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Let's discuss our thoughts and feelings over the word obscure. This discussion came to me when I saw a video from a guy titled "Obscure Anime: Welcome to the NHK" and some of the comments were criticizing the fact that it's a pretty popular/well known series in the anime community, so it would be inappropriate to say it's obscure.

The uploader's defense was that the meaning of the word obscure is relative to the person or group, so most of his fans/subscribers are new to the world of anime and are only familiar with the shows that are shown on TV, shows like Bleach, Naruto, Dragonball Z, so to people he's targeting, Welcome to the NHK would be considered an obscure show.

While I definitely see the uploader's point, I do feel that there is a certain point to where it does kind of seem inappropriate to consider something obscure. Since we at MTB are music nerds, we're familiar with bands like Radiohead, Tool, Protest the Hero, etc., but people who only listen to the radio, or listen to primarily pop, rap or RnB, those bands would be obscure to them. So while those bands would be obscure to those people, I do feel that it does seem inappropriate to consider something that has a certain level of commercial success or critical success to be labeled as obscure just because you're not part of a hobby or subculture.

So what do you guys think? Do you agree with the uploader's usage of the word obscure, or do you feel that there's a certain point where it's inappropriate to call something obscure?
I think you have to know who you're communicating with. If I was just posting on a fairly mainstream site (Cracked as the first example to come to mind) and mentioned some lesser known movie or band or video game it would most likely be obscure to a lot of people. But if I did the same thing on a music or movie forum it's most likely not.
(02-14-2014, 11:55 PM)WCPhils Wrote: [ -> ]I think you have to know who you're communicating with. If I was just posting on a fairly mainstream site (Cracked as the first example to come to mind) and mentioned some lesser known movie or band or video game it would most likely be obscure to a lot of people. But if I did the same thing on a music or movie forum it's most likely not.

I understand that, but do you think that it becomes inappropriate to call something obscure if it has a high level of success or acclaim, but it's not popular enough to where people outside of the hobby know who they are. For example, Tool isn't well known for people who either aren't music nerds (or just listen to the radio), or people who aren't familiar with rock music, but they've won a few Grammy Awards and all four of their albums are platinum status. So at this point, do you think that it's still appropriate to call them obscure?
I don't think Tool is really obscure at all. Like, they aren't well known, but if you're in a room with ten random people I bet at least 3 or 4 have heard of them.
I've always thought of obscure as primarily meaning strange/weird, and not simply meaning unknown. More unfamiliar than unknown I guess (unfamiliar you've seen nothing like it, unknown you've just not seen that specific thing).
If it's going to mean unknown then usually that would be with respect to general society (like if CNN talked of an obscure film director gaining popularity in the USA it would mean that most Americans don't know of that director and that he's a bit "out there" stylistically but I'll ignore that second bit now). With his blog though he's going to get a different society forming around it than CNN and that would be English-speaking internet-using anime watchers who have Cartoon Network (I'm guessing that'd be the channel). Welcome to the NHK! isn't obscure for that group. If CNN has mainly viewers who shop at Walmart and Trader Joe's (hypothetical example) is CNN going to call Aldi an obscure store? No since they know it's not obscure to American society in general and CNN is still putting itself out there for all American society to watch. For the blogger if he knows most of his readers are only fans of battle shounen broadcasted on Cartoon Network that doesn't change that he's putting himself out there for all English-speaking internet-using anime fans to read.
However in reality he didn't know that his readership are only fans of battle shounen broadcasted on Cartoon Network anyway, since if his readers are now complaining about it being labelled obscure then it clearly isn't unknown to them, unless they're thinking of the description of obscure similar to one I gave at the beginning of this post (if I was his reader I would probably take offense to him calling WttNHK! obscure since I'd be thinking he's calling it strange).
(02-15-2014, 12:23 AM)WCPhils Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think Tool is really obscure at all. Like, they aren't well known, but if you're in a room with ten random people I bet at least 3 or 4 have heard of them.

That's basically my entire point, the Youtuber made a video titled "Obscure Anime" and he brought up a pretty well known series, and justified calling it obscure for people who only know about a couple of anime that's shown on TV. Though if people know a moderate level of anime, they've at least heard of Welcome to the NHK or watched it themselves. So you can go outside of anime communities and it won't be too difficult to find people who have heard of the show.

That's basically why I used examples like Tool or Radiohead. They're "obscure" for people who don't listen to music much, but they're definitely not obscure for people who listen to a decent bit of non-radio music, and you can easily find people who are familiar with those bands. So do you think the Youtuber was appropriate in labeling the anime as obscure because it's obscure to the people he was targeting, or because it's really well known he shouldn't really be calling it obscure?

