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Auryn posted:Have to agree here. One of the overall best posts I've read in recent memory. More, please! I've read every page of this thread, and the contributors are just amazing people! Both for writing such entertaining stuff, and for somehow enduring this insanity without being corrupted themselves! I think I said thanks already but if not... Thanks for sharing, guys! I knew a crazy anime girl myself during high school. She was the typical greasy, unwashed, yaoi-obsessed type. There's really nothing remarkable about her to relate, other than that she went to an anime convention a few years back and had her picture taken with the voice actor for one of the characters for Full Metal Alchemist. (Someone named Edward?) When I spotted the photo uploaded to Facebook, I immediately cringed. The poor guy has a very fake grin plastered on his face, looking horrified at having to be in such close proximity to her stinkyness. She is seriously clinging to him in the photo, and her unwashed hair is gooped to her head. It's awful. While that's not terribly entertaining, what WAS hilarious was finding a picture of her at another convention not too long later, where she posed with the same guy, only everything in this photo is times two. Facial expression, disgust, grease. Should I have qualms about sharing pictures? 'Cause I don't.
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Dec 18, 2011 06:32
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Auryn posted:Have to agree here. One of the overall best posts I've read in recent memory. More, please! 
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Dec 18, 2011 06:36
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Knight of the
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 How did you not blow your top with Summer when she pulled that poo poo? Hell, how did you ever put up with any of that World War II bullshit?
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Dec 18, 2011 06:59
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Thermophonic Joy posted:I've read every page of this thread, and the contributors are just amazing people! Both for writing such entertaining stuff, and for somehow enduring this insanity without being corrupted themselves! Motherfucking Vic Mignona. He has legions of absolutely insane fans, who he totally hams it up for. There are conflicting reports about whether he's genuinely a nice guy or an rear end in a top hat famewhore - I spoke to him in an elevator once, and it was pleasant enough - and he's an evangelical Pentecostal fundamentalist.
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Dec 18, 2011 07:03
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purple_sammich posted:I think Jed's insanity and poo poo lasagna were the pinnacle of insanity and poo poo lasagnas. On that note, I never thought I would hear about a poo poo lasagna ever again in any context. This thread never ceases to amaze. Um, the kawaiiest, are you sure that this faecal lasagne was of canine origin? I'm starting to suspect that your unwashed cohabitant was not housebroken.
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Dec 18, 2011 07:05
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LadySage posted:Motherfucking Vic Mignona. He has legions of absolutely insane fans, who he totally hams it up for. There are conflicting reports about whether he's genuinely a nice guy or an rear end in a top hat famewhore - I spoke to him in an elevator once, and it was pleasant enough - and he's an evangelical Pentecostal fundamentalist. Yeah, I guess that's the guy. He does look like a total douchebag in the photos. Not even the strongest wind could ruffle that expertly gelled coiffure. 
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Dec 18, 2011 07:27
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Frozen Horse posted:Um, the kawaiiest, are you sure that this faecal lasagne was of canine origin? I'm starting to suspect that your unwashed cohabitant was not housebroken. 
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Dec 18, 2011 08:22
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I've only ever experienced these people through proxy. All of my friends seem to "know one," but I guess I'm too big of an rear end in a top hat to get in on the crazy. There was a girl in high school though that made a 60 page "manga" about me being her Inu Yasha. Also my comic book self was opposite gender. Also I had wings. And the Japanese exchange student was her best friend/rival in love. I used to have a copy of the comic, but I never talked to this girl in my life. Neither did the exchange student.
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Dec 18, 2011 11:30
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This is how my first girlfriend dumped me  She had a mystical man in her head that would rape her called Bryan. Also the bad guy from The Incredibles. Also she drew yaoi. That relationship kinda screwed me up a little.
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Dec 18, 2011 12:37
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Viola the Mad posted:
That is a really, really good question. Out of all the stuff I eventually called her out on, I never said a word about her crazy Hitler/dictator thing. I think I purposely didn't think about it, or else it seemed relatively normal underneath all the other crazy. At least she got over her "I think I'm Jewish today" phase without my intervention. She was like a child; if her behavior wasn't encouraged by attention it usually went away. EDIT: Actually it was probably because if anyone ever got within inches of criticizing something about Summer, she'd go into a depressive self-hate spiral all day about how she's an awful person and deserves to die, and I'd have to spend hours talking her down. It was generally not worth my time to blow my top with her. Snapdragon750 fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Dec 18, 2011 |
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Dec 18, 2011 13:54
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Thermophonic Joy posted:When I spotted the photo uploaded to Facebook, I immediately cringed. The poor guy has a very fake grin plastered on his face, looking horrified at having to be in such close proximity to her stinkyness. She is seriously clinging to him in the photo, and her unwashed hair is gooped to her head. It's awful. If you don't want to share photos in this thread, it certainly sounds like they would qualify for the awkward/ugly photos thread in PYF. Oh, and I had a friend who thought she was Sailor Moon in high school, but she grew up to be normal, well-adjusted, and successful. There's hope for some people 
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Dec 18, 2011 15:29
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Thermophonic Joy posted:Should I have qualms about sharing pictures? 'Cause I don't. We won't judge you in the event that you decide to share these photos for the sake of science.
