By
Shawn Hutchinson
Photo provided by Christopher Fahlin. Art
by Oda Eiichirō.
Turn
on the TV and you’ll find any number of programs to potentially immerse
yourself in. There are shows for just about everyone. For some people, animated
cartoons from Japan, called anime, are very popular. One of these fans,
Christopher Fahlin, has taken his love of anime even further as he is learning
to speak Japanese.
“I
watch subtitled anime, so I kind of learn [the language],” Fahlin said. “I
wanted to read the manga before they were translated.”
Fahlin
said he likes anime because there tend to be good storylines in the shows, and
they can work in plot elements and actions that regular shows cannot.
“The
best part of anime is that it’s 100% CGI, so they can do whatever the heck they
want,” Fahlin said.
Fahlin
started watching anime in the early 2000s, when shows like Pokémon and Dragon
Ball Z had strong followings. This time represented a boom in American anime
consumption. Now, Fahlin said many anime have gone mainstream, which he considers
a mixed bag.
“A
ton of people I never thought would watch anime actually do,” Fahlin said. “The
downside is that mainstream anime do exist. They’re trying to make money, but
they have really bad plots.”
A
person familiar with the history of anime in the United States, Russ Walsh,
said this is part of the bubble bursting on anime.
“Back
in the day, there were seven or eight huge companies, and now there’s just
Crunchyroll and Funimation,” Walsh said about American anime companies.
Walsh
said anime has developed its own niche fandom among other media commonly categorized
as appealing to nerd audiences. Walsh said the anime group is big enough to be
noticed, but still separate from the fandoms around major video game and movie
franchises.
Not
everyone is on the anime bandwagon these days. Ted Sandberg considers himself a
casual anime watcher.
“I
developed a more perceptive eye for the faults in the content, the errors in
animation, and anime was just kind of a phase for me,” Sandberg said.
Sandberg
said current anime shows have a problem with focusing on a romantic comedy
plotline.
“You
can take the main plot of just about every show, and it’d be the exact same
thing, give or take a couple of variables,” Sandberg said.
Anime
has lost a bit of steam since about 2008, but it still maintains a large
following in the United States. Walsh said the key to future growth lies in
Japanese companies embracing the streaming culture. He said Japanese companies
will probably need to embrace streaming and working with Western companies to
find a larger audience.
Sandberg
said anime is not something people tend to get into just on their own.
“It’s
definitely a thing where unless something really captivates you, you’ll
probably get into it from a friend,” Sandberg said. “I didn’t have close
friends interested in it, so that’s why I fell out.”
Still,
for Fahlin, anime remains an important part of his identity that he is willing
to stick with.
“When
I first started watching anime, I thought ‘wow, this is cool,’” Fahlin said. “I
don’t care what other people think about it. I’m going to watch it no matter
what people think. You’ve got to watch what makes you happy.”
