Geek Out!
Dear Nerd,
You may call yourself an ‘otaku’ in a vain attempt to link yourself with the culture you desperately wish to be a part of, but the rest of the Western world still just sees you as an ordinary nerd. And I’m pretty sure the culture you want to be a part of will never see you as anything other than a foreigner. As fan of Japanese anime who has also spent some time living in Japan, I know this may seem somewhat hypocritical, but please bear with me as I explain what it is about you that makes my blood boil.
I have never, in my entire life, met anyone with the same interests in anime that I have. I have not decided whether this is a credit to the anime industry itself or a blight on my own personal world, but it is the reason I have been trawling the Internet looking, not for people with the exact same likes and dislikes, but people of a similar opinion to myself that I could strike up some kind of camaraderie with. And do you know what I have found? I have a sneaking suspicion that you do.
The majority of you ‘anime-bloggers’ seem to think it’s best to write as if you are the most abrasive, offensive, utterly incomprehensible uber-anime-fan that you could possibly be. You pepper your posts with a number of frustrating elements which I will attempt to understand and explain in order of annoyance.
First of all, the pigeon-Japanese. This must be a vain attempt to appear connected to the culture you so desperately wish to have been born into. The over-use of words such as kawaii, tsundere, otaku and so on is very occasionally (though never in the case of kawaii) warranted and generally offensive to both the anime and the reader who, judging from the fact that the majority of the posts are in English, is also of English-speaking background and thus may not actually have a snowball’s chance in hell of understanding your confusing hybrid language.
Second is the endless self-referential diatribing. Now, I would hate for you to think that I dislike a good diatribe because in fact I love one, but incomprehensible mentions at machine-gun speed of other anime character’s names in order to illustrate your opinion on the anime under review does little to affirm your qualifications to review, does absolutely nothing to impress me in regards to the amount of anime that you claim to have watched and does everything in its (in this case considerable) power to (pardon my French) piss me the fuck off. If I wanted to listen to someone recite a list of random Japanese names, I would.. I would.. Well at this point in time I’m at a loss as to what I would do, but I doubt very much I would actually ever want to listen to that, so it seems irrelevant what I would rather do than read your post.
Third is the underlying tone of mockery. This is one of the more subtle (I am similarly surprised that you can be anything other than blindingly obvious) aspects of your posts. In terms of fan-service, overly buxom female characters, yuri and yaoi and various other aspects of anime which may not sit well with your American standards, you tend to devolve into a three year old mentality, which is a far cry from your usual twelve, and giggle at the bouncing breasts, bleeding noses and same-sex love that is regularly displayed. I would suggest growing up, but I understand that you are in fact a tween, so that will hopefully come in time.
Finally, I would like to lampoon the over-use of emoticons, punctuation and Caps Lock in an attempt to create tone. I do not need to be accosted by your vast knowledge of how the Japanese convey emotion via text, nor do I need to read one thousand exclamation points when one would suffice. Nor, in fact, do I need to have every third word shouted at me for emphasis.
I will concede that the use of all four of these elements together is an excellent recipe for deflection. I am often so angry that I do not notice the lack of any actual opinion in your pieces or the fact that the majority of your post is screen-caps from the episode you managed to download before everyone else and I simply move on to the next painfully distancing blog about an anime I haven’t seen and therefore should not, it seems, be allowed the privilege of seeing.
This gauntlet, in honour of all the gauntletted heroes that you defile with your posts is aimed squarely at your tiny, no doubt pimple-ridden, greasy, wannabe heads.
Adrik




