The magic behind anime was that at one point channels stopped airing anime in favor for american cartoons. Even so, the popularity did not die out. In fact it got stronger. If you were to visit any website out there to past conventions, you will find the number attending actually has been increasing over the years steadily.
I made my cosplay debut at Anime Boston this year doing couples cosplay with my fiancee. I did two costumes.
Anime is popular that people are willing to fly to a city, book a hotel room and bring their costumes while buying tickets for food, transportation and to enter the convention for a weekend of panels, cosplay and fun!
Anime Boston was $60 for all three days this year and there were so many cool things about it. My personal favorite was everyone being referred to by character name. As a joke I had an inflatable oversized Tommy Gun that was a hit there with one of the characters I was cosplaying. It was actually peacebonded which added to the laughter.
Anime will always be cross-media because the conventions are great at doing that. Anime itself spans video games, radio drama broadcasts, manga, television anime series, film OVAs and Movies along with Cosplays and books.
Here is an example:
Anyone ever play dot hack? The order of dot hack is as follows:
Two Novels. The first outlines the formation and creation of "The World" and the second called A.I buster takes place before Hack//Sign.
Hack//Sign (The Anime) - half the story. The story dealing with Tsukasa and others..
The Four PS2 Hack Games (Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, Quarantine) which continue the story.
Hack//Unison - Taking place after the game. Both cast of characters are unified in an anime episode that brings that story to a close.
In this first story there are manga, anime series, novels, and video games!
Also, I find stories going through a lot of media being good for people. Allows them to learn and get a handle for each media, and it just is plain cool when artists and developers collaborate and bring a story to life through different mediums.
Best part was that they did it twice, with Hack//Roots and Hack/GU vol 1 - 3, and even an anime episode that took place after the story.
Most anime starts as Manga and in popularity becomes an anime series.
@Gamemako
I hear ya. Sure, I've a cosplayer, and I know the history of cartoon network, adult swim and toonami, but yes you are right. MMORPGs bring people from all over the world, not everyone is interested in anime and they have their lives. I play MMOs for the purpose of chatting with people from all over the world. Its interesting to have that buffer and while I like face to face meetings, its nice how emotions come out through non-verbal communication.
We can see tastes and attitude simply from character looks and class selection.
It would be nice if people did recognize that as much as I love anime, that being into anime is not a requirement needed to play a game.
Oh yeah, and newmans are my favorite race of all time in any series. ^_^
@infinite
Yeah, anime is growing and its amazing how fragile it is and what one goes through to maintain anime where it is. The fact that Japan is its source and people go bonkers to go all out in conventions just shows how much dedication and fanatical following anime has generated in the last ten years.
Its funny, I love the anime-look to Phantasy Star, because its actually an original look. I am not about "top graphics" as much as I like "original graphics" which identify a style set unique to a universe or story. ^_^
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