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Manga incident

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:39 am
by Ichigo_89
I was in the manga section of my local bookstore yesterday (the manga section is 1 double-sided bookshelf, island type thingy) and then two teenage highschoolers (who looked a little older than me) came over on the other side. They were saying, "What's up with this manga stuff? Brittany had one and she had to like, read it upside down, and then flip the other way just to read it. They're kinda scary. Why can't they just print em like normal books? It's really screwed,"

I held myself back from dropping in on the conversation. Which is good, because I just happened to be wearing my black "TOKYO" hoodie. They'd just think I was another crazy fan. Anyways, I just hate it when people don't know crap worth what manga or anime is all about and try to be "know it alls". Rrrggh, has this kinda thing happened to any of you guys?

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:18 am
by Mangafanatic
ZIPO_MASTER* wrote:I was in the manga section of my local bookstore yesterday (the manga section is 1 double-sided bookshelf, island type thingy) and then two teenage highschoolers (who looked a little older than me) came over on the other side. They were saying, "What's up with this manga stuff? Brittany had one and she had to like, read it upside down, and then flip the other way just to read it. They're kinda scary. Why can't they just print em like normal books? It's really screwed,"

I held myself back from dropping in on the conversation. Which is good, because I just happened to be wearing my black "TOKYO" hoodie. They'd just think I was another crazy fan. Anyways, I just hate it when people don't know crap worth what manga or anime is all about and try to be "know it alls". Rrrggh, has this kinda thing happened to any of you guys?



Bwa ha ha! YES! Actually, it happens all the time.

One day I was browsing around in the manga section. Well, I took a short detour to the fiction section, and then returned. It just turns out that both I and a young boy, probably twelve, converge on the section at the same time. I think he really wanted to impress me for some unknown reason and he picks up "Rayearth", flips thriugh it, and says to me "Who would read a book like that?" And he walked away.

And I was thinking ":eyebrow: Um, me."

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:19 am
by indyrocker
ignorence hate it with a passion.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:30 am
by AngelSakura
A while back, I was in one of the bigger bookstores and there were two ladies looking for some manga for a child, who wasn't with them. They were looking at Yu-Gi-Oh!, which has a Teen rating, which I pointed out to them. They thanked me and picked up some Pokemon, but my brother Tidus20 swears he saw them pick up Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. What a disaster that would have been...

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:34 am
by Cap'n Nick
During my time in Nebraska I fielded the "isn't it all porn?" question so many times I seriously considered printing a pamphlet. There's no sense in getting angry, though. Venting at random strangers certainly won't do anything to convice anybody that fans of anime and manga aren't by default insane.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:36 am
by Scribs
Sometimes whem people come by and make ignorant comments about somthing you like, it is just best to think to yourself "what idiots" chuckle about their inferiority and just continue with your life.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:39 am
by dragonshimmer
Cap'n Crack wrote:During my time in Nebraska I fielded the "isn't it all porn?" question so many times I seriously considered printing a pamphlet. There's no sense in getting angry, though. Venting at random strangers certainly won't do anything to convice anybody that fans of anime and manga aren't by default insane.


THANK YOU! I seem to have to answer that question all the time as well. The fact that a local video store places anime in the "adult movie" section doesn't exactly help.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:20 am
by Uriah
Bleh.. Stupid manga hating,pot smoking highschoolers..

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 12:22 pm
by Debitt
:lol: Amen to that, Uriah. I have soooo much fun explaining to people why I "read books backwards". >>;;; The fact that other countries read books in different directions really shouldn't be THAT hard to grasp.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:06 pm
by soul alive
*nods*... i always like it when the checkers try to be helpful about your selection, and just end up saying and/or doing dumb stuff. i had one girl try to open every single volume i was buying at the binding, to put in the bookmarks the store gives away... lol

dragonshimmer wrote:The fact that a local video store places anime in the "adult movie" section doesn't exactly help.
you have my sympathy. the bookstore at my college seems to have decided that manga are comics for occult-loving people, and has stuck them right smack in the middle of the new age books, thus deterring me from buying manga from them, well, that and their pitiful selection. o_O

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:13 pm
by Hitokiri
Luckly, the place where I get my anime and manga is aside from most of the stuff and has it's own section with oatku's just like me or crazier to help you with what you want.