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Dec 18, 2011 17:51
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The stories in this thread are simultaneously horrifying and entertaining. Kudos to uglynoodles et al for putting up with this kind of stuff and coming out okay from all of it. I have some stories about being friends with a rich white kid who was a pathological liar and made himself out to be the supreme ladies man at as young as 13, but I'm not sure if they fit with this thread which is mainly about anime/fandom craziness.
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Dec 18, 2011 18:22
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Snapdragon750 posted:That is a really, really good question. Out of all the stuff I eventually called her out on, I never said a word about her crazy Hitler/dictator thing. I think I purposely didn't think about it, or else it seemed relatively normal underneath all the other crazy. My theory is that this kind of delusional behaviour is symptomatic of really low self-esteem. I get why some of the hairysticky ham people described in this thread would have low self-esteem, but why would Summer if she was sort of...normal-looking and not completely socially inept? Did she have a really rough home life?
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Dec 18, 2011 18:22
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bringmyfishback posted:My theory is that this kind of delusional behaviour is symptomatic of really low self-esteem. I get why some of the hairysticky ham people described in this thread would have low self-esteem, but why would Summer if she was sort of...normal-looking and not completely socially inept? Did she have a really rough home life? Summer's mom was a bit of a dramatic crazyperson herself, and she was verbally abusive. She called Summer a lot of things that Summer probably really was, but you should never say those things to your daughter. She also accused her of things she didn't do and was so overprotective that Summer was grounded pretty much constantly for doing things like waxing her eyebrows without permission, getting a C on a test, or, once, crossing the street (at sixteen). Once she was punished for yelling across the house by losing her bedroom door, and another time her mom punished her by making her take a rolling backpack to school instead of her regular backpack, presumably to embarrass her. Summer's mom never trusted her and thought she was stealing and into drugs, which she wasn't. So I'm guessing Summer's crazy comes from a mix of the verbal abuse and probably a genetic tendency toward mental disorders.
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Dec 18, 2011 18:43
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UnknownMercenary posted:
There's always the pathological liar thread at http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3451555
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Dec 18, 2011 19:10
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bringmyfishback posted:My theory is that this kind of delusional behaviour is symptomatic of really low self-esteem. I get why some of the hairysticky ham people described in this thread would have low self-esteem, but why would Summer if she was sort of...normal-looking and not completely socially inept? Did she have a really rough home life? my guess would be genuine psychological issues such as borderline personality disorder, etc? I mean, while many of the folks described throughout this thread added their particular flavor of crazy into the mix (Denisse, Piccolo girl, aviator jacket guy, etc) some common elements appear - difficult home life, deep insecurities, low self-esteem, underwhelming academic (or any other kind of) prowess... Summer does kind of break the pattern (e: oh just noticed she had a sort of crazy mom, guess she's not too far from the overall pattern then), but it is important to take notice that for most psychological disorders there isn't a "cause" - one might have a predisposition to suffer them via genetics, but other than the existence of some obvious highly stressful experiences that can work as triggers, there's not a definite "if this happens to you you'll go crazy this way" cause-and-effect framework. i do think we should consider how exactly "Parrier's Syndrome" works on these folk's minds - do they genuinely believe that this is real, or have they come to depend on their make believe world in such a way that they can't allow themselves to outwardly admit it's bullshit, even though deep down they're aware it's just an escapist fantasy? is it a mixture of the two? not that i'm saying that "i believe in anime world" is a legit mental health illness, but it could be a culturally induced manifestation of a more general condition. i am talking out of my rear end though!! my psych background is limited to wikipedia and MY MOM SexyBlindfold fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Dec 18, 2011 |
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Dec 18, 2011 20:26
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Snapdragon750 posted:Summer's mom was a bit of a dramatic crazyperson herself, and she was verbally abusive. She called Summer a lot of things that Summer probably really was, but you should never say those things to your daughter. She also accused her of things she didn't do and was so overprotective that Summer was grounded pretty much constantly for doing things like waxing her eyebrows without permission, getting a C on a test, or, once, crossing the street (at sixteen). Once she was punished for yelling across the house by losing her bedroom door, and another time her mom punished her by making her take a rolling backpack to school instead of her regular backpack, presumably to embarrass her. Summer's mom never trusted her and thought she was stealing and into drugs, which she wasn't. That stuff all sounds really manic. Really really manic. Could quite be bi-polar or something along those lines.
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Dec 18, 2011 21:50
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Snapdragon750 posted:Summer's mom was a bit of a dramatic crazyperson herself, and she was verbally abusive. She called Summer a lot of things that Summer probably really was, but you should never say those things to your daughter. She also accused her of things she didn't do and was so overprotective that Summer was grounded pretty much constantly for doing things like waxing her eyebrows without permission, getting a C on a test, or, once, crossing the street (at sixteen). Once she was punished for yelling across the house by losing her bedroom door, and another time her mom punished her by making her take a rolling backpack to school instead of her regular backpack, presumably to embarrass her. Summer's mom never trusted her and thought she was stealing and into drugs, which she wasn't.
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Dec 18, 2011 22:29
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Thermophonic Joy posted:
You should have qualms. You should not let them stop you. pleasepleaseplease I want to see! 
