How my background influences my anime / cartoon choices

[Sammy Boy]

Hi everyone,

I'm wondering if your background influences your choice of anime and/or cartoon?

Because I spent the first eight years of my life in Hong Kong, where a lot of anime is imported and translated, it actually turned me off from watching anime for a while. It's not that the animation quality or stories were not good, some of them were great.

But I had found some of their plots or characters to be too complicated. Having moved to Australia later on and being exposed to US comics, I found myself enjoying them more than manga.

This is not to say that US comics somehow lack creativity or are not complicated in their own ways. But sometimes I just really want to read stories where it's clear who the heroes and villains are, and though there may be betrayals and stuff like that as the story progresses, generally speaking the sides are pretty clearcut, and traditional good vs. evil can make for a really refreshing change.

Do any of you feel this way? Or perhaps you started enjoying the typical good vs. evil stories, and now prefer stories where things are not as clear, because it's closer to real life?

[Atria35]

I'd have to say that having a generally unhappy childhood influenced me to read a lot of fantasy stories, and that's translated into some of my anime choices- I now really like ones that are mahou shoujo or have fantasy elements to them, because I still like to escape from reality now and again.

But I also really like anime where people aren't always what they seem to be, partly because I found out later about people who defended me from the bullies (behind my back, so I never knew that they'd ever defended me in the first place!).

Stories about people who are able to overcome the odds and become good, if not great people and get a happy ending are also high on my list of favorites.

[rocklobster]

I was (and still am) a huge sci-fi fantasy fan. Naturally, most of my anime have been in those categories. I was also a Transformers fan, so that probably gravitated to me becoming a fan of mech anime.

[SailorDove]

This is a very good thought! Yes, I find my background does influence my choice of anime and/or cartoon.

I like the clear cut good vs. bad. Not a fan of the anti-hero (bad guy who's the hero.) I don't mind twists, like discovering someone isn't who you thought they were. Pretty much prefer happy endings. (unlike real life where things are tough & tragedies are the norm.)

I'd have to agree with Atria35 as well.

[ILurvMusic]

[font="Comic Sans MS"][color="Pink"]You have an interesting thought right there, but for me, my background doesn't really affect my choices in anime or cartoons (I guess it could, but I haven't really really thought about it. lol). Anyway, for me, it's whatever show I think is interesting and appealing, then I will watch it.[/color][/font]

[Hohenheim]

I do think that my background influences my choices in anime, though only in specific areas. I like shounen type stuff because it includes going against evil or darkness, which is something that I find myself having to do on a daily basis. I also happen to be a deep thinker about philosophy and such, so I also enjoy anime that delve into deep questions about life (like FMA). In the past month or so I've begun to watch slice-of-life anime, and find that I enjoy it because, as the genre's name suggests, it has to do with the meanderings and musings of daily life.

[Dante]

I actually was anti-anime at first because the only anime out on TV around me was Pokemon (I dislike spending money on cards and so I didn't like a TV series that seemed to derive a good portion of their revenue from getting kids to buy something that was essentially rather cheap to make). This became rather strange because I was in an animation program. Eventually though, with video games adding a great deal of respect along with ironically older animators pushing me to accept it, I came to like anime. As soon as I started to consider the other things out there that anime had to offer beyond Pokemon, I became quite the fan although couldn't afford much. My real interests in anime actually didn't fully bloom till college when I gained access to high speed internet combined with an exploding selection of web-tv stuff like hulu or FMA Brotherhood on funimation. I also had some freedom with money and even purchased a few pieces of anime like Last Exile.