"Small-town Otaku: How the Other Half of Fandom Lives"
by Jonathan Cook

I was eating leftovers Sunday night when I turned on Ebert and Roeper. There was nothing else on and I was half dead from 7 hours at the bakery. After ripping through Nicole Kidman's latest film, "Birthday Girl" they critiqued a new anime film called Metropolis. Now I won't go into the details about how the two went back and forth, how Mr. Roeper kept mispronouncing the word "anime" or for that matter how Roger Ebert defended both the art form and the fanbase. I will mention that Mr. Roeper thought our fanbase was "small" and "unimportant". Last I checked wasn't Otakon's attendance this year 12,000? That's three times the population of Soddy-Daisy!

The footage of Metropolis was spellbinding and supposedly was released subtitled stateside. But that doesn't matter. What matters is what I consider the cold hard truth. Unless you live in one of the top five or ten biggest cities in America, you're S.O.L. To me, nothing is more enjoyable than the big-screen experience. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 10 anime movies that showing them on anything less than a small screen is anything short of injustice. When I saw Princess Mononoke twice at the theater with my popcorn and Cherry Coke in tow I thought "Why on earth are we not showing this back home?"

I can go into details about the reasons between limited vs. nationwide release, but that's not my issue here. My issue is the fact that I call Chattanooga home. Despite any places I may live in the immediate future, Chattanooga will always be considered my home. But like so many "mid-sized" cities in America, Chattanooga tends to fall through the cracks as an "independent film market". I know we have an independent film festival every year, but give me a break. I don't see Sunrise or Toei or Studio Gainax breaking down our doors to play their greatest works at the Bijou. Do you?

Chattanooga has never been known as the city to try new things. Its conservatism in my opinion will eventually lead to its downfall. In some cases it already has, but that's another subject altogether. This in turn has left otakus starved for more than what they can buy at Media Play or Electronics Boutique. Not to toot my own horn, but one of the reasons why I consider my "Sushi Bar" block on noncommercial WAWL Chattanooga State so successful is because nobody else is doing it. Commercial stations can't do it because there's no bottom-line. Who wants to buy advertising for a music genre with only a small niche audience?

It saddens me to no end that the Chattanoogas, the Augustas, the Huntsvilles, the Biloxis and the Corpus Christis of the U.S. cannot experience the same thing as the Chicagos and New Yorks. But such is the facts of life. We're not big enough to show any interest and, in turn, this is causing people to look elsewhere to show their works. I can only dream that someday I can help make my hometown anime-friendly in the independent circuit. But that takes time and money. I can say this much, I will make it big in the entertainment industry someway...somehow.

And in doing so, I will be able to open the doors to where the town I love can show the animation I love as it was meant to be shown.

As I go off to bed, I am reminded of a story Abraham Lincoln once told about a king asking his wisest of wise men about what perfect sentence can be used to fit any and all occasions. His response: This too shall pass.

So to those otakus out there in small-town America: This too shall pass.

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Jonathan Cook is a self-proclaimed otaku and aspiring anime voice actor from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is currently attending Chattanooga State Technical Community College part-time where he hosts the "Sushi Bar", an anime-themed radio program every Saturday night at 10 P.M. Listen online at www.wawl.org.