People who like animes are more open minded?
 

Well... I'll change the title accordingly if needed. (unless someone post too fast, since then I can't no more) (I'll add a poll, just in case someone complain about it and add some later with a mod's help if needed)

No sources for this too >.<

One of my favorite site is down at the moment and I found an article on it and it got me thinking and I found it to be true to a point. When I first started anime about umm... 4-5 years ago, back when I was in the 10th grade; Yup, i'm not that old. I was pretty grossed out by what I saw in some anime, but as grew with each and every anime, I rather became nulled by them and didn't really cared anymore, but I still live on my morals. Lolicon, yada yada yada, pretty much it involves the adult section of anime and the morals and social ethics that revolves around it, since some of them can get pretty explicit at times.

Pretty much the question is -" Are the people who watch and involve some of their life with anime more open minded?"

My opinion on it - Yes to a point. Like stated earlier, when I first started it was strange to me, weird crap happening everywhere, fudged up creature in every single anime (5ish years later, I still hold that true to today ^_^). Anime it self is a medium for distributing a creators ideas and thought into a viewable format, in which we call "anime." It conveys a whole variety of ideas and all if not most genres, involving most fields of human thinking from Engineering, Science, Politics, Social Issues, Fashion, Psychology, Creative thinking, most important of all *music* and many more that I don't wish to list. I participate in a political debate thread myself, which I do enjoy debating on moral ethics, foreign affairs and crappy US political figures & their social issues.
Has involving myself in anime made a more intelligent person? Mostly likely, and would I still have became this way without anime? Probably not. I'll probably would have become a bum like my brother or some of my idiotic friends who i feel know absolutely jack squat. From my point on view, anime hasn't really brought my any trouble rather than a budget increase.

I learned Photoshop, just cause I wanted to create better signatures. I started drawing, cause I also wanted to express myself to the world with my pictures, but I'm still a crappy novelist. I did watch the "Educational Television" programs like the Science channels stuff till we lost Direct TV about a week ago, so it's streaming for me now.

I guess I came at a great time too, since the 80s generation was the generation of the Internet.

I used to feel that anime fans were the best people in the world. But then, I was younger, socially awkward, and becoming an extreme anime fan. Over a short period of time I began noticing that there were anime fans who were far from perfect, nice people, and you didn't need to dig all that hard to find them.

I don't think anime fans are terribly different from other people, except that many of them reject their own cultures and aspire to the Japanese and/or other Asian cultures. This makes some of them come off as a bit strange.

I've felt inspired by certain anime series, but I've also discussed some series with others and noticed that they don't really come away with concepts that they take outside of the series. Sure, a message from the series may get across, but these people don't necessarily take it to heart, or give it a great amount of thought.

So now I consider anime nothing more than a more interesting entertainment medium, and as someone who doesn't watch TV, read fiction, or get into other forms of escape for lack of time and interest, that says a fair bit I suppose.

Anime fans are just regular people, bound together by a common interest. Not terribly different from any other hobbyist group, in my opinion.

Watching anime may give me some inspiration when writing some story for school or somenthing. Nothing else, really.

Well, as just said before - Anime inspires people.
I once tried to make a Ramen from Naruto, without knowing much about what the ingredients was, I just put some tomatoes, boiled eggs (I am not exactly sure what it is called in english), and some green stuff :p (without meat, because was too excited to make meat and wait for it). It tasted pretty good, but I felt it hurted my chest, so that was it... at least I got a picture of it, that I might post here later on, (or just never). Was quite fun through :)
Also, after seeing/reading anime/manga I learned quite more about the Japanese/Chinese culture etc.

After reading some Conan volumes and seeing the Death Note episodes, I got inspired to be more critical, and think about stuff, also be better to solve mysteries :)

''Do you think people who likes anime are more open minded?''
''I think so''... that's what I'm saying :D

I picked "not really", because I personally think that more than 50% of all anime is targeted towards the 8-14 age range. I don't disagree that some anime are wonderful and makes me more open-minded, but they're still not the majority, therefore, I don't completely disagree but don't completely agree. I myself as well as probably a lot of people in this community have watched all the "good" anime, so I will say that anime has made me open-minded.

@ Iambankai
Inspire? It's just food for thought. Accepting it as inspiration means accepting being brain washed by your Tv/Comp. Written words are the only things which can inspire people, in a good way.

Back to the topic...
No not really. There's no basis for such a statement.
Liking anime (or let's say not disliking) is more of childish trait just like watching movies, playing video games etc. There's nothing wrong with it, and there's nothing special either. To label anime fans as open minded is the same as proving every geometric shape with more then one side is a circle.

Statistics would support it, since most anime fans seem to be always searching for something else but the things which surround them, but is that being open minded or just being weird? Personally, I like to indulge in the idea that anime fans are more explorer-driven.

In my experiences, most anime fans, if I didn't know that they were anime fans, I would not come near with a 100 meter pole. We're really talking, in most cases, people you absolutely did not want to be caught dead with. They are certainly not the most beautiful, nor the most intelligent either. Yes, there are some great anime fans out there, and I know a few myself, but for the most part, if you're a hardcore Otaku, I would prefer you stayed away from me.

You may have different experiences, but these are mine.

