An Analogy - culture and reality
I've been playing since about 1978 and I'm glad a few posters have explained what anime was, since I'm not sure I ever had a name for the freaky cartoon kids with spiky hair carrying spiked chains jumping over trees on late night tv for a millisecond before I flip the channel. I thought I'd try to use an analogy and an understanding of the history of wargaming/fantasy gaming to illustrate the lack of appeal of anime to many grognards.
Why does anime seem silly (for lack of a better word) even to someone who'll grant the premise that dragons and magic exist in a fantasy world? Consider this analogy: there are people who probably enjoy WCW, crouching tiger, hidden dragon or many of the kung fu movies but then there are many people who'd rather watch boxing, wrestling, thai boxing, judo, kendo, k-1 or the ultimate fighting championship. The latter group of events have specific cultural references in the West and varying degrees of freedom around a "real fight." Western forms of semi-combat were created to imitate or practice REAL FIGHTING. Consider the history of ultimate fighting for example, where alleged kung fu practioners have basically never won a match against representatives of "real" disciplines, and consider that anyone who wrestled in high school can vouch that much of what one sees on WCW in the ring is pure nonsense.
Then, looking at the nature of the genres, it is clear that 'anime' used a huge number of degrees of freedom around the asian martial arts like kung fu that were basically worthless to begin with (from a combative perspective) and that the realistic genres of combat used fewer degrees of freedom around a real fight.
Of course I am not saying that either kung fu movies or semi-real fighting is an intrinsically superior form of entertainment (at least if you live in the coddled parts of our world where you've never actually had to fight anyone) but the two tend to attract different audiences that generally don't mix well because they audiences expect different things and the two groups have a very different relationship to to "real fighting."
To apply this analogy, I'm not saying that anything about d&d with magic, dragons and 100 hp is truly 'realistic.' But consider the history of D&D. Much like how boxing and UFC-type fighting (greek pancration) grew out of efforts to train for or practice REAL fighting in a simulated environment, so too did wargaming grow out of a serious or lighthearted effort to "practice" for real war (the prussian general staff were huge wargamers). Look at old gygaxian stories, D&D clearly grew out of wargaming and then incorporated 'fantasy' cultural norms of western myth (beowulf, the ring cycle, tolkien, arthurian legends, conan) from cultures which knew a lot about war (to wit the anglo-saxon in.vaders, the german tribes, tolkien fought in the brutal trenches of WWI, the gentry of england, and a rough-and-ready author from small town Texas writing to eat during the Great Depression). Anime has a totally different pedigree.
To someone who understands that D&D is a bastard lighthearted vision of 'real' fighting from cultures that knew how to fight, Anime appears to be utter whimsy. Consider today that if you talk to any of the Paizo guys they'll tell you that they have a huge number of military subscribers.
I've been playing since about 1978 and I'm glad a few posters have explained what anime was, since I'm not sure I ever had a name for the freaky cartoon kids with spiky hair carrying spiked chains jumping over trees on late night tv for a millisecond before I flip the channel. I thought I'd try to use an analogy and an understanding of the history of wargaming/fantasy gaming to illustrate the lack of appeal of anime to many grognards.
Why does anime seem silly (for lack of a better word) even to someone who'll grant the premise that dragons and magic exist in a fantasy world? Consider this analogy: there are people who probably enjoy WCW, crouching tiger, hidden dragon or many of the kung fu movies but then there are many people who'd rather watch boxing, wrestling, thai boxing, judo, kendo, k-1 or the ultimate fighting championship. The latter group of events have specific cultural references in the West and varying degrees of freedom around a "real fight." Western forms of semi-combat were created to imitate or practice REAL FIGHTING. Consider the history of ultimate fighting for example, where alleged kung fu practioners have basically never won a match against representatives of "real" disciplines, and consider that anyone who wrestled in high school can vouch that much of what one sees on WCW in the ring is pure nonsense.
Then, looking at the nature of the genres, it is clear that 'anime' used a huge number of degrees of freedom around the asian martial arts like kung fu that were basically worthless to begin with (from a combative perspective) and that the realistic genres of combat used fewer degrees of freedom around a real fight.
Of course I am not saying that either kung fu movies or semi-real fighting is an intrinsically superior form of entertainment (at least if you live in the coddled parts of our world where you've never actually had to fight anyone) but the two tend to attract different audiences that generally don't mix well because they audiences expect different things and the two groups have a very different relationship to to "real fighting."
To apply this analogy, I'm not saying that anything about d&d with magic, dragons and 100 hp is truly 'realistic.' But consider the history of D&D. Much like how boxing and UFC-type fighting (greek pancration) grew out of efforts to train for or practice REAL fighting in a simulated environment, so too did wargaming grow out of a serious or lighthearted effort to "practice" for real war (the prussian general staff were huge wargamers). Look at old gygaxian stories, D&D clearly grew out of wargaming and then incorporated 'fantasy' cultural norms of western myth (beowulf, the ring cycle, tolkien, arthurian legends, conan) from cultures which knew a lot about war (to wit the anglo-saxon in.vaders, the german tribes, tolkien fought in the brutal trenches of WWI, the gentry of england, and a rough-and-ready author from small town Texas writing to eat during the Great Depression). Anime has a totally different pedigree.
To someone who understands that D&D is a bastard lighthearted vision of 'real' fighting from cultures that knew how to fight, Anime appears to be utter whimsy. Consider today that if you talk to any of the Paizo guys they'll tell you that they have a huge number of military subscribers.
