Hung over in a hotel room and I failed to officially sign up to do the topic, but did you really think I’d skip out on the first B.O.O.B. (Breast-Owning Organization of (anime) Bloggers) round-robin topic? Heck no!

This first topic is, in shortened form, whether I think anime is a form of escapism for me and/or in general, and if that’s a good thing or an unhealthy thing. Other participants: Blissmo, Tachikomatic Days, Shizukie, myucon, KaeBoo, animemiz, elezend, usagijen, Gar Gar Stegosaurus, and of course, hinano.

Warning: I completely winged this. As such, it’s a meanderous, rambling thing, with no particular thesis or conclusion. Tread carefully!

Now, first off, I’d say that pretty much all forms of entertainment are escapism. There’s nothing productive about sitting in a movie theater for two and a half hours to see Indiana Jones meet aliens or Speed Racer kick some corporate ass. You don’t get anything tangible out of it; in fact, you pay for it. So why do so many people watch movies and TV and read books? Because people like spending a couple of hours outside of their own reality. I don’t care whether it’s a Harlequin novel or the Iliad, whether it’s Naruto or With the Light, Vampire Knight or Cowboy Bebop: you partake because it takes YOU out of the equation for a while, which is a nice break for most people.

As for anime in specific…well, as it applies to me is always a special case, seeing as anime has somehow been my career for over a year now. As a result it’s both an escape and…well…work! Yeah, I know, hate me for it already. (No, really– you should see this hotel room I’m sitting in for A-Kon. It’s niiiice. Okay, shut up gia, get back on topic.)

But this question isn’t really about whether anime IS escapism, I think. I think it’s actually more about whether anime is a more extreme escapism than other forms of media, and I think the reason we wonder about this at all is because the fans are, without a doubt, more hardcore about it than, say, your average House devotee, or even all those screeching American Idol fans (when was the last time YOU saw someone cosplay as Ryan Seacrest, aside from Halloween? Yeah, I thought so!).

So then the question shifts from being about whether anime is a form of escapism and moves into whether anime fans are escapISTS, which I’m using here to refer to people for whom escapism is less of an occasional break and more of a lifestyle. But isn’t that really what being a geek is all about? Whether you keep up with a dozen anime shows a week or play World of Warcraft for four hours a day, read every Star Wars novel or write Harry Potter fanfiction, we all have this in common: our entertainment is a truly significant part of our daily lives.

But is that okay? Is it healthy? At what point does it get taken too far?

It seems to me that there’s a pretty broad spectrum of fandom where there’s no problem at all; plenty of people avoid most entertainment and do okay. (Though if they avoid it, they probably don’t like it, and therefore is it still entertainment?) And there are plenty of people who are devotees of this or that nerdy thing who do pretty well for themselves in the rest of the world, too.

But I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that there are fans whose geekdoms take the place of a social life. We’ve all bumped into that guy at the con who smells like cheetos and sweat who can’t look you in the eye and blathers on about what he thinks without worrying about whether you care, the fangirl who literally tackles the cosplayer of her favorite character or tries to force a couple of guys into posing for yaoi scenes, that person at the panel who asks incredibly specific questions about minute details of XYZ series that make the creators go “…what?” (Though admittedly, I was kind of amused by Gainax’s answer to the question about why Simon turns the core drill to the left instead of to the right to turn on the Lagann…). There are the people who will actively refuse to leave the house in favor of watching anime and playing games; the ones who refuse to take a job that isn’t, well, like mine; the ones who really mean it when they say that 2D girls are better than 3D; the ones who just don’t understand how to be considerate.

…But…can I really say that it’s bad for these people to take their fandom to the extreme? Sure, they can be annoying, but what exactly would we expect them to do? It’s easy to say “get out there and learn how to be social!” but if you’ve missed out on learning a lot of the social cues as a kid, it is a bitch and a half– no, make that two bitches and a half –to try and train that into a late teen or adult. (Trust me, I tried once. Let’s not talk about that ex, shall we?)

I was originally thinking I’d say at some point that “escapism is fine as long as it doesn’t progressively infringe on your ability to have a real life,” but what about these people for whom being social is an incredibly stressful and difficult thing? It’s not exactly nice to say it, but plenty of them may never really function well in a social group. So if you take away their obsession, would it really help? Probably not.

I as pretty awkward at the time I got into anime. Granted, I was 12, and who isn’t awkward at 12? But I was especially so; I was just about to graduate from the school I’d been at from 2nd grade through 8th, where I was very much a social reject; no real friends. I was lucky to make some excellent friends in high school– geeks all –and also to be the kind of person who’ll put forth effort, so I’m actually pretty presentable now. (Or so my former boss, Rob Bricken, always said. Something to the effect of: “she’s a total professional…who devolves into a squealing fangirl.” Note that this man has a Lum tattoo and wrote his senior thesis on Final Fantasy VII, no fooling. I miss you Rob, even though I know you’ll never read this entire thing!)

But, yes, anime was very much an escape for me then, and it still is now…just like reading manga, playing a game, diving into a novel, etc. So…back to the consanity for me!

Tags: random, rant, round robin

14 Responses to “Round Robin: Insert Witty Escape/Rabbit Hole Joke Here”

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail