Anime: A Recent Derivative Form Of Entertainment?

[Glen Bosiwang]

Anime. What do I know about a foreign genre that is known to (almost) universally everyone as anime? Well, basically, it's pretty much like an ordinary cartoon show, only something more than your typical Saturday Morning show that would turn an entire society into a group of 'happy people' who have no idea of the outside situation, thinking that whatever happens, 'will eventually turn out fine at the end'. But that is not the case with anime.

Honestly, I wasn't entirely exposed to anime prior to a special showing at a university hall during my first year at the Multimedia University in Cyberjaya, Malaysia (I think they showed something like Slayers and Blue Seed). Similar to a first-time soldier at a grand battlefield, I did not know what to expect from the other side of the Rising Sun: a black spot that no local network would dare touch at the time. And for the first time in my life, I had no idea that shows like that can actually be quite bloody hilarious and intense at the same time! It was as if something lifted me out of the dark, bringing my sense to an entirely new direction (accompanied with the air-conditioners in an entire room, of course). But no one would expect a much bloodier and more shocking form of sex and violence as seen on Yoshiaki Kawajiri's classic masterpiece, Ninja Scroll the other day (at this point, my entire life had been completely revamped). My brain was about to explode at the time I viewed many of the movie's tramautizing scenes but hey, you will get over it by the time you get used to watch countless body shots and butchered heads.

Which actually leads to my point in this forum: the more you see the bloody same pattern, the more you feel as though you want to throw yourself out of the window and die a pitiful kitty cat. A real pity, really because I no longer have the aura that I once had back then (wish I could retain that but like everything else in life, nothing lasts forever). I was now seeking for a new source of inspiration like a parasite.

However, I am not writing this to criticize the legendary Osamu Tezuka for he, like many pioneers, was a true genius in creating something completely true to his sense as well as being truly original (for one thing, he was the first to think that every Japanese should look slightly pseudo-Americans and have big, massive marble eyes as opposed to their real-life counterparts). His early comic books (as well as the cartoon versions) may be a little crude and outdated to today's standard but it's their likeable characters (including the minor ones), the sometimes mature storyline, the wider scope of genres amongst his works and his other traits that would establish a commandment within the consciousness of every Japanese animator in each passing generation. From its roots, came other elements that had been retooled, reincorporated, revamped or were not originally created from Tezuka: mechas, shoujo, ecchi, hentai, harem, whatever strange terms an anime fan would think of. Along its way to popularity, we have a slew of revolutionary masterpieces: Akira, Perfect Blue, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Miyazaki's works, etc.

Ahhh, those were the days.

With each passing year, about an average of 15 animes are released, and at this point so far, digital animation now becomes a crucial part of the animation hierachy (whether it's a boon or bane to the industry, you decide). Sword and sorcery, giant mechas with religious oddities, characters with flamboyant weaponary and costumes; they are now a commonplace in the anime universe. Not surprisingly enough, I have a feeling that shows with these common elements begin to grow old in terms of their derivative nature. I mean, what sort of characters whose faces were an exact duplicate of the 80s/90s originals? I have seen about 20 girls and 30 boys (randomly picked from several different shows) who look exactly like Asuka and Shinji from Evangelion respectively. It's also worth mentioning that every youth (especially) in a particular anime were netiher boys nor girls, for their facial appearances all have the qualities of both sexes (in other words, a boy can be a girl and vice versa and yes, they all look alike).

What was once entertaining is now beginning to bore the hell out of my head. The jokes, the lazy exaggerated expressions with giant sweat drops and some 'pre-Disney' hose movements; they are no longer funny and original; instead, they are now a form of distraction, irritation and absurdity that don't merge well with the context of a particular show (especially the ones with serious tones).

Additionally, the awkwardness of their appearances and movements (thanks to not-so-awesome animation) as well as the animators' approach to realism with cheery colors really make my teeth grinding with irritation as if you would never escape from the Satellite of Love, forcing yourself to revive these trite moments over and over again.

Fancy effects with strange demonic emblems flying all over the screen? Final Fantasy-esque stories about a band of unlikely heroes with massive swords and stuff who are destined to save the world from cliche villains? Endless robot battles? More unneccessary fanservice? For anime fanatics, it's paradise.

