[Keaton421]

Originally Posted by Koir

To my thinking, it's also an enigma that I'm seeing another person who increasingly chooses to only view things that are personally disliked and determining the entire forum to be only those things.

I don't think I'm that odd - I'm just out of place; among hundreds of anime-obsessed lunatics.

But back to my original topic, here's a great quote from the article God Hates Janks! about the following that Japan(ese cartoons) attracts, and the belief that Japan is so "weird and different":

The fact that Japan's culture appears curiously odd to the average Western shmuck -- and a totally unknown element to those around him -- is the catalyst which spawns armies of researchers and "experts" and pundits who step all over each other's testicles trying to analyze it.

Japanophilia is, simply put, a never-ending posturing session to determine which person can use Japan's culture to their best ego-boosting advantage. People have the mistaken impression that Japan is still some sort of mysterious unknown alien culture, and the people who can sit back and toss off-hand expert explanations with one eyebrow raised are hailed as the next Indiana Fucking Jones.

They broadcast their feather-ruffling territorial display across all forms of media. A book is published about every seven seconds on how Japan, Inc.™ is a cold calculating oppressive economic machine with armies of suited slaves who fall asleep on the train every night, with several chapters explaining why. There are a billion newspaper articles and a billion billion web sites and a billion billion billion Usenet articles describing self-made experts and what sets them apart from the billion billion billion billion other self-made experts. I went to Japan several thousand times. I lived in Tokyo for X years. I took a piss in the back men's room of the government Diet building, where no foreigner has ever been. I went to a night class at Bumblefuck Community College to take a Japanese course, and now I can write in Japanese. See my web site, with the pretty Japanese writing all over it? Yeah, it's gibberish, but none of you unwashed uncultured fucks will ever know.