One bit of the story which isn't widely recognizing is that the Japanese language and music are remarkably legible to westerners.
In particular, westerners "just get" the emotional tone and rhythm of Japanese and right away feel the emotions of anime characters. My wife is skeptical of my Japanese obsession but she frequently remarks that she finds commercial Japanese music surprisingly relatable. I can still sing Japanese theme songs from old Rumiko Takahashi anime like Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½ regardless of knowing or not knowing what they mean -- it's just easy.
This is not at all the case for Chinese, where the conflict between grammatical tone and the tone in music is immense, where Chinese music frequently sounds like the worst of Eastern European traditional music, and where I struggle to feel the feeling behind Chinese speech despite pop culture exposure and taking every chance I can get to watch the faces of Chinese speakers while they converse. No wonder games like Azur Lane, Genshin Impact and Arknights default to Japanese vocals in the West.
On top of that, Hollywood productions seem like they were made by the people who were too cool to hang out with me in high school, whereas anime is in the space of fantasy and science fiction that I grew up with. (Frickin' O'Neill colonies in 1979 Gundam)
I'm inspired by the story of how Kirby, Ditko, Lee revolutionized comics in the 1960s but even more inspired by how Type/Moon made a low-budget game, then a series of increasingly complex games culiminating in the multi-billion Fate/Grand Order, or how web novel authors get a publishing contract and then a manga and an anime that becomes a global sensation. Or how anime's reach often exceeds it's grasp like the botched ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the bungled first firing of the wave motion gun in Space Battleship Yamato or the flawed anime of Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon with terrible character designs that turned me on a light novel that I greatly enjoy -- Hollywood just doesn't do that.
And it's about the superfan. Maybe you spend a bit on a Crunchyroll subscription but when my son got into Bocchi the Rock! he's spent hundreds on collecting volumes of the manga as soon as they come out
PaulHoule•18m ago
In particular, westerners "just get" the emotional tone and rhythm of Japanese and right away feel the emotions of anime characters. My wife is skeptical of my Japanese obsession but she frequently remarks that she finds commercial Japanese music surprisingly relatable. I can still sing Japanese theme songs from old Rumiko Takahashi anime like Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½ regardless of knowing or not knowing what they mean -- it's just easy.
This is not at all the case for Chinese, where the conflict between grammatical tone and the tone in music is immense, where Chinese music frequently sounds like the worst of Eastern European traditional music, and where I struggle to feel the feeling behind Chinese speech despite pop culture exposure and taking every chance I can get to watch the faces of Chinese speakers while they converse. No wonder games like Azur Lane, Genshin Impact and Arknights default to Japanese vocals in the West.
On top of that, Hollywood productions seem like they were made by the people who were too cool to hang out with me in high school, whereas anime is in the space of fantasy and science fiction that I grew up with. (Frickin' O'Neill colonies in 1979 Gundam)
I'm inspired by the story of how Kirby, Ditko, Lee revolutionized comics in the 1960s but even more inspired by how Type/Moon made a low-budget game, then a series of increasingly complex games culiminating in the multi-billion Fate/Grand Order, or how web novel authors get a publishing contract and then a manga and an anime that becomes a global sensation. Or how anime's reach often exceeds it's grasp like the botched ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the bungled first firing of the wave motion gun in Space Battleship Yamato or the flawed anime of Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon with terrible character designs that turned me on a light novel that I greatly enjoy -- Hollywood just doesn't do that.
And it's about the superfan. Maybe you spend a bit on a Crunchyroll subscription but when my son got into Bocchi the Rock! he's spent hundreds on collecting volumes of the manga as soon as they come out