The plan is for this to be an anime blog. Right now I haven’t seen many anime at all.
There’s far too much art, far too much entertainment, floating around the place. Multiple mediums, genres,approaches – and naturally i want to make the most of this. What this means is forcing myself to constantly expand my interests. Inevitably I’m going to accidentally come into contact with various media. My task is not to be a tourist.
When I use tourist a a pejorative I’m going for something pretty specific. When people laugh at tourists it isn’t because of their interest in new places – its because the tourist doesn’t really understand. Its in pursuit of understanding, of genuine connection, that we should approach the new. And yes there’s too much to ever capture completely, but trying isn’t just good for us, its’ fun.
As an example, I only really got into music at 16. Ever since then I’ve been exploring new genres, enjoying the exploration of the whole field. Doesn’t mean I like everything, doesn’t mean I ‘get’ each new approach first time around, but I’m glad I try, I have to try.
Well anime is obviously a narrower field than music, but at the same time its pretty damn diverse. Well clearly it isn’t a genre , its more an organisational term for a bunch of TV/film within a tradition (like Hollywood). Its a collective I stumbled into a few years back when I read the (broadsheet) rave reviews and went to see Spirited Away at the cinema. I loved it, but I didn’t immediately jump on into the whole anime thing, it took time. But its the same mindset that applies to discovering music or literature. Its “This was great, what else is there? I need to find more, explore it. Can’t just be a tourist”.
So, I gradually moved towards self-immersion. I watched more Miyazaki films. I poked around on the net. I watched Cowboy Bebop. I got keener. Some time just under a year ago I stepped over the line. Since then I’ve been a fairly regular watcher, I’ve routinised my watching habits, I’ve started going through the “classics”. And now I have a blog, so I can process my thoughts out loud. Basically that’s the plan: its a big old world, with piles of shit and nuggets of genius, I want to fight my way through it, claim the territory for myself the same way I would seek understanding from any medium, any genre. Its war on myself, killing the tourist.
I usually refer to it myself as a medium, probably because it’s more than just a collection of animation, as you’ve said.
Welcome to the anime blogosphere, and have a fun time doing it. :3
By: TheBigN on February 23, 2008
at 6:05 am
Cheers for the comment sir.
The more I’ve watched the more apparent the importance of conventions and traditions in anime gets. I suppose though its not technically a medium it operates just like one, its effectively a form it itself.
By: coburn on February 24, 2008
at 3:54 pm
[...] to watch a wide range of things. Perhaps another prompt to watch Kimikiss was coburn’s fine cocktail of metaphors for ‘getting into’ anime: exploration, conquest/colonisation, naturalisation and [...]
By: My Relationship With Kimikiss « The Animanachronism on March 1, 2008
at 9:56 pm
I really like the tourist as a metaphor, if you’re really using it in a metaphorical sense and I’m not just twisting your thoughts. I was thinking of similar a while ago, about tourism, but specifically sight-seeing. I really hate sight-seeing, especially when its with some annoying tour guide. I think it’s more of a waste of time to just go all out for like a few days or a week on some extravaganza sight-seeing tour of the grand canyon or what not, than to savor it and experience more of a “sight-being” – in essence, to be what you experience, not just look at it and say “well that sure is pretty.”
By: lelangir on April 30, 2008
at 2:27 am
Sight-seeing is pretty much what I meant when I used tourism negatively. The whole tourism thing comes from having spent a few holidays in foreign countries without ever feeling that I’d got to know what it was really like to live there. I’m not sure “sight-being” is necessarily what I’d like to do with anime though, because I don’t really like the idea of myself as a passive vehicle for the content of the medium, I want to engage critically. I guess that’s why I said it was a war, although plagiarism played its part in the phrasing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56hiB4eTzBE).
By: coburn on April 30, 2008
at 1:11 pm