Hello everyone, and welcome to MyAnimeDesh!
Not sure where to start exploring this new club after finding us through perhaps a friend's invitation or (miraculously) on MAL's Club Page? You are in the right place! Feel free to introduce yourself, how you found anime/manga and/or MyAnimeList, your South Asian nationality/identity, what the anime culture/community is like around where you live, et cetera! You don't have to list them all if you don't want to, just simply tell us at least a little bit about you.
Though I suppose the best way to start this conversation is to demonstrate...
My name is Fario-P and I have been a pretty active member on the MyAnimeList forums as well as the rest of the site for at least six years. I was born in and still live in the United States, but have also grown up as a Bengali-American to a rather large Bangladeshi family. Despite this, anime and manga has been a big part of my life—especially the manga medium and the magical girl genre—for at least... wow, has it really been at least twenty years? Am I considered old now?? Maybe since I still like to borrow manga from my local library lol... and I did join MAL because I do have a bad memory and wanted to keep up a list of all the things I've seen as well as learn about more to see...
Because of the culture and religion I grew up around, I had no idea that Bangladesh had a decent amount of anime fans. So you can imagine my surprise when I first started hearing about original anime-style projects in the country as well as India, and even the country's very first manga magazine, Source?. Something about me felt inspired, as well as hope that Bangladesh would be known for more than it currently is; there is some potential for unique entertainment there, at least if they really do take some of their own regional culture as an influence as well as Japanese entertainment. I mean, I'll be honest, part of the reason why I made this club and a thread that mentioned Source? was because I wanted to know if Bengali anime fans had a different perspective than anywhere else and what their preferences in anime were, so that maybe things like the magazine or even myself (as I like to be creative with art and writing) could appeal to a South Asian demographic.
So far my little research seems to be that South Asians just know about and/or prefer shounen anime as the demographic is spread everywhere... but I'm sure there's something unique to find and harness somewhere out there that a more South Asian perspective would appreciate. For example, I am also a fan of fairy tales and folklore, and I dunno about any of you, but I think it'd be cool to see manga-inspired comics based on Bengali folklore/mythology someday.
Nice to meet you all! Let's get along, okay?
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