J-List is excited about Anime Expo, and will have a huge presence. We’ll have a huge booth with hundreds of products, the lovely Kaho Shibuya as a guest of honor, and an awesome JAST USA panel where we’ll announce some great new titles. See our blog post for all the juicy details!
There are many reasons to watch anime. To escape from our boring, ho-hum life into a fun world with giant mecha and cute moe-moe catgirls. To experience stories that can be as dramatic as they want to be, including elements of death and violence and love and ecchi imagery. To access strong emotions that would be absent from our lives otherwise. Also, anime inspires us!
Anime is a surprisingly good way to find motivation, as I was reminded of in a recent episode of Comic Girls. The girls are cleaning out an old store room, and Kaos-chan finds an inspirational illustration by a previous member of the dormitory celebrating her finally getting published as a manga-ka. Kaos-chan uses the message in the illustration to push herself to be a better artist, eventually getting her first publishing gig. The illustration says:
Hooray! I finally got out of rejection hell! All my hard work paid off. No amount of genius can beat simple hard work!
The secrets to becoming a professional manga artist: You must love manga! You must keep at it! And step up, so that your small acts of courage will someday shine!
I asked J-List’s Twitter followers to list ways anime inspires them to be better, and got various responses, including:
- Being motivated by shows like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure or One Punch Man to hit the gym and work out.
- Returning to making music after watching music-related shows like K-On! or Your Lie in April.
- Getting serious about learning to cook thanks to Food Wars!
- Rediscovering a hobby like camping in the winter.
- Getting motivation to learn a language like Japanese, something I can attest to. I basically learned the language so I could read Maison Ikkoku and Orange Road manga, which weren’t available in English back in the 80s.
- Understanding the message Chihiro learns by the end of Spirited Away, which is to have humility and thank others who have helped you on the path of life.
- Generally embracing the word ganbarimasu (“I’ll do my best!”) as a way of moving forward, even just a few steps each day, until you get closer to your goal. I used this word back when I was studying Japanese in university and I use it today in the course of running J-List.
Do you think anime inspires us? How has anime helped you in some way? Tell us on Twitter!
We love ecchi manga and carry all the best kinds, from monthly anthology manga magazines to popular tankobon works by Japan’s top artists, and more. We’ve manga in Japanese, uncensored manga in English and everything in between. Browse our new products here.
