It’s
Saturday morning. Someone turns on the TV. Shrill voices pierce the air. Characters
with bright pink and blue hair shout about friendship and throw cute monsters
at one another. You groan. Who would ever want to watch something like that?
Anime (Japanese
animation): Giant robots, large-eyed critters, exaggerated voices and facial
expressions. Lurid colours and puerile humour; it’s designed to please little
kids. That’s what you’re thinking? You may have seen the adult side of the
coin: objectified women, glorified violence, completely crazy fan base. If
you’re thinking anime is any of these things: you’re right.
Didn’t
expect that? Well – you’re right to throw out the rubbish. Most anime is not
going to be to your taste or mine. That’s how everything works. For every
Dickensian classic there are shelves of Mills & Boon and vampire romances,
to every Citizen Kane there are
countless Scary Movies, for each Summer Wars there is a Sword Art Online. What’s popular doesn’t
line up with what’s good either.
Transformers’ and Pirates of the
Caribbean’s box office takes prove that; top 10 earners and WHY?
Anime hasn’t
got an entirely bad rep any more: a lot of people now recognise exceptions, but
there is more to good anime than Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and Howl’s
Moving Castle. Here are five:
1.
Sakamichi no Apollon (Kids on the Slope)
This is a story of friendship in 1966 southern
Japan (Kyushu) where two very different young men are united through a love of
jazz and their status as outsiders. Their personal struggles are believable,
and the animation of their performances is breath taking (the director
rotoscoped real performers to create it). The story is grounded, personal and very
engaging. The story moves very quickly, finishing in only 13 twenty-two minute
episodes. Not a strand of pink hair or a super-awesome-fighting-technique in
sight
2.
Kaiba
Just look at that animation. Though there are
conventions to animation in Japan, they can be broken. Kaiba is an intensely stylised work in both story and animation. A
boy wakes up without any memories and travels to discover the universe and
reclaim his identity. The story really picks up steam after a few episodes to
become something really special. The music is haunting and the largely
emotional brutality humanity displays throughout is accentuated by the
child-like art style. It’s bizarre in the extreme, as much anime is, but that
is what makes Kaiba work.
3.
Hyouka
A detective story like nothing you have ever seen,
because it deals with realistic high school situations. How should this movie
end? Who’s stealing things from the school fair? What does that PA announcement
actually mean? Hyouka takes these questions, and renders them fascinating. It’s
stunningly imaginative in its use of beautiful animation. The Kan’ya festival episodes (12-17) are
particularly brilliant for both characterisation and atmosphere.
4.
Zetsuen no Tempest
Its characters quote from and compare Hamlet and The Tempest to understand their motivations and their world. Yep –
this one looks to Shakespeare for inspiration. It appears to be more
conventional at first (for anime), setting up a story of revenge and magic. It
reveals its true brilliance part way through with a battle of wits and shifting
allegiances. Four characters simply stand and talk for several episodes. A
conversation becomes one of the most compelling things in anime.
5.
Hunter X Hunter
It looks like something you’ve seen before and avoided ever
since: two 12 year old boys on a quest to become strong? It’s an anime trope
and a cliché. But Hunter X Hunter
will surprise you if you let it, because underneath its apparently hackneyed
surface this show is devious. Each
story arc appears to be a contest of strength, but solutions are always found
through making intelligent moves to
overcome a more powerful enemy. Battle series like this are often looked down
upon, with good reason: they’re predictable and take no risks. Hunter X Hunter never falls into that
trap. It surprises viewers again and again.
One thing
sets anime apart from other visual media: range. Almost anything can be
attempted in anime without limitations faced by live action. Impossible
creatures are available to creators as a boxing match, other worlds as a grassy
field, magic as a scientific reaction. The sheer volume of possibility
available to creators in this medium means there is a wide range of different
stuff out there to be sampled. A lot of anime is available to view legally and
for free online through sites like Crunchyroll: so please test the waters: I
guarantee you haven’t seen it all.
Excellent post - and I certainly have no quibble with your examples. Kaiba wasn't expressly to my taste but it was definitely original.
ReplyDeleteWhat people fail to understand about anime, I think, it that it's not a genre - it's a medium. In Japan, animation is simply another form of expression like anything else, and stylistically it reaches out to every demographic in society (including the fringes of it). Americans especially have a hard time breaking free of the ghettoized view of animation that predominates there.
For several years, particularly in my late teens, I watched a lot of anime and enjoyed much of it. I would have definitely responded negatively to anyone dismissing the whole genre as puerile, or having a typical western view of it being "just cartoons". And I agree that there are stand out examples of excellent anime that tell engaging and surprising stories. Of the five you listed above, I have only seen one of them, and I look forward to watching the others some time now that you have recommended them.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think there is something to the argument against anime: You frame it in terms of there being a lot of rubbish in any medium, and the trick is to find the good, and beyond that, the content that appeals to your personal taste. You take the example of Dickens vs Mills & Boon.
But that is not strictly true. The *medium* is animation. And animation encompasses a much wider range of content than anime: It includes western cartoons, artistic shorts, Disney and Pixar films, and much more.
Anime is a subculture within the medium. And while there are Japanese companies making excellent things, I would venture to say that - more so than for other subcultures and genres - if someone tells you that a show is anime you will have an easier time guessing the clichés, motifs and so on that will be used in the show before you ever see it. (e.g. It will either have robots or school girls). Even when anime tells unusual and interesting stories, the creators frequently seem bound to do it through the medium of these same structures.
Please do not hear me wrong: I still like anime. But I no longer defend it so vociferously because I feel like a lot of the criticisms levelled are justified for such a huge proportion of the genre.
Interesting article and thanks for the recommendations!