In short, why do you watch anime?
A few reasons. One is that I enjoy the community. A few problems aside, I like exchanging thoughts with other fans on blogs, forums, and Twitter. Conventions and podcasts can be fun, too, and it also gives me something to share with my little sister.
Of course, there’s also my interest in Japanese culture generally; I’ve studied Japan’s language and history, and seek out Japanese films and literature.
As I mentioned in my Anime Autobiography series, when I first became interested in anime in high school, I couldn’t really afford much of it. However, I could afford the graphic novel versions of these shows. Since this was 2005/6, Tokyopop had standardised the $10 price point, so for the cost of one anime DVD, I could get two or three volumes of the graphic novels.
Once again, I’m not sure how I first encountered this stuff; I’ve always been an avid reader, though, so I probably stumbled on the ‘Manga’ section of a bookstore, and went from there.
Dark Horse just released Ueda Hajime’s comic adaptation of FLCL in omnibus form, and though I already own Tokyopop’s old two-volume release I went ahead and double-dipped on this. The comic holds some nostalgic value for me, since I actually read it long before I saw Gainax’s original anime version. Dark Horse did include some extras to make it worthwhile, and it’s a unique enough comic that it’s well worth the purchase.
<– Previous: Anime Autobiography - Endless Delinquency and Despair
In 2010, my university career ended with a whimper, and I entered the “real world.” Actually, I just continued at the job I already had and spent most of the next year or so wondering what to do for a career. It was a somewhat depressing time, in a way, but hey - I still had my Japanese cartoons.
Now, at this point I’d seen enough that fewer and fewer shows offered really new experiences for me.
I finally got hold of the long-awaited blu-ray edition of FLCL, which is second only to serial experiments lain among my favourite (and most-watched) anime. Just owning the whole series gives me sufficient cause to celebrate, since I only own vols. 1 and 3 of the previous release (plus the full series as a bootleg).
I’ve read that the Japanese edition had serious problems with video quality, so North American publisher Funimation did their own remastering.