So I'll tell you. Doing the New York Otaku column has been a lot of fun and also quite difficult. Coming up with stuff for every weekday is no joke! Anyway, I haven't been linking it out as much as I should be, so I figured that I would go over the past month in the column and point out the ones that were particularly good.
A lot of what I'm doing is just letting my (imaginary) Japanese audience know things that I think nobody would ever tell them. A lot of it is kind of "yeah, I know" for American fans, but there are other things that I think would still be interesting!
Takashi Murakami and "there is no Cool Japan"- Given what I'm doing, I felt that when I saw this interview with Murakami I had to chime in as an American observer. Anime's image here is a hell of a lot more complicated than "Cool Japan", and also Cool Japan is kind of bullshit.
An explanation of the brony phenomenon as the direct American equivalent to Japanese moe fandom.
A story about Pocky and how American anime fans irrevocably tied up the snack food with their identity.
Of course, a piece on the very small trend of Japanese mahjong and American anime fans.
My all-time saddest otaku story. If I ever write a book about this stuff, it's probably going to be the first chapter.
And in which I out my friends on owning Japan-priced anime and get to talk about Akibaranger.
Akibaranger comes recommended. I thought it was going to be obvious, weak parody of the most-parodied subject in otaku-land, but it's really funny, not totally self-deprecating, and unexpectedly sharp. Give it a watch.
What kind of feedback do you get from your readers?
Posted by: Bradley | April 23, 2012 at 03:09 PM
I'm actually finding these pretty fun to read, even if it is familiar material.
Posted by: rvr67michael | April 25, 2012 at 01:07 AM
Wow, I came here to make precisely the same two comments that Bradley and rvr67michael have already made. I will reiterate both.
Posted by: vul | May 11, 2012 at 10:05 PM