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The Greater Internet Debate-slash-Discussion of late has revolved around, among other things, diversity in SF fandom. (The other things are discussed widely in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
linkspam, if you want to see.)
Con attendance is a bad way to judge diversity of readership, because a small fraction (10%?) attend cons. Book sales is a great way to judge readership, but generally speaking, it's hard to guess the skin tone of people buying books on the internet (or even in stores, since they just collect data on number of books sold, not who's buying them.)
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nojojojo made an interesting post recently, and in comments the difference in diversity in con attendance between SF cons and anime cons is discussed, and I think she's got a good point.
So, Animazement was this weekend. I spent most of it sitting in Artists Alley, but probably a decent fraction of the con wandered through. Partly being in North Carolina helps, I think, but there were a lot of non-white faces in there. Black, East Asian, Hispanic, South Asian (a few!), walking around, giggling and buying stuff. Yeah, it was probably still majority white, but it's not the Old White Guys con that SF cons tend to be.
I think flemmings (in comments) has a good thought about the calcification of the genre. OWG don't *want* kids up in their SF, and they want their stuff to stay niche or whatever. And anime isn't SF, they should get out of my con.* So the kids all say "Screw that" and stay in anime fandom or quit entirely as they grow out of it.
Anime fandom is really damn young. There are a lot of folks with braces at Animazement - I kept being surprised to see a good cosplayer start talking to a friend and seeing braces! These kids are half my age! But "old skool" anime fans started in the early 80s or so, and if they were in high school then, they're pushing 40 now, so we don't have a lot of the OWGs floating around (yet.) I've only been a fan since about 1999, and I have "back in my day" stories (mostly involving fansubs and acquisition of merchandise. Both were more difficult then. Uphill, snow, etc.) Also, kids like cartoons, so there are plenty of 6-12-year-olds running around. They also like those video games and po-key-mans, so.
I'm not sure I have an actual *point* to this, but there it is. (It's time for dinner.)
*WTF. I can't say I've heard it stated precisely thus, but I recall a vast flamewar in the LJ Dragon*Con community last year because there's "too much dilution" at the con, with the American TV and Brit TV and animation and ... The whiner was met with a LOT of eyerolling, at least. But the "anime is NOT SF" idea I believe is entirely plausible.
But aside from that, if there's no SF in anime, I think a lot of fans of the following series would be surprised to hear that: Gundam (and its eleventy incarnations), Macross (and its sequels), Tytania, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Crest of the Stars, Code Geass, They Were 11, To Terra, Bubblegum Crisis, ... you get the idea. The UNC anime club tends to be very SF heavy because, uh, those of us who actually make suggestions of shows to watch like SF.
If they said that about *fantasy,* well. There's not much good fantasy anime out there. There's more good fantasy manga and novels (Twelve Kingdoms, for example), but not so many shows.
linkspam, if you want to see.)Con attendance is a bad way to judge diversity of readership, because a small fraction (10%?) attend cons. Book sales is a great way to judge readership, but generally speaking, it's hard to guess the skin tone of people buying books on the internet (or even in stores, since they just collect data on number of books sold, not who's buying them.)
nojojojo made an interesting post recently, and in comments the difference in diversity in con attendance between SF cons and anime cons is discussed, and I think she's got a good point.So, Animazement was this weekend. I spent most of it sitting in Artists Alley, but probably a decent fraction of the con wandered through. Partly being in North Carolina helps, I think, but there were a lot of non-white faces in there. Black, East Asian, Hispanic, South Asian (a few!), walking around, giggling and buying stuff. Yeah, it was probably still majority white, but it's not the Old White Guys con that SF cons tend to be.
I think flemmings (in comments) has a good thought about the calcification of the genre. OWG don't *want* kids up in their SF, and they want their stuff to stay niche or whatever. And anime isn't SF, they should get out of my con.* So the kids all say "Screw that" and stay in anime fandom or quit entirely as they grow out of it.
Anime fandom is really damn young. There are a lot of folks with braces at Animazement - I kept being surprised to see a good cosplayer start talking to a friend and seeing braces! These kids are half my age! But "old skool" anime fans started in the early 80s or so, and if they were in high school then, they're pushing 40 now, so we don't have a lot of the OWGs floating around (yet.) I've only been a fan since about 1999, and I have "back in my day" stories (mostly involving fansubs and acquisition of merchandise. Both were more difficult then. Uphill, snow, etc.) Also, kids like cartoons, so there are plenty of 6-12-year-olds running around. They also like those video games and po-key-mans, so.
I'm not sure I have an actual *point* to this, but there it is. (It's time for dinner.)
*WTF. I can't say I've heard it stated precisely thus, but I recall a vast flamewar in the LJ Dragon*Con community last year because there's "too much dilution" at the con, with the American TV and Brit TV and animation and ... The whiner was met with a LOT of eyerolling, at least. But the "anime is NOT SF" idea I believe is entirely plausible.
But aside from that, if there's no SF in anime, I think a lot of fans of the following series would be surprised to hear that: Gundam (and its eleventy incarnations), Macross (and its sequels), Tytania, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Crest of the Stars, Code Geass, They Were 11, To Terra, Bubblegum Crisis, ... you get the idea. The UNC anime club tends to be very SF heavy because, uh, those of us who actually make suggestions of shows to watch like SF.
If they said that about *fantasy,* well. There's not much good fantasy anime out there. There's more good fantasy manga and novels (Twelve Kingdoms, for example), but not so many shows.
