How big is the Anime Fanbase where you Live

[Naruko]

Well Basicly I would like to know if any of you have a large or small Anime Comunities if you have lots of friends who you watch with or if you have Anime clubs or such around your Areas that you like to hang out at and such to try and find new and fun anime to watch.

Well me Personaly I used to live in Californa had to move because of work and now I Live in Hell (A.K.A North Dakota). In Californa where I was living Anime was huge but all that anyone ever did around there realy was State side anime no one had ever heard of a Fansubb just about except for a few People I new here and there. Well anyway I started showing anime at Parties I would throw for People who liked anime just a friendly get to gether with friends and friend they might bring and i got alot of people into Fansubs.

I am now out here in North Dakota and there is almost no Anime Population here there are around 3 people that I made friends with when I first got up here 3 years ago, since then we have Addicted hundreds of friends and such its realy quite nice I feel like a borg I just want to say ressistance is futile hehehehe.

But now adays up here is very cool I have tons of friends who have gotten addicted to anime and even more so to fansubs. We gather once a weeks when we can find time and right now in are group thier are about 20 people.
The nice thing is we all pick and choose anime and divide the Downloads hehe its nice I dont have to download 30+ series each weak on my own.

But then we just have a bit of a Gaming Lanparty over the weekend watch anime and swap it as well and talk about anything new that we might want to get it is all around a good time.

[scotty81]

well , in Brest where I study the are quite a lot of anime people. Well they most buy manga. Not that much are in anime because they aren't many french fansubs and french people really suck at foreign languages!
In my parents town, I would say we are 2 me and my younger brother.
well in my uni there are a few good pals who really love fansubs too, so me spead out the downloads, I got naruto, get backers, and Full Metal Alchemist. and I get a lot of stuff with them. that's the fun!

[Jump]

I wish I could have an Anime club That would be so fun. Alas, there's only one person I know who watches anime with me. I see many anime fans at the local Best Buy, Suncoast, etc, but I'm too cowardly to talk with them

[sperry]

It's practically nonexistant where I live. I know one guy who's fairly interested in it, but he just buys some dvds every now and then, not obsessed with it. And then there are a few people who just watch the things on Cartoon Network and think they're the best(and only) anime in the world. So basically, I rely on mbs to talk to fellow anime lovers.

[Wandering_Youth]

I live near San Fransisco so there are quite a lot of people who like anime at where I live. My local high school that I use to go to had an anime club which I would go to when I was still a student there. My neighborhood is full of asians so it's pretty easy to find people who enjoy anime, however getting anime was another matter. We use to have a local anime store that deal with bishoujo games, wall scrolls, CDs, etc, but they left because not many people were going to their store. It was mainly because they never bought new anime to rent out so the kids stop coming when there was no new anime to rent. I'm guessing most of the majority of the people here who like anime saw the ones on Cartoon Network only. Now I'm in college and I have seen some students watching some fansub anime while in the media center.

[gravitation]

Location: London, England.
Anime on TV: Kinda non existent, although scifi channel shows quite a few animes these days (normally on late at night or early in the morn tho). Cartoon Network showed about 2 animes that i remember, Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star. There are not really any advertisments on TV about anime either.
Anime among my friends: Only one of my friends watches anime but he doesnt watch it much.
Anime in my area/school: Nobody i speak to in school knew what anime was until i told them, actually lots of people still just associate anime with porn and dragonball z (erghhh).
Anime in London: I havent seen an advertisement around London before about an anime, apart from Spirited Away. Hardly any animes shown in cinemas, i can only recall Spirited Away at the moment. There are a couple of stores around London that sell manga and anime merchandise (1 comic shop in camden, Gosh Comics, Forbidden Planet and Comicana on/near Oxford Street and few others that i dont know names of).
Overall: Ermm the term "dead" comes to mind ^_^.
How i feel: I actually quite like anime and manga not being so big, a while back i used to hate it but then i thought what it would be like if everyone liked it, i dunno im just weird that way.

[myoga]

here in canada(eh) there is plain crap on.Teletoon, won't put any on because of this law,but they never thoght of just having 1 a night,and as for YTV,kthe only good show is inu-yasha,which is on at midnight for people in winipeg.thankfuly there are 3 groups in winipeg who plan to (as they say in otaku no vidio) "otakunize" winipeg, as well as plenty anime stores.as for my school,i know lots of people who are addicted to it,as well as all over the city.aka plenty people love it,but not enogh anime to meet the demand.

[The Faction's Lord]

Where I live in England, anime is virtually unheard of, any who knows what it is thinks Pokemon and/or Digimon. There are no stores near me etc. The only person I know who likes anime is the person who introduced me to the wonderful world of fansubs.

