For every cultural trend there’s a counter-culture — a group of people who reject the norm and stake out on their own. We’ve seen this happen in fashion, music, food, and all kinds of hobbies. A niche group of these outsiders have often been labeled as “hipsters”, commonly seen in coffee shops sporting beards and ironic glasses being irked at most things.

The anime community has gotten its own brand of hipster trend, as lately more people have been reading “paper anime” instead of watching it. We went to our favorite local non-corporate coffee shop to find out more.

“I think it really brings anime to a new level of intellectual involvement,” Braxton Windrowe, a 23-year-old independent artist told Anime Maru. Flannel-clad and sipping some latte with 12 substitutions, we found him poring over a book with black and white frames of what looks to be an anime.

“When you watch anime, you know, all the action is happening for you. There’s nothing to think about, nothing to stimulate your mind. It’s like the difference between listening to The Birds and Andrew Bird, you know?”

“It’s like if you took the most important frames of an animation and stuck them together like a comic book. But it’s different from mainstream comic books because you read them right-to-left. It’s like, super refreshing from the boring bogged-down mainstream books,” Windrowe continued.

This information helped another fellow we met in the cafe who couldn’t figure out why he was looking at the ending first and why his anime wasn’t playing properly.

As for the name of this new trend? Windrowe told us it’s called reading a “mango”, an acronym for “mainstream animated normies get out”. As to whether or not this trend will catch on, who knows?

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