I tried to find an Australian-themed anime drawing, but failed. Have a “Once Upon a Time in a China Girl” instead.NewGeekPhilosopher wrote a little piece about a new sub-breed of anime fans he called the “Oztaku”. I can understand the desire to move away from using the word otaku, but the terms “anime fan” or “anime enthusiast” perfectly describe any of the individuals he raised as examples in his post, and it didn’t really matter at all where they were from. I trolled him in the comments, but he raised a point I thought worth wasting my time and yours with in his reply:
[...]the reason why I highlighted “Anglo Saxons” is because many white Anime and Manga fans are not the same as Japanese ones, and have a different cultural construction of their identity. Hence an Oztaku would be brought from a different cultural society entirely from a Japanese society.
I always thought the point of a “fandom” is that people are brought together through their passion for a hobby, regardless of race, creed, age or geographical location. Regardless of your culture or how you were raised, our passion for (in our case) anime brings us together as a group of fans. Our common hobby breaks down the cultural barrier, and we can chat simply as fellow anime fans, regardless of from where we hail.
However, I’m sure cultural identity affects our opinions on what we all watch. How big is that impact? Is the difference big enough that we would require sub-dividing of the fandom? For example, if a group of Americans and a group of Chinese watched the same show, does the difference in culture cause the two groups to arrive at vastly different conclusions or have vastly different opinions?
I think the difference could be quite karge. I’ve visited enough Chinese and English fansites to notice that there are palpable differences in what the English speaking audience perceives as classics and what the Chinese speaking audience perceives as classics. For example, Cowboy Bebop, which I deem to be a very Westernised show, is often called a favourite by English fans, but it’s rarely given the same amount of praise and adorations in Chinese circles. Other shows that spot more anime-ish characteristics (or maybe simply a more universal charm), such as Kino no Tabi or Naruto, tend to be more equally well-received by fans on both side of the language divide. However, from my limited experience, Australia fans’ tastes don’t seem to differ much from the fans born in America or Britain, probably because these three cultures are still closely related.
In short, how great, if it exists at all, do you think the impact of cultural upbringing is on our opinions of anime?
13 Comments
Actually, culture affects how we differentiate a good anime series. I’m not totally surprised, because I understood that differentiation (I’m on the minority side of otaku audiences in Singapore, and I can see the differences between the shows the majority Mandarin-speaking otaku favours, and the ones my people watch and defer).
It’s all due to how anime is introduced, internalized and relate to, to an audience. For my side, it was all “macho actions” (name all the shounen shows you can think of) that attracted to e.g. Neuroto and Buriichi, whilst the tastes of the Mandarin-speaking otaku are vastly different.
It perpetuates the stereotype that “lesser races” prefer “tribalistic shows” (which shows guts, manly courage and GAR) while the “sophisticated races” enjoy all sorts of genre. I find it silly, but interesting.
Wow… you went pretty all out in that comment you posted on his blog lol, not that I don’t think you brought up good points. Why include “otaku” in the new name if you want to get away from that image?
Anyway, back to what you were saying, I think that although our cultural upbringings may affect which genres and styles of anime and manga we prefer, the fact is that we are all fans of it to various degrees (some being otaku). I see no reason to divide a group of fans based on location, race or even language. That’s why I think the Japanese word “otaku” was used so that even though we come from different areas and have different languages, we can all connect through the medium of manga and anime. (That didn’t sound as cheesy in my head)
And I think the reason why words like Oztaku, Britaku, or Singtaku (other words from that guy’s blog comments) are created are because we as humans have a fascination and urge to connect with certain ideas and blend things together and overuse portmanteaus like for shipping couples or just somehow making a word a bit more personal, like with oztaku. It’s weird, but it’s human nature.
I don’t think cultural upbringing has much to do with it. Entertainment, in and of itself, showcases the most basics of human desires – which are fundamentally all the same. Europeans eating bread can relate to Chinese eating rice whom can empathize with Arabs eating with their bare hands.
I think that when you go into politics, is when the real misunderstandings arise between cultures.
After you get over the initial “culture shock” of watching a Japanes film, or a French film, or a Nigerian film, or a Korean film, or a Nigerian film, or Persian Film, or an Indian film, or a Polish film, or a Russian film, or a Turkish film then you come to realize that you can enjoy any kind of media as long as the plot, setting and characters are to your liking.
Im an Australian anime/manga fan. If you came into my room and did a 360. You notice my manga on a shelf and whole lot of anime DVDs and that would be it. This all you find in my room to prove I’m a Oztaku.
I love the word and meaning of Otaku it gives a anime/manga fans a face. “Yes, I love to watch cartoons and read comics so what didn’t you when you were young?”.
