[DonQuigleone]

@Sci-fi Fandom: I think it's correct to say that Sci Fi fandom has fractured into several large chunks. Off the top of my head: Star Wars, Star Trek, Horror, Alien/Predator, old school, cyberpunk etc.

The unified fandom that typified the "golden age" of Scifi, does not really exist anymore. Not only that, the "core" titles that made up Scifi (titles like Foundation, Dune, Enders Game, etc.) are no longer being written. Instead you have a dozen smaller fandoms, each too small to gain a substantive presence and organisation online. It would be interesting to know what the fandom of English language Sci-Fi is like in other countries, because Sci-Fi is probably one of our biggest cultural "inventions". Few foreign authors match up in popularity to Asimov, Herbert, etc.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

However, the online comic book fandom is probably not quite as organized (especially when it comes to things like categorization) as the online anime fandom is, because the online comic book fandom has more internal divisions.

Most of us anime fans have some variations in taste with one another, but the overlap is substantive. Very few anime fans are just Haruhi fans, or just Shana fans, or just Monogatari series fans.

But there are loads of comic book fans that are just Superman fans, or just Batman fans, or just Spiderman fans. Comic book fans that are only into a particular character or two aren't always concerned about the medium as a whole. They have their favorites and that's that.

Even amongst the comic book fans that like a wide range of characters and titles, you still have the DC/Marvel division. Loads of comic book fans only like Marvel, or only like DC, so they're not necessarily making a point to catalogue the full collection of "the other guy's" titles.

So I think that there's a larger percentage of people within the anime fandom that's really into the medium as a whole (and wants all of it carefully catalogued online) then the percentage of people within the comic book fandom that's really into the medium as a whole (and wants it all carefully catalogued online).

I think this is an interesting theory, and it seems to be on the right track. One of the reasons anime fandom is so unified is because there are very few large franchises, and no franchises hold large market share the way they do in comic books. Anime fans are frequently faced with the question of "what next?" because few series are longer then 24 episodes, and likewise most manga are also short, compared to western comics. Most Manga might run for ~5 years, comics run for upwards of 20 years. So Anime fans are continuously looking for new things to watch, and so they have to organize large databases and categorization systems. This in turn catalyses further activity, because it makes it easy for uninformed newbies to find new things to watch (the quick advice is to go to MAL, search for the genres you like, list by rating, and proceed down the list until you find something that appeals.)

In fact, the titles within Anime/Manga fandom that are most "comic" like, tend to have similiar behaviour to your comic book fans. This is most easily seen with Naruto fans and Bleach fans, who are very large and active, but rarely go beyond that, and rarely interact with each other (there's a Naruto/Bleach rivalry, though not nearly as intense as DC/Marvel), or with the anime community at large. Gundam might show a similiar behaviour if releases were more frequent, and if Sunrise stuck to one timeline, without ever ending a story.

The style of anime (short novel sized series) means that fans are more open to new series, and look for better resources for trying new things.

Of course, the same logic doesn't really hold for the "indie" graphic novel scene, which does have short series. That it's easier to find new indie manga/doujinshi scans to read then to find new indie comics, is somewhat ironic. Webcomics are doing fine, but most of those are "funnies" strip type comics, and not long form and plot based.

Movies still have a certain prestige about them that television largely lacks. I can't think of the TV reviewer equivalent of Roger Ebert, and that probably says something about which of the two (TV shows vs. Movies) society holds in higher esteem.

Absolutely true, though books also hold a similiar level of prestige, though perhaps lack the mass audience movies can draw on. That said, in Movies vs. TV, the way TV doesn't self organise could be similiar to the way comics don't organise either. TV fans aren't continuously faced with the dillema of finding new things to watch, and the fact there are so many long running series enables the fandom as a whole to drastically fracture along series lines in a way that anime can not. For instance, we hear about "buffy fans" or "star trek fans" but we rarely use "haruhi fans" used in the same way. A haruhi fan would first describe themselves as an "anime fan", with their haruhi fandom being more casually. A buffy fan might focus entirely on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The average fan of Haruhi does not usually do so, there simply isn't enough Haruhi.

Maybe because Asian drams and pop music are relatively more exotic, and people like trying exotic things sometimes?

I'm hardly well-versed on European television or Europop, but from what little I've heard/seen of it, I've rarely seen a big difference between a lot of Europe's most popular pop artists and North America's.

But J-Pop does have a bit of distinctive feel, imo.

This could be, but on the flip side, European stuff has the benefit of being traditionally associated with "high art". It's got a prestigious association. Surely that count for something?

Edit: Also, on the piracy point. I think that anime is better-suited to digital distribution in general than comic books are. Part of the charm of comic books, at least for a lot of older, established fans like myself, is actually holding that physical comic book in your hands, and flicking through it, and collecting stacks of comics. Reading comic books online isn't quite the same, and I'd say that applies to me as well. But whether you watch anime from a computer screen (after DLing online) or watch it from a DVD/Blu-Ray you pop in the DVD/Blu-Ray player, doesn't have that big of a difference in "feel", imo. Quality difference might be there, but the overall experience is much the same.

Maybe, but this doesn't stand in the way of manga scanlations. Admiteddly, Manga is printed on pretty shoddy paper, and Scans are in some way superior to the original, as you can usually more easily see the detail.

As for Anime, I'd say a download is superior to a DVD. No messing with disks, and the image is the exact same (and no ugly yellow subtitles!)