Anime: Geek Thoughts 2

In the summer of 2001, right before I left for Japan, the Bear said to me, “Chewy, you realize that if you go to Japan, there’s a danger you might get interested in Anime.”

This comment was in reference to an on-going dispute between us Camelot roommates. Bear had been one of the founding members of Calvin College’s Anime club the previous year. Because Bear was quoted in a Chimes article about the club, as a joke Bosch and Butterball wrote letters into the Chimes denouncing Anime and complaining about the club receiving Calvin funding. Bear didn’t think this was very funny, and wrote in the following week defending Anime.

(Um, Problem with the Chimes archives, can't find the damn links at the moment. Guess this isn't as funny without the actual letters, but just imagine).

I held aloof from this argument, and 5 years later I’m still trying to decide if Anime is as worthless as Bosch and Butterball made it out to be, or as great as the Bear claims it is.

Part of the problem is the question of whether we classify Anime as a genre or as a medium. A good case could be made for either. In theory, Animation is nothing more than a medium through which any sort of genre could be portrayed. In practice, there are certainly distinct genres into which Japanese Anime tends to group itself. I have nothing against animation as a medium, but the genre of Japanese Anime I believe is limited in what it can achieve.

Take for example the sexual content, which is one of the things most people associate with Anime. Before I came to Japan I used to tell people (in my typical way of shooting off my mouth about things I knew nothing about) that Anime is nothing more than a medium through which all sorts of genres can be portrayed. Some Anime may have a sexual content, and, because we Americans are perverts, most of the Anime imported to America has a sexual content, but this is not representative of Anime in general.

Within a few months of moving to Japan, I had reversed my opinion. The Anime that is popular in America is comparatively tame compared to what is common in Japan. Sex is everywhere in Japan. Even the comic books in the Junior high school library had a high degree of sexual content. And my jaw just about dropped to the floor when I flipped through the comic books sold at the local stationary store.

Any discussion of Anime and Manga must take it for granted that Japan has a different idea of acceptable sexual content. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is another debate, but its something that has to be moved past to get to a discussion of the other values of Anime (and Manga).

There are a lot of good things to be said for Anime. For one thing if you allow yourself to get into it, it can be pretty entertaining. And funny at points. And because it isn’t considered “only for kids” in Japan, it bites off a lot of deep themes and subject matters, such as environmentalism, War and pacifism, and the impact of the atomic bombings on Japan.

Now, whether it deals with these themes well or not is another question. I think (and you’ll have to forgive me for this Bear) that Anime defenders are too quick to give credit to Anime just for attempting these themes. But anyone can make an attempt. I mean, think of all the 1950s science fiction movies that deal with mutations caused by atomic bombings. Certainly this played off the culture of the time, but “Beginning of the End” (the one where the giant grasshoppers attacked) is hardly Shakespeare. I don’t care what people say on the Internet, the Godzilla movies are not an intelligent dissertation on the affects of atomic bombs.

I know I’m making straw men by picking at the weakest examples, but the point is you don’t get credit just for attempting deep themes. Nor do you get credit just for attempting symbolism. I know Anime is filled with all sorts of symbols and cultural allusions, but the question is not how much, but how well.

I once bought a book called “Anime Explosion” by Patrick Drazen. The author has a degree in Japanese culture, but it is difficult to know how someone can be so smart and at the same time so dumb. Almost every piece of Anime he talked about was high art.

I should have known he was full of it when he sung the praises of “Pokemon”, but I was still intrigued by his description of the “Giant Robot” series.

On the face of it, he argued, “Giant Robot” may seem like just another cartoon about a boy and a Giant Robot, but all of the characters were drawn from Ancient Chinese and Norse mythology. The plot had several parallels to Wagner’s “The Ring” cycle. The plot appeared to be a league of heroes fighting a league of villains, but as the series went on, the relationships and betrayals got more and more complex until it was hard to tell who was good and who was bad.

Fascinated by this description, I rented all the “Giant Robot” series and spent two days sprawled out on Shoko’s couch watching them. Boy, was it ever a bunch of crap. I guess the title “Giant Robot” should have warned me off.

That being said, I did find a lot of Anime and Manga I liked. I got really into to the comics of Tezuka Osamu, and even wrote an article about him for the local Oita magazine.

Although it is difficult to make generalizations about a whole genre (or medium), in the end I find myself comparing Anime to a good TV show. It can have good character development, interesting plot, good writing, etc, but in the end it’s just a TV show. You could find worse ways to spend your time, but it doesn’t rise to the level of art.

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