Hey, Answerman!

Driving home the other night, I had the radio tuned to a show I never seem to catch the name of, but which features two amiable guys talking about sports, firstly, and their seemingly humorous lives, secondly. I was only half paying attention when one of the hosts began a long-winded tale about his weekend trip to Baltimore, which from his tone and delivery promised to culminate in a witty demand for listeners to call in and commiserate with him. Of course, "Baltimore" and "weekend" should have set off red flags in my head, but like a lot of anime fans, I tend to forget that "normal people" live in the same universe as we do and might occasionally run into the same anime experiences. I was therefore completely floored when the host summed up his trip by demanding what in the world was going on that wouldn't let him get out of the city around mid afternoon. "It was like an adult costume party!" he raved angrily.

Ding ding ding! Other than anime conventions, I can't image too many other events attended by tons of people all jammed into a (relatively) small city area that the public would be completely baffled by. It baffled ME somewhat that he didn't know a cosplayer when he saw one – or a few thousand of them – though he picked up on the fact that this wasn't a Harry Potter fest or a Star Trek gathering. Being so baffled, I began to suspect that this man was just pretending not to know what the event really was, until a few minutes later a caller informed them in a delivery and voice that just screamed OTAKU that it was an anime convention. They hung up on the poor kid while I gnashed my teeth over the fact that of all the people to enlighten them, it HAD to be someone who sounded like he'd just crawled out of an Evangelion sleeping bag after an all-night mecha marathon. This is a topic for another time, but please please PLEASE if you're going to try and "enlighten" the public about anime, pay attention to how you're coming off.

The radio show continued for another minute or so with the hosts debating what anime was. At one point, they couldn't decide whether Pokémon was anime, but I figured they were on the right track, if not the best one.

The next caller opened the floodgates to this rant. He seemed sincere – I was still extremely suspicious of the proceedings – and claimed to be average Joe Schmoe Baltimore resident. Every year "these people" descended on the city, he railed, and he found out what they were up to by visiting the Otakon Web site. Rather than explaining this, or mentioning anything about the convention itself, the caller shot right into a list of things "these people" were being reminded to do, including washing regularly, not wearing costumes 24/7 for days on end and making sure to use soap in the shower. He probably could have gone on (I can think of a lot of rules on convention Web sites that would raise eyebrows) but this was quite enough to lampoon anime fans everywhere with a huge "dirty, immature, disgusting" label. The show hosts, of course, took this and ran – I'm not sure how far because I lost my radio signal and that was it for me. I've never really considered calling in to a radio show before, but I truly was right then, that's how mortified I was.

What's interesting is that I wasn't upset at the radio hosts or the caller for their ridiculing. I was furious at the fans out there who necessitate such juvenile admonishments and also at convention staffers who publish these stupid rules so prominently, despite the fact that anyone who has to be reminded to use soap in the shower is hardly going to be prodded into it by a low-brow statement that he/she needs to practice normal hygiene, even if it's against their modus operandi. Can you imagine a staff member walking up to a particularly fragrant individual and asking them if they read the attendee guidelines page on the Web site that clearly promotes cleanliness? Not going to happen, so don't put it there in the first place. It embarrasses the rest of us and is probably NOT going to do one bit of good. Most fans know all about these kinds of convention attendees and take care not to become one, do we REALLY need to elevate the unclean otaku into a necessary part of the convention experience, a joke that's no longer a joke? To the point where we must mention it (again, to no good) on a Web site frequented not only by fans, but obviously by the general public? Would a convention be only so-so if everyone behaved like normal people and didn't have to be reminded about personal hygiene?

Now, I realize conventions are generally run by volunteers, and as such there may be a serious lack of professionalism in certain quarters, but this kind of ludicrous, ineffectual, pointless harping on the habits of certain bad apples in otakudom is only slandering the rest of us. Ok, anime fans tend to be a juvenile lot anyways, but would a cosplayer showing an unacceptable amount of flesh and kicked out of a convention honestly not know, in the back of their minds, that if they're in public, then all the normal rules of conduct and deportment still apply? Are they going to argue that, because the convention rules did not explicitly state that wearing only pasties and a fig leaf was completely out of line, they had no right to be given the boot? I'm sure someone would try, but again, I can't believe they aren't aware on some level that their attire and behavior is completely unacceptable – I mean, they are a part of society and have been bred and raised on its rules.

Anime fans are not idiots, we're not societal blemishes and we're not above or exceptions to the accepted patterns of behavior everyone else is expected to comply with. Convention staff going out of their way to remind us all of this is extremely insulting and is NOT helping to cast fans in the best light possible when the startled public gets a peek at our pastime. As far as the cleanliness clause goes, again, what possible fraction of offenders is actually moved to reform their hygiene habits based on a few choice words from the convention Web site? Yes, there are many, many standing jokes about the convention experience, but raising some of them to such a high level of visibility is taking it way too far. Obviously, as evidenced by one radio show caller, it's easy to take as a very broad statement about anime fans – one that's completely false. And even if it's accepted as a warning for the few, that still leaves a very bad taste in one's mouth for the people running the event that see nothing wrong (and indeed think they're doing everyone a favor) by taking this small bump in the road to a wonderful convention experience and turning it into a major pot hole that swallows us all.