i was lonely at comicon. well and truly. it was like the dream some people have where they arrive late for an exam without having read anything, and they're not wearing any pants besides. . . they talked about things i'd never heard of and that i couldn't make myself care about. you can't ask me to absorb two almost incompatible subcultures, not and stay sane.

it's not comics i have anything against. i read quite a bit of manga for a gaijin. i especially like clamp and nobuhiro watsuki. i've read parts of doraemon, i''s, evangelion, and love hina. it's not the medium that bothers me.

it's the culture.

as an otaku, i don't wish to be identified with comic fans. i don't want my culture lumped in with so many other subcultures, with whom i share next to nothing. a certain sense of humor, perhaps. a certain antisocial geekiness. little else.

nonetheless, at every anime convention i've attended, i've felt i was among people i could trust. people who understood me because they liked much the same things i did. there was none of that commonality at comicon.

josh ritter, a man experienced and comfortable in both cultures, has this to say: 'i get sick of hearing american artists complaining about how busy they are and how many deadlines they face. in japan, people who draw manga produce as much work in a month as these do in half a year, and most of them have no assistants, or one assistant. in japan, their work is respectable, and they feel pride in their art. here, it's a job to a lot of these people. they work nine to five, and go home at the end of the day.'

(i might note in passing that mr. ritter agreed to be quoted on the condition that his words were taken out of context and mangled beyond recognition. we have obliged.)

am i excessive? do i generalize?

is mihoshi an airhead? of course, but these are my opinions. they will not become your opinions until the orbital mind control lasers are operational. for the record, i will be honest and say that i met some very nice people at comicon who did not like anime. i will admit that it takes at least as much dedication to dress as a klingon as it takes to dress as sakura from card captor sakura. i don't intend to attack the devotion of comic fans. i know them to be insanely dedicated people with many elements of the otaku nature.

is this article bigoted? absolutely. but i met exactly this sort of bigoted response at comicon, from people who spent months of salary on american comics and could not understand otaku who did the same for laserdiscs.

some of you in the back, where no one else can see, are nodding. not many, and that's a good thing too. i want the subcultures united against the hollywood least-common-denominator juggernaut. the otaku nature must survive in the face of the best efforts of the mass to smear us all together into some easily manipulated, god forbid, /market segment/.

we should all be together. i will apologize profusely to all those i've insulted, one day.