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Dec 18, 2011 22:33
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Kingnothing posted:That stuff all sounds really manic. Really really manic. Could quite be bi-polar or something along those lines. I'd be surprised if Summer weren't manic-depressive; she would go from "LUFTWAFFE DRUM MAJOR *gigglegigglegiggle* I love Mr. Piccolo!" to "I hate myself and want to die" more than once throughout the course of a single day. She never went through any legit suicide attempt or actual self-mutilation though; she'd just threaten constantly and once (ONCE) barely scratched herself on her wrist with a scissor so that for the next 5 years she could show me one of the lines on her wrist that everyone has and say, "I still have the scar." Then she labeled herself as a cutter and told everyone who spent more than 10 minutes getting to know her her "deep dark secret" of how she cuts herself. So it's like...she had legit reasons to be depressed, but I still to this day don't know if she was really depressed or just pretended to be for all the attention it got her.
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Dec 18, 2011 23:16
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Twiggy Johnson posted:We won't judge you in the event that you decide to share these photos for the sake of science. Well, when you put it that way...   And the second, and more disturbing photo:  My original post about these photos. Thermophonic Joy fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Dec 19, 2011 |
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Dec 19, 2011 01:16
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I love this thread. I decided to share...it's not a teenager and anime, it was my friend's mom and the bible. I didn't have internet until I graduated High School (rural area), if I had I probably would have realized just how weird this was. I hope this doesn't suck, it's likely not as entertaining as some of the stories posted in this thread, and I'm probably wordy. And really, only the stuff mentioned here was the interesting things. Her mom wasn't as crazy when I was there. I'm sure my friend has some stories, but I haven't talked to her in years. My friend we'll call Angel, her mom Sue, her older brother Archie, her dad Luke, and her younger sister Abby. I met Angel in sixth grade, and we lived within walking distance from each other's houses, we were both quiet, and we both liked to read, so naturally we became BFFs. Sue was a fundamentalist Christan who had long rules Angel and her siblings (and me, when I was there) had to follow, but nothing bad enough to cause me to stay away from Angel or her house. There was only a few off things I noticed. One was that Luke (who was a big comic book nerd,) had to keep his comics in a locked box in the garage so none of the kids could read them and be tempted or whatever. Second, Angel had to do a lot more chores than her siblings, and since I was there anyway most of the time, I helped her. We were the ones who kept that house so clean. Also, Angel (and to a lesser extent, her siblings) couldn't have any money of her own without Sue suddenly deciding to charge her for "rent," or something else that was just an excuse to get Angel's birthday or Christmas money (since Angel didn't receive an allowance,) that Angel received from her relatives. And finally, when I met Angel and her family, they had three cats, one dog. Four years later, they had seventeen cats and eight dogs. By the time Angel and I graduated high school, they had forty something cats. Sue didn't believe in fixing pets, as it was against God's will. She was really good at finding some of them homes, otherwise they would have had a lot more. Oh, and also, their house, while kept very clean was packed with stuff. Not quite Hoarders level stuff, but I would say it was a total fire hazard. At my house, by the way, were my druggie parents, bipolar grandma, and a long parade of my parents druggie friends going in and out. So some things at Angel's house were a bit odd, mean, or just plain unfair, it was still aces better than my house. One day, sometime in 10th grade, Angel and I arrived at Angel's house and put our school books on the table to do our homework. I had a Harry Potter book in with my text books that I was in the middle of. Sue saw it and did typical Harry Potter is satanist blah blah stuff. I hadn't realized Harry Potter was against Sue's rules, considering some of the books in their bookcases, and would have kept it in my back pack had I known. After she finished her tirade, she fainted. Kinda. After a very long minute, she stood up, and faced a very red faced Angel and me. Speaking in a low tone, she told me that God would forgive me for reading Harry Potter if I swore on a bible right then that I wouldn't touch it again. I swore on that bible, and tossed the Harry Potter book into the trash can like she told me too. I was so freaked out I actually went home way earlier than I usually did. The next day at school, Angel had brought the Harry Potter book for me, as it was a library book. I was still a little freaked out, and didn't want to touch it, and I had her put it into the libraries return bin for me. It took me till the next book had come out to finish reading whatever one that was, by the way. Naturally, I asked Angel what was up with her mom. Angel then explained to me that Sue sometimes was possessed by a male angel prophet. I can't remember what name she said, so let's go with Bob. Bob had foretold that Angel's brother Archie was Jesus reborn. Bob appeared every day, usually, almost always to shame Angel or Luke, to praise Archie, or to remind Angel and Abby that they would serve Archie and spread the word about Archie when the time came. Sue & Bob's big plan for them to go around spreading the word of Archie was to get into Sue's minivan, and start driving around. Oh, and Bob almost didn't let Angel be friends with me, but changed his mind. Angel said she was glad Bob changed his mind, because I was the first friend Sue and Bob said she could have outside of school. Angel, by the way, completely and utterly believed her Mom was the spirit vessel of an angelic prophet, and that after Abby finished High School, Archie, Abby, and Angel would start spreading the word. I didn't really believe Sue, but I called Sue mom, and she let me be at their house a lot more than most people would, so I didn't really speak up or anything. Life continued on. Bob showed himself in my presence every now and then, but nothing near as