User blog comment:Cheese Lord/What Is So Damn Special About Anime?/@comment-4295646-20120129030603

The easiest and most truthful way to answer this, I think, would be to advise you to look at -any- field of dedicated cultural interest. Like cars: some people's lives revolve around a particular mod or model. Movies. Wine. What's so great about wine? It's stuff you make out of fermented fruit that gets you drunk. Saying something like that to a true-blue viniculturist will get you nothing but gapes and stutters.

It should be a rule of the internet, but it transcends internet. Where there is a Thing, there is also a Nerd for that Thing. The only reason it seems now as though "everyone" is into anime is because the internet is not as wide-open and diverse as in theory. It, too, is made of contained cultural zones and communities, many of whom share an enthusiasm for Eastern animation. Not only that, it wasn't so long ago that nobody had heard of the stuff; we're looking at an explosion in popularity over the last few decades, and no more. Tomorrow it might be something wholly different.