“Why the Narnia reference?” I hear you say, well this all stems back to the old days of reading WikiFur. Although the page existed for nigh on two months, there was an article on the term “Narnian” - a person who exhibited all the qualities of being in the furry fandom and/or was involved with the fandom but denied involvement with the community. Put simply, a Narnian was someone who is “in the fur closet”, a humorous nod to C.S. Lewis’s magical closet that lead to the world of Narnia - fittingly filled with all manner of anthropomorphic beasts.

That article doesn’t exist now, but it’s memory has stuck with me since.

Music used:
Jack Johnson - Questions ( website | buy )
Kurrel the Raven - The Furry Song (Version 2) ( website | fur affinity )
Baz Luhrmann - Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) ( website | buy )
Eagles - Journey of the Sorcerer ( website | buy )

Comment on the full article below.

Luckily, my immediate family are somewhat open minded. They know that I am a furry and don’t seem to mind (except when I spend too much on it). My friends also don’t mind, particular those at my university. In fact, it has been here that I’ve first met furries in real-life and not just over the web. However, something came up recently which put a new spin on things.

My parents spotted something I posted on another website. It was not furry, but the conversation I had with them later moved into the subject. They said that while they are open minded, many people are not as understanding. In particular, I dare say that most people are not aware about the existence of the furry fandom. Explaining the furry fandom to someone who has never heard it before. You imagine the conversation:

• Furry: I’m a furry.
• Non-furry: What’s a furry?
• Furry: Someone who likes anthropomorphic animals. Like Sonic the Hedgehog, Bugs Bunny and that.
• Non-furry: So what do you do then?
• Furry: Well, some write stories, others draw art or comic strips. Some make costumes and many attend conventions.
• Non-furry: Hang on; there are conventions for this sort of thing?
• Furry: Yeah, all over the place.
• Non-furry: And you “furries” dress up as animals at these places?
• Furry: Some do, some don’t.
• Non-furry: Sounds a bit weird if you ask me.
• Furry: Bits are, but then again that is one of the beauties of it. We furries tend to be much more open about ourselves than most people.
• Non-furry: Open how?
• Furry: Well, in our opinions, our relationships and so forth.
• Non-furry: Open in your relationships? Are you all into free love or something?
• Furry: I’m not, but the furry fandom is a diverse group sexually. Most people think we’re mainly gay, but most are actually bisexual.
• Non-furry: So does that mean you lot like to have sex dressed up as animals?
• Furry: Some do, some don’t. Personally, I think that question’s a bit personal.
• Non-furry: But you don’t deny that you do?
• Furry: Like I said, that question is very personal, somewhat offensive and I’d think it is best I don’t answer it.
• Non-furry: Right…

Now that is a tricky conversation to be in. Imagine how much worse it would be if you were in a job interview, and someone asked you what your interested were. If someone got the wrong end of the stick about what you were talking about, that conversation might put you out of a job. It could also harm your chances of making friends and may harm relationships with you family. Maybe that is why so many furries have relationships with other members of the fandom.

Anyway, the conversation I had with my parents did lead me to take certain precautions. I removed some of my more “yiffy” material from my Fur Affinity account (a job that would be a lot easier if the site did not keep going down). Incidentally, if my parents are reading this, and want to know more about this “yiffy” material, my advice is don’t, otherwise it would lead to a much longer conversation.

My point is that due to the worries and prejudices that other people have, this means that it is hard for furries to be open. As a result, I am less open about my furry tastes. This for me is somewhat upsetting for me because there are certain things that I am now worried about talking about.

Speaking as a media student, I believe that in the current climate, the only way to avoid attack is to either be incredibly secretive and not let anyone know about your interest (i.e. Not letting anyone know at all), or being completely open about everything, telling everyone about every aspect and just don’t worry about what people think (i.e. Letting as many people as possible know via as many possible channels). I personally prefer the latter method because if you tell them everything, they cannot incriminate you later, even though it risks unpopularity. That would be my advice to any furry that was to become famous.

I suppose that the reasons for my own behaviour and “self-censorship” are a combination of worry and cowardice. I am happy to admit I did not want to do what I did, but then again at least it has given me time to move into other projects in the fandom. I have started to write what I hope will be a book called The Chained Wolf Presents: The History of Humanity – A Somewhat Mildly Amusing Guide to a Now Extinct Species (If published, I hope I might get mentioned in the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. Granted, I don’t accept awards, but it would be nice publicity).

In the end, I would say that when coming out, be prepared to expect some criticism, but remember that it is your right to be who you are.

