Hey, Answerman!

For the last 2 weeks you've been getting mail from that kid who thinks he's Naruto or can use ninja chakra powers, and while I thought it was fake at first, i realized that this is the internet and people like that probably do exist. So here's my question: are there people out there who sincerely think they can use anime characters' powers in real life? Are they just kids playing pretend or what?

I knew this question would come one day and somehow I knew that flake would spurn it. I dread answering this. I don't even like knowing the answer to this.

The short answer to your question is "yes". The long answer is terrifying if you haven't heard of these people before.

Thanks to the internet, delusional people now have a haven where they can all get together and tell eachother that they aren't delusional. This bolsters their delusions and makes them self-righteous and in many cases, highly pretentious about their ridiculous "beliefs". Some kid can be "practicing" his fake "martial arts" outside after watching too much Naruto, pretend that he surprised himself by doing something "magical" like shooting ninja lightning out of his ass or something, and then go online and report it to his friends and SOMEONE else will undoubtedly hop on the attention monger train and say "Wow that same thing happened to me too!". Then it all turns into this big wank-fest where they make up stuff and agree with eachother and eventually start taking themselves really seriously. The kid who wrote in threatening to beat me up with his imaginary cartoon powers last week sounded like he had a little clique of friends, who probably all buy into his bullshit and have convinced themselves that they, too, have magic inner spirit animals that give them special abilities. They probably also draw anime-style fanart of themselves. There are a LOT of little cliques like this out there; they are all over the internet and infest high schools everywhere.

Kids like that aren't even really the worst of it, either; they're sort of the 'larvae stage' of an even creepier community, the "Otakukin". There's a small chance you've heard of "otherkin", people who believe they're actually dragons or foxes or faeries or whatever trapped in human bodies. Those people are bad enough, but Otakukin take it one step further - they believe they are the reincarnation of an anime character.

No, I'm not kidding. Yes, there are people who actually subscribe to this. Yes, they are completely bonkers.

The basic concept is this: someone goes on to the Otakukin message board - wherever it may exist, there are a few of 'em out there - and claims that they think they may have been Kagome or Goku or Duo Maxwell in a past life. How can they prove it? Well, they claim that when they were watching the anime series, they had specific memories of having lived those events, and sometimes the anime series gets it "wrong". That's right, someone will claim to be Inuyasha and then say that in episode #82, the events were "wrong", it actually happened "like this", and they know that because in a past life or a parallel dimension or something they actually were Inuyasha so they know better.

Here's a choice quote from the Livejournal Otakukin community to give you an example of how these people talk to eachother:

:Samurai X: The Motion Picture, on the other hand, was offensive to me. So poorly put together and so utterly pessimistic, it wasn't anything like me, especially at that time in my soul progression."

Obviously this person believes he or she is Rurouni Kenshin. See what I mean? Here's another couple of gems:

"Also, the recent anime portrayals of me in the filler arc of Naruto were so... Hollow. Almost kinda soulless and cheap. I'm definitely manga canon."

"I've had this sort of thing happen with soul bonds, and bonds that I've known on other's systems, even they way the 'oringal' artist designed the charatcers, I've been told they was slight off."

This person uses the word "original" in quotes, because Otakukin believe that the person who actually created the manga was simply "tapping in" to the alternate reality in which the anime character actually existed, and therefore is doing no more than recording a fictionalized version of real events. This gives them room to "disagree" or act violated somehow when they watch anime and decide they want to take issue with some scene.

Is your head exploding yet? I don't really need to harp on and on about how utterly ridiculous this stuff is, because it really does speak for itself, but it just goes to show you that even when something is so ridiculous and out there it seems like it has to be a joke, there are doubtless hundreds who take it gravely seriously. Take a cruise around the Otakukin sites (or read today's Flake of the Week), though; it will give you the very unique sensation of feeling really good about yourself as a person while simultaneously laughing and sobbing.

My rant is about anime reviews/reviewers.  I will firstly admit that I don't scour around and read dozens of reviews and honestly reviews practically never influence my decision on what I buy anyway.  However, I do feel a bit aggrivated when I happen to casually read a review I sometimes come across.  This happens in the majority of the few reviews I do end up reading.

What bothers me the most about what I too often (in my opinion) read in so many anime reviews is one simple thing.  The word "cliche" and/or the phrase "something we've all seen before".  I just can't stand to see that in practically every review I come across.  I understand it can give an idea of what people who've seen these "cliches" before over and over what to expect but I find that more often what accompanies such description is low scores, heavily opinionated/subjective writing, and (overly) harsh statements about the show/volume.

I realize it can be difficult, really impossible, to give an unbiased review of something, but come on.  Not everyone has seen all these "cliches" that are constantly mentioned and often times causing a review to be written in a direction of bias.  And even if they have, their experience with them may vary.  I realize (and have been told) that I am easy to please, and I find just about all the anime I watch and own (which is hundreds of dvds/series, and nearly six years of interest in anime) to be quite enjoyable and I end up disagreeing with the harshness of a review just because of cliches. 

I don't mind so much when someone says the animation is not amazing, or the voice actors could have been better, and stuff like that.  It's just that I hate to see someone immediately berate a title for being similar to something else and calling it bad because of it.  i.e. something like "Such and Such is just another crappy harem show.  Same old cliche - high school guy meets alien girl, girls fight over him and several live with him, blah blah blah. Story: C-"  If the reviewer can make his points well and explain why in the case of that title the cliches don't work, that's not so bad.  Problem is I often times don't find that kind of reviewing done and it ends up just a padded version of the example above. 

In my opinion, cliches are done so much, hence becomming cliches, because not only can it be difficult to be unique and completely original but it's also because it becomes something that works.  I've seen dozens of harem shows, which I find to be the biggest targets of the negative cliche reviews, and I'm not at all tired of the same formulas over and over.  These shows wouldn't be so cliched if nobody enjoyed them.  In my opinion that's the key point a lot of reviewers neglect.  I also think most of them, conciously or subconciously, write their reviews with the idea in mind that most people feel the same way they do.  I think this is a wrong way of doing it.

Basically, what I'm saying is I would love to see less biased reviews and see more of them written in a one-on-one objective focus on what the show brings to the table.  Try not to be personal and when writing a review examine it as if it were the first time you've encountered it.  It's kinda funny when I think about it - often times a reviewer themselves can become cliches in the very ways they often despise by constantly berating titles for the same things over and over.  When I think about a show I think about that show and only that show, so maybe that's another reason I can enjoy most of what I watch more than most people who write reviews apparently can.

So please, I'm not desiring that reviewers enjoy everything and call everything good, I just want to see better written reviews based on the quality and use of the content of a title.  Not mostly on how the title's cliches/content compares to something else.  There is nothing wrong with a little comparing, but don't forget the title on it's own.