terrifying as the first time. Usually it was to praise my cleaning or grades, and hint that Archie deserved someone like me. Archie was (and still is) an ugly, fat, anti-social jerk who literally thought he was Jesus. He once punched me in the face on the school bus because I tossed a folder to Angel, who was sitting next to him and it landed on his lap instead of hers. And he never apologized. There was no way, Jesus or not, I was marrying him and having his babies, no matter what Bob kept hinting he saw in the future. Anyway, on to our final year of high school. Archie had graduated the year before, and was idling his time away waiting for Abby to graduate the next year by playing World Of Warcraft. Archie and Sue were the only ones allowed on the computer, by the way. Things were going as normal as normal was there, until mid school year or so. I really only hung out with Angel after school and on the weekends, and not during school because she switched to a new group of friends who didn't like me or our old group much. I was there, however, when sixteen and a half year old Abby told Sue, Luke, Archie, Angel and myself she was pregnant and wanted to get married to her boyfriend. Her one friend that Sue & Ben approved of for after school friendship had an older brother, and Abby was at their house a lot. Turns out she got along better with him than her. It went over about as well as you'd expect. Angel told me later that all she could think of was how much work it was to take care of a baby. Archie was trying to use his Jesus powers to cause a miscarriage or something (by waving his hands around Abby's general direction. It was the first time I had seen him try to use his powers.) Sue-as-Bob was had a temper tantrum of epic proportions, and kept insisting it was devil spawn trying to block the prophecy and destroy the world. I think that's what caused something to click in Luke, and for the first time he actually stopped being passive and letting Sue and Bob rule the house. He actually told her to "Cut out that nonsense." A few days later, Luke ended up taking Abby and Angel and moving out. My friendship with Angel pretty much dissolved by the time we graduated. We didn't live by each other anymore we couldn't hang out much after school & on weekends. Luke was also way way more lenient than Sue and still passive, so Angel could do what she wanted, and hang out with who she wanted to and that wasn't often me. We did see each other every now and then but usually when she wanted me to hang out with her it was actually her and her new friends, and they still didn't like me much. Obviously I didn't go over to Sue's house without Angel there. I pretty much haven't had much contact with any of them in years. So here's what I know about them now. Last I talked to Angel was a few years ago, and she was a hipster in Oregon squatting with a bunch of other hipsters in a foreclosed on house. Luke and Sue got a divorce. Sue met a guy on World of Warcraft and moved across the country to be with him (taking Archie of course). Abby married her boyfriend, had another kid with him, and was doing good last I heard from a third party. Archie still lives with his mom, weighs at least 300 pounds, has never held a job, still plays WoW, and probably posts on those forums that talk about how women oppress and tempt men. He messaged me on my old myspace account I hadn't logged into in years...his is updated regularly. His profile photo is him holding a sword.
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Dec 19, 2011 02:14
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Ahhh Real Zombies! posted:
I thought your story would be pretty run-of-the-mill crazy fundamentalist Christian parenting. Then I read this. 
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Dec 19, 2011 03:31
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I knew a girl like this in Middle School! I wish my memories and records of this were better, but I'll do what I can with what I've got. Please know that these girls were a couple years older than me (13/14) and I was young for my age - 10/11 in 6th/7th grade. It was right after Fellowship of the Ring had come out. I knew almost nothing about anime since I wasn't allowed to stay up late enough to watch Toonami. I had watched pokemon and I guess maybe Yu Gi Oh! if it was out at that point but I was pretty much still watching Looney Toons and my favorite childhood show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. I knew what it was, and that my brother watched it some (he was big into Gundam and DBZ), and during my friendship with this girl I think I read most of Chobits, which I found weird but interesting enough. Sarah Part I: The Introduction I met Sarah through a group of rather low-achieving friends I'd managed to make floating around as a wide-eyed ten year old at a brand new school. They were mostly your run of the mill angsty teenagers, most of them are married now and work somewhere between wal-mart and the local alternative medicine/spirituality store. Harmless, but probably not a great influence. Sarah was the only really crazy one, and she was complete with her own Uglynoodles/Kat, who tried to be supportive and understanding but generally was not as crazy as Sarah. Sarah had the weirdest name ever. I think this is important because it was her birthname, I have no idea where it came from and I expect it suggests a craziness that was inherited. She was really pale and white with badly dyed-black hair and an attitude that she was princess of everything. Because I was small, cute and impressionable she liked me immediately. I started hanging around with her and her less-crazy friend Faith. Sarah introduces me to Chobits, tells me about animes she likes and I sort of nod and do some research on my own. I liked some of the stuff I found that was funny and had robots in it (Full Metal Panic, maybe?) but most of it didn't really click with me. I did like the Lord of the Rings movie that had just come out, and Sarah seemed to like chatting with me about it, and especially about Legolas and Galadriel and the other elves, all of whose names she knew. She told me that she'd been studying Quenya, which I thought was pretty cool because even back then I was a huge language nerd. She started showing me some stuff about its grammar and phonology, and we had fun writing notes in "elvish" (really just English words with the elvish script). A few weeks after that she decided to confide in me. Sarah told me that she was an elf. Just like in Tolkien, which is why she was taller and prettier