History of Otaku culture in Cuba I: ''Wonderland''

Cosplayer: Leonor Hernandez, as Alice in Wonderland's White Rabbit.

Otaku (Japanese) extremely or sickly fanatic, is used nowadays worldwide to denominate anime, manga, videogames, science fiction, fantastic literature and cinema and japanese culture lovers.

This post will be quite interesting and I will enjoy doing it a lot.
There are too many people who have been interested in the history of my hobby in my country, Cuba, and how it is inserted in society, or rather as we Cubans in this culture, wich is so foreign to us and even though has been denied to us. That is why I have decided to tell you in a post how this movement was born in Cuba and how is it going.

First you must know about three words to understand a little the difference of the development of this culture in our country and then I will start the story, anyway who wants to know more about these phenomena can ask me. They are: ** Piracy, Censorship, Embargo**

Pic: Mapamundial

After the fall of the Socialist Camp, Cuban government promoted the entrance of tourists and allowed the visit of those who had "deserted" in order to alleviate the so-called "Special Period" (a terrible crisis). The people and consequently the Cuban television and cinema, obtained some films and series, among them the some Japanese, such as ** Voltus V, the Princess Knight or films from Studios Ghibli **, curiously sometimes they where not translated and they subtitled them randomly. The country made official purchases or exchange of these products only a few times. Those videos greatly alleviated the sadness in the country, and also were a chilling change to the Soviet animation and film, rigid, harrowing and propagandistic to which we were subjected. Years later, the first video game consoles like Atari and Nintendo came in, I remember that in each block there was a family with a tv, or with vhs reader, or an atari, and they recieved all the kids to play and share, watching animation for hours and hours. We also met ** Super Mario, Final Fantasy and Resident Evil **.

There was always a lucky boy that recieved new things from his family at another country, and thanks to him they spread and ended up even on TV or movies. Others perhaps had the famous "Antenna" with which they could watch and record programs of the USA tv. The propagation, rental and purchase of these videos or games became one of the best hobbies, of course, illegal, not because of the piracy, but for supposing a movement of money outside the eyes of the state, and for containing elements such as propaganda against the system, or in favor of consumerism and capitalism. At least some of them were televised, although occasionally with some censorship. It also hapened with comics and science fiction or fantastic literature.

Pic: Wikipedia

When these generations grew up, we always had a great nostalgia for these cartoons, mainly the Japanese ones, for their varied themes and spectacular animation, without even being aware that it was a specific genre (in fact they were Chinese cartoon to us) and we started to get interested in informing ourselves about them, their creators, see new works. We started to create fan clubs, groups that met friends to share the latest information they obtained. The names of some of these group are ** Dialfa ** (Project of Disclosure of Art and Literature Fantasticos) and ** AnK ** (Anime no Kenkyuu or anime research). There were many cases of animators , or art students, which reflected in their style their appreciation for those strange drawings , and of course were always rejected because they were not ''authentical'' enough.

Pic: America Teve

The necessity itself made this movement grow in that peculiar way. Already in the 2000 some people had the opportunity to work at a place with internet and could look for info or download some videos. With the digitization in Cuba (I mean the fact that some people got their first computers and CD players), some video games for PC and new series or movies began to be propagated, many people also copied or rented them, which influenced them to propagate even more.

Anime no Kenkyuu's event

Thanks to people with our same interests who started working at TV, they created a program to which we all owe much of what we learned, called ** X-distant **, specifically dedicated to adult anime, and led by a critic and film teacher who informed himself and explain to the Cuban public the genres, styles and themes of Anime and Manga (that was when at least for me everything started to make sense). Curiously, many of the videos televised in that program were provided by fan groups, who stopped being clubs of friends who met to talk about those topics, and began to warn more and more people, to prepare talks about some theme, drawing competitions or some tournaments of videjuegos, obtaining sometimes between 10 and 30 attendants. The meetings were held in their homes or sometimes in places that requested thanks to a family member or work centers.

Anime no Kenkyuu's event

I was content to watch series alone and rarely had someone to comment it with. Sometimes a random person suddenly spoke of anime or video games, it was like watching a comet, and in fact, almost always we started talking and became friends. In an anime I learned about cosplay and it fascinated me, I loved to know that it was common to dress up as characters, because I always loved costume design, I was studying fine arts, I wanted to study stage design in the university; So I took advantage of every costume party to dress up as a lolita, even though no one understood that it was. Lately they opened some intranet connection networks with forums where there were some sections dedicated to anime and games. In my case I could access thanks to my mother's work, so I met my friends and knew the spaces to go to. I attended my first event al the comic library ''Vitrina de Valonia'', which had about 50 people, I was dressed in my first cosplay and I did not feel anachronistic, and best of all: I met many people like me!

This is the part of the story in which I stopped being a spectator in 3rd person, in 2011. I have written too much and I am going bore you, so in the next post I will tell you about my experience being more active in the otaku community of Cuba. I hope you found this information interesting. Many greetings to all, see you next time.

Anime no Kenkyuu's event. I'm on the floor, as a maid. To the right, behind, Leonor, the girl on the cover of the article.