I have a question for you, dear readers. It’s actually a question that my husband came up with. We were in the middle of watching the anime series Gurren Lagann. Gurren Lagann is a very enjoyable show, mixing high action, over the top giant robot battles with surprisingly engaging characters and involving stories. But the question that came up while we were watching it had more to do with anime in general. My husband commented on how anime – just about any anime – still felt special to him. I agreed that there was a particular thrill that I got from watching anime, different from the excitement I get from watching other kinds of animation.
A little background: when my husband and I were younger, Japanese animation was not readily available in the U.S. Some kid-friendly shows from Japan were being shown on American television, as had been the case for decades before. But such shows were few and far between. Fans looking for anime aimed at an older audience had limited options. A local Japanese import shop might have boasted a decent selection of videos. Regular video retail stores were a crapshoot. Videos, and later DVDs, usually had between two and three episodes of a show per tape or disc and cost around $30 each. Budding otaku were lucky to find a single row of anime videos at the video rental store, often indiscriminately labeled “Adults Only” whether the film in question was Akira or My Neighbor Totoro.
It’s a very different story today. Anime has won mainstream acceptance, thanks to the success of kid-friendly shows like – love it or hate it – Pokemon. Anime and anime-inspired shows remain staples of many networks’ children’s programming blocks. Some channels, most notably cartoon network with their Adult Swim block, show anime targeted towards older viewers. DVD rental websites like Netflix feature robust anime collections, as do sites like Amazon for those looking to buy. Anime is everywhere.
I’m not trying to portray myself as someone who liked anime “before it was cool” or define the time when I first discovered Japanese animation as “the good old days.” Far from it. I can remember the frustration of purchasing one of those $30 DVDs with only three episodes on it and only later discovering that one of the episodes was a clip show. I don’t long for the days when I had to purchase grainy VHS bootlegs of Miyazaki films because there was no other way to see them. (All have since been replaced with legitimate release DVDs.) I love that I can easily rent and view almost any anime series I desire from the comfort of my home, or go and see a film like Ponyo in theaters. Now is unquestionably a better time to be an anime fan than when I was first becoming interested in anime.
All that said, my husband and i couldn’t help but wonder if kids growing up with anime so readily available will regard it with the same excitement that we do. I think there’s still a part of us that thinks of anime as something new and different, maybe because we are rather picky and don’t watch that much of it. One generation’s cutting edge will inevitably become another’s boring mainstream. So anime becoming more accepted and less fringe is neither unexpected nor something to fight against. What I wonder is just where we are in that cycle. Do today’s kids still see anime as something new and different, or has it become what they expect to see on TV?
What do you think? How did you first discover anime and how do you see it today? Do you think anime has lost it’s newness and is ripe to be replaced by a different animation style? Or does it still have the power to thrill audiences like no other kind of animation?
The image is this article is copyright Pioneer Entertainment.
Tags: anime, hand-drawn animation, miyazaki
I’m part of the “Pokemon Generation”: I was aware that the new series “Sailor Moon” that was airing a few years earlier had a notably different visual style, but it was only around the time of “Pokemon” that I could identify it as material from Japan, and become interested in exploring its origins and whatever else it offered. My first “mature” anime was Gundam Wing, despite its ping-pong timeslot on Canadian television.
Now, over ten years later, I do feel that anime has lost its “magic” to me. I enjoy my favourite series greatly, and do sporadically discover new ones, but I don’t pursue anime as actively as I used to. I know there are good series out there, but it is impossible for me to keep up with them all.
Furthermore, I have also repaired my relationship with American animation. I’m sure most locals who discover anime go through a phase where they disdain and deride their local cartoons, feeling that anime offers everything they want and more, and some never grow out of that phase. Thankfully, I did, and largely by recognizing American series/shorts/movies on their individual merits, and that there was more than one type of “Good” cartoon–comedic cartoons could involve as much craft as action-driven ones.
If I could define it simply, it would be that *individual* anime (and manga, for the two are so frequently intertwined) are still “special” to me, and others that I have not seen have the potential to become special, yet I have lost that feeling that “anime” is itself a monolith worth worshipping.
That comes from a greater exposure to the body of work (tied into the increasing popularity of anime releases in the US), realizing that there are bad anime, too, and remembering the good American cartoons, and taking a more individualized approach. Conversely, I might have gone too far in the other direction–knowing that anime like “Neon Genesis Evangelion” or “Whisper of the Heart” (two of my all-time favourite Japanese works) would not be made in the U.S., almost doesn’t register with me, and lead me to consider anime superior because of this.
It’s also become a huge pet peeve to think that any American series which is action-oriented and features tropes that some superficially consider “anime” is “practically anime”. I include Avatar: TLA in this category, since it’s not like anime at all, since anime has no monopoly on anything being expressed in that series. Anime is an inspiration to Avatar, bu so many other things inspired it.
We seem to be on the same wavelength here. Though I came from an earlier generation and spent more time worshipping the Disney monolith than the anime one, my experiences were similar. It took me a while to recognize that no particular style, studio, or country was inherently superior than any other when it came to animation. I did have a time when I would watch almost any anime I could get my hands on, but I’ve become a lot more choosy as the amount of anime available to me was grown.