than everyone else. Sarah looked a lot like a horse, so this confused me, but hey cool an elf! Ten year old me had barely stopped pretending to ride invisible horses around the backyard with my best friend, I could manage this, it sounded like a fun game! Oh, how wrong I was. I was informed that I, also was an elf (as was Faith), just a smaller, younger, less-pretty elf. And that Sarah was an Elven princess, and that her father had been a King of Elves. All this came with a lot of probably very-canon LOTR history I've since forgotten but boy I used to know names like Gloin and Glorfindel and such. Then she told me about her Astral Elf Boyfriend. He'd given her an elven name (Luineleer) and I got one too (Lokte, which I thought sounded like a Jewish potato pancake). I cannot find this Astral Elf Boyfriend's name but I know it was elvish and it started with Isil-. So Isil it is. She would talk to him through her dreams and through seances, which she wanted us all to hold together during lunch. I think he also astrally impregnated her. She was demanding and manipulative and tried for awhile to dress me up like the main character from Chobits, which horrified me greatly (I was still wearing my big brother's hand me down sweatshirts), but I see from this thread has apparently become A Thing. She believed thoroughly that someday this boyfriend would arrive to take her away to a different world, apparently one in which anime characters and elves live together in harmony. She was mocked mercilessly for her weirdness, but I've gotta say, she didn't let it phase her. When our middle school choir sang an Enya song from Lord of the Rings with some elvish in it, you bet she jumped right up to the front of the class and gave us all a lecture on correct pronunciation. She owned her crazy, every last bit of it. That is, until I tried to suggest that her boyfriend might not be real. After all, she told me I had one too and I'd never heard or felt a drat thing. Her revenge for that suggestion was slow, carefully-deliberated and very cold. I have more stories of Sarah, including the time she drugged her mother in order to get laid. I wish I could share pictures, and I found a beautiful website she made in 2005 that exhibits this crazy so well, but I'm not in touch with her anymore and while a quick facebook stalk suggests otherwise, she may no longer be a crazy person.
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Dec 19, 2011 03:37
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Thermophonic Joy posted: is all I can say about those fine individuals.
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Dec 19, 2011 03:39
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Runcible Cat posted:Misha Collins' wife gets an incredible amount of hate too, which really depresses me - she's kind of goofy-looking and insanely smart and she's got herself this steaming hot husband; all I can think is good for her, it's not something you often see that way round. But the fans loathe her with a passion; the poo poo that's posted about her looks would make 4chan say hang on a second. And this is from women. She may be a little goofy looking but she wrote the book on threesomes...
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Dec 19, 2011 05:29
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InEscape posted:Her revenge for that suggestion was slow, carefully-deliberated and very cold. InEscape posted:I have more stories of Sarah, including the time she drugged her mother in order to get laid. InEscape posted:I found a beautiful website she made in 2005 that exhibits this crazy so well Need to see this. For the love of god, woman!
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Dec 19, 2011 05:37
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cuntvalet posted:Also, I know somebody mentioned it before, but...what is it with people with emotional malfunctions drifting towards anime instead of...well, any other bit of pop culture? Gonna try to keep this as concise as possible, but I think this is going to be one hell of a wall-of-text. I'm pretty sure I was that creepy friend in my younger days. The height of my anime-delirium started in the late 90s, and at its worst I was importing expensive-as-hell Japanese Anime LaserDiscs and was pretty goddamn convinced Anime was the best thing ever and other people just needed to open their eyes. I also studied Japanese in University because of this (and like most people who studied Japanese for that reason, really struggled with it and still do), and taught English in Japan for a few years, even bringing home my now-wife (although she herself is from New Zealand, not Japanese). In saying all of this I avoided getting "that bad," I never wore cat ears or truly believe I was Jubei or anything like that. I somehow never even really had anime friends (almost joined an Anime club in my province's college equivalent, but I had a really hard time opening up to people and some combination of them seeming "off" and myself thinking I was better than them prevented me from doing so). I did find myself related to a lot of the more struggling "heroes" in Anime like the protagonist in Wings of Honneamise and the like, for what that's worth. In saying all of this, I think at several points in time I was one bad decision away from ending up with a pillow for a wife. For Western TV, I watched The Simpsons and basically nothing else, I never really 'got' shows like Seinfeld and Friends which were on at the time. I was pretty heavily bullied and had a lot of girl problems, and I think this had a lot to do with my never getting into these shows (the bullies enjoy this because they're stupid, I won't stoop to their level by liking it too). I think it really comes to Anime being a sort of bridge for people with a 12 year-old mindset who want to feel "mature." I went through a depressive phase in my teenage years (bullying, serious girl problems) and got really hooked on Anime at the time, which was basically 1996 and a few years beyond that (for reference I was born in 81). Especially back then Anime was the only medium that really filled that sort of void; anything aimed at children was pretty hard to watch as an adult, with very few exceptions, and the only "adult" animated show was The Simpsons. I think "animated" is an important qualifier, because real life was something I viewed as unpleasant I didn't enjoy watching real people with real problems. "Oh, you're having problems with your girlfriend/wife? gently caress YOU FOR EVEN HAVING A GIRLFRIEND." Similarly, most of the new brand