The more of anime culture that I consume, the lower my standards get – that’s how it looks from an outside perspective, but more accurately, the more that I consume, the more things I find to appreciate about everything I see. Not just anime, but music, too – I used to be pretty picky about what genres I would watch or listen to, and now I can safely say that there is no genre that I am incapable of enjoying on a case-by-case basis. I’ve found myself liking more and more shows that I wouldn’t have before and willing to listen to music that I couldn’t formerly tolerate. It is not always easy to branch into a genre you were previously uninterested in, but always rewarding – however, I have found that the hardest thing to get into is something more personal.
That is, anime and music that I formerly claimed to hate. Or if not hate, then whose fans I formerly looked down upon. I have striven to remove all of my elitism, but I’d be lying if I said i was done doing so, nor if I said that I didn’t used to be really, really elitist. I mean, hey, everyone wants to have at least someone to look down on, to instill a feeling that they are at least superior to that guy, but I can hardly kid myself like that. No one has ever told me that I had good taste, and no one ever will. There are genres of music and anime fandom (yes, genre of fandom) that I looked down on in the past, and far harder than merely breaking into a genre that I was formerly uninterested in is breaking into one that I formerly looked down on.