One of us? A closer look at the anime fandom

[0cean]

Today I stumbled upon a blog entry from 2012 quoting what I think crystallizes what the anime fandom is and since there have been some threads in recent months broaching this topic, I thought it would be worth sharing. The quote in question goes back to 2008, so over a decade ago now. But if you ask me, nothing has changed.

Picture a small, smoke-filled karaoke box in Ueno, filled with ten or so 30- to 40-year old Japanese [...]

He takes a drag from his cigarette, looks at me, and says, "Look, I'm glad you're really into eroge now. I really am. We need more young people playing our games. But you young people..." He pulls another drag. "...are all the same. You start playing eroge when you're 18 or 19. You're really into it. You love the sex. The romance. The girls. The art. The voice acting. The music...everything. By the time you're 22, you've seen it all. It doesn't interest you anymore. You're out. You move on to better things." He snuffs out his cigarette.

"But..." I say.

"Or," he says, lighting another cigarette, "you become one of them."

He tilts his head, indicating the other men sitting around the table. They nod their heads in agreement. "These guys have been playing eroge longer than most people in the industry today have been making them. The girls are all the same to them now. When they play, they look for a certain type of girl. I bet you one of these guys sitting here with us today is really, really into tsundere."

A mousy, bespectacled man with messy hair raises his hand. "Yup," he says, "That's me." And so on, and so forth. A different man claimed dominion over each different archetype.

"You see?" Tomo says, smiling at me. "It's not about the characters. It's about the archetype. When you've seen 100 tsunderes, you know what's up already. You know what you're getting yourself into. You like it. That's why you haven't moved on yet. That's why you're still playing eroge at 35. Everyone else figures it out, gets bored of it, packs up, and goes home."

Source: https://goldenani.blogspot.com/2013/...thou.html#more