I may be over 20 yrs old but I am young at heart which makes me ME an otaku til I die of a sudden mecha attack with manga in my hands. LOL
Hmmm really can’t come up with a good answer to that question. Obviously the attitudeto anime, in your country, can affect whether or not you watch it but I’m not sure if it can influence your taste in shows. It seems whatever Japan churns out someone in the anglosaxon world will like it and this is probably true for any cultures product.
Of course this doesn’t really explain why some series are incredibly popular outside of Japan and not inside. I sometimes wonder if these ‘classic’ series are just the shows that were well marketed to the western audiences when they came out (when you couldn’t find every new release that season with a little googling). I can’t imagine something like FMA doing as well as it has done if it came out today.
I’m Australian, I suspect we don’t really differ from American or British fandom very much. We get manga from Cheung Yi (sp?), the singaporian company as well as the American companies and almost all anime distribution is by the one company, but taste wise I think we’re pretty similar.
However I think that being western has some effect as you mentioned.
Oztaku is a magazine here I believe. Manga drawn by Australian artists.
Relatability is an important part of media and if a series is relatable either to current events, the culture or to the “classics” of that culture, it will be much more favoured than a show that isn’t relatable. Cowboy Bebop slipping into western culture is easy to imagine; western media wasn’t too far off from Bebop when it was released. However, imagine something like Aria trying to find its way to mainstream western media. Regardless of how good the show is, there just isn’t enough demand for something like that to happen.
Still, I don’t see the need to break down “otaku” into subcategories of culture. My take is that an Oztaku would be one who is heavily into Australian media, a Taitaku is one heavily into Taiwanese media, etc. Whether one is Japanese, Australian, Singaporean, ___, should not affect the title of “otaku”. Japanese otaku definitely have personal preferences based on personal circumstances. So does the fact that I’m Canadian and elseone is Australian change the fact that we both love Japanese media?
Building on what Senefen posted: OzTaku is indeed an Australian anthology of manga. Releases are somewhat sporadic, but it’s an anthology nevertheless.
Douglass Rushkoff said something interesting at a comic convention with Scott McCloud, possibly in relation to this:
Seemingly, as you’ve put it, anime as content is delivered to nationalities. As with Jacob’s post and the comments here, using nationality as a basis for subculture isn’t operative at all because “the nation” isn’t homogeneous, it is very diverse. The internet attests to this, where people are drawn together not by nationality, but by hobby, though ultimately this is through language, but we can’t confuse language and nationality, though they are very intwined but distinct.
You pointed out that Chinese fans have different opinions of Cowboy Bebop than Westerners do, and that’s really fascinating. Could it be about the music? There’s a list of female, Japanese pianists who have either studied in the West (namely Berklee) and so the influences of jazz in Japan (see Atkins, 2001) are interesting, the interplay of “east” and “west”. Though this is speculative because I don’t know anything on Chinese music, past nor present.
But besides music as a possibility, culture may be one way of explaining preference, but it could also be a political or economic situation. Maybe the markets just don’t exist in China?
Hmmm. I think the difference is that lubczyk focuses on the form of entertainment, while Lupus heeds to the content of it. All humans may be equally subdued by the wonder of anime itself, but surely Marx, had he watched anime, would respond differently to Kaiba than Joseph McCarthy. Bush would respond differently to Princess Mononoke than would Al Gore. And of course all humans have the potential to be socialist or environmentalist, but that very upbringing is dependant upon discourse, culture and society, not human nature: human nature allows for development, but does not dictate it.
I do agree that culture affects how people perceive information from things, like anime and manga. We born in the area that has different social means and rules, so it’s normal we see what is right/wrong , cool/ uncool differently. Anyway, for anime, I don’t think that the different is that obvious…
Ummm… anyone tried Googling the term yet?
I’ll make it a little easier: http://forums.oztaku.com
Website’s been registered since 2003.
Enjoy.
Certainly culture does affect the way we think, what we perceive as important and what not, what we reckon to be cool and what not, but so or even more does our age and what we have experienced… And I dont exactly see fans grouping by age and creating “25-30years” Otaku groups…
My point is we are all anime fans and therefore otaku – without any suffixes or prefixes.
What could have been one of the worst mistakes in my blogging career actually turned out to make people start thinking about cultural fandoms. I admit never having Googled “Oztaku” before I used the word, but sometimes you discover amazing things by mistake.
Oh, and Guy Who Wrote This Article [Edit: Your name is Lupus it appears] (I forget your name, it brings bad painful memories, but you have been redeemed) you could have used an image from Queenie Chan’s The Dreaming for an Australian manga picture.
One Trackback
[...] class="cmd-avatar" /><div class="info"><a href="http://www.thatanimeblog.com/2008/11/01/cultural-impact/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Cultural [...]