Well this is just
more on being personal than actually explaining things... so this post is a little but all over the place :))
I’m pretty positive
that all of us have a good share of our very own ‘personal anime history’. Some
bloggers have a small page or post of it on their blogs while some just share
it to other people through forums, MAL profiles, or other means of sharing.
This little history
of ours basically goes around how we first found anime, manga, seasonal anime
and how our preferences change over time. In my personal point of view, our age
and exposure to anime basically play the biggest roles in the development of
our current preferences in anime (and that’s what I’ll talk about here).
I’m pretty sure that
most anime fans are aware of the basic gender-age related genre – shounen & shoujo
and seinen & josei. These four are divided by gender and age bracket for its
target audience but anyone can generally just watch anything. I believe that
these gender and age brackets basically give an overview as to how much one can
appreciate or understand a series in general.
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| shounen-battle-adventure? :)) |
I wouldn’t want to
expound so much on these four but in general shounen
& shoujo caters audience between the
ages of gradeschool to highschool with shounen
series being obviously for boys while shoujo
series are for girls. Seinen & Josei, on the other hand, simply goes around
for audience around 18yrs old and above thus having deeper stories, characters,
more violent battles and such (you get the point).
These age brackets
are basically how writers set the content of their series because with age
comes the viewer’s ability to understand or appreciate a story or a set of
characters, as I have mentioned earlier.
Now that I’m done
with that, let me go over how one’s exposure to anime affects his anime
preferences together with his age. I guess this is where we’ll go through our
anime history (my anime history for this post but you can take a look or
reminisce at your own as you read my post, if you can relate, that it :3).
While those
gender-age-based genres generally relies on content, as anime fans who did not
grew up in Japan, we rely on what is available on our local televisions. Here
in our country, Philippines, I remember when I was in 2nd grade an anime airs
weekly – Hell Teacher Nube/Jigoku Sensei Nube
(Mondays), Ranma 1/2 (Tuesdays), Master of Mosquiton (Wednesdays), Sorcerer Hunters (Thursdays), Fushigi Yuugi and Pokémon (Fridays) and somewhere there is The Vision of Escaflowne, Lupin III and Flame of Recca/Rekka no Honoo (any Filipino readers out there
that can probably remind me of their schedule? XD). I’ve also seen Yu Yu Hakusho (Ghost
Fighter) but I think it aired separately from this set (I think even
before these were aired in the country).
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| Yu-Gi-Oh! - Hyakunin Isshu style |
There were a lot
more stuff that were made available in local channels (and naturally they were
in Filipino dub) during those times and I generally watch most of them but I
think that Pokémon was my fave.
Throughout my gradeschool days, I think I grew up being a shounen series fan
since shoujo series weren’t exactly offered so much in local television (if
they were offered such as Card Captor Sakura
I seriously just missed them =__=). At fifth grade, my love for shounen series
grew after watching Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters.
It was the series I considered my fave until I dropped anime during my
highschool days and went back to anime through Yu-Gi-Oh!5D’s before college.
Throughout my first
two years in college I’m into streaming anime. From watching Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, I randomly discovered Angel Beats! thus my discovery of KEY anime. I was exposed to other KEY series such as CLANNAD, Kanon and Air. From there, I further searched for
romance-drama series – oh you know KEY
series :3 I came across more romance series, seasonal anime (and downloading
from torrent. LOL) and my history goes on.
Currently, I believe
that my preference in anime has greatly changed. Although I still watch and
occasionally enjoy the series I watch back then, my focus on watching kind of
changed from plain romance and drama to something that inspires or has some pretty
sensible plot or pretty relatable characters (maybe that just sounds so stupid
-__-). I’ve grown more critical in what I watch. I think that this is basically
because of the number of series I’ve seen (200 isn’t exactly that many but still it’s a pretty huge
number), the variation of their genres and probably my exposure to blogging
also had an impact.
I’m pretty sure that
sooner or later my taste in anime will somehow change. Actually I’m sure that
interest will change soon (and I can already see that coming) that I might even
set anime aside (but probably not for good). ANYWAY, we all have changed in
interest, preferences and such that I’m pretty sure that you guys also went on
some changes in taste since you started watching anime. Anyone want to share
stuff on how your preferred series/genre changed over the years?
