Downtown Ithaca had it’s annual Apple Harvest Festival this weekend, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a couple dozen fans of various things wandering around. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to people-watch when you’re standing amongst thousands of festival-goers.
The shops downtown, however, give people-watchers such as myself a much easier venue for finding fan cultures. I stopped briefly inside Comics For Collectors again, and was happy to see a group of women entering the shop looking for Buffy comics.
But the real surprise yesterday came when the group I was with took refuge from the rain inside a hobby shop. We spent a quarter-hour chatting amongst ourselves about card collections, and somehow the topic of anime came up (something very near and dear to the hearts of my friends). A girl sitting at the register nearby casually said “are you guys all anime fans?”. It turns out that she had a general interest in anime, but regretted not knowing as much about the genre as she would like. While she may not have neccessarily been a fan of anime, it warmed my heart to hear that interest is becoming more widespread and common. Being an anime fan no longer has the stigma of being “uncool”. Instead, the girl behind the counter at a local store can turn out to be a supporter of the anime culture.
Up until maybe six or seven years ago, many anime fans felt like outcasts with no acceptance as a fan culture by the general public. But, as my encounter yesterday might suggest, an understanding of anime is growing. While not a large fan herself, the girl working at the shop turned out to understand a great deal about the culture. And for the general public to understand something is a huge victory for all fan cultures
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