of Western "Adult" Animated shows aren't places you'd legitimately want to escape to. No one watches South Park and go "wow, I want to be JUST like Randy." I think some of the longer-running Sci-Fi shows like Star Trek have a certain form of appeal, but I don't think they're varied enough or have the complete package to draw out the true crazies in the same way Anime does. Anime had that whole video game-like aspect to it (and at the time video games were also very much a loner hobby, as Playstation's extreme marketing hadn't quite yet mainstreamed video games in the West). Related, Anime is built in a way where you can very easily picture yourself as the main character, or at least his friend in his world. The Matrix was quite similar in this regards (and some feel that Keanu Reeves was the perfect choice for Neo specifically because apparently something about him lets audience members self-insert themselves as him). Going beyond that, Anime is an astonishingly no-holds-barred medium, with tons of sexism, violence and just general hosed-up-ness in shows and movies, even if they're aimed at small children, which I think holds HUGE appeal to people wanting to be rebels of sorts. Compared to American "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" insanity, Japanese children's entertainment gives exactly zero fucks with regards to the messages it's teaching as long as its target audience keeps watching. The amount of stuff that would be considered psychological and sexual abuse by Western standards is nuts, and it's pretty telling when a show made for children by frickin' Nintendo still had to be heavily edited for Western broadcast to the point where some episodes were cut entirely. Even going beyond that is that quite a bit of Anime has loner characters (Sephiroth et al) and touches on abandonment issues, again even in children-aimed stuff; the children in Totoro have a mother suffering from TB who has to stay in a far-away hospital and has a very real chance of dying, and in a more recent anime film Brave Story, the main character, a young boy, whose father had recently up-and-left him and his mother, has a scene near the end in, if memory serves, a kind of "your worst fear" room in a fantasy world; his worst fear took the shape of his father basically pinning the kid against a wall and loudly proclaiming every bad thing in his father's life to be his fault and him leaving to "get away from YOU!" while the main character bawled his eyes out. Even coming from a family where my parents were happily married it was brutal to watch. However, I think the fact that they're touching on this stuff at all and drawing in an audience going through those sorts of rocky patches with familial breakdowns...also note how many of the people in the horror stories in this thread went through horrible poo poo; Anime has the appearance of being that rare-as-hell "we understand you" voice when you feel at your most alone and vulnerable. Further, in the real world, Japanese celebrities and politicians have said horribly misogynistic things (including women) that in the Western world would have been career-ending before their interview or speed would have been over (all of their careers are fine last I checked, I'm pretty sure the politicians were re-elected). Japanese society is this really weird blend of some old ideals that some would perceive as "the good old days"; I taught an eldery woman in Japan who, in one classroom discussion, announced that babysitters didn't exist in Japan. Not "people don't use them here", as in the concept doesn't exist whatsoever, because the wife is always home, and if she isn't the grandmother's around too because they all live forever and nothing bad ever happens and there's no such thing as a single father situation. This wasn't a translation snafu or some other communications breakdown, this is literally what she believed. So here we have a land where the impression is that "I will be popular because I know all the animes, plus women know their place unlike here in America and once I score myself a waifu I'll finally have all the sex I haven't been having," coupled with Anime being an escapist fantasy from THAT, plus this twisted idea about Anime being a respected medium in Japan (which is to say that Anime was recognized as a legitimate artform in Japan and was winning actual awards long before it was in the West, but what wasn't touched on was how much of it wasn't and was just junk) gives self-proclaimed Otaku everywhere this idea that they're "normal" by Japanese standards and can finally fit in. And this "I finally fit in here" ideal is key, because only the most tortured, legitimately-serial-killer people out there don't truly have this as their end goal. Every person you see who's enjoying Otaku-thon a little TOO much is someone who dreams of a utopia where basically his entire surroundings are a 24/7 anime convention where no one hates Anime and the Pocky never runs out. Add in the various nerd fallacies about never being able to criticize anybody for anything, and it just becomes a perfect storm. tl:dr - Anime is popular vs other forms of media because it's relatable to crazy, bitter, lonely nerds in a hosed-up way that no other media really pulls off. I'm happy to expand on certain details if there's interest, but something tells me I did more than enough here.
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Dec 19, 2011 06:19
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univbee posted:In saying all of this, I think at several points in time I was one bad decision away from ending up with a pillow for a wife. Would like details on this.
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Dec 19, 2011 07:59
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InEscape posted:Ten year old me had barely stopped pretending to ride invisible horses around the backyard with my best friend, I could manage this, it sounded like a fun game! Oh, how wrong I was. Hell yes! A fellow invisihorse-rider! I used to jump my dad's hedge with mine. The poor hedge never recovered... InEscape posted:She believed thoroughly that someday this boyfriend would arrive to take her away to a different world, apparently one in which anime characters and elves live together in harmony. Denise also believed this. She'd tell be about how the boys were working on a thing to get us all out of here. This was mainly in the Heero Yuy era, but Sephiroth was working on it too. When the Naruto and Bleach folks came around and Denise became Parrier, this didn't seem to be such a big thing anymore.
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Dec 19, 2011 08:25
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univbee posted:I'm happy to expand on certain details if there's interest, but something tells me I did more than enough here. I'd like to hear more about your experiences living in Japan. Did you go to Japan expecting it to be all anime paradise, or were your expectations pretty reasonable? I live in Japan too, and I've seen my share of anime freaks come and go, but the long-term ones tend to be pretty functional people, because living and holding down a job in a foreign country takes a level of competence that most of the people mentioned in this thread don't have. I'd love to hear stories about how Denise and the previously-mentioned Lolitas flipped their poo poo when they got to Japan. For some reason Japanese TV stations love to go out in Tokyo and find the fattest, greasiest anime nerd tourists and put them on TV, making me weep with shame for my country. I saw something a while ago where they were talking to this fat American cosplayer girl, and they convinced her to have some sort of makeover and put the most ridiculous make-up on her. I am convinced that the media likes to troll the poo poo out of foreign otakus, which is both hilarious and mortifying.
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Dec 19, 2011 08:45
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LyonsLions posted:For some reason Japanese TV stations love to go out in Tokyo and find the fattest, greasiest anime nerd tourists and put them on TV, making me weep with shame for my country. I saw something a while ago where they were talking to this fat American cosplayer girl, and they convinced her to have some sort of makeover and put the most ridiculous make-up on her. I am convinced that the media likes to troll the poo poo out of foreign otakus, which is both hilarious and mortifying. Would making weeaboos watch those kinds of programs cause them to realize that's how they come across to people, and that they should clean up their act? Or would it just cause them to go into denial and/or ignore it?
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Dec 19, 2011 09:17
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LyonsLions posted:I'd love to hear stories about how Denise and the previously-mentioned Lolitas flipped their poo poo when they got to Japan. Fortunately, I did not have the pleasure of accompanying Denise to Japan. She neglected to invite me. I would have said 'no' if she had (more like hell no), since I had become resistant to spending time with her at that point. I had enough fun babysitting her on a domestic flight. I had no desire to do the same on an international flight to a country where she can't even speak the loving language. That still gets me. She loves Japan and all, but won't learn Japanese beyond random anime sayings. Probably because  I do know that she found a life-sized Sephiroth in the Squeenix store, and that she hit up a lot of anime stores. I cringe to imagine her in a temple.
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Dec 19, 2011 09:45
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Hedera Helix posted:Would making weeaboos watch those kinds of programs cause them to realize that's how they come across to people, and that they should clean up their act? Or would it just cause them to go into denial and/or ignore it? I would imagine it's the same as creeps who watch To Catch A Predator yet still try to pick up underage girls on the internet. They don't have the self awareness to realise that they behave exactly like the people on the TV, or if they do, they think they're a ~*special unique snowflake*~ to whom social rules or laws don't apply. froglet fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Dec 19, 2011 |
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Dec 19, 2011 10:31
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LyonsLions posted:For some reason Japanese TV stations love to go out in Tokyo and find the fattest, greasiest anime nerd tourists and put them on TV It's for the exact same reason that this thread is gold. You know, it's kinda reassuring to know that despite our so many cultural differences, there are some things that both the East and West find fascinatingly weird.
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Dec 19, 2011 12:27
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I know a guy who watches a live stream of some street in Akihabara literally all day long because he wants to "feel closer to Japan". He freaked out the other day because the audio was removed and he could no longer hear the cars. I'm an artist and I'm pretty good at drawing animes so I do a lot of commissions for anime fans. I deal with otakus and weeaboos and crazy people almost every day. I swear I don't mind weeaboos too much when they're just kids because hey, everyone is dumb when they're a kid. But this guy is in his 40s. He is in his 40s and he thinks Japan is anime Pocky wonderland. He's like this huge fat hairy guy and now that I think of it, he probably has a pillow for a wife. Ew. Well at least he's not a lolicon I guess...
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Dec 19, 2011 13:20
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Zotwoz posted:Would like details on this. I don't have any concrete examples, these are more hunches. When my Anime desires were at their highest, I was definitely a highly-impressionable person, and I think if the wrong people had caught on to it I could have easily been cult-ish, take that as you will. LyonsLions posted:I'd like to hear more about your experiences living in Japan. Did you go to Japan expecting it to be all anime paradise, or were your expectations pretty reasonable? Preface: I was in Japan from September 2005 to about a year later, and then returned in May of the following year and was there for a year and a half. In my first stay, I taught for the official elementary school board in a mid-sized town about 20 minutes outside of Sapporo, in Hokkaido. During that time is when I met my now-wife, and sowed the seeds for my return, where I taught at a private English school she was working for too, which taught literally every age group from 18 months (yes, really) to retirees in their 80s. I definitely had a bit of culture shock in Japan, but I didn't have a "my world view is shattered" kind of issues. Fact of the matter is, I think Japan does certain things a LOT better than where I'm from. Their trains are insanely on-time and well-priced (having a train leave every two hours going to the most remote bumfuck-nowhere place was a hell of a change from where I came from). You can sell/trade all kinds of stuff at video stores and pawn shops, and at the time (pre-Game Center CX catching on) that stuff was CHEAP, I couldn't believe I could get mint condition old video game consoles (these were so mint they still had the original price tag on them) for the change kicking around in my pocket. If I was up late (which happened a lot in the second half of my stay because I worked from 1-9) there were 24/7 convenience stores and vending machines everywhere for me to get my