In Soviet Russia… state of the fandom

Pete brought up an interesting point about Russian anime bloggers, or rather about the absence of them. Those few of us that do speak Russian as our first language still choose to blog in English. Im not sure what’s Pete’s reasoning behind not blogging in Russian, but mine is actually rather simple. And no, it has nothing to do with any kind of argument eventually ending in “you’re a dick and your mom is a slut” (which is two memes by the way). I am actually fine with that kind of course of discussion, they are rarely constructive, but hey, it’s fun to troll some trolls once in a while.

The deal is in something else. For one, Russian anime fandom is painfully slow, no more like SLOW! And out of what I’ve seen there are two more or less major reasons for it:

1) good internets are hard to come by and I do understand, not everybody lives in Moscow and carts in couple of grand a month just to pay for internet traffic. But holy crap, how long can you go on about the same show over and over and over again.

2) It’s lack of information about the subject matter. The problem partially because the internet issue, but mainly because whatever information Russian fandom gets actually comes from the English speaking sector. Namely, most of the existing Russian fansubs are actually re-translations form English ones; the only decent news blog (nekona.ru) is mostly a compilation of information from various English ones, and as far as I know there was only one group that did jap-> rus subs and their translator used to be staff for the English one first. Which brings me to the somewhat sad fact: those people who at least somewhat on top of what’s going on in the anime industry all speak perfect English (at least, and some moonspeak too), you probably met most of them at the animesuki forums, and language is really not an issue for them.

Secondly, and I mentioned this already, it’s unhealthy fixation on couple of particular animes, namely EVA, Elfin Lied, Last Exile and Trinity Blood. Ok, North American fandom also has running fixation with Z0MG TEH REI, but it’s nowhere near the wankfest that the Russian fandom has around each one of these titles. So let’s face it, discussing for the 100^th time the “deeper meaning” of Elfin Lied… yea, I’ll go fetch another beer, as I tend to laugh myself to death at this discussion if I’m sober.

I am going to come back to the methods of upholding a discussion in rus. fandom for a second. Yes It’s full of trolls; battletoads, bible black, or boku no piko is a response to every who/what/where from/what to watch question and the mom joke is the end of every discussion. I say end because after that it turns into sniping shit at each other, /b/ style. But that’s not an issue, I mean, it’s similar to you talking with your brother; you don’t say: “can you get me a drink” you say: ‘you, shithead, get off your ass and fetch me a beer before I dry out”. He, in turn, gives you a finger, calls you a lazy whore, and drags his sorry ass to the fridge to get you a can. It’s not the form, it’s the lack of content. Though having a civil discussion with someone who is, for once, is not a member of the same clique, is a breath of fresh air. I mean, there is only that many people in rus. fandom that are on top of things, and we do have a tendency to hang out together.

And on the side note: I’m about a decade older then the average anime fan. Lol, but then, it applies to the English speaking fandom as well, it’s just not so prominent in it ^^

P.S. eee… this turned out to be so random.. I really need to practice writing more coherently.. hehe ^^; mew~