What’s an anime guilty pleasure? It’s the things some of us have reservations about liking but still like anyway. It’s the jiggly boobs, the hot men, the gratuitous blood and violence and all the other critters and whatnot we go gaga for but keep to ourselves. It’s the anime we publicly deride but secretly watch when we’re alone. It’s the battles we mock and sneer at openly, but are cheering for behind closed doors.

For me, it’s pretty boys. Yeah, it’s out now. I like pretty men. However, I keep my fangirlism to myself, mostly. Poor David, however, is sometimes witness to those rare fangirl moments of giddy clapping. That’s my fangirl thing: I clap and smile like someone who’s been out in the sun too long. Oh, and I hop. And squeal. But like I said, it’s rare. At cons when I see pretty men, I just smile. A lot. All the pictures of me with a fave character feature me smiling like a turnip farmer who just won the lottery. Special.

Pretty men are my anime guilty pleasure. That and the occasional blood spattered volume of Hellsing. I’m not a huge fan of gratuitous violence, but for some reason, Hellsing also makes me smile and clap. Oh, and I forgot to mention my ultimate guilty pleasure: shoujo manga. I have no clue why someone with my preferences, who hates romantic comedies, loathes chick flicks and detests soap operas, would like shoujo manga. I think the gods of anime have a wicked sense of humor….

I also like random comedies and anime cats, but those aren’t guilty pleasures. Everyone knows about those.

Do you have a fave something in anime you keep from your anime friends? Is there a series your friends hate but you love, yet you chime in when they say they loathe it? Is there a fanservice device you feel dirty for liking? Do you like panty shots? Giant mechs? Pretty boys? Magical girls? What’s your anime guilty pleasure?

Feel free to share your anime guilty pleasure below. Let this be your anime confessional!

Geneon’s US demise this past October left a bad taste in my mouth. I figured a monopoly was the worse that could happen, but also that other unsavory outcomes were possible. Some fans had the opinion Geneon’s tanking was no biggie, while others who’ve seen this sort of thing before took a “wait and see” approach to the episode.

As ADV started laying off employees, the bad taste in my mouth went from slightly sour to icky. When I read ADV was closing their wallet to anime clubs and shutting down Newtype, I think I became ill. And then when unofficial news surfaced about ADV’s discontinuation of titles, I had to rethink what I originally thought of the US anime landscape.

What would happen if little by little, anime in America, as we know it now, began to disappear? What if, instead of recent anime being released on DVD, any “new” anime was solely available on cable? And what if those titles were nothing but shows like Bleach and Naruto?

Sure, fansubs would gain new fans and a bigger audience, but wouldn’t anime crawl back under the rock it came from in terms of its popularity and mainstream appeal (I use “popular” in a relative context and a loose one at that)? What would happen to manga? Would manga keep the anime culture in America afloat? Or is this a minor setback, one we’ll bounce right back from?

These questions and more are the ones I ask myself and other anime fans whenever there’s some disturbances with the distribution companies. Some questions I toss out to get the dialog going but some I honestly want to know. The biggest, ultimate question, however, would be: What if anime in America were no more…Period.

No fansubs, no new Adult Swim, no video on demand, no YouTube, nothing. Zip. No more anime. Just the series and movies already in your and your buddies collections. All the cool new super awesome shows you hear are being released in Japan would be nothing more than wishful thinking in America.

Reruns would rule supreme (imagine Cowboy Bebop back on Cartoon Network in an endless loop- forever!) Fans would start to further pick apart old series, looking for some fresh nuance to keep discussions alive. Anime conventions would slowly devolve into burnt out shrines of anime past, with no new cosplays, no announcements, just a bunch of fans reliving the Golden Years. It’d be like a Star Wars convention…

And what would you do? Would you give up the medium? Or buy an $80 bootleg DVD of crappy anime from China and Europe? Would you still cosplay? What would your room look like with no new plushies to brighten it? How would you get your fix? What would you do if anime were no more in America?

Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds like I’m being all doom and gloom (it’s only a hypothetical discussion), but please comment below on what you’re anime disaster plan would be!

Adorable kitties aren’t the only critters in anime that I’m a sucker for; other furry, fuzzy, cuddly creatures also up the kawaii factor for me and elicit many drawn out “Awwwwww! Isn’t it a cuddly wuddly, what-ever-the-hell-it-is?” I have no idea why I get absolutely stupid when I see cute animals (cute human children don’t register on the Kawaii-O-Meter™) but if an anime or manga has a cutesy, well-designed animal character, it gets extra points from me.

Cool creature designs are always a plus in anime, and the diverse nature of the medium always promises that fantastical creatures of inhuman origin will be a matter of course in certain genres rather than the exception. Aside from the cutesy pet-characters, there are characters who are part critter/ part human, all critter, and all human/ all critter at different times (human during the day, critter by night).

My fave anime animals are cats, followed by anything small, fuzzy and cute. Is there a certain type of critter that makes you temporarily lose brain function? Which anime creatures make you sigh in admiration (one way or another)? What’s your fave critter in anime?

My gripes are with bad stories, crappy animation, poor voice casts, etc., but everyone has gripes with those. I couldn’t care less about cat girls, robots and lolitas in anime-when used in moderation. Same goes for fanservice.

Moe, however, if it were up to me, would no longer be allowed in the house that anime built. If I could outlaw one thing in anime, it would be moe.

The Anime Blog Poll

How about you? What’s the one thing, no matter how big or how small, that you would outlaw in anime? Would you ban all non-bishie men? Toss out all girls C-cup and under? Buh-bye, tsundere? Sayonara, kittens? So long, mechs? What’s the one thing you would outlaw in anime?

Answer in the comments below!