[Baba]

Well, I live in Paris, and anime here is ok I guess.
There are quite a few specialised stores selling dvd, manga (french and imported) and goodies. However, manga is much bigger than anime in France as far as I know. But still, since I don't have TV I don't really get a good impression of what's going on.
As for myself, I used to be in my school manga club wich rented anime and distributed fansubs. That's at this point that I really got into anime, beside, we were aable to share our files through the school network which also helped to share scans or subs .
Now I've left this school so I mostly watch anime with old friends or alone. My close friends are not really into it although they do watch some with me once in a while .

[kj1980]

Tokyo, Japan.

60 anime shows per week on VHF, UHF, BS and CS satellite broadcasts. Too much stuff to watch, to much ero-games to play - too little time.

Head over for a short train ride to Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Nakano, or Akihabara yields tons of anime/manga/ero-games bonanzas. I literally spend days there indulging myself on DVDs and the latest ero-games.

Every month there is a special fair going on at Animate, Gamers, Mandarake, K-Books, Toranoana, and Sofmap. LAOX Asobit-City used to be a great place to get stuff...8 stories of anime/manga/ero-game goods. Too bad this is closing on April. At least there is a clearance sale.....

Twice a year, I go to the Summer and Winter Comic Market at the Ariake Big Sight Convention Centre. Along with my friends, we line up in a long line "battling" 300,000 other otakus to get doujinshis made by famous doujin artists, doujin games, and to get the Comike limited edition goods from the exhibitors booth.

Every once in a while, I do an off-kai event with my otaku associates where we go to cosplay cafes and cute Anna-Miller's type restaurants and discuss what we like the best right now, where the good deals are, and what to check out for in the future. We usually end up going to karaoke (usually Sega since they have the most anime/ero-game songs).

Now, if I only had a cute girlfriend into cosplaying...

[Kurara]

Cosplay Cafe? Whoa *_*; I thought that didn't exist. It would be fun if there was one around here. I'd like to work there.. Even though I'm way too shy. x.o;

I live in Montreal, Canada... x.o The anime fan base here?.. That's hard to say. Most people who are into anime are college students here. There's a few anime clubs in colleges and universities, but they're not as big as anime clubs in USA at all. .. If you ask people in colleges if they know what anime is.. I'd say most of them wouldn't know, or they'd say it's like Pokémon. :P And most anime fans here aren't the type of fans to download all the recent anime series. I don't know why. Most people I've known who like anime here are more into the extremely popular and classic series.

It's really hard for me to say this, though. There's a festival here called "Fantasia festival".. They play foreign movies and a lot of Japanese movies. They used to play a lot of anime, but for some reason they don't do it a lot anymore.. And if they do, it's not recent anime at all. Maybe I'm just talking about something I don't know, because I've never really been there.. I only checked the programs. Also there's a few anime stores here. Or comic/hobby stores with anime merchandise.. But I wouldn't say there's a lot.

What I find strange is that it's an older fan base.. Perhaps it's because it's totally uncool to like anime when you're in secondary school here. [ middle school + high school ] You won't find a lot of cosplayers or otaku either.. There are no conventions here. And most people who do like anime aren't obsessed with it.

However, I think that this is changing... Since the 90's there's a lot of rare manga translated in France that you can find here.. And we usually get certain manga series a long time before people in USA get them. It's mostly shoujo manga.. It seems that some teenagers read manga casually sometimes here, but I'm not sure. Also, animesuki is becoming really popular here.

[XuKouryuuX]

Originally Posted by sperry

It's practically nonexistant where I live. I know one guy who's fairly interested in it, but he just buys some dvds every now and then, not obsessed with it. And then there are a few people who just watch the things on Cartoon Network and think they're the best(and only) anime in the world. So basically, I rely on mbs to talk to fellow anime lovers.

same here! it annoys me when people start talking to me about how great Cowboy Bebop is (I'm not bashing it, I just think that there is better anime out there). I have met one person who's really into anime...Lexington, North Carolina sucks. I used to live in florida and there were a lot more people into anime there.

[Ral]

In my school in Mayfield Hts (by Cleveland, Ohio) I've seen a lot of different people with some sort of anime related thing. I've seen about 3 people reading manga. I've seen plenty of shirts. So far the shirts I've seen are: DBZ, Yu-Gi-Oh, Vampire Hunter D, Hellsing, Lupin, Berserk, Inuyasha and Kenshin. These are from at least 7 different people boy and girl. Someone also has a Hellsing bookbag. I don't know if there is a club there or not.

[babbito2k]

Never has been hard to find anime, manga (translated and original), Japanese restaurants (even a spaghetti restaurant called Italian Tomato), Japanese supermarkets, toys, games and music in the New York area. Attending college-based club meetings and anime showings at different schools gave me the chance to see some neat stuff (unlicensed at the time), like theater showings of the Patlabor 2 movie and all 3 Evangelion movies. The thing I remember best is seeing a couple of episodes of Card Captor Sakura, which I knew nothing about and which blew my socks off...

