Fandom Owes A Debt
I grew up in a house that held some Trekies that had been
fans from the original series until the present. So having people devoted to a
particular fandom seemed to open the gateway for my own, of many of them being
anime. Though many is the time that I could sit down with them and watch a Star
Trek episode, to this day see what TV both here and in Japan as well as film
owe to the franchise and what icons like Leonard Nimoy had managed to for us as
fans, for our aspirations when we would grow up and the pleasure we have gotten
from the experience since. An icon in fandom is important, no one knows this
more than the fans themselves, you’ll see plenty of stories when people go to
conventions and see just how much of an impact they have made. No doubt Leonard
Nimoy was one of those icons, in fact the character he played on Star Trek,
Spock, could have had an extreme effect on the many characters that come from
anime. Stoic, intelligent and cool.
Offering a
glimpse into the future is something that Anime/Manga are obsessed with. It
helps us reach further and take some of those ideas, bring them here to the
present and really examine them. Many things that were fiction in Star Trek
have become science fact since then, thanks in large part to most of the people
that developed the things we have being big fans of the show. In fact movies
and shows to this day still touch on things that Star Trek was touching on
years ago. There are times that anime
and manga walk down those paths as well.
A great way to question things and go further still, you can never fault fandom from pushing
people toward their dreams, how many people watched Indiana Jones and decided
to become Archeologist is the same as seeing Leonard Nimoy’s character on the
screen and wanted to pursue something close to that, it is also something anime
and manga can do in a special way, even
with their special pilgrimages to places shows were set in, to actual professions
of the characters we watch in anime and manga. To even watching shows with
robots or say mobile suits and wondering if that’s possible to make and they have,
in so many ways and will continue to do so. That saying that nerds rule the
world is not an understatement, fandom pushes our imagination and challenges
our ingenuity, it can also question the importance of certain things and maybe,
hopefully prepare us for things we might not otherwise expect or have thought
about until too late, in other words make us more aware of the world and beyond
that around us.
Being in a house
among fans taught me the value of carrying some respect as one towards those
that contributed to my fandom in a large way, it’s a respect among anime fans
that have striking similarities to Star Trek fans. The wonderful thing about
fandom is often it can be connected, even those that may have never sat and
watched an original Star Trek episode or even bothered to his cameo in the new
films, might have heard his voice when they were holding the controller playing
the Kingdom Hearts games, since he was the voice of Master Xehanort. One of my favorite games of all time actually. Not to mention the actor has had credits in
many films and shows you really should at least see once, if you think some of the top creators
in Japan hadn’t than you’re crazy, shows like The Outer Limit and The Mission
Impossible TV show. Already tributes have been made by fans all over the world
in several games tributes will be made to the actor such as Star Trek Online,
Elite: Dangerous and Star Commander. In Star Trek Online many players on the
day of his passing had already acted on the tribute with thousands of
players going to the Vulcan planet in
which the character Spock came from, paying their respects to the man that influenced
their lives. In Canada many are giving a Spock treatment to their five dollar
bills or ‘spocking a five”, drawing the character and altering the appearance
of the currency.
If nothing else
Leonard Nimoy was a part of something that is very important to fandom,
offering something that people had never seen before and I’m not just talking
about the story in the show, I’m talking about how many barriers they broke
including racial ones in a rather tense time for such a thing. Fandom is good with addressing and breaking
through such issues. How right is it, that I would see those I grew up with as
Star Trek fans and respected my love of anime and manga buy the Star Trek manga. It felt like a circle had been made, a
connection to the things that we love, that we share and helped influence us
from there on. As a fan I felt obliged to give a thank you to an icon who
managed to inspire a wave of hope and good will as well as contribute to the
arts that all run parallel paths and sometimes send us down our paths in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment