Now, I’m sure I’m going to get some details wrong, but the major point is that there is a growing number of mostly males who say that they can only love something digital… something in anime. (more after the jump)

Now, I’m considerate to other people’s lifestyles. I mean, sure, Second Life sure has a lot of weird things in it, but I don’t care. Simply because it’s none of my business. But lately there is just more and more stigma being attached to anime. This growing outcry for Otaku Rights and people making a big deal out of loving a character in an anime is only deepening the boundaries between “normal people” and someone who “watches anime”.

As it stands, in most normal conversations, if you bring up that you like anime most people will assume you mean Naruto or Bleach or whatever is the flavor of the year on Adult Swim. However, more and more people are becoming aware of the weird things attached to anime. The Otakukins, the website Otakubooty (seriously), cosplay, and more. Anime is being more and more mainstream and so is the oddities involved.

People need to calm down, take their fetishes back in private or get help. I say get help in the sense that a lot of people are using anime as a form of escape and I’m sure whatever that is in their life that is causing that need could be worked at. But yeah, I’m not getting into that because the second you try to relate people needing help with their lives to anime you get zerg rushed down with various opinions. Opinions, of course, are something everyone has.

Anyway, I think something should be done with anime in order to make it more public friendly. More integrated with society. As it stands now to watch current Japanese anime you have to understand how the Internet works, how to torrent things or use IRC. Then you have to take the time to constantly seek it. If you’re spending that much time on the computer then good chances you are probably spending a lot of time online.

Which generally means something bad is going on in your life. A lot of people seek escape and sometimes they tangled up with some things that are really bad PR as a hobby. I’m keeping things PG here, but I will say that some of them are urgh. Anyway, those that do watch anime and get involved with these other things become vocal. Then people relate the two together.

Spending a lot of time online + anime = relation to stuff like furries/otakukin/otherkin (the really bad ones). Then the stigma forms.

So, in my confusing editorial, I’m trying to say that either people need to begin separating anime in general from their “sick” (point of view) hobbies or anime needs to become more mainstream. As it stands now, anyone who is Internet savvy can probably tell you what a furry is and will probably relate anime to one of those hilarious pictures of real Otakus with their 23992384 billion Anime DVDs and stuff.

If it continues, it’ll soon be to the point where watching anime will be instant stigmatization. Right now on Something Awful posters of the ADTRW forum are constantly ridiculed by Helldump and other forums. Its always been that way, but lately it has increased due to a small number of posters who let their “weirdness” out in the public. Few bad apples and all that. Anyway, anything related to anime on Something Awful is now pretty much the end of a poster’s career anywhere outside of ADTRW. Just do the massive amount of stigma surrounding anime.

So if you’re reading major anime label company, try to get anime out there more where it’s no longer the past time of people with a lot of time on their hands. If you’re reading mister STRANGE FETISH + rapid anime watcher, try to be less vocal with your hobbies. Maybe keep them within their community. It’s actually quiet healthy to keep some things within a group of people who understand and away from groups of people who don’t.

Now, sub groups like dattebayo are able to get their anime out within 24 hours of release. That is translated, TIMED, quality checked, and released. Generally speaking, it’s normal for your average fansub group to get anime out within 3 days after its release in Japan.

Really though, should we expect this of all fansubbers? If you look at the process in which anime fansubing takes, you first have to obtain a high quality RAW from someone in Japan (usually someone who works for the group and lives in Japan). Then, they have to get someone to sit down and translate word for word what is going on. This process can be sped up with more translators.

Then comes the timing, after the entire process of translation (which in itself requires some quality checking). Someone has to time the translation to the screen and have the words come up long enough to be read but also go along with whats happening on the screen. Again, more people assigned to this the faster it goes.

Next comes the encoding. I don’t know much about this other then it involves a guy using some kind of computer to mux together the subs and the video and compress it without losing quality. THEN comes quality check (people watching it over and over for errors). After that, comes release.

Considering a lot of this sounds like horrible grueling work, I personally don’t think we should expect instant turn around on subs. Although I do feel that there is a certain amount of responsibility for sub groups to get things out in a timely manner. Apparently there is some kind of “FANSUB CODE OF HONOR” in which one fansub group can only sub one anime at a time and if another shows up on the scene they have to start from the beginning of the series. So, if you’re they are going to be slow, there better be a damn good reason.

I think, all in all, I have yet to feel angered with any fansub group. The fast subbers always pickup the popular series, although there are times where I could shake my fist into the air that Code Geass isn’t coming out fast enough.

Pizza Hut brain washing has taken effect.

