Yappie Days and Nights

More selections from The Anime magazine's "Yappie Handbook."

A Day in the Yappie Lifestyle

7:00 AM: A digital timer triggers the cassette Walkman, playing the day's wake-up song from a pair of mini-speakers. For a Yappie, "Hellow Vifam" is the perfect choice. Those looking for something more uptempo might choose the "Theme From Captain Tsubasa." but "The Arale-Chan Dance"? Never.

7:20 AM: The time before school is important for planning out the day ahead. After scanning through the newspaper's TV listings and checking that the VCR timer is properly set, a Yappie carefully selects the videotapes and character goods that they are bound to exchange with friends at least twice during the day. Also: mark anime magazine pages with likely topics for discussion. Before leaving house, blow a kiss at a selected anime poster.

8:00 AM: While walking to school, mentally rewind and review anime watched the night before so as to fix at least the screenwriter, voice actors, and animation director's names in memory.

8:40 AM: No need to be on the honor roll. It's more important to cultivate the ability to combine appreciation of anime with one's studies. "The Adventures of Meme" can be as educational as any class, and many things can be learned from the complicated lines of "Urusei Yatsura."

9:40 AM: Between classes, a Yappie never holds back from talking with their classmates. Remember, a Yappie is an anime fan -- not a fanatic. Mastering everyday sorts of conversational topics and adding them to one's anime repertoire keeps a Yappie fresh and interesting. Yappies are dedicated to changing the image of anime fans as nekura (gloomy).

12:20 PM: Lunchtime is the perfect time to swap the latest anime info, trade tapes with friends, and exchange info with pals who are buying different anime magazines. But make sure to leave some time to talk with "normal" classmates too.

3:00 PM: School is out, and a Yappie uses this time to focus on their hobbies. A happy anime fan club is a good fan club. Gather together like-minded fans to chat, work on one's original animation production, or make handmade anime items. 

5:00 PM: Drop by the local anime shop. Aiming for a time near closing when other customers are scarce, chat up the manager for the latest insider info. After the anime shop, drop by the record shop, book shop, and if female, the local gift shop, before returning home. Catch news on TV, then listen to the latest singles on the radio.

7:00 PM: The time after dinner is perfect for enjoying one's "private anime life." After watching the anime one taped earlier in the day, write the daily entry in the anime logbook.

9:00 PM: After finishing up required studying and homework, prepare the weekend schedule by using the television listings to determine which shows to record. Now it's free time! Listen to a record, read a "young novel" or anime novelization, prepare for a weekend anime event, or work on your original anime cel tracings. And get to bed before midnight... Because a Yappie is a beautiful dreamer!

Comments

[Carl]

Well, I guess I was sort of a high-school Yappie, especially on the anti-nekura front, mitte der achtziger Jahre. But that talk of a "daily entry in the anime logbook," sounds more Travis Bickle than Trapper Keeper, if you get me.

[MattAlt]

Yes, this does read like the diary of someone who's about to snap, though I suspect they'd be more likely to open fire on their classmates with Chogokin rocket punches than actual firearms.

[Tim Eldred]

Aw, I thought it was kind'a sweet. An idealized look at a time when the hobby can still the top priority. Hold onto 16 as long as you ca-an, changes comin' round real soon make us women and men.

There's even a caveat about not turning into one of "them." For all the good THAT did...

[MattAlt]

Am I jumping to conclusions imagining exactly what kind of anime was being "mentally reviewed and rewound," given all the imagery of scantily-clad females?

[Bernie]

Thanks for translating this piece of insanity.

Pretty surprised there's nothing in there about getting a Yappie approved part-time job in order buy more garbage to grow inappropriately attached to. I am however not surprised that there's nothing in the handbook on making preparations to one day come in intimate contact with another well-rounded and consenting Yappie.

[MattAlt]

Au contraire, my friend. This is but the first two pages. Stay tuned for... YAPPIE HOLIDAYS & COUPLES! Coming soon to a monitor near you.

[Jeremy Neiman]

This whole Yappie thing keeps getting weirder. No wonder it didn't catch on, too many rules to follow.

@Matt

Then what do "the screenwriter, voice actors, and animation director's names" represent?

[MattAlt]

A convenient cover-story?

[Mark]

I guess I have been neglecting my anime logbook. (?)

[Carl]

>>No wonder it didn't catch on, too many rules to follow.

But isn't this a required element in Japanese fashion trends?

[Tim Eldred]

Why are those who have spoken out so far lining up to trash this? Sure, it's a rose-colored look at a never-never land, but you have to admire the optimism. I tells ya, if I were there in the 80s, I would have been a fully-functioning Yappie and proud of it.

[hillsy]

I don't know if I've ever been a fully functioning anything...alas, I wouldn't have been a Yappie...unless Yappies were reading "Omaha" in study hall scheming after girly Yappie booty (and getting nowhere, of course)....

[Variable Gear]

This is amazing. The way I absorbed video game culture in the US is quite similar to this, minus the kisses - and the VCR.

