When referring to "the South" a few things might come to mind. Pig pickings, cow tipping, swimming holes with tire swings, and college football rivalry's so heated it could kick off Civil War II. All of that is a huge part of "Southern" culture and is objectively pretty great. But what happens when you're growing up in "the South" and you don't seem to check off any of these culture boxes? You tend to find yourself outside a culture looking in and wishing you belonged. So you compensate. You look for a place that seems like a better fit for you. It's the basic recruiting strategy for street gangs but I'm not really the bandana wearing type. For me, I turned to Anime or Japanese Animation, or as your parents might call it "that weird Pokey-Man cartoony stuff." This is just my personal experience on growing up in North Carolina and how I was able to deal with feeling like an outsider in my own hometown.
1. There Was Nothing For Me To Do In The South.
If you grew up in the south near a big City like Charlotte or Atlanta then entertainment wasn't too hard to come by. Maybe a 20-30 minute drive to get into the city, find a movie theater or restaurant, and enjoy yourself. Not so bad right? (The exception,of course, is on game days where you get to watch your parents argue over the best way to get home from the backseat of the station wagon.)
That's not where I grew up. I grew up in a backwoods neighborhood where it was a 15-minute drive to the nearest stop light, let alone to a movie theater. So when you're growing up in the woods you tend to make your own fun. Now growing up in the woods might seem like fun to a lot of people. There's hiking, camping, sasquatch hunting, and all kinds of activities for the avid nature enthusiast. I was not one of these people. I liked books, staying indoors, watching T.V., and not being eaten alive by everything terrible in nature. (This was also during the pre-internet age.) I have specific childhood memories of my dad waking me up at the butt crack of dawn to go fishing. I immediately hated it and I would nag him until he drove us both home with just a little less love for me in his eyes. I was not a woodsman.
Besides the outdoors, there was always the option of playing sports to pass the time. The most common of these sports in the south is football. To this day me, and my nonconcussed brain, thank my parents for not letting me play football as a kid. But at the time I was so angry that I didn't get to play smash 'em heads with all the other kids in the neighborhood. Since I didn't play football I didn't get a whole lot of friends and was seen as a bit abnormal. (I also wasn't a fan of country or rap music back then either. Which is the majority of music you hear on the radio below Virginia.) So I did what every other non-sport kid did after school. I watched Dragonball Z on Toonami.
Yep, that was my (and most current anime nerds) gateway drug into the weird world of anime. If you didn't grow up in the 90's, "Toonami" was a block of cartoons specifically designed to appeal to kids who hated fresh air. For about three hours a day, "Toonami" would air the latest and greatest of animation from the far east. The crowning jewel of which was Dragonball Z. After I watched the first episode where the main character gets a laser through the chest, I was hooked. Every day I would come home, munch on what was left of my Lunchable, and waited for the scream fest that was DBZ. Why? Because it was the best damn cartoon my nine-year-old eyeballs had ever seen.
2. It Was Way Better Than Any U.S. Cartoon At The Time.
Think back to the late 1990's and ask yourself "What was the best American Cartoon?" Maybe you picked "Animaniacs" or "Freakazoid" or even "Rugrats"? For me,it was always "Batman the Animated Series." cause get it? I'm a nerd! All of these are good shows, The only thing is, none of these American-produced cartoons held a candle to the Japanese animation of the late 90's anime. (I say that being fully aware of the nerd rage tsunami heading my way.) Take Dragonball Z, or Sailor Moon, or even YuYuHakusho if you like deep cuts, all of these shows were produced in Japan with almost double the animators on staff as their American counterparts. With a larger staff, things like fight scenes with energy blasts or intricate costume transformations could be done better and at a faster rate. So while we waited every fall for the new "Batman" or "Ren and Stimpy" season to come out, we were treated to fresh episodes almost every week of our favorite anime. So fans of these shows never had a chance to get bored of the reruns and, god forbid, go outside.
It's not just the animation that was better either. The stories that they told were far superior and complex to American cartoon writing. See in America, in the late 90's, cartoons were only starting to break away from the silly, wacky, always have things resolved in thirty minutes or less, style of storytelling. But Japan had been dealing with real and complex issues for a while. Issues like death and depression and dealing with these things could be seen in "Neon Genesis Evangelion." The moralities of the death penalty were explored in "Tri-Gun." Coming to terms with one's past choices while trying to survive in an ever-changing universe was the main theme of "Cowboy Bebop." (I could go on but the comedy rule-of-three tells me to stop.) I mean, when was the last time you saw a 90's American cartoon deal with such heavy subject material? Trick question, you didn't. Don't get me wrong. I love Batman (I have the footy pajamas to prove it) but at the end of the day, he is still the same Batman who catches the same bad guys in the same bad-ass way that we all love. It's amazing but there's no real character growth. There's no overall story arc.
