Issue 9 - Yipe!

J-Pop is not Filk.This is a bad thing?interest of SF fans and thusdeserved a place in their convention(that place often beinga dark midnight screeningroom tucked away in afar corner of the hotel.)Any costume theme that embarassesneither boyfriend nor girlfriend hassomething going for it.Thus, anime fans were treatedlike juvenile delinquentsand second class citizens, notto be trusted with the lineageof fandom because they ‘justdon’t get it’.But a truly terrible thing happened,at one point. Some ofthose repressed anime fansgrew up. And some of themdecided to start anime conventionsof their own. Andsome of those anime conventionsmake WorldConlook like the saddest littleTupperware party in the historyof leftovers.in them.I’ll grant some of this stemsfrom feelings running between“The college kids keepsneaking drinks to theirfriends” and “You kids get offmy lawn!” Humans, by ourvery survival instincts, liketo separate things into categories,and younger peopletend to be more energetic yetless organized/organizablethan their elders. They haveless invested in the worldthey inhabit, and thus can’tbe trusted to treat it with therespect it deserves.On the other hand, we ain’tgetting any younger. So, it reallydoesn’t matter if we don’tentirely respect the opinionsof future generations as longas there are, in fact, futuregenerations willing to carryon any part of our belovedtraditions. Modern rockabillyshows may not matchthe ones in the ‘50’s, but atleast they’re keeping the musicalive.The debates we have in sciencefiction fandom are legion,but a big one seemingto separate ‘young’ from ‘old’is the place where animebelongs. Classic fandomhas had many reactions tothe phenomenon of anime.Some say it’s nothing morethan a passing fancy. Othersargue the term ‘anime’ istoo general (allowing non-Sci Fi/non-Fantasy into thescene). But more peoplemade a case it’s a commonSure, size isn’t everything*snicker*, but even the mostagoraphobic, mouth-breathingneckbeard would agreethey want to be at the biggestand best convention outthere. And they back thisup by flocking to the growinganime conventions, leavingbehind the science fictionconventions where ‘oldpeople’ relegate 20-year oldanime to the basement level.Now, before we go too farpainting the anime fans asrepressed young revolutionariesboldly leading us intothe future of fandom, let’snot forget much of theirscene is built on the ideaof getting away from theirparents, being cool, and celebratingtheir youth. Wecan pretty much guarantee,when the next big thingcomes along, anime conventionswill themselves becomegrey, somber affairs adults