31 Flavors of Anime

So I finally remembered what I was going to talk about earlier. The downside is that I've been getting small 15 minute naps all day to make up for the missing 8 hours of sleep, so you'll have to excuse me if I suddenly sounds a little insane.

Anime, as I'm sure you've noticed, is one of my interests and probably vices as well. Naturally, like any good anime fan / Otaku, I have to educate others on the wonder of anime. A few months ago, my family was visited by some friends of my parents, which is fairly common. While discussing some of my interests as small talk, one of them expressed recognition as far as anime went. She was a little misguided though, so I chatted with her a bit about anime. She suspected that it was made of two parts - television shows like Pokemon and cinematic movies like Spirited Away. I really have an issue with that.

You see, popular animation in North America is basically split on such a line. You have cartoon shows that are for children, mostly comedy or comedy and action mixed. Then you have the high-quality movies like what Disney has a history of making or like what CG movies are doing today. Sure, adults can enjoy it - the Simpsons or Family Guy are too 'mature' for most children, but they're still comedy shows at their roots. The only thing that pulls away from this are action shows based on toys or games like G.I. Joe back in the day. They're more pure action, but they're heavy in product placement and character recognition.

Now, I won't try and say that Anime is more noble and better than American animation. Anime is a commercial product as well, and if it wasn't for things like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh and Bedamon or whatever it certainly wouldn't be burying so deep into the American market.

What I will say, as I told that woman, is that Anime isn't a genre. When you think 'Cartoon' you might think Bugs Bunny or Ninja Turtles. It's true that not all American cartoons are that, but Anime has set itself up as a medium. Manga as well emphasizes that, the thick magazines they publish weekly or monthly are set towards obvious groups like young boys, young girls, older men (not porn) and older women.

What brought this up is mostly MuchMusic (It's like Canada's MTV [not to be confused with MTV Canada], but they still have music videos), who have been playing BECK in hour-long blocks at least a couple times a week. BECK, you see, is about young Japanese kid who gets caught up in the start of a brand new band that ends up going all the way. The series takes place over a couple of years and expands his personal development with other people as well as his development as a guitarist, singer and songwriter. I watched the anime when it was originally released in Japan and I really enjoyed it, and the dub is fairly good (though it loses a lot of its early flavor since everyone speaks English - originally there was a lot of fun Engrish). Where else could you have that, really? Need a new music series? I can think of at least another high quality series, NANA (Though it concentrates on relationships). Need realistic Sci-Fi? Cartoony Sci-Fi? Re-imaginations of classic literature? Racing? Team sports? Fantasy series? A show about bread? There's an Anime for every possible genre.

Now, filling Turner Classic Movies with Anime films is asking too much (Though they occasionally show some Ghibli works). Anime just seems like it's underused and misunderstood. People see animation and they suspect that it's either for children or, if it's really violent, gory or full of cursing - older boys. If people weren't afraid of watching, they could get into the drama of a series like Honey and Clover, or enjoy the investigative drama of Stand Alone Complex.

One of the big things that I'd like to see change is the realization that while girls watch 'boy' series with action like Naruto or Inuyasha (Though the latter is like DBZ for girls anyway), you might be able to pull in a larger female audience and sustain a male audience with girl-targeted shows. Fruits Basket comes to mind, Zannen.ca always seemed to be pushing for it, and I think it's a series that could really attracted viewers on, say, YTV's Friday night anime blocks.

Right now, I'm watching so many new animes from Japan I can't always keep track of them. It's up and down from the new-style harem anime Airantou to the otaku slice-of-life Lucky Star and the parody-filled comedy Hayate no Gotoku, back to the hyper-realistic, dark Bokurano, up to the mystic Reideen and further to the wackiness of Gurren-Lagann. Then I can watch some Shonen action from new episodes of Naruto and Bleach, then pull back to the drama of NANA or the situational comedy of Lovely Complex. When I'm in the mood, I'll sit through and episode of the developing Darker Than Black or the gory action of Claymore before loading up the next part of Sola or Rocket Girls. Really, with that kind of selection how can you complain? There's at least something for everyone - as long as you can stomach interesting characters and an intruiging storyline matched with excellent animation from some mere 'cartoon'.

That's all I can say really. MuchMusic's programmers really got my intrigued when they introduced BECK but YTV's regurgitation of Adult Swim is getting tiring as well. And could someone explain to me why Teletoon won't play a single anime series, but fills the evenings with Adult Swim's hand-me-down hit-and-miss 15 minute episode series?

That's all for tonight. Thanks for your time for my ranty little attitude today.