Yes, anime dealt with this mature subject material with giant robot fights or crazy super powers, but they never did it in a way that talked down to their target audience. Their target audience being kids my age who were just trying to make sense of the world. Speaking of Kids my age...
3. I Found My Best Friends Bonding Over Anime.
As you can imagine, North Carolina is not the Mecca of anime fandom and during the time I was in school, bullying was (and probably still is) a huge problem. Any reason to be singled out for being "different" was met with an onslaught of side glances and punches to the arm. School in the 90's, in the South, wasn't the most progressive of places. So I kept my newly discovered passion for anime to myself and told no one for fear of being one of the weirdos. Until one day I was walking down the hall after school when I heard the distinct battle cry of a hidden leaf village ninja. I poked my head through a nearby classroom door and I saw about twenty people sitting on desks watching the latest "Naruto" season on DVD. In Japanese no less! )This was extra rare at the time.) I shyly asked if I could join them and without hesitation, they took me in as one of their own. No judgment, no slamming the door in my face, just a desk to sit on and slightly stale popcorn.
I spent the remainder of my senior year watching anime after school with some of the nicest people I've ever known. None of us were considered "cool" by any stretches of the imagination but it was the first time in my life where that didn't matter to me. I remember trying so hard to be liked by others that it used to keep me up at night. But while I was watching anime with my new found friends, I never felt that pressure. High school was a number of years ago for me and I still talk to people from that group to this day. That's what anime was for us. It wasn't a friendship that was based on how good you could throw a ball or how much money you had. It was just people coming together to see cartoon pirates with magic powers blow each other up in the ocean. (Yeah, that's a real show called "One Piece" and now you're going to look it up.) Sure we were ostracized a bit. But I felt closer to my friends because of it. It was like if you and twenty of your closest friends got the latest "Beyonce" album and you were the only ones who listened to it. Sometimes you meet the really good people on the fringes of society.
*I should point out that I wasn't a total dweeb in high school and that I did participate in my school's wrestling team and I did have friends from there as well. I was just closer to my anime friends at that time.*
4. Anime Was There For Me When I Needed It.
Hold on to your flashlights kids cause it's about to get dark! So about a few months into joining the secret Anime club at school, my parents decided to go through one hell of a divorce. I don't know if you know this or not but divorce, in the south, can really suck for the kid. (and probably everywhere else for that matter) What used to be Southern hospitality from my community quickly became Southern pity, and then I became this taboo child where I could only be talked to like a wounded puppy or not at all. It was the last thing I needed at that time. My parents didn't handle the situation well and I got to be used as a pawn for getting more money for child support and was then passed around as an emotional hand grenade with the pin pulled out between my parents. Therapy was apparently a luxury we couldn't afford now and instead of dealing with this in a healthy manner, I was forced to deal with my own issues as well as two frail and wounded parents. Both of whom had the habit of dumping all their emotional garbage onto a 16-year-old kid. So I did what I thought was the most logical and I ran away from home. And not the made-it-to-the-end-of-the-driveway kind of ran away. I mean I packed my duffle bag, got in my beat up 1999 Toyota Camry, and drove away without telling anyone.
During my hiatus from domestic life, I stayed at an anime club friend's house who's parents were kind enough to let me sleep on their pull out sofa bed.(Southern hospitality again.) One night my friend busts out a fresh DVD of "Spirited Away." A movie I had never seen before.
If you don't know what "Spirited Away" is then I feel bad for your sad, sad life. "Spirited Away" is a "Studio Ghibli" film about a girl who loses her parents in the spirit world and has to go on a huge journey to rescue them. (that synopsis doesn't nearly do it justice. Just go watch it if you've never seen it. It's amazing!) It also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Picture in 2001. The first anime movie to ever win the Oscar.
Needless to say, I cried like a toddler on an airplane by the end of it. I knew that I eventually had to go home and that running away from my problems was never going to make the problems go away but only delay how they caught up with me. I thanked my friend for showing me the movie and the next day I went home.
*I should mention that I now have healthy relationships with both of my parents.*
Anime was there for me when I needed it. It was there to act as a mirror on my own problems, even when I didn't want it too. And in a small way, how to cope with said problems. It was more than an escape from a reality that I didn't enjoy anymore. It was therapeutic. And yes, there are some dumb and terrible anime out there. (looking at you "High School Of The Dead") But that's the case of any visual medium. You think every live action show knocks it out of the park? No way.
My point being is that for me, anime was a way to feel accepted in a world where up until then, I felt fairly alone. It became a gateway to friendship and a way of dealing with a rough time in my life. It's special to me. And now as an adult, I still enjoy sitting on my couch and watching an episode or two.
