What is the point (of anime and blogging)?

This is an existential kind of question. A question that a lines itself with things like “why are we here?”, “what are we supposed to do?”, “who am I really?”, “what do I want?”, and many other questions that make us think beyond are current time frame and reference point in time and space. Of course, my question was about anime in general and not life itself, though the two can be connected to each other for many of us. This post is kind of influenced by one of my friends on facebook, who after I announced I was finally convinced to watch RWBY, which may or may not be an anime depending on your own personal definition, wanted to know if there was a point to it. Now, this isn’t going to be a post about RWBY, though a post might appear when I am all caught up with it. Maybe. Instead, this is a post about why I and maybe some other people watch and blog about anime.

Arguing about what is the point of anime is the same as arguing about all fictional media in general. To some people, anything fiction doesn’t have any point to it. All they need are facts in order to live out their lives. I, of course, think that fiction is very important. Not only as a way to escape from our normal day to day lives a little bit at a time, but as an expression of creative ideas that many of us having running around in our heads. These ideas could just be plain “I am making a fantasy adventure series” or they could come up with amazing “what if scenarios” revolving around some extreme exploration of the world events right now. Different people have so many great ideas in their heads, which is why there are so many genres of fiction available. Sometimes, ideas overlap and look the same, but it’s all about the execution. For something that doesn’t have to exist, I’m glad it does. It’s nice to see how other people see the world and how they think. It’s like getting to know people without meeting them.

Narrowing this down a little further, the question becomes why anime specifically? It’s not the only form of fiction that I pay attention to, but it’s one that I hold dear amongst many other forms of fiction out there. When I watched anime for the first time, there was something different about it that drew me to it. The art, the style, and the story telling. All of those were so different and so engrossing from what I’ve seen at that time. Even now, everything special about is still there, but with maybe a lot less flare from seeing more of it. Western animation just didn’t have the appeal to me at that time. Right now, there have been some that have come close like Avatar: The Last Air Bender and the new Voltron series, but the only people that seem to be able to do anime well are anime production studios. The original source. I can see why animation from such a small country has gotten huge all around the world. So many people have their own reasons to watch it, but this is mine.

As for blogging, that all goes the same way. For me, blogging is something new that I started recently but I can’t help not doing it. It’s one of the few ways that I try to use my own creative abilities. In a meta sort of way, blogging is how I talk about creative ideas with hopefully some creative ideas. I try to think up some interesting ways to explain my point of view about why I like anime and what I find intriguing about several different series. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I am not and that is okay. Talking about creative ideas with creative ideas seems to be a popular thing these days. There is a large amount of youtube videos which individual people and groups of people work hard to make interesting videos about anime and other media, many websites like comicbookmovie.com and animenewsnetwork thrive on that while also talking about anime in an creative and new way and/or giving an opinion about creative ideas, and then there is an endless amount of bloggers. Not everyone is creative, but then not all ideas that form into anime and other media are creative either. Nobody is perfect.

So, bringing it all together, none of us need to be here or need to write anything or watch anything. It’s something that we choose to do and thus defines us. I can go around and only talk to some people at my job. Only talk about the job and how it can be done better. For some of them, I never know what they do outside of the job and that’s all I see or know about them. To make this even worse, it’s possible to talk to everyone like this, but that would be a very cold existence. An existence more fitting for a robot then a human being. Us watching shows and talking about them becomes a part of our identities and how we can connect with other people. Now, tv shows and anime are one thing. There are also other obvious interests like music, youtube videos, comedy, and some others create interests that make us who we are and allow us to connect to others on a personal level. So that is the point here, creative ideas allow us to be human beings and separate us from robots.