Oh, didn't I mention that within every episode of a particular anime, there would be something like a snail-paced scenes that don't involve too many animation (economical but lazy at best) as well as stiff facial expressions? Basically, they all move around here and there like broken robots.

Also, I recall a single battle between two characters that actually lasts for 3, 4 episodes thanks to some 'edutainment' moment (whatever move a character made is dubiously elaborated thoroughly) and some time-consuming power build-up scenes that will sometimes end up doing nothing much at all to the entire plot. If I were correct, they remind me of Dragon Ball Z and Naruto (which I think is one of the worst and most overrated anime I've ever seen).

Yes, we've entering an underwhelming age when many of our most beloved classic characters from the Golden Age are ruthlessly turned into anime by studio executives for profit reasons. Remember Looney Tunes? Good Lord, I can't imagine them very well as typical Japanese fighters with humanoid appearances and duller color template. Teen Titans, Batman, G.I.Joe, etc; they all have been converted into Japanese counterparts of the original. Even some of the kids in my homeland begin to interpret Malaysians like Japanese people.

But like all creations of mankind, anime can actually be diverted to a new direction. I've heard and seen shows and movies from the new era that really break the conventional laws of anime. Stylized visuals, original plots, imaginative ideas: these are some of the most crucial elements to ensure the survival of a genre. If they wish to follow the steps of Mr. Tezuka, then they are on the right path, except that they are not nearly as creative as he was (as far as I've watched on some on his animated works, Tezuka really wanted to stray away from the usual dominance of typical big-eyed heroes in a oh-it-seems-so-familiar world of mechas, breast-bouncy gals and more bloody decapitations).

It's time to bid your horrible memories goodbye. Say hello to innovation.

- Glen B.Wang

[bonzo]

Hi Glen, i have in my hands just for coincidence, a comic book called
"Understanding Comics" by Scott Mcclaud, it's a real good book,
at chapter 7 he talks about art and the learning-creative
process of an artist, the content applies to all forms of arts, not only comics.
Reading your post made me think in this book, I think can be useful for you, and
in the worst of the cases, fun.
Thanks.

[Joanie Michelle Rich]

Anime's like any medium -- it has its good examples and bad examples. It's the same thing with American animation - just because there's a lot of mediocre stuff that's coming out at the moment, it doesn't mean the whole industry is spoiled rotten. There's always gonna be a few shining examples that keep people coming back for more.

Glen, If you wanna see a new anime that's worth watching, I highly recommend "DeathNote" playing on Adult Swim on Cartoon Network - you can watch episodes online at Adult Swim.com if you don't have cable. It's one of the most philosophical ones I've ever seen and the characters are multi-layered.

I think what's driving young people to watch anime is that they're wanting stories with more drama and depth (possibly tragedies even -- think why "Romeo & Juliet" is a required read that's loved by high schoolers) - which is very different from the styles on right now. American Television animation is definitely leading more on the comedy side. Not a bad thing. Just different. :)

I second Scott McCloud's book! (Or any of his books for that matter!) That's a wonderful book if you haven't picked it up yet. Even though we're in animation, there's so many animated applications to the topics he talks about.

[Amy Mebberson]

As Joanie said - modern tv anime has fallen into the traps of derivation and copycat as much as any western tv cartoon.
The last decent anime I watched was Cowboy Bebop and FLCL. I agree that most anime these days doesn't shake up much, but then, why should it? Not every anime show is going to be a hit - probably precisely BECAUSE of the lack of anything new and creative. FLCL SHATTERED comedy conventions and parodied them mercilessly. Bebop did amazing things with animation cinematography and had a great tight group of characters who didn't fall back on cliche'd acting.

Sure you have to sift through a lot of mediocre stuff to find a gem, but you can argue that of ANY creative field.

I DO admit a slight prejudice against western animation that 'copies' anime. An anime INFLUENCE is just fine, happens all the time. I like to think those seeds were planted during the 80's when most of the toons we all watched were done in Japan, anyway. But when a cartoon goes all out to mimic anime conventions, I roll my eyes and change channel. For god's sake, the Japanese do anime and do it better than a western cartoon ever could, so why bother?
It's why I never really liked Teen Titans and don't really care for Avatar, either.

