I always found other cultures fascinating. Asia was also just that little twinge of wierd that I could never quite grasp. Is it that their entire writing is based off of pictoral messages? That the cultures of America and Asia are mild - extreme on different topics? (art, sex, laws, whatever). I don't really know.
The last few days I have been watching a few things on youtube and listening to the katamari OST for the first game. One of my favorite games. I was curious about the lyrics and composition so looked it up and such. I have an odd feeling that since one word can mean 70 billion things that something that is a pop song in japan could be written as an opera here only because of that. Where here a song like 'Time in a Bottle' by Tim Croce can both mean he wants to spend more time with his kids away from work, wishing he could bring his dead wife back to hold those precious moments closer, as well as to keep life at the fullest because we are going to die someday (in case of curiosity www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1rMeYnOmM ), in japan there can be that meaning, or the meaning of one song could mean completely different things because one word has seven meanings.
Some of the katamari songs have this. One of the songs of the PSP game actually has pointers of what to roll up if you can keep up with it and figure out what they are talking about. Kind of interesting from that aspect.
These are just my ramblings but it's been a hard few weeks so the fact that I have been able to just have thoughts roll around has been a nice get away.
I recently made a post looking for some metal to enjoy...this is pretty irrelevant because only one person responded. But, I linked an artist I was looking for more music similar to the style: turns out, I just needed to look up more from that artist.
I have enjoyed Yousei Teikoku quite a bit as of late:
I would be careful about posting about Japanese culture...it's not so bad here on the Tek forums, but there are some people who will take offense at "HOW DARE YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THE FINER POINTS OF OTAKU-LIEFFFFF". As a great man once said, "There's a stigma attached to that shit," and how true this man was.
I never understood that mentality. I love talking about things like anime or some other aspect of Japanese culture with someone who doesn't have the same exposure as I do and is curious to learn more. I hate the exclusionary mentality... Perhaps I'm just more enlightened?
It's hard to say where the mentality comes from. To a lesser, considerably more mild degree I have experienced it here on the Tek forums when I was shamelessly promoting my anime-review stuff I do on Youtube (even thise post is a vein attempt at shameless self promotion, bahahaha) but when I posted my content on more serious anime sites, the responses were almost comically daft; people scrutinizing grammar or pronunciation of Japanese words rather than focusing on the opinion I had. When I had an opinion they disagreed with they wrote me off as just being an uneducated anime viewer (in various different flavors).
It's silly, and I could probably hypothesize how this behavior came to stem from the subculture of extremist anime watchers, but I know nearly nothing about human psychology or social science, so it would be little more than a loose hypothesis with little merit. The short of it is; in any subculture that is built around a hobby or past-time, there will always an extremist end; this can be applied to nearly anything. From computer hardware, Trekkies, Star Wars fanatics, Comic Book nerds, so on and so forth. If a person can show superior knowledge over someone else, they are most likely to do so - it's just the extremists that take it to a condescending and fanatical degree.
It's unfortunate this stigma is so rampant amongst anime; I've had a few viewers of my channel basically say that quote I posted above, "There's a stigma attached to that shit," and it's that stigma they avoid anime. I personally can't care what people think; I will always do what makes me happy, and some whiny kids who think I'm not Supreme Otaku enough to be an anime viewer can go cry in my comment section; because I'll laugh, because, as I said: it's almost comical how fanatical these people can get. It's reaches a cartoon level of caricature that it's ridiculous.
And now to make you lower that pint in realizing I'm just out for myself, here is a shameless plug of my second most recent review that I did....mostly because I'm not proud of my most recent one... https://youtu.be/AvAFk3CMYvQ
And then if you're in the mood for more japanese metal, here's some more Yousei Teikoku with a song that has a title that is sort of relevant to this thread.
From a sociology standpoint it's mostly insecurity. At my college campus the nutballs all seemed to group together like a swarm of bitchy bees. THat is human nature but if you said "Oh I started watching Naruto, it's funny!" one of them or.... well all of them, would run over and SJW the shit out of how Naruto is a young orphan boy who has feelings and alianwdffbiufajksduhb. I mean jeez, social maniacs much?
