The Old School Otaku Lounge

Apparently Jeopardy ran a Manga section of questions recently and I actually thought it was a decent short litmus test of both anime and manga knowledge.

https://twitter.com/Jeopardy/status/928834613190860801

I'm sure everyone here would be able to get all five (although there's no shame in not getting all five), but I thought it would be interesting to ask my friends that are into anime/manga fans but not really into old things. Most of these friends I would characterize as being into almost exclusively modern trending stuff.

I expected most people to get 3/5 (or 2/5 if they are not aware of Astro Boy), and so far everyone has done above average so maybe I should be giving them more credit . The next questions I would ask naturally were how did you know about Speed Racer or how did you know about Lone Wolf and Cub. These are two titles I wouldn't expect fans around my age to know so I find it interesting how others come across titles I don't expect to be in the modern fan consciousness. Since I didn't grow up in America when I was young my barometer is not the best regarding whether or not same generation American anime fans would know about certain works (for instance, before I naively thought for whatever reason that someone I knew who was a fan of American superhero comics but not particularly a fan of anime/manga would not possibly know about The Big O but in retrospect I don't think this is surprising at all).

So far one person knew about Speed Racer because their dad was a fan, and had it on VHS (understandable reason). One person just heard of it when they were young (I wonder from whom or what? but this person also has some general awareness of Tatsunoko); this person also heard of Lone Wolf and Cub but cannot recall where. Another person saw Lone Wolf and Cub mentioned in some ads for manga.

My educated guess would be that most people would know Sailor Moon and Speed Racer from those titles, seeing how long their noteriety and influence has been in America. Then again, I think it would be a Christmas miracle if one of those questions were answered by your avg. American because they have kids who like Attack on Titan or Sailor Moon.

YES! I saw this tweet earlier this week and thought it was pretty awesome I was even happier that contestants knew the answers!

As for Lone Wolf and Cub, I actually knew about the movies long before the original manga, so that could be another factor?

I had my wife (who was in anime back in the day as well) and daughter (who is oddly not into anime at all :~( ) do these. My daughter got 2/5 (Sailor Moon and Astro Boy) and my wife got 3/4 (She also got Speed Racer. She recognized Attack on Titan after mentioning it, and had heard of Lone Wolf and Cub ).

My daughter had seen the Wachowski's Speed Racer but it was quite a while back)
I enjoyed being able to share that with them, so now I am sharing my sharing with you all.