fix. What blew me away, for lack of a better term, was how "normal" everything was. At the end of the day, Japan is just like any other country. It was pretty compact and had very little of the desolate stretches I was used to in my Quebec-New Brunswick road trips, but there were still rural areas (I was in Hokkaido if that helps). Teaching at an elementary school there helped too, seeing a normal group of kids of all ages just going through the motions in Japan was an interesting experience. Teaching for the private school was interesting too. It was interesting seeing the dynamic; what people in different age groups were like, how things changed as time went on, what the younger kids' parents were like...you had a lot of everything; helicopter parents who were trying to call the shots, teenagers being...dumb teenagers, the super-hot cool high school kid who spoke English stupidly well, batty old ladies, with a whole lot of normal-ness in between. I almost feel this could be an Ask/Tell in and of itself if the interest was there. To keep things as thread-relevant as possible, three things I noticed about Japanese culture: 1.) Fitting in is everything. Anime nerds probably know that "uchi" means house, but it can also be used to mean clique, or social circle, and keeping up appearances in your "uchi" is the most important thing a Japanese person has; I'm pretty drat sure that the hikkikomori phenomenon can be linked to a breakdown of the "uchi," among other things. This is also why Japanese men go out drinking until the wee hours after work every day in a kind of demented "team building" exercise; if you don't go, people stop inviting you to things, and then you're all alone and bam! your wife's an anime pillow. Also, the Japanese equivalent of sending a kid to his room as punishment is to (temporarily) banish him from the house and send him outside. 2.) Japanese society does not believe in mental illness at all. The whole idea that someone can have a treatable mental condition isn't recognized in any sort of established societal way. I think all there is is privately-owned mental hospitals and the like, although I'll admit my knowledge of this is pretty limited. This is why when a 15 year-old kills themselves by jumping in front of a train, most people focus on the inconvenience caused with the train delays, and few actually ask the question of "why" (more on this later). If someone Otaku breaks down and goes on some kind of weird killing spree, they see that person as always having been broken and don't think "hey, this could have been nipped in the bud if we were pro-active about mental health" here. It's like the official diagnosis if you're depressed is "well, then stop being depressed." Because of this lack of "help" system, Japanese "uchi" formed their own circles. Outcasts in Japan are outcast as gently caress and stick together like crazy, and I think this appeals to like-minded Western Anime nerds. 3.) There is a HUGE lack of critical thinking and individual expression in Japan. One minor example that kind of stuck with me, as I saw equivalents a few times when I was teaching in elementary school there: some classes would do the whole "displaying everyone's art project" thing on a board outside their classroom. While this in and of itself is fine, every single student's project looked exactly the same. As in, it would be a tree with fruit and leaves on it made out of cardboard cut-outs kind of South Park-style. Every single person's tree was exactly the same; same number of branches, same number of leaves and fruit, same color cardboard. There were just tiny imperfections in the sizes and angles of certain things; that was the only thing keeping them from being essentially photocopies. I think this also shows in calligraphy, where there's only one "true" way of doing a kanji. Getting people into a critical thinking situation, like asking them their opinion of something, it's extraordinarily difficult to get anything more than a "safe" answer. I also had to learn to read people's body language, because if they didn't understand something I'd just explained, they sure as gently caress weren't going to tell me. This is also why the Chinese always flip their poo poo when textbook edits look to downplay Japan's role in World War II: in those cultures, textbooks might as well be The Bible. In saying that, replying to "because the textbook says so" with "Well, how do you know the textbook is right and isn't wrong or lying to you?" blows some people's minds; it's an amazing thing, seeing the look in people's eyes at the exact moment you pulled them out of the Matrix. And...poo poo, another wall of text. I'll write up some more thread-relevant stories later on. univbee fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Dec 19, 2011 |
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Dec 19, 2011 14:58
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univbee posted:"Well, how do you know the textbook is right and isn't wrong or lying to you?" blows some people's minds; it's an amazing thing, seeing the look in people's eyes at the exact moment you pulled them out of the Matrix. I've always been crazy interested in Japanese culture just because my friends were crazy otaku wannabes, and I would definitely like to hear more about that sort of thing, even just in a separate thread.
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Dec 19, 2011 15:11
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InEscape posted:That is, until I tried to suggest that her boyfriend might not be real. After all, she told me I had one too and I'd never heard or felt a drat thing. Her revenge for that suggestion was slow, carefully-deliberated and very cold. Why yes I do believe I would like to hear more of Sarah! She and Summer would have either been BFFs or enemies. Probably enemies. Lots of people posted:Why is it always anime? I think kids who are happy and satisfied with their real life tend not to get "so into" anime or other fantasy-ish worlds, even if it appeals to them on a casual level. But really what percentage of teenagers are truly happy with their lives? No one, but I think the pretty and popular kids tend to have too much to do (Social lives! Yearbook club! Varsity sports!) to get sucked into anime like us nerdy/shy kids do. Maturity/imagination (whatever you choose to call it) might have something to do with it too. I can't speak for others, but I loved playing make believe and definitely played with barbies until I was like 14. I remember when the feeling of "this is so stupid" started to creep in while I was playing until it was too much to ignore. It made me so sad.  You get to a certain age and you still like cartoons, but they're not geared toward you anymore. Anime, though, is! And it stimulates the imagination and takes you to new worlds in a way that American cartoons and shows usually don't. It's as simple as the main characters' age. I was shocked to learn in my children's literature class that this is the only requirement for a book to be labeled as "young adult," but it fits.
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Dec 19, 2011 15:25
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