Horse riding is a beautiful sport. The mere fact that you can control a beast at your will makes it such a amazing thing. I’ve met horse riders who share a special emotional bond with their partners. I admit, sometimes I do wish I was younger, lighter and richer, if only to be able to ride a horse for the weekends in the rolling hills. Once upon a time horse riding was a skill teachers taught school boys, and career prospects (in the middle ages at least) were interesting to say the least. For many, it was their only chance to get out of their village. However, in this day and age, horse riding is reserved for the strata of society where their bellies are full, they have a roof over their heads, no mortgage to pay, no loans to settle, well educated, and above all, no bank account falling faster than HDD prices. In short, where once horse riding was a skill needed, it is now the reserve of the rich and the privileged.
As I have written in the past, the anime scene has changed dramatically over the last short four years. I have touched briefly on the factors of this change, namely broadband penetration, improved compression codec’s etc. However, in the greater scheme of things, are these changes for better or for worst?
I’m not what most people would call “old”. I’m no pioneer. However, I am old enough to remember playing with the INT strings of a 33.6k modem (Hyper terminal days), I was there when the 5KB/s barrier was broken. The astronomical cost of downloading a 18MB game demo is seared in my head. The MMX extensions of the K6-2 brought multimedia to me, while I had hours of fun getting a sound card to work under Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 (what ever you might think, PnP was nowhere mature then). Ahhhhh….good old days.
Unlike most of my peers however, Card Captor Sakura and Rurouni Kenshin was not my first induction to the interesting world of anime. More proof, is anyone wants it, that I’m not normal. But it was in those days, where there was a loyal following. We’d “meet” up in mailing lists and newsgroups ( phpBB based forums were still a pipe dream then) and discuss, share fanfics and trade rare images that someone managed to get hold of. Keeping in mind that scanners cost 4 digits at that time and at best had a resolution of 2 MP, there was no wonder that those who provided the images were seen as gods. People set up fan-sites, with their hard labor (WYSIWYG HTML was only starting to mature, push button publishing was a dream, and CMS was something only Microsoft had) shared the love and passion for their anime of choice. These were loyal, true fans, who would dig up every tiny detail, no matter how insignificant, and amazing (and now that I look back, cringe-worthy too) debates would transpire from this. In a way, the comradeship between fans was more tangible and I would argue, lasting.
Fast forward to this day. Anime comes and goes with a frequency of 15648656981 Hz. Everything is now divided into 一月，二月。。。。新番. Fan-sites are now considered passé. The trend now is seemingly blogs and forums, which can crash, fail, or just simply disappear at any time. The popularity of any given anime series falls faster than the RM once it has finished airing. It is almost as it anime has become a commodity, from one to another in quick succession, produced in bulk, with no soul and heart, and to quote Jeremy Clarkson “something to prop-up 3rd world economies”. While Card captor Sakura took 2 years to come down from Japan to Malaysian TV, the plague I call Haruhiism is now infecting the masses (on the same TV station no less) less than a year after it was broadcast in Japan. I can remember running around, shuffling VHS tapes, while this so-called Gen-Y can download a entire series in HD, 1080i, in hours. I thought VHS was quite good, while we have people now moaning that 640 x 480 is no longer sufficient.
I suppose then, that the root of my gripe is that the bonds of loyalty that held us minority anime fans together no longer exists in this modern age thanks to the overwhelming influx of anime immigrants. Back in the days where I still had the optimism of youth, I dreamt of a day where we anime fans would be at least acknowledged, where we wouldn’t be just lumped under “cartoons” and be able to be proud of what we are. A future where manga would be readily available in my local bookshop, and anime easily bought. I saw a future where anime fans would no longer be a minority.
Sadly, as all have seen are people like me become a minority in a minority. Lets face it: for all the advances the anime-fandom has made in the real world, it is still very much a niche market. But like all markets, it got the attention of corporations who, for better or worst, saw the money in anime. It was then inevitable then, that the cases of Fans vs ADV (2002), Fans vs Funimation (2004), Fans vs Odex (2007) and Fansub groups vs MediaFactory (2004) would make real world creep into the underground fandom of anime.
The problem is, people like me watch anime to ESCAPE from real life, NOT see real life reflected! Unfortunately, real life has been encroaching further and further, no thanks to the new influx of anime immigrants who thinks its leet to be associated with “anime”. Simply because of their numbers, coupled with their poor command of the English language, them immigrants have pushed us old-timers who like to stay in the background out. They took our silence as an admission of defeat. So it is now supposedly the “in” thing to be incomprehensible in type, tOtAL aNd w0nT0n abUs3 of thE plAC1ng oF caP1TaL l3TteRs anD nUmb3R5 (I don’t know how people type like that. It took me 4 mins to type that one short sentence; I can bang out a whole paragraph in that same 4 mins) just so these peasants think they’re being 1337, pwning everyone, wanting moar and seeing me phail. I’m sorry, but all I see are disgraceful, ill-educated, narrow-minded and incompetent kids who are full of themselves.
The thing is, if we had left history to the peasants (teenages, kids with goth myspace pages etc), we’d be still in the fields, thinking sliced bread is the best thing since, well, sliced bread. As many countries have learnt (just look at Malaysia), what the masses want is not necessarily a good idea.
So, my responce to TJ Han’s statement: [Are] “Anime Clubs are Horses in the Automobile Age”, I would say, yes. But on the same line, look at who can ride horses in the automobile age. With Proton giving out 4% car loans, anyone can drive, but only the professionals can tame, control and work with a horse.
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