Anime Hate: America's Othering of a Valid Art Form
TokyoPop. CLAMP. ufotable. VIZ Media. BONES. Usagi Tsukino. To most of the people reading this, I’d assume few (if any) of these names represent nothing of any significance to them. I’d also assume that once I told you all of these terms are related to the Japanese animation industry I would lose a great deal of your attention or would garner a grunt, scoff, and/or eye roll, like most of my experiences with whomever I’m speaking.
Sure, not everybody's going to like everything, but the reactions I get concerning this topic are always the most extreme. Many will immediately jump to some Americanized action show, in which the talent of the voice actors and/or instructions by directors often pale in comparison to their Japanese originals. And sure, there is a good number of "magical girls" and robot shows, but like any genre of anything, you can find some variety if you are willing and open to look for it.
"Mahō Shōjo Madoka Magika." a magical girl show with a dark twist.
Rin and her adoptive single father, Daikichi, in “Usagi Drop.”
We do what we Americans love to do: we actively ignore a
culture until they have become “chic” and/or, most importantly,
profitable; we “other” until we want it. Many anime and manga
have values that we are currently campaigning for, such as
LGBTQ rights and feminism. “Sailor Moon” featured two of the
female superheroes as lovers, but when I watched this show’s
English dub growing up, they were apparently “cousins,” a fact I
thought to be true until many years later.
Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus: elemental superheroes, lovers, and overall butt-kickers.
The greatest irony lies in the fact that we pride ourselves on being the “Great American Melting Pot,” when, if anything, we act as a multi-layered sifter. Fellow college blogger Kate Haddock states, “If we keep treating the world as a binary where same is ‘good’ and different is ‘bad,’ how will our generation improve and take good ideas from others ... Isn’t it time to stop pushing away the ‘weird’ and to instead find the merit in the ‘different?’”
Peace, love, and Blue Ivy Carter
Jalen
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Facebook post: So you think anime is weird? Why? Today’s blog examines why Americans are so quick to devalue a valid art form that just happens to not be what they’re used to: http://bornefair.wordpress.com/?p=50&preview=true
Tweet: New Post: Anime Hate - America's Othering of a Valid Art Form #Anime #Manga #Othering http://bit.ly/1t3KF0Z
“Mahō Shōjo Madoka Magica” plays on the magical girl trope when things aren't exactly so simple when two Machiavellian forces come into conflict; its big screen adaptation garnered a nomination for Best Animation during 2014's Japanese Academy Awards. Or you might like “Usagi Drop,” which is about a thirty-year-old man who ends up suddenly having to become the guardian of a six-year-old relative.
As a Black, Hispanic, gay man, it was hard enough to find a cartoon character or lead actor in the media as I grew up, unless we count he one “Static Shock.” “Sailor Moon” was decades ahead of its time, yet that didn't and won’t make it into the mainstream … but I guess we can just wait for “Frozen” to do a Vogue or Elle and have the public blindly swear that this was the first animated production that was feminist and showed a gay couple (for half a second), and was SO PROGRESSIVE. God bless. The United States has a deep-seated problem with our intercultural practices.