But I have been confronted by those who know little to some about anime/manga. I was reading a Trigun manga at school and so person was asking me a bit and was aksing why you read it backwords and such. I of course explained it and he thought it was wierd.

Than some guy saw I had some of my Evangelion anime DVD's to let a friend borrow and he was like "OMG!! Don't you know Dragon Ball Z and Gundam Wing is like the ... best EVER anime in the world!!" I said "Well, that's an opinion. Persoanlly, I don't like DBZ but Gundam Wing is ok...but I prefer Evangelion over Gundam". He was like "nu-uh!! DBZ pawns all!! You're not a anime fan!!" Let's just say at that time, if I was in a anime/manga, I would of had a big sweat drop from my head. heh heh heh

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:25 pm
by Scribs
I don't have to deal with much ignorance (besides my own) because I buy my anime stuff from a local anime shop where all the people are crazier than I will ever be.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:55 pm
by Mr. SmartyPants
my english teacher thinks all anime and manga is hentai

he says: "It's dirty nasty hentai man"

i don't even want to bother arguing with him

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:17 pm
by Shao Feng-Li
Why does it matter?

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:23 pm
by bigsleepj
Nah, my friends don't mind me reading although they can be very puritan. But they know I better than to judge all anime and manga on the level of hentai. In fact I got one of them to read "Rourini Kenshin" :grin: which he loves. But since my manga collection is pitiful I can't really give them a lot. People don't really know, in South Africa, what Manga is so I'm safe from unaproving frowns.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:36 pm
by Riku777
During my time in Nebraska I fielded the "isn't it all porn?" question so many times I seriously considered printing a pamphlet.


lol!!! :lol::lol::lol: I'm reading manga in the hallways of my school during lunch hour and my friends'll walk by and say, Mat, don't you ever get tired of that anime porn stuff? hoo boy it ticks me off. lol

PostPosted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:02 pm
by Aka-chan
I just kind of laugh pityingly at those people...

PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 11:37 am
by Debitt
Shao Feng-Li wrote:Why does it matter?

To me, it's not really a personal picky thing (well, that's the way it used to be. I'm not so sure anymore) but the fact that people are SO PAINFULLY IGNORANT, labelling another country's way of reading as "weird" or "stupid". =/

PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:00 pm
by Kisa
Mangafanatic wrote:Bwa ha ha! YES! Actually, it happens all the time.

One day I was browsing around in the manga section. Well, I took a short detour to the fiction section, and then returned. It just turns out that both I and a young boy, probably twelve, converge on the section at the same time. I think he really wanted to impress me for some unknown reason and he picks up "Rayearth", flips thriugh it, and says to me "Who would read a book like that?" And he walked away.

And I was thinking ":eyebrow: Um, me."


LOL! Yes yes. Yay Rayearth! ^^
Yes ignorance is so annoying... its like, just cause you don't get it doesn't mean its dumb..... ><

PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:18 pm
by Scribs
Today, I was in Waldenbooks, flipping through volume three of megatokyo when who should apear but two surly looking girls. one stoped to look at some manga. The other looked back at her, and with a horrible sneer said "that looks like pokemon, why would you want to read something like that." she turned toward the you adult section "now here are some good books" she said. her friend put down the manga and went over to pick up some foolish young adult book. My rage grew within me. My blood curtled. (ok, so i just kept on reading, but that doesn't sound so dramatic.) Now I see the purpose of this thread. This must be stopped. Their scorn must be turned to Ph34r!

PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:22 pm
by Debitt
piloswine wrote:Today, I was in Waldenbooks, flipping through volume three of megatokyo when who should apear but two surly looking girls. one stoped to look at some manga. The other looked back at her, and with a horrible sneer said "that looks like pokemon, why would you want to read something like that." she turned toward the you adult section "now here are some good books" she said. her friend put down the manga and went over to pick up some foolish young adult book. My rage grew within me. My blood curtled. (ok, so i just kept on reading, but that doesn't sound so dramatic.) Now I see the purpose of this thread. This must be stopped. Their scorn must be turned to Ph34r!

