by Andre Martinez, MA student, Japanese
The Denver I grew up in was a dusty old cow town; ghosts of the glory days as a beatnik stopover swept in and out of old river front warehouses by empty railways.
I remember all too clearly the world before the Toonami. When all the choice waves of the "animated in Japan" cartoons of the mid to late 80s died down, those of us who were committed fans of animation were virtually land-locked. We were stuck with few choices, the best of which were usually caught on perpetual re-run, and even classic animation compilations were a rare find.
Oh, the 90s were a desolate era!
In those days, if one wanted to expand their interest past the scattered anime VHS cassettes available at each video store -- a whomping 5 titles per store -- they had to invest in some serious gumshoeing.
It was OK, of course, the joy is in the hunt, right? You go to the video store with your friends on the weekend, rent a video game, an anime, some other nerdy 90s movie like Labyrinth or The Wiz or Weird Science and have an awesome night. Add in every kid’s favorite thing in the history of ever, Halloween, and you'll get a sense of how this nostalgic trip is relevant to the modern day convention.
It's the ultimate slumber party.
A geek fantasy made reality: a trade show where one can have in-depth conversations about character development, test their digi-might against other devoted duelists, buy and sell character-goods, contribute first hand to the readership of fan fiction and independently produced works, see panels with their favorite artists, writers, actors, dance un-abated to anime and game music.
The concentrated con conjunction in Colorado harkens back to the bygone days when Denver was a haven for poets and jazz musicians. Today Colorado welcomes young costumers, illustrators, graphic novelists and voice actors here to make their marks with their art.
Whether dressing as the character they love, chancing to meet someone who shares an affinity for the same obscure series, or just plugging into the unity in appreciation for passionate interest, otaku these days live the lives that a 6th grader in a basement watching a 4th generation bootleg of Akira his best friend's big brother inherited through old-time nerd networking could barely dare to dream.
A floating world.
My own interest in a no-holds-barred animated world, devoid of condescending black-and-white moralities could not be satisfied by the scant offerings of the pre-J media-crazed USA. In my time, to feed this interest nothing short of learning Japanese would do. In a pre-internet video world, renting VHS tapes recorded off of Japanese television and shipped to the Japanese video stores became a ritual. Striving to decipher issues of manga purchased at exorbitant prices became my self imposed homework. After spending a year at a high-school in Kyoto at age 15 I abandoned the US in early 2000 at 18, just as the Toonami hit, and lived the next 6 years in Japan voraciously feeding on manga, games and anime.
The world after the Toonami looked much different; the generation who came of age after the wave had plowed its course -- the N64~PS2 generation -- knows as much of a world before Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Dragonball Z as they do of rotary phones. Over the past 7 years while teaching about Japan, Japanese and Japanese arts, the classrooms I have stood in have been filled with students intent on learning Japanese to understand Japanese media, not just to gain access to it.
The proposition of learning Japanese by and for anime, manga and games is not only wholly viable, it's straight up advisable. A level of expression and characterization only accessible through intimate knowledge of the Japanese language exists in each of these genres. The possibility of a modern otaku dialect of English frequently employing Japanese terminology and linguistic conventions is a realistic sci-fi "future" projection. As a Japanese instructor I'm thrilled to contribute what I can to the otaku lingo melting pot.
When it comes to otaku culture, convention culture, and anime & manga, mass media seems preoccupied with the image of, "misfits unite!" -- they perceive it as a social flowering of shut-ins -- but I find this to be as archaic as the headline, "Cartoons aren't just for kids anymore!" Sure, it is a special environment where you can connect with others in 4D, geek out to the fullest extreme, but that's a shallow reading of the cumulative of a larger experience.
The true beauty is in working toward the next event.
Conventions are a venue to express and appreciate months worth of crafting: be it comic or costume or character cultivation. It is a clear goal as much as it is an outlet.
Just as the sphere of artistic production and consumption in Edo Japan hovered somewhere in between fantasy and reality, so, too, do contemporary artists and fans perceive the creative process as a means of engaging with reality in a multitude of imaginative ways.
We are not escaping a reality we cannot bear to face. We are waiting with bated breath for the chance to see what wonders our contemporaries create. We are uniting around media we love. We are creating a community for the appreciation and proliferation of those cultural products.