Almost all “mainstream” ideas began as “niche.” When Star Wars came out critics panned it because they had never seen anything like it before. X-men, Batman, Final Fantasy, Nintendo, Blizzard, Warcraft, Microsoft, Ebay, and Google started small and “niche” but became big and mainstream. These companies/franchises kept their core audience and grew. If they could do it, why can’t anime and manga studios do it too?

“But I want anime to remain niche because it is special to me.” Or another way to put it is “I’m contemptuous of popular culture because I don’t want to be like the others. If anime becomes mainstream, then I have to watch something else.”

Well… ok. I admit that a lot of popular culture is junk. But then again, if you think about it, a lot of anime shows and indie bands are junk too. During a season what percentage of anime shows are unique and creative and “step outside of the box?” And what percentage of shows do the opposite: follow the format, script, and character development of anime series from previous seasons? The proportion of the former to the later is underwhelming to the extent that a person can argue that otaku-dom is less creative than mainstream culture. Lolis, moe, giant robots, tsunderes, cartoon pornography, giant breasts, androids, maids, and various other stereotypes are everywhere in anime and manga, repeated ad nauseum. Japanese mega-corporations churn out the same hash season after season because it works. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, I mean they want money and we want to be entertained, but at some point it becomes redundant and boring.

Otakudom is different from mainstream culture, but different is not necessarily better. To conflate the two would be a confusion of terms. To illustrate, let’s create a fictional character John. John is a member of a special millennial cult that believes that science is bunk and the world will end in thirty years. Every week John and his friends gather in their small insular community to watch films that explains why the world will end in thirty years and why science is bunk. In his spare moments John reflects on the stupidity of everybody else. “How could anyone believe in such rubbish? Luckily I’m not brainwashed like them. I’m special like the millions of other believers in my cult.”

Of course John is purely a fictional character but my point is that many of the arguments against the idea of anime becoming more mainstream are selfish or contradictory. The isolationist attitude: “I like it, which is why we should keep others away from it” is not rational and is almost always self-defeating.

And yes, the desire for isolation is self-defeating. If there’s one lesson to get from history it is that the civilizations, religions and ideas that go out into the world to “sow their wild oats” (literally and figuratively) do the best and the ones that cower behind thick walls die. This statement is of course a gross oversimplification. The Mormons, Jews and the Amish [religious/cultural sects in America] are notable exceptions. However, compare Judaism to Islam or Christianity. Which religion has more adherents, power and money? Well of course Islam and Christianity. These religions actively sent missionaries to convert people around the world.

To provide another example. compare and contrast the historical impact of China versus England on world history. Certainly China had and will continue to make a tremendous impact on its region but England has made its footprint on the world. Even though China has a population and a land-size several hundred times that of England’s and even though Chinese history is a thousand years longer, the language on this screen is English, not Chinese. When the Chinese built walls the English being smarter built ships. Four hundred years later the universal world language is this one.

Another good example among the millions of other examples is Blizzard. The World of Warcraft is the first MMORPG (Mega Multiplayer Role Playing Game) to successfully attract normal, everyday, mainstream people into online gaming. Unlike the makers of Everquest and other producers of online games the developers at Blizzard made it a special point to make World of Warcraft attractive to the casual gamer. They made player-to-player interaction and PvP fighting easy, they built townhalls and meeting places everywhere, and they designed quests and characters types to encourage teamwork. Most 25-man raids and ten-men dungeons are impossible to finish without character specialization and good team communication. The result is that the majority of the people who play WoW are professionals/working people who have the time to play for only a couple of hours every day. To keep its hard-core gamer base happy Blizzard designs special (and almost impossible to accomplish) raids that drop godly equipment. The mixture of hard-core gamers and millions of other casual gamers makes the World of Warcraft one of the most bustling, creative, and prosperous communities in the world.  I believe when future generations study the history of the Internet, WoW will be mentioned like the way Pythagoras is mentioned in the history of math.

If you didn’t understand anything you’re read up to this point, understand this: ISOLATION = BAD. SOWING WILD OATS = GOOD. May this be your slogan. The purpose of entertainment is to entertain and the more people who share your interests the better. A lot of the “Moe girls,” “Maids,” “Lolis,” and other “weirdness” are there to cover up the plot holes and the stereotypes. In the age of computer graphics, animated cartoon is a terrific medium for storytelling. I do not want to eliminate otaku culture: that would be impossible and self-defeating. What I want instead is for anime to expand beyond its current limiting stereotypes to discuss topics and issues outside of Japan from a Japanese perspective. I want fifty year old beer guzzlers living in Oklahoma to pack movie theaters to watch a cartoon. I want it to become mainstream.

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