...that was seriously the funniest and the most disturbing thing I've read all day. Congrats. *shakes piloswine's hand* >_> I agree completely.

PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:29 pm
by Cedahlia
A kid from my school who I never even talk to IMed me once and asked what I did in my free time. One thing I put was watch anime, and he said 'isn't that porn?' So I tried my best to explain it to him, but he didn't really get it, so I just dropped it. ^^; People ask me why I read backwards all the time too at school as well.

PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:20 pm
by Knuckles
Yes, it shows that otaku are strange people indeed >;]

PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:49 pm
by Arnobius
Since I was out of school before the anime explosion happened, I didn't have those experiences. Most of the people I see at the manga shelves are a bunch of teenagers spread all over the place reading and blocking my view of what's available :stressed: and in Borders back when their policy was more like a library, the manga shelves were a wreck with books tossed all over the place.

The problem I have is with people who believe all the stuff is hentai. Unfortunately, the internet helps with that perception. For example, one of my favorite series is Sailor Moon. So a nephew of mine goes on line looking for SM pics-- and somehow winds up at a hentai site. So, now they believe that these were screen shots of the anime. After explaining things like fan art and copyright enforcement, they've finally quit harassing me, but want me to keep it away from the kids.

Doesn't help when a company rates an anime 13+ and have naked women in it-- it leads parents to think they can't trust anime not to have nudity pop up somewhere (and given the pre-pokemon anime selection, it's not unreasonable)

PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:53 am
by CreatureArt
In NZ, luckily, most people don't know enough about manga and anime to ask the hentai question. However, as it becomes more popular, I have the horrible feeling this could change due to misperception. :(

We DO have the Pokemon/ DBZ/ Yu-gi-oh perception of anime happening a lot, though - just like what you guys have shared. Not awesome. People hate those shows so they dismiss any form of the drawing style rather than judging each on an induvidual basis.

It makes me feel a lot like joining Piloswine's scorn--->fear tactic.... :evil: :lol:

PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:18 am
by bigsleepj
[quote="Cedahlia"]^^]

Tell them the beginning is boring so you decide to read the ending first then see how it happened. That ought to shut them up. :grin:

PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 9:16 am
by Mangafanatic
Cedahlia wrote: People ask me why I read backwards all the time too at school as well.


Or you could tell them you're looking for codes from the mother ship. That's shut them up fast.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 11:36 am
by Debitt
Mangafanatic wrote:Or you could tell them you're looking for codes from the mother ship. That's shut them up fast.

:lol: I'll have the remember that one! X3;

PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 8:32 pm
by Cedahlia
bigsleepj wrote:Tell them the beginning is boring so you decide to read the ending first then see how it happened. That ought to shut them up. :grin:


mangafanatic wrote:Or you could tell them you're looking for codes from the mother ship. That's shut them up fast.



XD Great ideas! Afterall, pretty much all my classmates think I'm really weird already. Which is fine with me. ^_^

PostPosted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 7:42 am
by Mangafanatic
Oh, the funniest thing happened yesterday! Well, me and my sis were browsing through a book store. Well, we were sitting in the chairs that were scattered around the book store when I decided I wanted to read a different manga than the one I had selected. So I left breifly to pick up a new title.

When I came back, my sister was laughing, and she said "You should have heard this guy! He picked up one of the volumes and said 'OH MY GOSH!! YOU GOTTA LIKE, READ THIS BACKWARDS AND STUFF!! AND LOOK, THERE'S A NECKED CARTOON IN THIS ONE!!'"

So I asked "Where are they?"

"Oh, they left."

Well, naturally, that reminded me of the story that Zipomaster started this thread with, so I told her the story, and just as I got to the line where that girl said "You have ot, like, read it upside down" I hear this masculine voice behind me that says "It's not very nice to make fun of people."

Yeah, it was the same guys who had made the "OHMYGOSH! YOU HAVE TO READ IT BACKWARDS" remarks. Well, they walked by, and I just sat there for a minute, wondering what they meant. Suddenly, my sistergasps and says "They thought we were talking about them!"

It as simply too ironic.

Needless to say, we amade a hasty departure shortly after than.