I also share your annoyance at the term “American anime” gets tossed around so much. I don’t mind it so much with shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender. You’re correct in saying that the show draws on a wealth of different influences, but Japanese and other Asian animation is clearly an influence on the visual look of the show. What really bugs me is when a show like Gargoyles gets labelled “American anime” for the flimsiest of reasons when neither the look nor the writing of the show indicate that anime was more of an influence than anything else. An argument I hear a lot in this particular case is “But it was animated in Japan.” While that is partly true, many American developed television series are animated overseas, in Japan and other countries. Disney’s now shuttered Japanese studio, which did animate some episodes of Gargoyles, also worked on TaleSpin, Bonkers, Darkwing Duck, and The Tigger Movie among other Disney projects. I haven’t head the case made for any of those being “American anime.” More often than not, I think the term is a way for those anime fans who detest and deride anything that isn’t from Japan to safely like a show that is by granting it “honorary” anime status.
They actually sold the first season of Exo-Squad as “Exo-Squad: The American Anime,” which seems a bit odd to me.
Anime stopped feeling special to me when it got to the point you could buy it at Suncoast, so maybe fifteen years ago? That was the point when I realized most of it was impenetrable garbage.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there some sort of attempt to tie Exo-Squad in with Robotech?
Maybe sort of. There was an ambiguous “new threat” at the end of the second season, and at the same time Playmates folded Robotech into the Exo-Squad toy line.
From what I’ve read, those two things may have been unrelated, though. I think they were going to have an alien race of plant people attack the solar system in the show, so the humans and neosapiens would have to ally against them.
Ah, okay. I can see why some fans may have concluded that there was going to be a connection beyond the toys, even if that wasn’t the case.
In light of that, I’m guessing the copy on the first season was some marketer’s way of trying to coax anime fans to give an American cartoon with mech suits a shot.
Re: Avatar.
I like Avatar a lot, but to refer to it as “American anime” still is incorrect, because I consider that term an oxymoron: to me, anime is an animated work produced in Japan, for a Japanese audience first, full stop. Anime isn’t a “style” any more than it is a genre. Avatar is doing what epic fantasy novel series have done for ages: basing their fantasy cultures on real-world cultures beyond the standard fantasy-Europe pastiche. Furthermore, its tone and characterization are unmistakably Western.
Re: Other series (this is Incisivis from s8, BTW)
“Exosquad” and “Gargoyles”, both shows which I love, suffer from a slightly different problem. Billing or marketing these series as “anime” is done, not because either show is in “anime style”, but because to certain folk, “anime” means other things: it means action, drama, continuity, bright colours, and lots of futuristic machines. There are even rare types of animation fans who explicitly *want* to use the term “anime” as something location-neutral to refer to cartoons of just this type, for reasons I can’t fathom.
In a nutshell, there are a subset of marketers and animation fans who believe that “anime” is synonymous with “dark, edgy action cartoon”, a perception which is as damaging as believing that anime is all tentacle porn, even if the former reduction is done to praise anime.
As to Exosquad and Robotech, I recently watched Exosquad and am nursing a bizarre an untimely obsession with Robotech right now, and I’ll say that Playmates re-released many Robotech vehicle toys under the Exosquad banner, with their Robotech names, but it was not supposed to go any further than that. I can’t imagine where else it would go, since it would be even more of a legal nightmare than Robotech already is.
Again, it doesn’t bug me as much when “American anime” is used to mean “American animation with a clear anime influence” (even if it’s not trying to copy every aspect of anime). I do agree that it’s really an oxymoron and it’s not a term I would use myself, but in that context, I’m not too bothered by it. Your mileage may vary.
In Japanese, “anime” simply means “animation” and is location neutral. So that’s another definition of the word, if not one commonly used outside of Japan. I’ve seen it used to describe animation from other Asian countries as well, usually of a similar style to Japanese animation. But I agree that the urge to use the word to mean a particular type of story or animation containing any of numerous qualities not necessarily specific or exclusive to anime.
And I know who you are. I can see your e-mail address.
Mm. I’m just rigid about terminology, I guess, and the term “American anime” also suggests detracting something from good-quality American cartoons.
I sympathize and I agree that it can sound like a backhanded compliment. I put up with it when it’s used to describe a visual style, but it’s not a term I like or would use myself.
I think anime is still special to a lot of fans who recognize anime is becoming (or, has already become) scarce again, in the context of the retail environment. I started getting heavy into Japanese animation in the early to mid 1990s, and can see myself in a few younger fans I know… fans who haven’t yet been consumed by the digital era, and still rely on their mother’s purse strings or late night cable to get their fix. It’s impossible to ignore the impact of anime available online, but the peculiar truth is that not all kids do have the time and access to see all this content online. Perhaps this is another, different kind of “special,” where one sector’s over-saturation means consumers have to be selective in their devotion.