On the other hand, anime competes with lots of other stuff for attention - there are fewer specialty shops now than there were back then, and Japanese pop culture is just part of the media mix.

[Slade xTekno]

Location: Bakersfield, CA
It sounds like a oakey town, but is actually quite large [70th largest city, 50th fastest growing].
I have no trouble finding people who like anime here. We have an Anime Club at our school of almost 40 members. We watches new anime every Friday afternoon [normally fansubs, currently watching Full Metal Panic Fumoffu]. No real anime store, though. I order online.
Some may not get this, but much of the anime here is americanized. Many only knew about anime fansubbed before attending Anime Club. You won't find any original manga. Does anyone get this? God bless the internet.

[Naruko]

Well its good to know there is a large deversity in anime watchers around the place. As for me, my step-father is in the air force and when I was younger we where in japan for a little over a year but it was when I was like 8 so I didnt get as much enjoyment as I would these days considering I am 23 now hehehe.

But I am planning on going back to Japan in the next 2 years or so once I can afford to stay over there for at least a year or 2 hehe. I have friends there so I was told I can stay with them, who knows if I can get some good contacts I just might get a job and stay hehehe.

I used to live in californa actualy it was in Fairfield its between Sacramento and san fansisco, so I had alot of anime to watch but alot of people around where very dumfounded when they would see some of the anime stuff I had. I did know a few People in san fansisco that had relitives that would record stuff from japan and send it to them once a month to watch, it was very cool.

My japanese is a little rusty now adays but at least I can get through a raw if I need to hehehe.

[7thMethuselah]

Well, in my direct environment there's only my brother-in-law who likes (a bit) of anime. But through the japanese classes I'm taking and throiugh the manga stores i got to know quite a few people who share the same addiction as me
I'm not in any anime club however, we just share anime and manga between friends

[chris]

here in canada(eh) there is plain crap on.Teletoon, won't put any on because of this law,but they never thoght of just having 1 a night,and as for YTV,kthe only good show is inu-yasha,which is on at midnight for people in winipeg.thankfuly there are 3 groups in winipeg who plan to (as they say in otaku no vidio) "otakunize" winipeg, as well as plenty anime stores.as for my school,i know lots of people who are addicted to it,as well as all over the city.aka plenty people love it,but not enogh anime to meet the demand.
2004-02-18 19:34

Lets just face facts canadin cable tv sucks, i mean ytv has gone to crap, i dont watch much cable anymore I like my dvds they are allot better then whats on cable tv. O btw this is only my opinion so dont think im bashing my own country, we just need more anime on our cable tv.

[Kurara]

I don't think Canadian TV is that much worse than American TV... The main difference is that.. We get the kiddy shonen anime like pokémon and digimon and yu-gi-oh and all that stuff, and we don't get the popular series that we already saw fansubbed anyway. :P I personally don't think adding more anime series to our TV will solve the problem, because only the popular series will be there anyway.. I've written a letter to teletoon once asking them if they were going to air some old anime series that we had here before like Akage no Ann, Tom Sawyer anime, anime Three Musketeers, etc. etc... They replied that they never bought the rights of the series when they started the channel, so they can't.. And they don't want to have to buy them again.

I don't know though.. I don't live in USA so I can't compare... But from what a lot of my American friends tell me, anime isn't really more popular.. It's true that there's a bigger anime fan base in the USA, though. I don't think it's because of the TV, but there definitely is one...

However, I think that different parts of Canada and different parts of USA have different fan bases. ^^;; By example, here, in Montreal.. Manga is a lot more popular than anime. There's manga on sale in most book stores.. Since the early to mid 90's I'd say. When I was 8-9 years old, I would already see some popular manga series like Sailor Moon, DBZ, Gunnm and Akira on sale.. We got them quicker because they were translated in France. Manga was a BIG controversial topic at some point here.. In the newspaper, there was a lot of stupid journalists who talked about manga in a really bad way saying that all manga series were full of perversion and violence.. <_<;; But later on, I guess it became more normal.. No one really hears anything about it anymore. In Toronto, the anime fanbase is a lot bigger than here.. Probably because of Anime North, the convention.. ^^;; But if you go up north or in the country, you won't find anyone reading manga or watching anime.. :P

[chris]

well all i ask for is a 24/7 anime channal for us Canadin's, is that to much to ask for... :P
lets face facts if you want to wach anime in canada better buy it on dvd, as well I know a few ppl in school who wach anime. Altho i cant compair the Canadin cable tv to the U.S. cable tv because all I have is Canadin cable tv.