Aimless Reminiscing – 1st Day

With 2017 nearing its end, for many it is a time of festivities and indulgence. In this mood of celebration, family gatherings are to be expected, of course. And as it so happens, it is once again time for the 12 Days of Anime event! Which can in some ways be seen as a family gathering of sorts as well, but for the aniblogging community. Last year I wanted to take part but only managed to write up two days on a whim. This year I hope to fare better.

Most of my writing for the upcoming days will be more focused. This won’t be structured around any single point, and there’ll be spoilers for TTGL and Death Note. I guess deep down I felt like reminiscing, and decided a blog post would be a good occasion for just that. Figured I’d prepare a small account of what my journey in this medium has been like.

As a kid, there were plenty of Japanese animation shows on TV that I’d watch (Digimon, Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Doraemon, Ojamajo Doremi, and more) but I’d never thought of them as anything different from Western animation. Around my late middle school years, I ran into Naruto on TV and my thirst for more led me to surf around and begin devouring pixelated episodes one after the other. Thus I began to learn about what “anime” was and how it differed from my “normal”, or what set it apart.

For the next few years, memories remain faint but my fandom mostly grew in the shadow of that specific show, and little else. I made sure to spread such interests in my group of friends at the time, but no one seemingly took to it like I did. To this day I still find some of them asking me if I remember when I liked those Japanese cartoons (little do they know, haha).

 

By high school my interest was starting to die – I felt a jaded veteran of Naruto, seeing twists and turns coming miles ahead of their actual reveals, always disappointed. While I ran into a lot more people who I could enjoy the medium with, I tired of the franchise as well.

 

At the time, some of them introduced me to other series like TTGL, Durarara! or Death Note, all appropriate gateways for the kind of teen I was. I vividly remember staring in shock after episode 8 of TTGL during one afternoon alone at home, incapable of believing they’d put down the one character I stubbornly saw as the protagonist. In another instance, I was floored when L died, and had to stop watching for the day to digest it. Anime was heavy stuff, heh. I also started developing an interest in learning Japanese, amazed by certain classmates undertaking that effort already.

 

During the preparation for college I had to put a lot of my hobbies aside, and not all of them returned so quickly. I thought to “outgrow anime”. Luckily, college friends helped me understand it didn’t have to be that way.

What mainly drew me in again, as a former bookworm, was the frequency with which anime could bring to motion a lot of settings and story-types I’d read about, that would otherwise be quite difficult to put together in live-action (or they’d look fairly odd and off-putting). Fantasy and science-fiction had been my blood and bones for a long time.

These days, I no longer have time the likes of which I stole from my college degree to dump into anime in past years. But it was wonderful while it lasted, and I’m left with a strong desire to keep up with the medium and the culture at large for the foreseeable future. In more recent years, I began reading reviews, first of the humorous kind, and afterwards more serious ones, and my understanding improved a lot thanks to that. I’ve still got too much to learn, but it’s thanks to the many anibloggers, amateurs or professionals, that I’ve gained much in my viewing experience, and now desire to share my own thoughts publically.

As a final note on that, I’ll be putting together a post later on showcasing some of the writers I feel I owe the most to.

For the most part, this wraps up this ramble of sorts! Fairly standard stuff, but that is just the way I like it.