The rule long-predated that. And it's a silly reason regardless.Cheynem wrote:I have some antipathy towards anime because anime fans hijacked the boards not two years ago and posted all sorts of worthless threads and nonsense.
Also, an "orientalized" culture? Haha.
And Japanese culture is absolutely orientalized and sometimes stigmatized in the popular American imagination. People will naturally comment on how "weird Japan is" or talk about "inscrutability" if prompted. Temporal traits or even anecdotes from Japanese society have been treated as essentialized pathologies since the era of Matthew Perry. Mundane differences in society are used to pinpoint something uniquely "strange" (or uniquely-unique) and to support pre-concieved notions of incomprehensible other-ness. This is an exceedingly well-documented phenomenon in Japanese studies.
This kind of sentiment that specifically targets Japanese animation could not exist without the Orientalist stigmatization of Japanese popular culture as deviant and alien. Even criticizing the social profile of the typical American fan is a weak defense, because there's no My Little Pony rule.
I'd have no complaints with either popping up in a quiz-bowl question. The Rolling Stones are a major band, both in terms of musical influence and in terms of their influence on the U.S. 60's counter-culture. And e-sports are a huge industry. Both potentially perfectly relevant to quizbowl, but fortunately, there isn't a rule concerning either.Something More Easily Remembered wrote:There also exists serious academic discussion of the Rolling Stones and Starcraft, but those are not considered Quizbowl relevant at all.kroeajueluo wrote:Second, of note that there does exist serious academic relevant discussion of Japanese anime. I do remember a cinema tossup on Tokyo that mentioned The Place Promised in Our Early Days right before Tokyo Monogatari, something relatively justified since both works have probably been discussed in an academic context. Even our middle-of-nowhere shack in Hanover has hosted at least 4 different comparative literature/film studies classes featuring some degree of Japanese animation.
Also, I wouldn't consider an Ivy League school a "middle-of-nowhere shack".
The point is that one of the major downsides of a smaller school is possible lack of access to less well-known subjects, even if they are important. For example, I-O Psychology is important , but I've certainly seen no class about it. However, there's been a growing movement to analyze Japanese animation (and its discontents), probably because it actually is becoming more important, which is partially why even I can keep finding literature classes on it.