I see a lot of posts here dragging the same old 'anime is pedo' line. Are there some anime which have actually underage kids in sexual situations? Yes. Are they a mainstay of the medium? No. Are they even all that well known in Japan? No.
What is happening though, with alarming ignorance and double standards, are accusations of 'phantom pedophilia', ie, assumptions that a girl drawn without large breasts and a (Western-centric) ideal of adultness, is somehow a ersatz for pedophilia.
As a decade long resident of Japan, I can tell you that I STILL cannot estimate a woman's age here. I have met 25 year olds who could easily be highschool girls after school. It's not about festishism. It's just a very typical combination of common body types, shapes and fashion. Japanese woman generally heap more care on their skin and hair than I have seen any other nationality of women do. They even go so far as to avoid the sun so as to be pretty wrinkle free at even 30 years old.
When I see a cherubic female character in anime or manga, I don't see undercover jailbait. I see half the young women on the train, in the street and in my place of work. Honestly, the ignorance and arrogance by so many people online today astounds me. When did the young of the English speaking world because so incredibly insular and sometimes, downright xenophobic?
Has anyone stopped to consider that perhaps small breasted women with no curves and puppy fat (which is a very large percentage of Japan's human population) 'look like kids' to you simply because that's not how women look or are idealised in YOUR country, and in YOUR country, probably all your comic heroines have breasts the size of watermelons and wear swimsuits everywhere they go. Is THAT a healthy outlook on women?
As for the large eyes, I reject the assertion that this is *because of* Disney art. I reject it as very hopeful America-centrism. Large eyes in Japanese art have existed before Atom graced his first cover, before Mickey Mouse set out to conquer the world. Large eyes in Japan is part of a cultural ideal of the following:
1) YOUTH (Kids here have such bright and wide eyes.)
2) INNOCENCE (NO, stop those dirty thoughts. WIDE EYES to better see the world.)
3) BEAUTY (you want what you can't have.)
4) SELF-EXPRESSION (With large eyes, emotions and inner processes can be shown.)
5) CUTENESS (Big eyes are KAWAII! Puppies have them, cats have them. Why not human characters?)
Even if early artists saw Disney's work and the eyes just clicked for them, the concept itself was not at all culturally alien. In fact, I am certain that the large eyes would have been just as logical to those artists as it was logical to Walt. Perhaps more so, due to the aforementioned deep cultural attitudes.
Are these eyes too big, though? And if they are, is that some offense to the rest of us real people with small, regular sized eyes?
Well, it amuses me that while anime art cops constant disparaging remarks from those aforementioned ignoramuses and xenophobes, Disney and the wealth of American animation which contains the same tradition, do not. Additionally, why is the size of the eyes so important when in the Japanese art, a face can suddenly transform into geometric shapes or just a couple of lines! Besides, who is offended by American artists drawing every hero and heroine with impossibly mascuine and feminine proportions and qualities respectively?
I don't know it became uncool to enjoy foreign animation, or rather *cool* to hate it, but the commentary and diatribes surrounding its almost constant disparagement are quite often to be filed in that box labeled 'Irrational', along with 'Mac vs PC', Iphone vs Android', Ps3 vs Xbox 360' and 'PC gaming vs the World*'
*I'm a PC gamer, incidentally. I don't agree with that attitude.
TheRightToArmBears said:
Anime is not a medium.
Animation is a medium.
A medium is a category of a work of art, as determined by its materials and methods of production. There is nothing to distinguish anime from other hand-drawn or computer animated animation. As far as I can tell anime is a group of genres that are actually fairly diverse that all originate in (or are influenced by) Japan.
Casual Shinji said:
Animation is a medium, anime is a genre within that medium. I'm sorry, but it simply is.
Actually you're only half right and only in a non-Japanese context. Here in Japan, people can and do refer to ALL TV and movie animation as 'anime' because the word is simply a contraction of the word 'animation'. The language is full of contractions. It's common practice. The only reason you three and everybody else it seems, think that 'anime' is a genre is *because* of what the OP was trying to say:
In the West, only a miniscule selection of the total output of animated content in Japan is ever released or represented there. Because 'amime' and 'manga' were turned into marketable labels and even brands, licensees certainly limit their acquisitions to suit the general public perception of what Japanese animation is. The thing is, here in Japan, whether it's TinTin or the new Hack movie; whether it's Dark Horse or Jump, its common for the terms 'anime' and 'manga' to apply, respectively.
