Anime 101
Published September 18, 2005
Welcome to the world of anime! This rapidly growing industry is making it's mark in the American market with more and more titles being licensed and released each year by companies such as Funimation, ADV, and Geneon to name the Big Three.
Remember that anime has a whole range of age groups. Just because these shows are animated does not mean that little kids should watch every anime out there. Most anime is not rated but they do have age recommendations such as 13+ or 15+ etc. I would suggest parents view the material and then decide whether or not to let their kids watch.
When you want to start watching this type of animation there are some things to consider. The big question is what genre do you like? Because just saying you want to watch an anime is like saying you want to watch a movie. Do you like horror? Fantasy? Romantic comedy? Historical fiction, even?
Next is how strong is your stomach? More often than not, since we are going up in the age group here, you are going to see varying amounts of blood etc. Also there'll sometimes be explicit language; of course this all depends on the genre you choose to begin with.
Next consideration, remember the culture this is coming from. This is probably one of the reasons that attracted me to anime to begin with. There will be animes that show what daily life is like from going to school, to working in a shrine, to what a typical meal is like. I found the book The Anime Companion: What's Japanese in Japanese Animation by Gilles Poitras to be quite interesting in showing these distinctions. It is set up like a dictionary A-Z with informative blurbs on topics ranging from landmarks to culture to food to people to religion just to name a few. I'd recommend this book to anyone starting to watch anime or is just plain curious about the culture.
Perhaps I should explain some terminology also. To begin with there is Shoujo and Shounen types of anime. Basically Shoujo is anime geared to a female audience. These can be the romantic comedies or the "cutesy" types of anime. Shounen on the other hand is the opposite, this type is geared toward the male audience. These are typically the more action-packed series and (more noticeably) fan service series. Now just because these animes have been declared either Shoujo or Shounen does not mean a girl should not check out a Shounen type if she wants or a boy from checking out a Shoujo series if he wants. Just revert back to the genre you would like to watch.
- Anime 101
- Published: September 18, 2005
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Foreign Language, Video: Animation
- Writer: Lindsay Beaumont
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Great post! Your recommendations are spot on. Three of my all-time favorite shows, Fruits Basket, Azumanga Daioh, and Cowboy Bebop are on you rlist. I hope you contribute more anime reviews in the future.
cowboy bepop is crap. Dragonball z is the best.
At last! Someone I can ask questions of; all I ever wanted to know about anime but couldn't find anyone to corner & ask! Thanks.
First question: I've noticed that in most (if not all - I haven't seen a whole lot) anime, most of the characters have 'western' features: pale skin, big round eyes, little noses, light hair, etc. while the villains - or more particularly, the clowns & comic relief, have features more obviously oriental. Classic case of this is "Princess Mononoke". Why is this? Many thanks.
Each creator/ art director, I suppose? has their own style of animation. If you watch Miyazaki films (Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away etc.) and then compare to the character designs of Yutaka Minowa of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (gorgeous animation, one of my favorite movies) They're really different. The animation style anyway. Character features though, the only thing I'm sure of is how the Big Eyes came about. Back in the '60's an anime was born by the name of Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka. He was influenced by Walt Disney (Bambi '42, Pinnochio '40 etc.) to use the Big Eyes. Tezuka had a tremendous affect on the animation industry and the Big Eyes was here to stay. Skin and hair, I believe I read somewhere, Japan has a homogeneous population, thus the light skin. But also to get variety in anime you have the funky hair-do's and colors instead of all black hair.
Just to add on to what Lindsay said, I've heard various theories behind the characters having pale skin. One of them says that it is due to early shoujo manga. A lot of early shoujo manga had stories that took place outside of Japan. Even as more stories took place in Japan after this, the pale skin of the characters stayed.
Another thing to note is that a good portion of anime doesn't even take place in Japan. Cowboy Bebop takes place across various planets while Slayers takes place in a fantasy world. Settings like these make it very easy to justify characters that don't "look" Japanese.
What genre do you like? You have got to be kidding me; It is a cartoon! Oh, oh, yeah thats right, I was a big fan of the sphinct-unen (or was it sphinct-oujo?) Bullwinkle and Wonder Dog genre. With its pastiche about societal ills while paying homage to the action characters of the American comic book lifestyle.....blahdee blahdee blah.
What your waste of a book fails to cover is the dichotomy of blatant western ripoff mixed with a slap in the face apocalyptic central theme. Will the jap artisite culture ever get over the fact that we dropped the big one? No! Just like they will never get over the fact that they wanted to drop one on us....Thus every japenese animation (that is not flat out porn) will feature a wonderful climatic scene of some nutty version of a really big explosion. Whoo whee.
Just stop telling me that this is supposed to be 'high art'. Give me a break - this is the culture that believes Ninjas were Real! Boshido that for a while. And give me any Pixar any day versus Cowboy Bebop - Buzz Lightyear will kick their rice burning butts.
ps: Akira Kurosawa hated this crap.....
Anyway, Nancy, I would recommend anythng by Miyazaki. Think of his films as Japanese Disney. They're sweet coming-of-age stories. My favorites of his are Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service, and Castle in the Sky. There are series that I would call historical fiction like Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Deeper Kyo. Kenshin is good but a bit long so you might want to try Kyo first. These 2 do have violence (not extreme in my opinion but it's there) in them. These series are all up on amazon.com so there are further descriptions. Hope this helps!
Intelligence abounds. Guess it takes all types....
I've seen those, thanks, and very familiar w/Kimba, Astro Boy, et al. I'm just puzzled as to why anime/Japanese seem to have a fixation on westerners' features in the characters, instead of Japanese, and when one DOES see Japanese, they seem invariably to be clowns or villains - or am I the only one to notice this seeming psychological foible?
Can't say I've really noticed it, but I don't watch as much as my sister.
ok, I think I found something that may or may not be helpful with Nancy's question. I was flipping through The Anime Companion, the one I mention above and on found out that according to the book page 101, Japanese consider themselves "wet" (crying, nosebleeds, sweat etc). They mean by this that they put higher priority on emotion. So maybe the Japanese looking characters are the more emotional ones. On the other hand the book continues, Americans are "dry" by making reason a higher priority. So the more serious characters could have more Western features. That's all I could find. Hope it helps!
Video Editor Joan picked this his pick of the week. Go HERE to find out why. And thank you very much.
omg i love anime so much i love it
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Nice review. The recommendations are especially nice, as I haven't come across several of them, but will check them out now. I can see we have at least one fave in common - Cowboy Bebop!