What is Anime?

There are a lot of people who are not familiar with anime and know nothing about it. Then there are those who know about anime and believe it is only cartoons. Anime is much more than just cartoons. It is not just something for your child on Saturday mornings. It is much bigger than that. It is a medium. A medium of entertainment.

This is how far I have been pushed...

Anime, at its root, is a Japanese animated product. The word itself comes from the word animated(Why I had no idea, Alexander!). Since it is a Japanese product, it has likely been written, directed, and produced through Japan. The rest of the animated productions are then called anime-influenced animation, but I hate calling it that. I don’t want to have that conversation now, but most anime I view is made in Japan.

Commonly anime will begin as a manga or light novel, then be produced as an animated product. A manga is a Japanese comic book that follows the Japanese style of writing. Meaning that you read it from the back cover to the front, reading the panels on the inside left to right. It is confusing at first, but now it is second nature for me to read a manga. That does not mean an anime can’t be an original production as well, because there have been some very popular original productions.

If you have a plot, you can then move onto making the anime itself. Hand-drawn and computer-generated imagery(CGI) have been the two common methods of animating a series. Each has it pros as well as cons. Hand-drawn anime can have more attention to detail and it is marvelous if done correctly. Where as CGI can provide you with more options you have to be weary of choppy and unrealistic renders with them.

Is this not beautiful?

If it helps to understand. Iron Man’s suit was created with CGI and was done very well. High quality CGI is very expensive and that is why the anime industry has turned away from it and continued producing anime the traditional way. Walt Disney was a company built on hand-drawn animation, but has discontinued it as of currently. The last hand-drawn anime by Disney was The Princess and The Frog.

Perhaps the most discerning feature of anime is the sound. I am not talking about the soundtracks, but the voicings. It is produced in Japan and it only makes sense that the voices are first done in Japanese. It then takes up to a few years for an anime to be produced by another company with English voices. Not everybody can sit down and watch subtitles, so this is where the industry has one of its biggest bottlenecks. Then again, a great anime will be worth it if you have to wait any amount of time.

Rarely will an anime be produced in English as it is being produced in Japanese. The soon-to-be released Space Dandy will be produced in both languages and available for viewing on normal television broadcasting. On a side note, I am looking forward to Space Dandy.

I think this looks like a lot fun.

So how can we say anime is more than just a cartoon? All I have done so far is tell you the jist of how the industry functions and that it is centered around Japan. There is this false charade surrounding animated products. Just because it is not real, it does not mean it is not for adults. Iron Man was not real and I know plenty of adults who enjoyed it. Of course, Iron Man is a terrible example for this because the animation seemed real to me. But my point is, animated products are not only for a childish audience.

We have seinen and josei anime aimed at adult men and women. These shows are usually sexual, violent, and mature in how they handle themselves. I watched Dogs: Bullets & Carnage which is part of the seinen genre. It had nudity and lots of violence. It was made for an adult audience, not your child. The animation and comedy was dark, the habits of characters were foul, and the impression it would give a child is not a good one.

Let’s look at ecchi anime. Personally, I don’t like the genre, I think it has become mindless fanservice that abuses hormonal teenagers who lack self-control. Ecchi is usually an anime that includes sexual innuendos, but never nudity. That way it can be classified as PG-13. Often it will also be comedy or a harem show, which I don’t like harems either. I think it is bad overall to endorse harems, what kind of society would we be if harems were everywhere? A sleazy one is what we would be.

There is anime made for adults. There is anime for teenagers. There is also anime made for kids, which can be called cartoons. In America, most anime you will see broadcasted on television will be a cartoon. Because that is the audience that will watch it. Anime does not appeal to American adults. It hardly even sells to a majority of Japanese adults. So it is understandable that anime seen as nothing more than cartoons.

Naruto, a very popular anime that I would consider a cartoon.
This is what got me started.

It does irk me to death when it is called a cartoon, because would you not find it irritating that your favorite form of media is compared to that of a child’s show? I doubt in my time it will become accepted as an appropriate form of entertainment, but that will not stop me from watching it. The main reason I watch anime is because I can find stories that I cannot find elsewhere.

Death Note, a well known anime, is the story of an intelligent high school student who finds a book that can kill anybody just by writing their name. He then goes through the process of making himself into a god, where else can I find this? Fullmetal Alchemist, an young alchemist who is a born natural fights against homunculi while dealing with the troubles of the government and attempting to retrieve his brother’s lost body. Code Geass, very similar feeling to Death Note, is the show of a Prince who obtains the power of complete obedience and fights against an entire empire with unfathomable resources and technology that can produce giant fighting robots. He then takes down that empire and creates world peace in what I would describe as the greatest anime ending ever created, where else can I find a show like this?

Lelouch, the main character of Code Geass, as seen in the preview of Akito the Exiled 2.
I am so excited to see this with the subtitles. Does anybody else get chills from this?

My point is clear. I watch anime because it is something different. It is more than just reality television and game shows. It is an experience that has yet to be matched.

Explore. Find what will interest you. There is a genre for everything and for every audience. Use the last three I mentioned, they are great. Start somewhere, just don't miss out on something that has been fantastic.