This post is part of Nopy’s series, My History With Anime.  I also reached 230,000 views some time ago, so let’s consider this a commemoration post as well.

A friend of mine, a fellow geek who isn’t interested in anime, recently asked me an interesting question: What’s the difference between him and me?  That is, what makes an anime fan–  not just somebody who occasionally reads Naruto and has seen Afro Samurai, but the kind of devotion that results in attending anime conventions every year, buying premium media and goods, writing about anime online (on blogs, forums, Twitter, what-have-you) and keeping up with its latest trends?

 

The epitome of "Sure, I watch some anime," which I still have yet to see in its entirety.

Is there some grand unified theory for the fans we become?  When we tell history, it’s very tempting to say, “When you take into account factors X, Y and Z, such-and-such was bound to happen.”  But I want to avoid inevitability-in-retrospect.

For example: I fit many aspects of a love-shy person.  My mother still recalls with joy what a calm and quiet baby I was.  Lately, she also complains that I don’t have a girlfriend because I’m too withdrawn and cold to the ladies.  It hurts (I love you, mom), but I won’t deny it.  I also never liked playing with other boys, and always preferred to be alone or with the company of just one friend.

Was I destined to become a geek?  Well, I’d say it was certainly in the cards.  Was I destined to become an anime geek?  Not necessarily!  So what happened?

 

This may be hard to believe now, but "Shooting Star" really did rock my world, once upon a time.

There’s an interesting, if somewhat dry article called “Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties” (PDF).  Basically, what it says is that there are strong/short ties (e.g. immediate family, close friends), and weak/long ties (e.g. Facebook friends).  Long ties are good for spreading simple contagions, like information and disease (hence “viral marketing”).  But complex contagions that require confirmation from multiple sources, like political and artistic movements, also need shorter ties as they become more difficult to maintain.

I look back on my history as a fan, and I see a whole lot of shows that left their mark: Sailor Moon and Tenchi Muyo in Love (rented from that old dinosaur, Blockbuster) got me started, Evangelion, Video Girl Ai and Love Hina rekindled my interest as a teenager, Midori Days introduced me to the concept of keeping up with seasons, R.O.D. the TV Series introduced me to BitTorrent, Kotoko in Please Teacher! and the Indigo in Ai Yori Aoshi turned me on to newer anisongs.  And on and on and on.

 

I purchased all the ROD TV Series DVDs as they came out, and they were worth every dime. The retouched animation is a-MAY-zing!

It seems to me that anime fandom is a complex contagion, but not an especially difficult one.  That is, you need confirmation to keep going the way you do, but you don’t need terribly much.  Before Japan, I always had a short tie: Some close friend or two who was really into anime, and who would encourage me to be really into anime as well.  Now, as an ani-blogger and a compulsive Twitter-checker, I have a whole lot of long ties to anime.  And that’s working out better than ever.

So, what is an otaku?  Why am I one, while someone else just as geeky is not?  Basically, it’s all with a little help from my friends. Thanks guys.