I used the thread title as it is so it would attract more attention than if I were to ask the question and used it as the thread title. That is true what you said, to simply state that anime viewers are more open minded than other groups of viewers is really arrogant, simple minded and simply a single sided statement. But the question is about anime viewers, I didn't want to included any groups of anime viewers cause that would really separate the discussion and cause people to flame each others rejecting which group they belonged it or not.

But I like to think of anime as a collection of ideas, rather than a single entity.

No, anime fans are the same closed minded, set in their ways idiots as the rest of the population. The only difference is they happened to watch the right anime at the right moment to get interested. The trouble is a lot of anime fans like to think that just watching anime makes them open minded because it's from Japan. Then they'll dismiss anything from other countries as not being as good as anime without even giving it a chance. Sorry that's not being open minded at all.

Of course I dont' think being open minded is a good thing any more. These days the meaning of the phrase seems to have changed from being accepting and open to new ideas to being accepting and open to stupid ideas like conspiracy theories with nothing to support them. The former is good, the latter not so much.:heh:

I share Demongod's feelings as far as opinions of other anime fans go. Reading the two other posts before ours I think you should explain what exactly being open minded refers to in the said context. BTW, are we analyzing real life or simply internet make-believe attitudes we read on forums, irc channels etc?

What is the difference you are trying to make. I can't think of a collection of ideas as anything other then a group, entity call it what you will. If it's in a collection then that means it can be ordered, hence they are a specific group of ideas a entity in itself.
Can you rephrase your thoughts?

This is a nice theory, really. But 5 minutes over at ANN suffice to disprove it.

The typical anime viewer is probably more nerdy than the average person in his age group but neither more open minded nor more closed minded.

Sadly, one can browse the Internet 24/7 while maintaining an amazing level of ignorance.

Not really i would say...you still get jerks around even with anime fans...and we have the forums to prove it :heh: its just that perhaps "otakus" just generally know more than your average nerd (for all sorts of areas)...for good or for bad - its usually their choice to show. while some can be open minded, others are still closed off. i guess it comes down to whether you accept the "teachings" of some anime or just shrug it off (open minded or closed).

I'll say not really, because people are people regardless of community. Every community has its dregs, and its legends.

I tend to entertain the idea that most anime watchers are a small step above the writhing masses in the realm of intellectuality. I say this because in order to watch most anime and actually enjoy them, you've got to have an open mind. This becomes an overwhelmingly important character trait when watching anime that deal with controversial topics. So yes, I do believe that the majority of anime watchers are more open minded than the general public.

Not really.
Other way around, in fact.
But it varies from person to person.

Hmm, at least anime's btter than the D!zn3y Ch@nn3|! :p

As a demographic I think anime fans spread just as many types as any other interest. There's good and bad to found just like anywhere else. It's always up to the individual to determine their gain from experiences.

Just like everything else in life, it's all subjective.

This depends greatly on subs vs. dubs. A lot of dubs really dumb series down (let's not even get in to the severe butchering known as 're-tooling' that used to be common: see Macross->Robotech etc.) -- Somebody who only watches dubs on something like Adult Swim is going to be in a different league as somebody who watches a much broader range of things, in their original language without crappy American edits.

#1 - For the first part, I rather didn't specify what I wanted, so I sorta hoped for ya to fill in the gap through discussions rather than me stating on a specific topic other than my vague title. But since we are in this far, i'll name what I really wanted to poke at. When I meant "open mined" I was implying more like acknowledgement of the anime and it the information it throws at you. It's pretty much acceptance of the ideas presented in anime. When I mean "acceptance", I don't mean go believing in Aliens or Ghosts and warp speed technology(w/e Star Trek reference ^_^).

I guess you can say "how the person feel when the person intake the information and how they accept it, even though it is absolutely outrageous or not." It's like string theory, even though the theory state that there are energy shaped like lines and strings and other, and they vibrate in certain way and the shape also effect what kind of energy and level is being transmitted (something like that ^_^). Can the person just accept it as is without much information or facts to prove its point, without total dismissal. If you were to just brush off that idea, then you would fall into the "non open minded" group ^_^

I hope that answered some confusing for you Cats.

*Real life and the internet are one in the same in this discussion, so take that into account when ya are posting. Discussion of anime is rather made easier on the internet with so much resource at our disposal.

#2 - My way of thinking and organizing data is a bit different from yours, I would say; Tomato, To(mah)to. While You say that a collection is a gathering of thoughts hence meaning its a total sum of, equaling 100%. I like to think of them as individuals, separate, with nothing more than a common interest, helping and sharing ideas. I guess you can pretty much call them a group or entity. My way of defining them is just different. Yours is just nothing more than a step above mine in classification.

That may be so, but not everyone can understand Japanese, reading and writing it. Subs are the best way we can go for those who cannot do the 2 above.


I would mostly agree with your statement. There's a limit to what you should know and what you should discuss with you non-anime friends; Useful knowledge has it's limits too.

That's not being open minded. Open minded means you're open to new ideas or ways of doing things. It does not mean you accept those ideas without information or facts, just that you give the person presenting the idea the chance to present the information. If they can show you why it's better, right or whatever then you accept it. If they can't, if there's nothing backing it, you are not being closed minded to dismiss it.

It's close minded when you don't even give someone a chance to explain their idea and present evidence.