Anime fandom in America is more than a fandom, it is a subculture.

Anime attracts a very diverse audience in the west. Despite the sentiment in America that animation is immature for children, millions of Americans adults enjoy Japanese animation deeply.

Watching a studio Ghibli film is a vastly different experience from watching the latest Disney Pixar film. There is something unique about the culture of animation in Japan, which has caused it to be appreciated worldwide. The reading focused mainly on the works of Miyazaki, regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest animation director in the world. Growing up, My Neighbor Totoro was one of my favorite movies, at that age I had not even understood that it was foreign. One doesn’t need to have an intimate understanding of Japanese culture to understand the themes of Miyazaki, they are very humanistic and rely on human emotion over culture.

It’s not hard to see that Miyazaki is a strong environmentalist. There is a pattern to be seen in many of his films that involves a separation of humanity and nature, followed by a conflict, which ends in humans and nature learning to live in harmony. This is a powerful conflict that people across the globe, of all ages and genders can relate to.

Face to face interaction and a sense of a geographical community has been disappearing in recent decades. Rather the cyber world has acted as a catalyst for new communities have formed, thousands of miles apart. Fandoms of specific anime form as international fans discuss them online. A broader fandom of anime exists, but there is great diversity within anime. Anime fans can relate to each other on a level beyond culture. People might like very specific genres of anime, but there is overlap.

Anime often leaves viewers to make their own moral conclusion. People of widely different life experiences and viewpoints can enjoy it, and this is what makes it a shift in what we consider a community.