It's a red herring to try to talk to any of them in my opinion because their thought process is so broken, almost looped if anything. Much like how here if someone is asking an opinion of a PC build and they slightly mention "Oh I might fiddle with VM's at some point, but I mainly do this" you can't even mention a non-six-core processor without all of the Intel fanshits jumping on you. It's Heretic and stupid, but it is the same thing as the anime fans. Theres nothing to be done about it but just ignore them and kick them in the ass when they decide to take a swing at you (often times a lot of the posts don't reference real benchmarks or proof of anything, not to say they were wrong, it's just the post I am thinking of the guy didn't want a VM server, he wanted a 3D/Photo/Video workstation and the users of the forum made it into a VM station and overall it was cancer).
My loose hypothesis on their behavior comes from what I think is just a snowballing effect. I feel like they become "bitchy bees" because it starts, at first, from being rejected for enjoying whatever anime; this rejection leads those who understand each other grouping together, which makes them more fanatical and exclusionary, thus making them seem weird, thus making them more rejected, and thus a vicious circle begins. At this point, it's just a matter of a chicken or the egg; was it the stigma that came first, or was it the obsessive anime watcher?
But I don't really know sociology, so that idea might be...hmm...wrong.....I never claimed to be good at this stuff. I almost find their behavior interesting, though, to say the least.
-Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to give them an excuse for their behavior, however.
As I said it gets to circular thought at times. Like the VM example, people who are fanatics about something can come close to insanity and never actually break, fighting for something objectively wrong or making idiots of themselves. Either way it is a red herring and they should be avoided.
I forget who said it on the forum, but everyone should be able to have their cake in peace. Windows, Mac, Linux, Huawei, LG, Anime, Batman, Star wars, Star Trek, whatever.
Agreed; I openly support the idea that people should be able to enjoy whatever it is they want so long as it doesn't bring PHYSICAL harm to another person.
Life sucks enough as is; no reason to limit yourself in what makes you happy just because of some sort of stigma attached to it.
Honestly it's other people that are assholes that create a stigma. I don't mind the herd of bitchy bees, just so long as instead of feeling triggered at the mention of someone enjoying something and yelling at them, maybe say hello?
Yeah.... People just need to calm the hell down :P
Some people just have too much time and too little to offer to society... and they just exclude themselves from it by trying to draw attention to themselves. I find the typical (highschool and such) anime groups to be a bunch of idiots with too much money and a emotional wrecks. Draws attention... probably... are they helpful or can I have an interesting conversation with them? Nup. And because these types of people make the most noise, well it becomes the stereotype.
If you don't want anything to do with them, don't get involved with them. Enjoy what you enjoy with the people you can talk to. Pretty much what I did.
If you want something good to listen to, Touhou OSTs and KOKIA is good, if you want something with more energy in it... something hardcore? Like Hardcore Syndrome or something else?
I've never really encounter that kind of swarm irl, only on the internets. Some of my friends also watch anime but we have like each our type of anime that we love to watch so often discussion are more about are you interested in such anime or not ant etc. Though I limit my mention of anime in public when I'm not with with friends as there is this fear of being labelled as an anime freak and all the stigmas related to that.
Whatever, I'm there for the music. There is Kalafina which is for me one of the best group and created great openings/endings of great anime (Madoka Magica, Kara no Kyoukai)
And up to date one of the best OST is the Clannad one (some great instrumental tracks in this OST)
not really on japanese music, but I guess I'll still post this.
I used to read some manga and watch a boatload of anime. Nowadays I can't since I find that if I read any manga or anime, I can't do anything for the next couple hours.
Binge watching/reading is a pretty big problem of mine. I watched the first episode of nurarihyon no mago at a friend's place. Bad idea.
I ended up coming home on the weekend and watching the 2 seasons or so of the series for basically the rest of the weekend. Productivity went to zero haha.
Also when seeing this thread, this popped into my head:
I went through the standard adolescent-male-discovering-Samurai-and-thinking-they-are-awesome-phase which was prevalent in the 90's and early 00's. I did not jump on the Pokemon wagon, or drink the Anime kool-aid, though. Not that I disliked it, but, it just wasn't my cup o' tea.
But I totally get what you mean by studying other cultures being fascinating. Why do we (speaking as an American) have an almost ritual observance for light-hearted manners and politeness, but in other cultures (like in Germany or China) saying "How are you?" is more of a literal conversation starter rather than an extended way of saying hello to an acquaintance.
Anyway, with Japanese culture specifically, I think one of the lures is how structured many aspects seem to be. Paired with that is the way it seemed to be almost as if looking into a mirror.