by Ryan Mathews

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March 2000

I'm not kidding. I mean it. Never again. The only possible exception would be if said video room is showing something I'll never have a chance to see anywhere else, and even then I'll have to think long and hard about it.

On the off chance that there's even one reader who doesn't understand, I'm referring to the video rooms at anime conventions, considered by most fans to be the second most important venue at the con, right after the dealer's room. After all, what would be the point of attending an anime convention if you didn't watch at least a little anime?

Well, I guess I'm going to find out.

The experience that drove me to this decision occurred at Katsucon. I'd already had two bad video room experiences at the last convention I'd attended, Anime Expo 99 (see the August 1999 column for details), and I was prepared, I thought, for the usual crap you have to put up with when viewing anime in a room full of otaku: loud, inappropriate laughter and general rudeness. But what happened at Katsucon went beyond rudeness. Far beyond.

The movie was Perfect Blue. For those who haven't seen it, this is not a funny movie. It's a very cerebral work that examines issues such as rape, madness, and the meaning of one's identity. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that the ending is tricky to watch. It presents multiple interpretations of reality and challenges the viewer to sort them out. In short, Perfect Blue is a "thinker". In retrospect, perhaps that should have been a red flag.

The showing began innocently enough. The audience was sufficiently polite up until the point that the main character discovers a web site devoted to her. In this scene, a friend briefly describes how to use a web browser, and suddenly the otaku geeks burst into laughter. The Netscape logo pops up. More laughter. The main character says "H-T-T-P..." as she types, and the crowd are almost on the floor! Ha ha! Look at that! There's an anime character and she's browsing the web! What a hoot! Someone shouts "Macs suck!" and is rewarded with more laughter.

That last bit should have been my cue to get the hell out. The laughing? It was annoying, but I was used to it. You can't watch anime with otaku without there being at least one idiot who laughs hysterically at things that aren't the slightest bit funny. Conventions mean bigger crowds, which in turn mean more idiots and more and louder laughter. But that last bit? Someone had heckled the movie and was rewarded for it. Bad sign.

Sure enough, as the movie progressed, the hecklers got bolder and bolder, until the front third of the theater was dominated by morons who thought they were watching MST3K. Remember how I said the ending was tricky to watch? Well, these jerks didn't even try! Each twist brought groans and shouting at the screen. At the climactic moment, they began chanting one word over and over again at the top of their lungs. (I'd tell you the word, but it could spoil the ending.)

As I left the theater, I could not remember ever having had a worse opinion of my fellow anime fans. They reminded me of a tribe of apemen. You want to know when the heckling stopped? The rape scene. Scenes with violence. Their tiny little minds could comprehend that. But as soon as the plot moved back to the question of what was reality and what was fantasy, the hooting and hollering began again.

Now, I know there are those out there with the opinion that Perfect Blue sucks. That's fine. You have every right to your opinion. I heard someone say "It gets worse" during the showing, so I know some in the theater had that opinion. But no one was forcing those idiots to sit there. The doors were not locked. They hadn't paid admission to the movie. No, these S.O.B.'s were heckling the movie because they wanted to, and the enjoyment of anyone else in the theater be damned.

Should I have tried harder to get them to quiet down? I did say "shut up" at one point, but was either ignored or, more likely, not heard. To do more, I would have had to shout, and that's something I find difficult to do in a room full of strangers. On top of that, I just felt so outnumbered. If it had been any other movie, I would simply have left, but I had to know how it ended, so I sat, and suffered, and fumed.

It made me think about Ryan Matheuszik's letter from last month, in which he informed me that there are anime fans who watch anime, not to enjoy it, but to make fun of it, much in the same way people watch cheezy low-budget monster movies. It blew my mind that anyone who followed anime would treat it in this manner, but what else could I have been experiencing?

If you were in that theater watching Perfect Blue, I would like to hear from you. I'd especially like to hear from you if you were one of those who had been heckling the movie. An apology would be nice. Failing that, I'd like to hear your justification. Why did you think it was okay to continually shout at the screen? Did you truly think there was nobody in the theater actually watching the show?

Having gotten that off my chest, let's move on to this month's web picks