Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcus H.
I personally don't like those terms, but there are people who put everything Japanese on a special pedestal like it's "the best thing since sliced bread". I haven't met someone like that, fortunately.
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I was about to post the same thing, and
unfortunately I
have met such people. But the thing is that "such people" exist for all kinds of likes, fashions, etc. So you can't say that liking anime or Japanese stuff is stupid or automatically "weeaboo" based on some of the extremists.
On another forum I visit, a guy said that he "loathed the Japanese people and culture". He then explained one of the reasons as being his dislike for anime, and how it seems that people will blindly defend Japan, right or wrong, just because of that. While I myself have noticed a bias toward Japanese stuff as opposed to other Asian cultures (ex: why do we call Zen Buddhism by its Japanese name if it was founded in China?), the reason is probably historical and has something to do with Japan being the world's 2nd biggest economy, not because of an inherently skewed positive image of it from Western eyes.
The problem about weeaboos, as I see it, is not that they like Japanese stuff or anime, but because they are are shallow, obsessive, pathetic, and above all very demonstrative in their love of it, esp. in combination with the others. You have these kids who watch some animes and start to think Japan is awesome. In some combination or the other, they try to learn Japanese, watch more anime, attempt to do things "the Japanese way", and make their newfound Japaneseness known to all. Yet at the same time they are obviously failing at this. They don't really know much about Japan beyond the extremely limited idea they get from anime and perhaps a couple books or visits to a Japanese garden and the like. They are a far cry from the true enthusiast who really attempts to learn all he can about a subject.