And, to those talking about the "rules" of being a Yappie, I think you're misinterpreting things. I could be wrong myself, but I think that the original article wasn't meant to instill a series of strict laws, but to give Japanese anime fans a bit of self-confidence in their fascination with anime. "Talk about anime with your friends, expand your anime knowledge, and don't worry about your grades to much, but try not to fail." That's the gist of it, in my opinion.

Then again, maybe I'm over-simplifying things.

[MattAlt]

>>Why are those who have spoken out so far lining up to trash this?

We (or at least I) trash out of love. I agree: it's intended less as journalism and more as a shot in the arm for an obviously downtrodden segment of society. For a sense of how these guys looked to the outside world, just read Nakamori's description from the year before:

http://neojaponisme.com/2008/04/02/what-kind-of-otaku-are-you/

(Now quit wasting time on the Internet and get back to your anime logbook.)

[Carl]

I personally wouldn't trash it. First of all, I was a teenager in the 1980s, and thus feel a little familiarity with the style. I would say the "Yappie" is more positive than some other models of being an otaku; not only in the value it places on sociability, but in how it suggests one should be a fan of anime as a whole--that is, a fan of the medium and a fan of specific works--rather than the modern conception of being mainly a fan of certain characters with certain traits; i.e., the moe-based model. To me, this is the *artistic* problem with moe (as opposed to the moral or psychological problems with it, which most discussion of moe seems to center around).

[MattAlt]

>>don't worry about your grades to much,

It's true, this repeats like a mantra throughout the pamphlet. Initially, I'd thought of it as borderline rebellious, but reading Nakamori's piece above he mentions "boys who spent their childhoods going to the best cram-schools but turn into fish-eyed losers." In some circles, perhaps there was as much of a stigma attached to trying too hard scholastically as there was in being an anime maniac.

[Steve Harrison]

It's interesting, the first thing I glommed onto is, where are the parents?

See, think about it. When this was written, VCRs were STILL hellish expensive things. In the US the price had come down to about $800 for a nicely featured VHS machine, while in Japan the same model was still around $1000, maybe more. I doubt most households had more than one machine, yes?

So, our prototype Yappie checks the TV listings, sets the timer. What if Papa-san wants to tape the Sumo match? What about Mama-san's 'stories'? And if little sister has a cartoon SHE wants to watch at the same time....

(Believe me, these are serious issues and were in my house, until I put in the signal splitter and the switchbox)

[hillsy]

>Sumo matches

Well, that's what izakayas and local bars are for. Plus Papa-san gets away from the fam. Plus, sumo goes all day during the tournament...I don't your average salaryman having time to watch all that recorded sumo. And baseball is televised at night. Preferrably watched with feet up and beer in hand.

And Mama-san? Well, hell...chances are she was home during the day anyways. I'm sure she didn't have a problem with little Ichiro the Yappie recording an hour of anime a few times a week.

[Steve Harrison]

Ah, but you forget how it was in the days of the VCR.

If Mama-san was watching the soaps, the VCR was offline!

Much would depend on the savvy of the Yappie in connecting the equipment.

[Carl]

Another thing an American otaku wanted to be doing with his family's VCR in 1984--hook it up with someone else's, so copies could be made (come to think of it, off-air recording was a much less important use of the VCR for the American anime fan than the Japanese one, for obvious reasons). Permission needed to be negotiated for that, too, most especially if that meant leaving the house with it.

Fortunately the basic idea of why you needed to hook two VCRs together in the first place was understood by parents here, since by that point tape copying had become a known practice in U.S. society (that's what prompted the famous Betamax Supreme Court case, after all). The only question was going to be, were you gonna take your (i.e., your parents') VCR over to your friend's house this time, or was it their turn to bring it over to yours...?

But I wonder how that played out for your average Yappie. Was the more likely scenario in 1984 Japan that you would arrange to get copies made at someone's place who already owned two VCRs, or maybe a local business that discreetly charged for the service? Of course, a Japanese fan would be more likely to purchase or rent licensed copies, but there was still a demand for copying in certain situations, including unreleased material and rarities.

[MattAlt]

I am pretty sure -- and I hope AceFace or someone who lived in Japan at the time will confirm this for me -- that back in the Eighties, some Japanese video-rental shops would actually make copies of videos for customers. I don't know how widespread this practice was, but I was totally (and actually quite happily) surprised when I discovered the video shop near my homestay family offered the service.

[Aceface]

Video shops did offer such services.But only for the tapes that you brought in,which are either home video or the recorded TV program.You can't just take "Ghostbusters"from the lineup of the shop and ask the clerk to copy it which was both illegaland suicidal for the business.

I remember one of my buddies at school had asked the shop to copy John Carpenter's "The Thing"that was aired on TV the previous day,over his sister's tape with tear-jerking dog story and all time Japan boxoffice record"Antarctica"was in.We ended up watching the tape with Taro and Jiro running toward Ken Takakura and suddenly the Norwegian chopper start sniping the dog.

[Lawrence Eng]

I suspect that many of Matt's readers (myself included) fall within the older, more-likely-to-be-jaded, demographic.

That said, I personally approve of this Yappie idealism, and feel sorry for anyone who hasn't lived their own golden age of fandom (for at least a little while).