My taste for this genre started when I began my course in media studies and I decided to explore different genres of television. Then last year I joined the University of Teesside’s Animation and Comics Society (Anicom), the birthplace of the Avatar “Bender” gag. How come no-one had noticed the incredibly gigantic amount of homosexual double-entrée in a cartoon in which everyone was some kind of “Bender” during its producer, I will probably never know. Anyway, I have been reading manga books as well as furry ones as well. Therefore, finding a furry manga would be of immediate interest. Hyper Police, created by Minoru Tachikawa (under the pseudonym “MEE”), is such a manga.

If you were to look for the books (of which there are 10 volumes), you will noticed that the main character is a catgirl. Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that a catgirl is not strictly speaking a furry. Well, that may well be the case. However, there are four main recurring characters, one of which is an anthropomorphic wolf, which is furry.

Hyper Police is a mixture of sci-fi, comedy and action. It is set in a period in the future in which humans are in danger of extinction, after a portal between the human world and a “Monster” world opened. As a result, the most populous creatures are crosses between the two. The manga focuses on the relationships between four employees of a privatised police force: catgirl Natsuki Sasahara, kitsune (fox spirit) Sakura Bokuseiinmonzeninari, werewolf Batanen Fujioka and his more anthropomorphic cousin Tomy Fujioka.

Natsuki, the main character in the strip is highly loveable. She is fun, cute and highly amusing. While she always means to do what is right, she more often than not often causes total chaos. However, it is total chaos which got her a job in the first place, due to her pet parasites being able to create massive electric shocks. This attracts Batanen’s affections – both professional and romantic.

The comedy in this strip mainly comes in two ways. One is the amusing missions that the four officers find themselves in. My personal favourite occurs quite late in the story (Volumes 7 and 8), in which a gang of mice who Natsuki had unwittingly harmed take revenge by building a robot version of her and go on a crime spree, while framing the catgirl. The whole sequence and situation is highly amusing.

The other way in which this series gets its laughs is the relationships that the characters have. Batanen is deeply in love with Natsuki, Tomy is in love with Poe, a human who can manipulate water, and Sakura falls in love with a time-travelling samurai.

The series was popular in Japan, with it being turned into a TV series. The series covers the storyline between volumes 1-4, and contains some differences from the original manga. Interestingly, the series was translated into Spanish before it got translated in English. The series was shown in the United States but has never been broadcast in the UK. It is not even on DVD in Europe, which is where the “Appeal” part of the article’s title comes in.

I want to try to get the TV series of Hyper Police released in the UK, and for that matter the rest of Europe, using the power of the internet. I have set up an online petition asking for the company behind the series, Studio Pierrot, to release the series in this continent. This can be done easily. The series has already been translated into two European languages, and Japan shares the same DVD region code as Europe. Of course, you could sell the DVD as “Region 0”, and therefore anyone around the world can buy the DVD.

I also plan to use the one thing that gets internet attention: Internet memes. I plan to launch an amusing campaign in order to get my message across called, “HP DVD or I bust thee!”

I release that my artistic attempts leave a lot to be desired, but I’m sure the more people we get involved, the more this whole thing will pick up.

What I want you to do is to please sign my petition, and to spread my meme as widely as possible. Go to as many websites you find, whether they are furry, animé, TV or anyone who might be interested. Spread the meme. Link to the petition or to this article. Try and appeal to everyone and anyone.

If you want to have some idea of how many people we would need to get this DVD released, a similar online petition to get the first series of QI released on DVD attracted 1,821 signatures and was successful.

So please, help us (especially me) and the rest of Europe to help get this DVD out of here. Sign the petition now!

Hyper Police is published in 10 volumes by Tokyopop, but is soon going out of print, so be quick! The TV Series is on Region 1 DVDs, so you can watch it on a region-free DVD player.

You see, announcing something like the furry fandom to the world is like having sex with a beautiful woman (or man, depending); there’s no right or wrong way of doing it, and in any case you’re going to need to do it softly to coax it in as if it were something good but perfectly natural. Go in too hard and you could cause more harm than good, too soft and your advances may go unnoticed.

Okay, that simile got creepy. Anyway, should you choose to oust yourself or not, you can at least enjoy the tunes along the way. Yes, in a desperate act to do something completely different I’m going to be doing my article through the medium of music, colour and text.

Enjoy the show, be sure to take advantage of comments, and be sure to sign Chained Wolf’s petition! (Although you’ll probably want to know why first!)

Sign the guestbook!