(02-15-2014, 12:25 AM)there Wrote: [ -> ]I've always thought of obscure as primarily meaning strange/weird, and not simply meaning unknown. More unfamiliar than unknown I guess (unfamiliar you've seen nothing like it, unknown you've just not seen that specific thing).
If it's going to mean unknown then usually that would be with respect to general society (like if CNN talked of an obscure film director gaining popularity in the USA it would mean that most Americans don't know of that director and that he's a bit "out there" stylistically but I'll ignore that second bit now). With his blog though he's going to get a different society forming around it than CNN and that would be English-speaking internet-using anime watchers who have Cartoon Network (I'm guessing that'd be the channel). Welcome to the NHK! isn't obscure for that group. If CNN has mainly viewers who shop at Walmart and Trader Joe's (hypothetical example) is CNN going to call Aldi an obscure store? No since they know it's not obscure to American society in general and CNN is still putting itself out there for all American society to watch. For the blogger if he knows most of his readers are only fans of battle shounen broadcasted on Cartoon Network that doesn't change that he's putting himself out there for all English-speaking internet-using anime fans to read.
However in reality he didn't know that his readership are only fans of battle shounen broadcasted on Cartoon Network anyway, since if his readers are now complaining about it being labelled obscure then it clearly isn't unknown to them, unless they're thinking of the description of obscure similar to one I gave at the beginning of this post (if I was his reader I would probably take offense to him calling WttNHK! obscure since I'd be thinking he's calling it strange).

I disagree with your thing on obscure also meaning weird, as we can find obscure stuff that's not weird, it's just not well known. Also I really wish you would stop misusing the term shonen, as when you do some research, it's really an arbitrary label slapped on what demographic the magazine the manga was published in. There's four manga demographics: shonen, shojo, seinen, and josei. While there are many series within the same demographic that do share some similar features and content, (for example mecha anime is largely shonen, and magical girl is largely shojo) you'll find manga within different demographics share the same content, and manga in the same demographic have very different content.

A good example would be Death Note, it shares many characteristics with other seinen manga, but the mere fact it was published in Shonen Jump, it's considered a shonen manga. There's also many situations where they take a manga that's more catered to a seinen demographic and publish it in a shonen mangazine, as a shonen magazine is more commercially successful due to shonen mangazines having a wider commercial appeal, and how they tend to have cross demographic appeal.

Another good example would be the schoolgirl slice of life comedies, they're all very similar, but some of them are labeled as shonen, and some are labeled as seinen. So you'll see Strawberry Marshmallow and K-on! be very similar to each other, but the former is shonen, which means it has the same target demographic as DBZ and Bleach, and K-on! has the same target demographic as Ghost in the Shell and Gantz. So this is another case where labels like shonen and seinen don't really mean shit.

Also those demographic labels only apply to manga, not anime original or anime based off of light novels.


Other than that, I do agree with the rest of what you said.
I couldn't think of a better way to group DBZ, Bleach and Naruto together than "battle shounen". Well I guess "battle anime on Cartoon Network" would've worked.

In dictionaries obscure can either mean unknown or not easy to understand, the second of which is vaguely like strange but it's not the same as strange, true.
(02-15-2014, 01:50 AM)there Wrote: [ -> ]I couldn't think of a better way to group DBZ, Bleach and Naruto together than "battle shounen". Well I guess "battle anime on Cartoon Network" would've worked.

In dictionaries obscure can either mean unknown or not easy to understand, the second of which is vaguely like strange but it's not the same as strange, true.

Well I forgot to mention the fact that he started the video with the definition: Obscure - not readily noticed or seen; inconspicuous. So he's using the definition of the show being lesser known, and he's saying the purpose of his video is to introduce the show to people who wouldn't be familiar with it, otherwise it would just be a review that you would agree or disagree with (review part is a direct quote). So he's not using your preferred usage of obscure.

The reason why people always want to associate shonen as battle shows, as those are the types of shonen anime that gets popular in the West. So early on, people saw these shows listed as shonen, so they think "oh, shonen must mean those battle shows", so after a misinterpretation, it's kind of gotten stuck in the western anime culture. A similar thing is happening with seinen anime's recent surge of popularity, particularly seinen schoolgirl anime, so it's not uncommon to see seinen associated with schoolgirl shows.

So a lot of people started misinterpreting and misusing these words, so it causes a ton of confusion with people when they start getting confused with a situation like the series A Certain Magical Index not being considered shonen, but its side story A Certain Scientific Railgun is. Even though they're both pretty much the same show, but featuring different characters as the lead, the main show isn't considered shonen all because it's based off of a light novel, and the side story is based off of a manga.

Another interesting case of misused Japanese words: hentai. Contrary to popular belief, hentai does not mean "anime porn", it refers to either a person who's really perverted or a really perverted act. So it would be appropriate to call someone hentai because he snuck into your sister's bedroom to sniff her panties. Somehow the word got transformed into a genre of porn.
(02-15-2014, 02:11 AM)Grungie Wrote: [ -> ]Another interesting case of misused Japanese words: hentai. Contrary to popular belief, hentai does not mean "anime porn", it refers to either a person who's really perverted or a really perverted act. So it would be appropriate to call someone hentai because he snuck into your sister's bedroom to sniff her panties. Somehow the word got transformed into a genre of porn.
Honestly, I did not know that. Interesting.
(02-15-2014, 02:39 AM)JoelCarli Wrote: [ -> ]Honestly, I did not know that. Interesting.

You'll hear it shouted a lot in anime, usually in romantic comedies, or comedies in general when the guy is either a pervert, or the girl is just being a bitch to him. So they're not calling the guy cartoon porn.

A similar misunderstanding is doujinshi, which people think means "hentai manga", but it actually means amateur manga in general. So it includes original work, fanfiction, porn, or porn fanfics.
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