We're only noticing how lacklustre most anime is because there's a deluge of it right now. Anime and manga are cool and we're riding a big cultural wave of Japanomania just as the West did back in the late 19th century. Mass communication means the audience is bigger and companies are capable of importing anything and EVERYTHING to satisfy the demand, but it too will pass and ten or more years from now, we'll be remembering the really GOOD stuff that was produced, like Ghibli Movies, not the also-ran tv crap.

The Japanese took Powerpuff Girls and made a pure anime out of it - I think we should exact revenge by taking Naruto and making it look like Aqua Teen Hunger Force >:)

[Joanie Michelle Rich]

YES! I saw the PPG anime ... it bothered me so much. XD Now I know how they must feel when we try to copycat their style.

Count me in, Amy. That would be hysterical. Or at least pass the idea onto the team at Robot Chicken. God Bless Seth Green and Matt!

For me, a good example of being influenced by Anime (and Asian cinema for that matter) but not constraining to stereotypical "traits" is Samurai Jack. They showcased a lot of the elements that are true to anime as an art form. The use of time especially. But Mr. Tartakovsky has always been fond of "the Power of the Pause" as I like to call it. It's one of the reasons I think Dexter's Lab stood out so much. The pacing was truly suspenseful and meticulously calculated.

And a definite big YES to "Cowboy Bebop" - one of my favorite shows of all time. Just everything about it was perfectly orchestrated. And you gotta love the music. It was so out there and the concept so solid, it just yanks you into it. One of my personal favorites is "Fushigi Yuugi" (the Mysterious Play) by Yuu Watase. I can't help it, I'm a romanticist at heart. It got very philosophic at times and I love stuff like that which makes you think about your life.

[Amy Mebberson]

There is a lot of anime I have never actually SEEN, but got the soundtracks simply because Yoko Kanno did them ;)
She and Jo Hisaishi, oh god, FANGIRL!

That IS one thing that a LOT of western cartoons are beating into the ground right now - the pregnant pause.
It's EVERYWHERE. Samurai Jack uses the 'muuuuu' pause found in anime for dramatic tension, but more commonly found in other toons is the 'wtf was that?' pause. How successful it is vastly depends on who's doing it - Seth Green, being the method actor that he is, uses it to great effect in directing Robot Chicken. But when cartoons get self-conscious or self-parodying about it, it gets annoying fast - 'Hey, let's have the characters do this huuuuuuuuuuge pause because silence is FUNNY and it's CHEAP because the animators don't have to DO ANYTHING are we too cute to kiss or what?'

It's found a LOT in web comics, too. Used a lot by copy-paste whores. Lazy asses.
I partly blame Matt Groening, he used it a LOT in Life in Hell, too.

I was hugely into Fushigi Yuugi when it first hit fansubs about ten years ago. I bought a lot of the manga. Interesting enough story, but the 'OMG Miaka gets naked/almost raped with EVERY MALE CAST MEMBER' got old fast, not to mention the endless 'Miaka!'.... 'Tamahome!'....I-love-you-no-I-don't thing made you want to punch the screen ;)

[Joanie Michelle Rich]

Yoko Kanno's the whole reason I started watching Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex.... that opening song is just... pure liquid crack. <3 And it's got some nice 3D Animation to go along with it for that matter. :)

You wanna know one anime heroine that really gets annoying? The girl from Blue Seed! XD I can't stand the girl's voice in Japanese... she's like an opera singer on high "E" everytime she says "Kusanagi!!!" *cracks up*

And I agree about some shows abusing the pause. When used right though, it's totally awesome. Sometimes it's nice to have a break from endless dialogue. :3 It's all in the timing.

[Clinton Racine]

I watched the PPG Anime on YouTube. I didn't see the point in doing it considering how simple PPG looked originally on CN. However, I did like how Mojo Jojo and other enemies were redrawn. If anyone is a frequent visitor of DeviantArt, there is a comic book artist by the name of Bleedman that drew is own PPG comic book.

[Joanie Michelle Rich]

I think it's whole DN concept that's got me glued to my seat, even if it does get a little melodramatic at times. :) hehehe

[Joanie Michelle Rich]

Taken with some salt --- knowing that I do tend to like dubs for the most part as much as subs --- (I like to watch both to compare because there's advantages to both sides as a non-Japanese speaker) --- I like it. There are a lot of anime where the American dubbing just... grinds my teeth out. (Azumanga Daiyoh) But I like the actors on DN and the dub doesn't bother me a bit. Course this is me without access to the original. ;) Bear that in mind too.

