The Internet allows anime fans to connect as never before. We flourish and grow in numbers at a new pace because we are able to share our thoughts and resources on a daily basis without traveling hours or days to conventions. The increasing popularity of the genre in mainstream America only adds to our sense of growth.

Sometimes I feel as though our numbers are multitudinous, although statistics peg us as a small sector of the community. In order to give myself an appropriate slap in the face (or a boost to the ego), Team Gamma and I have once again assumed a mission: to poll the New Jersey and New York area and gain an idea of the general knowledge of anime amongst the layman.

We here at Team Gamma Semi-Moron are the kind of people who like to confuse and harass others, to compensate for the many years of ridicule and torment we suffered as children for being labeled as complete and utter dorks. To this end, a bizarre poll is right up our alley. In fact, it's the sort of thing we exploit for hours of entertainment. We've discovered along the way that polling isn't really about the facts. It's about the people you meet; how they interact, facial expressions, and body language. And believe us, there was plenty of it.

So, how to go about the poll? We decided on a visual recognition test. I compiled a folder full of pictures of characters, organized by level. The levels were as follows:

• Level 1 (Blue) - Popular US Broadcasts: Card Captor Sakura, Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, Pokemon.
• Level 2 (Red) - Popular Commercial: Evangelion, Fushigi Yuugi, Ranma ˝, Escalowne.
• Level 3 (Purple) - Lesser-known Commercial: Slayers, Rurouni Kenshin, Oh! My Goddess, Utena.
• Level 4 (Green) - Popular Unlicensed: Inuyasha, Marmalade Boy, Weiss Kreuz, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.

These titles were chosen based on category and the Anime Web Turnpike popular series list.

On this mission, Team Gamma comprised of myself ("Dr. Ikari"), Jai the Little Asian Girl, Jen the Carrier of Emphysema, and Cindy the Incompetent Camera Woman.

We showed every person we stopped pictures and asked him/her to identify a character by name or show. Each person began at level 1, and moved up the scale incrementally for every character they could identify. For example, if they could not identify one level 2 character, we tried giving them another level 2 character until they got one right and moved up to level 3, and if they couldn't identify any we sent them on their merry, pathetic way.

We began our poll in New York City, at St. Mark's Place to be exact. It's not a city of friendly, smiling faces. Especially in the Village where we faced the difficulty of approaching strangely colored hair and piercings in just about every body part we could name (and some we can't name). Then again, those years of pent-up anger over stolen milk money can sometimes be a blessing to a Semi-Moron. We persevered despite the eyes-averted, brisk-walk policy of New Yorkers.

St. Mark's Place is full of Japanese restaurants, comic stores, novelty shops, and even a place called "Japan USA." Although we avoided the places which would obviously have biased the poll (if you're hanging out in "Japan USA" you better know what anime is), we hoped that the atmosphere would allow us to poll more knowledgeable fans from New York than would have otherwise been possible. Boy, were we wrong ...

Mostly, we harassed bystanders browsing around sidewalk displays, and people who were waiting on benches or near lampposts. As we were lying in the wait for a suitable victim, a man walked by wearing a Dragonball Z t-shirt. "Oh," we thought naively, "surely this guy could make it through at least level 1." When showed a picture of Goku, the character right on his chest, he stared at us blankly like a deer in headlights. Sighing and pointing at the large, large "DRAGONBALL Z" written on his stomach, we walked off to go find a couple beers and some Valium.* It was going to be a long day.