Beginner Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: 葬送のフリーレン // Next: ウスズミの果て

This is actually why I picked up Fruits Basket in the first place. I was told it was Hentai - which it is not =P Spoiler; there is NO sex :wink: It is a romance at least though :wink:
Person confused the words hentai and anime… XD

My brother in law did the same… My sister and I were talking about Anime, and he literally thought I meant animated p*rn ^^;
I had to explain the difference to him… and translate the words so he could be educated :wink:
This was in the car with their kids, in just the right age… Old enough to understand, to young to have this kind of conversation with (8-12)

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It really perplexes me how when it comes to anime, people regularly confuse medium with genre. People are perfectly happy to accept that adult-themed magazines exist without assuming that all magazines are adult-themed, but somehow when it comes to anime, they forget this.

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Let’s not forget, “I saw something anime, and I know you like anime, so I bought it for you.” Hands over a figurine of weird-looking character from a series you’d never ever watch, even if you’d ever heard of it.

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Netflix: “Hey I see you watched some anime, so we’re gonna say every anime on Netflix is a 90+% match”.
Me: :unamused:

(P.S. From just checking Netflix, apparently in the U.S. it now has Angel Beats and AnoHana.)

Has that actually happened to you? Because that’s very strange.

(P.S. Why doesn’t English let you write “Has that actually happened to you?, because that’s very strange.”? What’s the best way to write that in one sentence I wonder.)
(P.P.S. I blame Japanese for me wanting to put “I wonder” at the end of my sentences.)

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Multiple times, from various people. I’ve also received some Chinese items because “I saw this and know you like Japanese things” =D

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I was so close to buying this cool stained glass with a panda design recently, but it had the Simplified Chinese version of 愛 on it, which annoyed me (plus I didn’t have a good place to put it).

I’m glad this hasn’t happened to me, because that would be awkward. I’d be like, “uhhhh why’d you get this for me?”. :laughing:

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Not with anime, but I’ve been randomly gifted volume 13 of X (Wikipedia page for those too young to know it). It got me to read the series, though, so it wasn’t so bad.
(It turns out volume 13 was the latest published in France at the time, so it wasn’t completely random either, but still)

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Haha, yes, for some reason, people seem fond of gifting later volumes in a series… I got part two of some random two-part comic book once… Kept thinking to myself “really, just part 2 of a 2-part book? how much of a cheapskate are you?” That was when I was a kid, and those were adults in the extended family… really just goes to show how little people care. :woman_shrugging:

Well, sometimes the awkwardness might be intended. :smirk: Didn’t happen to me though.

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Ooo. I kinda want to rewatch Anohana, because I’ll be visiting Chichibu in October…

These kinds of thinks kinda happened to me. My parent bought me a anime T-shirt once. The fun part was that I started watching the anime something like 4 days before they gave me the T-shirt of that anime. I laughed so hard. I was like I started watching this anime 4 days ago. Liked the coincidence.

But yeah I don’t know how I would react if someone were to randomly give me a the 13 volume of a random serie. Probaly just asked why.

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This exact scenario has happened to me. I don’t collect figurines either, so it was really odd, but it was my mom who gave it to me, soooooo…I now have a box with some random figurine from a series I’ve never heard of sitting on my bookshelf. I feel bad even thinking of getting rid of it because it came from my mom. :sweat_smile:

I’ll probably wait a little while and then donate it to Goodwill or something.

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What was the series? I’m kinda curious if I’ve heard of it.

I’ve never really experienced this at all, where people think you like all anime and give you stuff.
What I always experience are people sayings like “I don’t like anime” (also “comics are dumb”), which basically implies the same mindset. Because the same people wouldn’t say “I don’t like movies.” That would be weird. Like… which kind of movies? ALL movies? Really?

It is okay to not like a medium (like some people genuinely don’t like the medium of comics for various personal reasons), but I’m talking about when people clearly think all anime is the same genre (generally shounen). It’s a little odd.

At the same time, I think it can be shorthand (intentional or not) for not liking really common aspects of something. Like, when I say I don’t like bollywood music, what I really mean is that the artificially high female vocals drive me crazy. In a similar way, Japanese women intentionally sounding like babies (no matter what age they’re playing) really drives some people away. Then there’s other things, like how Japanese media generally doesn’t have the consistent tone that Western audiences enjoy. They don’t really have a tone problem, but it can feel like they so when you’re uninitiated.
Also every damn show is in high school

So I don’t think it’s totally invalid either. So I usually just point out that everything has exceptions and everyone is impressed by Akira :wink:

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But but! Shirobako!

Well, shounen isn’t a genre either. It’s a demographic.

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Touché, though I think it kind of crosses that line. In that way that “YA novel film adaptation” is almost it’s own genre with it’s own tropes even though it kinda shouldn’t be?

Ah well.

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Random weird/maybe unexpected thing: やがて君になる technically runs in a shounen magazine(as do plenty of other manga that aren’t really what people typically think of as shounen, but that seemed like one of the more unusual examples).


Regarding the thing about people getting random stuff, it made me remember that my grandparent’s on my dad’s side randomly gave me volume 18 of dragonball z when I was younger - without knowing I liked anime or manga or anything. I guess they just figured buying volume 18 of a comic seemed like a good present somehow?

(On the other hand, on my mom’s side, my Grandma has a Rin nesoberi - not because she knows anything about love live at all, but because she just likes plushies in general and thought it was pretty unique)

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The only result potentially being the annoying furigana everywhere. :unamused:

That’s actually kinda amazing. I just looked it up and the pose is totally in character. :laughing:

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魔法騎士(マジックナイト)レイアース

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Well I have not heard of that, but according to AniList it was the third most popular anime from 1994. So uhh, I guess there’s that.

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…I mean, I know about it. It is CLAMP after all >_>

i’malsojustolderthaneveryone

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