I find anime special in some context or another, personally, because it takes up so much of my DVD collection. Part of me feels that watching a lot of anime, both good and bad, allows me the flexibility to feel or to claim that some anime are more special to me than others. Whether that’s true or not is a bit hard to explain; but the bottom line is that keeping anime “special” means a constant respect of the medium, and always being open to something new… always willing to be surprised.
I think you’re right that the increased availability of anime may be pushing fans to be more choosy about what they watch and hopefully, to realize that anime is not just great by default. As the movies I watch for this site should attest, I do believe in the value of watching bad animation as well as good from time to time, since it helps me to better define what I do enjoy in animation, what I don’t, and why that is.
[...] continued – ( The Ink and Pixel Club) [...]
Greetings! This is Masterdramon from the S8 Comment Room. Per your suggestion, I’ve decided to come in and give my two cents on this fairly interesting matter.
Given my age, it was inevitable that my first exposure to anime would be dubs like Pokemon and Dragonball Z, which were generally so thoroughly Westernized that I didn’t even realize that they were from another country until I was several years into watching them. This was a few years before I really became quite discerning with what television animation I gave my time to viewing, and I watched many of these early wave animes voraciously.
Once I did become a little more cognizant of general quality, I dropped Pokemon for being excruciatingly boring and formulaic, while a select few others stuck with me (most notably Digimon, which unfortunately suffered what we might call “Gummi Bears syndrome” here in the U.S.; its well-developed characters and season-long story arcs were often ignored as it was largely dismissed as simply “just another Pokemon clone”).
In fact, apart from these select few I drew away from anime in the following years, to the point where the very low level that I watch now rather surprises me (the fact that my girlfriend is absolutely obsessed with anime, as are most of my friends, just makes it all the stranger). Never watched Neon Genesis, or Bleach, or Full Metal Alchemist, or Code Geass, or any of a multitude of others that I’m certain offer very high-quality stories. I’m honestly not sure why that is, other than that I’m generally resistant to picking up new shows wholesale because of my limited time for watching cartoons at the moment. Currently, the only anime that I’m consistently watching subbed is Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, which is mostly out of force of habit than anything else (the first two seasons having been excellent, whereas the current one is…not so much).
As for anime movies, particularly Miyazaki’s, I really do wish I watched more. I try to watch Spirited Away at least once a year, and since I was too young to really appreciate Princess Mononoke when it first came out, I have a subbed version of Mononoke Hime that I’m saving for watching on Halloween. I was also recently introduced to Howl’s Moving Castle by my girlfriend and enjoyed it immensely. But I’ve never watched Kiki’s Delivery Service, or My Neighbor Totoro, or Ponyo, and I think that’s rather a shame. The problem of course is that tracking down such works takes time and money that I don’t generally have available; I buy very few films on DVD at the moment and don’t have the budget to increase the habit all-that-much. It’s something I certainly want to get to in the future…but precisely when, I really can’t say.
So in the end, the prolification of anime has, if anything, reduced my consumption of it. Whether this is merely correlation or there is some manner of causation involved is a mystery…but on the other hand the anime subculture has undeniably expanded around me, and placed a fair bit of pressure on me to expand my horizons with it. Is limited time and money something of an excuse for not trying the multitude of new experiences that the commonness of anime has opened up? Perhaps. But inertia is a powerful thing.
In any event, this article certainly has me thinking, and you have my thanks for that.
Even though I was much older than the target age for the show when it came out, I did watch about a season of “Pokemon.” I was playing the video game at the time and I found the show entertaining initially. After a while, it got too repetitive, a problem that turns me off to a lot of anime (and non-Japanese animated shows) where nearly every episode is the exact same MacGuffin hunt. But when it was at its height of popularity, much was written about the appeal of a show where kids could go off on unsupervised adventures with friendly monsters when the dangers of the real world prevent children from leaving their parents’ sight for an instant and I always did like that about the series.
I watched all of the first season of “Digimon” and some of the later seasons. I even caught the patched together “movie” in theaters. I liked that it had more forward momentum than “Pokemon,” but it’s also become my favorite example of the growing acceptance of Japanese culture in TV animation. Early on in the series, two characters come across some Japanese kanji and while their backs are turned (so no mouth movements), one of them exclaim that it’s “the secret digi-code.” Obviously the writers of the dub hadn’t yet seen any of the later episodes where the characters return to Japan and everything is written in “the secret digi-code.” By the time those episodes aored, the issue had been dropped and kids were trusted to just accept that there was Japanese writing on signs and buildings without become hopelessly confused.
Due to Disney’s deal to distribute Studio Ghibli’s films in the U.S. and John Lasseter being a huge Miyazaki fan, all of Miyazaki’s feature films and many of the Ghibli films by other directors are available for purchase or rent. I think we’re due for another couple of movies getting a Blu-Ray release and possibly a new DVD release very soon, though I’m not sure about that. And “Tales From Earthsea,” directed by Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro, is currently playing at a small number of U.S. theaters. So it’s a very good time to be a Studio Ghibli fan, or start familiarizing yourself with their movies.
I really appreciate you stopping by and I hope you’;; continue to comment.