Ask John: Why Are American Otaku So Pretentious?

Question:
Why are many Western anime fans so pretentious? It always seems to me that many fans of anime in the West try to over-analyze and make observations of things in shows that aren’t as big of a deal or just plain don’t exist. Is it that Western fans really want to justify their hobby as being mature so they’ll gravitate towards shows that [are] supposedly deep and complex and turn up their noses at shows [that are] immature and shallow?

Answer:
Perhaps merely a difference of parlance, I think of many of America’s anime fans as compensatory rather than pretentious. American anime fans aren’t so much trying to make themselves seem intellectual and cultured for their own edification; they’re compensating to avoid embarrassment and shame. “Cartoons” is practically a bad word in America. Cartoons are perfectly normal for small children, and America has grown to accept certain types of cartoons as viable for adults – particularly satires and parodies like The Simpsons, South Park, Metalocalypse, and Archer. And animation is occasionally granted exception if it’s obviously “artistic” and oriented to cineastes and art theaters. But outside of these narrow compartmentalizations, cartoons aren’t widely considered an appropriate medium for rational, responsible adults to watch. So American otaku are faced with the option of either enduring and ignoring the upraised eyebrow of mainstream society, or justifying anime as “okay” to watch because it falls into one of the few categories of cartoons considered acceptable for adult Americans.

The simple homage character “Action Mask” in Japan’s Crayon Shin-chan was reimagined as “Action Bastard” for American audiences – a representation of an effort to consciously misrepresent the nature of the show. Crayon Shin-chan is a children’s cartoon, thus not considered appropriate for adolescent and young adult American viewers. In order to make the show “okay” for older American viewers to watch without embarrassment, the show had to be punched up and made more “adult” and satirical. Dragon Ball Z is a shounen anime. By definition, it’s an anime targeted at male children. Yet for years American anime fans have tried to delude themselves and others into the perception that Dragon Ball Z is an “adult” cartoon because it contains graphic violence and death. Early American Dragon Ball Z fansubs were filled with swearing – yet another attempt to make the show seem more adult, and therefore more acceptable for grown viewers to watch, than it was ever intended to be. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a children’s anime like Pokemon being the show for young children viewers that it is, the show has become a target of self-justifying American otaku that feel compelled to distinguish that the “adult” anime they watch is different from embarrassing and age-inappropriate children’s cartoons like Pokemon. Viewers that may have felt embarrassed to watch “girls cartoons” like Sailor Moon, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, Tokyo Mew Mew, or Ojamajo Doremi can justify watching the magical girl anime Madoka Magica because the later is “dark” and “adult” because it includes violence, death, and provocative philosophical themes. The most successful American anime co-productions, including The Animatrix and Afro Samurai, are successful not because they’re intelligent or legitimately artistic, but rather because they’re violent and superficially “adult” enough to escape from the conventional American stigma of being “cartoons.”

I do think that the American anime community, along with the American mainstream, is slowly becoming more tolerant of, and less embarrassed about, animated programing that isn’t either children’s cartoons nor adult animation. Increasingly American anime fans seem willing to admit that Dragon Ball Z is a children’s cartoon, that seemingly adult oriented intellectual and provocative anime like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Gantz are still targeted at older teen viewers rather than actual adults, and that the pressing problem isn’t the content of animation but America’s outdated perception of animation. However, the lingering fear of being laughed at for watching “kids cartoons” and “that anime stuff,” still motivates a lot of Americans to rationalize that the anime they love isn’t “kids cartoons”; it’s serious adult-minded literary and artistic animation. The ability to honestly feel comfortable watching and enjoying immature, shallow cartoons requires, ironically, a great deal of personal, emotional maturity. Many of America’s younger anime fans are teens still in the process of forming their self-image and developing their self-identity and self-confidence. American anime fans who are absolutely comfortable and happy admitting a fondness for foreign children’s cartoons may be slightly aggravated by other fans that seemingly refuse to acknowledge reality. But most, if not all of those adult and/or experienced fans who feel no shame in watching children’s anime or shamelessly gratuitous anime may forget that they themselves once felt insecurities about their hobby. Until ingrained, traditional American perceptions and stereotypes about animation change, American viewers are going to have to face the dilemma of either defiantly and proudly disregarding social opinion, or convincing themselves and their peers that they’re not strange or immature for watching children’s cartoons because the animation they watch is not actually children’s cartoons.