandoms),” said Souza.
That’s not to say everybody who dislikes anime does it for unsound reasons. For example, some people avoid anime altogether because of the sexualization of young people that is present in some of it. This is seen as acceptable in Japan largely because the age of consent over there is 13.
This makes some people in America resent anime due to it promoting things that are not only illegal here, but are also considered immoral.
“If they only resent the kind of anime that promotes those things, I can understand that. But I don’t think it’s fair to dislike all anime just because some of them are weird,” said Souza.
Going back to what was said earlier, it’s not fair to group the average anime fan into the same category as the weird ones. The truth is that nearly all anime fans would denounce those who partake in disgusting acts, such as wearing anime hoodies to school. Seriously, that guy is embarrassing.
“My experience has been awesome. It’s cool getting to explore a lot of different anime communities and discuss things about the characters with them,” said Ortega Lopez.
