Why do you like anime characters, they said. It's fictional, they said.

I'm a retired otaku. Friends who knew me since secondary days know that I'm an otaku. My life revolves around anime and manga, literally. The interest only goes away when I entered A-Levels when I was too busy and all my friends with the same interest left me. T.T Eventually, the otaku in me went away (aww... poor thing). Non-otaku friends would never really understand our interest. I guess it's just like how I'll never understand the hearts hardcore Kpop fans. I don't know how hardcore of an otaku I was in the past but well, I would save up money the entire year just to get my friend's aunt to buy 10 volumes of Ouran Host Club manga from Singapore for me (starved the entire year during recess but the end result was worth it). Today, some of my most valuable manga is still in my book racks.  I would also buy animes from shops, not from pasar malam simply because I feel that I need to acknowledge the creators' rights. I don't know how many anime CDs I own that are original ones (maybe the shop owners cheated me in the past, saying it's original when it's not) but I do my best to support these creators lah. 

I know this might sound really exaggerated but anime and manga is not just an interest to me. It's already a form of art. It's because I know it's not easy to make a manga or an anime. Maybe people outside might just think that it's just an interest. A comic artist doesn't just come up with a manga like that. Drawing skills don't just appear out of nowhere like that. Process of making manga might be easier now with Photoshop and stuffs but in the 90s, one volume of manga (that you probably finish in half an hour) might take up to 6-9 moths. That's why, creator of Hana Yori Dango (or most of you know as Boys Over Flowers) took up more than a decade to finish its 36 volumes. Heh, I used to draw some manga too (when I wanted to join Gempak's competition but never got anything cos my drawing is just too bad). Six pages of it took me entire month to finish. I can't imagine how the mangaka (comic artists) did their work. And not to mention, most of them starve (ahh... the unfortunate fate of most artists T.T) everyday too.

When people ask why otakus would like all these stuffs, I don't think we could give an answer. Might take up 3 days 3 nights to explain our interest. Some of friends also said things like, why would we want to like something fictional, something which is not even real and it's like pointless for us to like etc. I never really got an answer. I think it's because it's art? I actually think each anime and manga character that I watch, they're not just characters for me. They've got depths and a lot of them actually affects me and the way I see life. No joke, okay. I'm not trying to sound philosophical and godly or what but it's true. I don't think it's just me. I think it applies to a lot of other otakus out there too. Some really really good ones out there really teaches you a thing or two about life. After all, manga is the just the same as books. They've got lessons too, not just some shallow stories that teaches you nothing. For some who come across echi or hentai (porn manga) and then basically judging the entire anime industry... well, there're porn movies too and you don't go around judging it and then ask people not to watch movie, do you?

Till today, I think the few animes I really love would still be the same, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fruits Basket, Nana, Ouran Host Club and hmm... the ones I really love are pretty this few. And also Hana Yori Dango. I don't really have much updates about this industry for these 2 years so I don't know how it's going. Did any mangaka pass away? Or did any new mangaka come up with fresh stories? Or did the fans in the entire world decrease or increase? Heh, when I was in secondary school, I was so bloody updated with every news. : D I think it's partly because I have friends with mutual interest, we just kinda update each other with all these things. I also used to go read online manga and boy, back to 4 or 5 years ago, it was really hard to find a website with all the mangas. Nowadays, it's relatively easy though, there're so many websites out there with lots and lots of online manga. In the past, when I wanted to read a manga so much, it was so hard for me. Cos we don't have that much manga in Malaysia and even so, they're all imported from the US (ShojoBeat and Tokyopop all those) and bloody expensive. :(

Flunyway, as i grew older I think I also became more choosy. I've read a lot of anime and manga and honestly, most of them are pretty much the same, especially shojo manga (it's means girl's comics. usually love stories). It's all like, the girl meets the boy, who happens to be really really handsome and pretty and famous in school. They fell in love etc, things happen, they break up, the mother disagree etc, the end (pretty much like Taiwanese drama). Good ones are hard to come by (cos I've read most of them.. haha). And some manga also depict the girls in such a way that they're always under control of the guys and some girls are so cheerful they come off as annoying. That's why I like only the few mangas I mention up there. The characters actually have personalities, you know. As for the shonen manga (means the comics for guys, usually fighting ones, got monsters all those one), it's all full of monsters, and a NEVER ENDING MANGA. Now that I think about it, are Naruto and Detective Conan even finished?! It's so tiring, I tell you. Every month have to update myself with these stories and sometimes they don't update it into the websites, have to wait longer, and before you know it, you forgot the storyline! And then, when you read a lot of manga all at once, you tend to get mixed up with the storylines. That's what happens to me with Vampire Knight. At first, it was pretty good and promising with all the pretty guys and girls. And the story wasn't to complicated and easily understood too. And then it just had to drag and then more and more and more characters came out, I ended up losing my track of the story. Plus, at that time, I was reading Fruits Basket, Nana, and Fullmetal Alchemist and couple of other anime and manga too. That is also one reason why I like Fullmetal Alchemist. It ends with a perfect timing, not too long, not too short story. It doesn't have 84308943120 volumes and overly complex storyline.

I think it's just that as I got older, I had higher expectation and a lot of manga isn't like what I expect so eventually, I stopped reading new manga altogether. I'm actually still waiting updates from Ai Yazawa though. Her Nana is on hiatus for more than 2 years already (she got some serious illness and got hospitalised).

Whatever it is, the anime and manga industry is something I would still appreciate because I understand the hard work most of the creators go through. It's not easy to create a manga and most artists starve in the daily basis (unless you're Fujio F. Fujiko kind of famous, he's Doraemon's creator) and also have to rush datelines and stuffs. :( Life must have been really hard on them. Let us give them a moment of silence and hope that they can lead a better life.