I wanted to come back to this distasteful story, because there are only so many developing stories in the world of American otaku right now.
This column was a long time coming. If you ask any young American person of my generation about the word “Voltron” they'll probably get nostalgic, and then perhaps excited.
American fighting game players very widely use the term “anime game”. It's all but official terminology! When we do so, we're talking about a very particular sort of game in the genre: games descended from Darkstalkers (Vampire),
Let's talk about one more event that leads to lines around the convention center. There's the rave, there's the concert,
A friend of mine doesn't like to talk about it, but he singlehandedly put the word “weeaboo” into regular usage among American anime fans.
A friend of mine-- I'll withhold his name to protect his identity-- has an otaku secret that he doesn't want his buddies to know about.
The earliest American anime fans were people at science fiction conventions watching tapes untranslated: if they were lucky there was a translated script in their hands, or
Years ago I briefly dated a Japanese-American otaku girl who very sincerely asked me, “Dave, am I Japanese enough for you?” The question was
And so it was that at two in the morning during a round of Dodonpachi with a friend, I found out that Anime Boston had been shut down by the police.
Shinichiro Watanabe's new anime Kids on the Slope just premiered, and it made me think about American online fan reaction to the show even
there are many cases of censorship in older American broadcasts of anime/manga. A brushed-out splash of blood here, bare breasts painted over with a “swimsuit” there.
I have mentioned in passing that nearly every anime that aired on American television was somehow altered for US audiences.
I thought right away of Gundam in America. It's a very strange story, and Gundam fans in Japan might be a little mortified to hear it.
At midnight on April Fool's Day this year, Cartoon Network changed its usual late-night programming to “Toonami”, the fondly remembered programming block from the late 90s.
I won't exactly call it a trend-- it's much too small for that-- but in the last few years a lot of English-speakers have suddenly been taking up Japanese-style mahjong.
If you give American anime fans a few square feet of free space, they'll do one of two things: pull out a stereo and start a dance circle
Speaking of moe outside Japan, here's one you might not have heard. Years ago, the Japanese artist Raita drew some pictures in a doujinshi
"Letters from the New York Otaku"