The Kamehameha

I may have spelled that wrong although the spellcheker isn’t flipping out. It is basically one of the longer attacks having the caster shout for upwards to a minute the phase then unleashing a ball of their own spirit energy (from DBZ). This attack’s long name really helps continue the suspense of the moment as you wait to see if the ball hits or not.

The Spirit Gun

The Spirit Gun is Yusuke’s weapon in Yu Yu Hakusho. He shouts “SPIRIT GUN” or for the Japanese version it’s “REI-GUN”. This attack, his most powerful, is very short and by the time he is done saying the name the blast is off. No suspense is built.

The Shining Finger

G Gundam’s famous Shining Finger involves a long winded burning passion filled threat the enemy followed by an incredibly hot hand usually melting parts off the other Gundam. As the attack winds up you feel yourself in suspense as you know he’s about to unleash his major attack.

Gomu Gomu no

In One Piece, Luffy often uses his “Gomu Gomu no ” after time he does on of his stretching moves. Generally he has two forms the quick “GOMU GOMU NO GATTLING GUN” for instance and the long “GOOOMMUUU GOOOMUUU NO PIIIIIIIISSSSSSTTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL”. The short one is hardly noticed as he does it in quick attacks, but the long one builds up the suspense as you hope it works to damage the enemy.

Okay, I think I will stop. While taking a small sampling out of various Shounen series we have discovered the longer the attack name the cooler it becomes. Why? The suspense and drama associated with the attacks.

As two people draw back to unleash their attacks, the longer they spend “powering up” as it were the more excited you become about the actual attacks. For instance in G Gundam, when the speech starts you know something awesome is about to happen and get glued to your seats. While in Yu Yu Hakusho he quickly shouts Spirit Gun and it’s unleashed. While I’m not trying to discredit Yu Yu Hakusho from being a bad anime, I am trying to create a point in relation to the length of the attack names vs. the enjoyment of it.

That said, I think you can have too long of an attack. The Spirit Bomb unleashed by Goku took way too long, although it was REALLY dramatic when it went off against Freiza. It was really hard to debate as it took several episodes to power up and when it was unleashed you knew that it was going to be epic.

So, in summary, I believe the longer the attack the better. Anything over say 3 minutes is too much and anything less then 20 isn’t enough. I think within 3 minutes you can get an entire speech out and launch the attack and anything under 20 seconds is just them quickly screaming out the attack name and launching themselves forward.

The quality of being just; fairness.
1. The principle of moral rightness; equity.
2. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness
1. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
2. Law. The administration and procedure of law.

Normally, when we think of justice, we think of the majority of these based on our own opinions of what is honor, standards, law, and fairness. However, in anime it’s slightly different.

In anime, each side good and bad have their on view of what fairness is. For instance, in One Piece the Marines believe that anyone who does any kind of evil is without a doubt a very bad person requiring punishment. That is their absolute justice. However, on the other side Luffy belives in what you would think to be a more common sense of morals and fairness. That is his justice.

That is a kind of a bad example, so I’ll use some super robot examples. Say some bad guys are fighting against the good guys. From the good guys point of view, the “bad guys” are without a doubt evil and deserve their punishment. This is their justice. The evil guys however, aren’t exactly as evil as we think. See, in their eyes the good guys are evil and deserve THEIR punishment. This is their justice. So you see battle reflects around both sides definition of what their justice is.

The point I am getting at here, using simplistic examples to not make a fool of myself, is that I think a lot of people don’t look at how awesome and deep some mecha and to a certain extent shounen (jump) anime series are. On the outside it may look as if two fighters are fighting each other and that fighting is cool, but there is just so much going on between the two that it makes the fighting extremely emotional. All of this for shows targeted at children between 13 and 18. Amazing, really.

Anime runs in blocks and will either go for 13, 26, or 52 episodes. A season is, of course, 13 weeks or exactly 1/4th of a year. Unlike American T.V., Anime doesn’t stop after one season but continues until it’s finished. There are some expections to this, but on average even if they have to create filler they will be showing an anime from start to finish in one block.

Anything going past about 55 episodes is generally a Shounen anime, something so popular that it’ll be going for a very long time. Examples would be Dragonball Z, One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto.

Anime generally has a major plot change half way through on anything that is 2 seasons longer or more. This generally means on your 12th or 24th episode you will have something major happen to the characters, such as the story being completely solved but something new has begun.

When an anime ends, it’s spot is generally taken up by another anime. Rarely will you find reruns happening… those are reserved for DVDs. Reruns do run sometimes on seperate time slots or after an anime is finished showing.