Naruto and Pokemon

The other day I was teaching a school program with fifth graders and one kid had a Naruto headeband tied around his wrist. "You like Naruto," I said. He looked shocked and gasped, "How did you know?" I pointed out the headband and he told me about some other kids in his class who liked the show too.

Naruto is a good example of an anime that a had a cult following here when it was first airing in Japan, then later it was licenced and shown on Cartoon Network. Now there are a lot of ten-year-olds into it. Like some other fans, I have mixed feelings about this. I remember someone saying, "Would you like anime as much if it was on every billboard?" Of course hardcore fans have moved on from Naruto to other shows long ago--particularly as the Naruto being aired in Japan has been filler for a while now, and not even geared to the Otaku community there either. But these new fans, who might not be into any other anime yet, could evolve into otaku--like the infusion of Pokemon kids a few years ago. (Example: Anime Nano podcast mentions the PokeRap).

I'd been into anime for awhile when Pokemon got big over here, and I never played or watched it, so my main memory of Pokemon is from working at a Borders in 1999 when we were giving away free Mew cards--people had to buy a Pokemon item to get one, but in the end we had so many we were giving them away by the dozens to kids who didn't want them anymore. I remember one kid saying he needed another Mew card like he needed a hole in the head!

The Naruto kid said he got his wristband at Hot Topic. They had a blitz of Naruto stuff for a while last year. When I was waliking by HT in the mall the other day I saw they'd now rolled out the Bleach goods.