As a side note.... Dubbing in general is a tough subject with me, actually...

I'm torn, because on the one hand, yes, it is hard to read subtitles and watch at the same time, but again, it's rough when you're dubbing trying to match the original spirit (some things just don't translate), the emotion and less-so the lip sync. American cartoons are UN-dubbable in my opinion. It works for anime since they don't rely on lips so much, so for dubbers it's like doing work with the Muppets' style of lip sync - you match the beats. But American... it's just as bad as watching a dubbed live-action film - or worse.

On the other hand, I hate saying that, because I'm very glad all the international cartoons are getting exposure around the world. And it's fun when my favorite DVDs come with the dubs from other countries. I like hearing the differences in the characters and the dialogue pacing. I can usually ignore the mouth movements if I'm engaged enough in the story and it's not a "Talking Heads" scene. Sometimes even some scenes are even FUNNIER in a dub. :)

[Robertryan Cory]

I was once married to someone from Japan, she told me that many things that arrive in N. America are not always their big sellers. We may specifically be marketed too by distribution CO. I never thought crayon shin-chan would be played over here but then when I saw how it was edited and hipped for the US... it was a little sad. I think it's difficult to say that they just produce the same old stuff.... b/c I don't live in Japan. Recent anime that I like, I like for art or interesting design/color so I'm not sure about story (b/c I don't think it's important). I like most things 4 degree C studio does (sound insect, mind games)... sometimes I'll watch gainax (FLCL, abenobashi). The anime I've like the most in last decade was cat soup. I also watch kids cartoons, dekoboko friends, zenmai zamurai. To me though... if you like something you study its influence... not it. So I like illustrators more. I have many japanese artist I admire and that you can see there influence in many cartoons. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Keichi Tanaami, Hideshi Hino, Junji Ito, Junko Mizuno, Mizuki Shigeru, Machiko Hasegawa, Monkeypunch, Toyokazu Matsunaga, Shigeru Sugiura, etc. Those are just on the top of my head there are so many more.... none of them I would say are cliche... or even specifically Japanese. There are a whole bunch of really cool underground comic artist from Hong Kong (I know, not japan) that make me excited. Animation has never been the most groundbreaking area of art. That's b/c it takes a lot of time, people, & equipment to produce.... but good art is everywhere on every continent (except antartica).

[Niko Anesti]

I don't watch anime, pretty much for every reason you mentioned above. And I do try to watch these series when they come out or when I first learn about them but they all...run together. All the characters look the same, all the plots are the same... Go to a bookstore, find the manga section, and just grab several random books. Or even just look at a character's head on the spine. 9 times out of 10, they all look like they were drawn by the same person. Occasionally I find stuff out of the norm, or something that breaks the mold. FLCL for example, it looks like a lot of other anime at first glance. But as I watched it, I loved the absurd humor and cartoony, unrealistic actions. There's also Crayon Shinchan. This series, at first look, you can't even really tell that it's from Japan. When I saw it animated, it became obvious, but still, the character designs aren't huge-eyed people with odd-colored hair. And it's more fun to watch, because every episode is different; it's not focused on one central ever-continuing plot that makes all the episodes run together. They're all different. The only other anime I kind of liked was Super Milk Chan, but I actually liked the cel animated "vintage" episodes the best. Again, didn't look like just another anime. There's also one manga series I gambled on and ended up liking called Love Roma. The art style is close to generic anime. But you can definitely see some good, original aspects from the artist. Like FLCL, it can be very cartoony, instead of trying not to stray from the pack like all other animes.

[Kevin Smith]

They have crap, we have crap. It's just a different type of crap. I agree with you on one thing. I am tired of manga about high schoolers, especially the romance ones where everyone is too scared to admit how they fell.

What I would like to see is animators from both East and West learn from one another. What I guess your argument goes to show is that no matter the style or medium, what matters most in storytelling is content. Anime PPGZ can't hold a candle to the charm of the original American series. Likewise, with possible exception of the upcoming Samurai Jack movie, no American animation will ever top the story and ending of Cowboy Bebop. It's give and take.

If you are interested, pick up that new anime movie that came out. It's got a weird name, Tekkagirin don something. It has a vastly different drawing style and an innovative story you might like.