Isn't it a bit strange how people seem to think of anime as "one thing"?

[das_n00b]

I hate to be the one to say this (having had a healthy interested both in Japanese bred manga and animation, and stateside comics and animation) but I think part of the reason people engage in vain reductionism when speaking of anime is because of its lack of willingness to draw inspiration from outside sources. Now I realize some of you might be ready to start listing all the anime which you feel prove me wrong, and I will concede that certain films do stand out and are widely recognized by the anime, the film, and the art critics alike, but a lot of times those horses die and keep getting beaten.

I think Hayao Miyazaki sumed upt best:

?Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know.
It?s produced by humans who can?t stand looking at other humans.
And that?s why the industry is full of otaku!?

 

[chadachada123]

Honestly, I don't feel that it gets 'lumped' much more than "cartoon" is implied for western animation. A greater, much greater, stigma, absolutely, but a similar lumping nonetheless. Similarly, stop-motion films like Coraline and Nightmare Before Christmas, and then 3D animation. I used to abhor ALL stop-motion films, until I thankfully decided to give Coraline a chance, and freaking loved it. Similarly, I have a friend that (still) swears that all 3D animation is not only all 'Disney' (ignoring Dreamworks and Pixar), but also equally girly.

You could argue that I'm listing three different western animation categories but only one "anime," but I'd counter that there really isn't any (well-known) stop-motion or 3D Japanese animation out there (aside from KoS and battle sequences from some mecha/tank/etc anime, but whatever).

 

[snekadid]

That would be my mistake lol. I'm mostly talking about the games & animes combined ... I apologize for getting your hopes up.
Do forgive me. I should of been more clear in my statements but yeah game wise / anime wise / manga wise ... a ton of animes are based off the teenage life around their high schools, mixed with fantasy or scifi .... if not fan service and other dumb elements.

MONSTER!!! There goes my hopes and dreams.... /cry

Anyways, you're quite correct except that I think you're placing it too far on anime when really that's a very cultural thing in Japan. It seems very focused, from a consumer media stand point, on the pre-college years. I think its a result of the cultural emphasis on success in college and work after grade school, marking high school as the beacon of nostalgia.

On a side note, I often find excessive fan service in anime hilarious. I don't remember the name but there was a anime on netflix about a month ago that I watched where a episode didn't pass without clothing getting ripped off and bras or bare breasts flopping around, god that was hilariously stupid. I at least have some respect for animes like Evangelion that own their fan service, "maybe next time I'll give you a little more fan service"-misato. It takes guts to admit you're a whore. ^_^

 

[Eddie the head]

Not really. People who are not exposed to anime a lot don't notice the difference between different anamies( is that how you say it?). Not surprising in the slightest really. You don't have to agree with something to understand why another person might believe it.

 

[Timeless Lavender]

I loved animes but even I can see that there is major similarities among them (like moe, school life, power fantasy) but this can be said about any medium with limited knowledge like video games (military shooter or candy crush) or even comics (super heroes type). So you can't blamed them can you?

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

No, because from the outside looking in, Anime *is* one thing. For someone who isn't into a thing, it can be put into a single category of "the thing in which I have no interest". In my case, I can apply the same to "football", "heavy metal" and "chick lit". While to a fan each of these things might have multiple sub-genres and oodles of nuance, for non-fans looking in, it is a single category of "stuff" all of which can be lumped together.

There may be the odd breakout success that transcends its medium to enter popular culture and become more widely known than its contemporaries. "Hunger Games" is one of those successes, which to everyone who doesn't care much for it classifies it as "yet another teenage dystopian story" of which there are many.

It's probably not too different from how non-gamers see "video games" as an all encompassing thing. To the untrained eye, all games are the same. How different is Skyrim from WoW to someone to whom the differences aren't obvious? At *best*, they may be able to tell the difference between a "shooting game" and a "driving game", but not the difference between Forza and GTA5.

To me, anime is all Japanese children with pink or blue (usually spiky) hair and swords bigger than they are, with big eyes and speed lines. There may also be giant robots and a lot of people shouting.

I'm a self-confessed geek and enjoy sci-fi movies, fantasy books, RPGs and most things "tech", but even to me, anime is so absurd that I think people who enjoy that stuff are weird. While I'm weird by many standards, to me anime is a whole new level of weird and geeky.

 

[Fox12]

I guess, if you wanted to, you could just say I'm a fan of animation. I love Pixar and classic Disney, and I think that Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea were fantastic. Coraline was great. I like the different styles, so I guess I've turned into an animation aficionado. I don't know when this happened. I used to just call myself a casual fan, until I realized I actually knew a lot more then the average person.

I'm a fan of animation, too, which is why I don't care much for anime anymore. As it is now it just doesn't embrace the medium of animation like it did in the 80's and 90's, when it was pushing the boundries of what people thought was possible. Not that Western animation is fairing that much better, but at least there it isn't crammed with high school settings.

While I agree that highschool shows are the cancer of the industry (except for Toradora), I would argue that there's still decent output. Madoka, for instance, may be plagued by plot holes, and it's far from a visionary masterpiece, but it's still willing to take innovative risks that Western Animation would never take. In fact, I think that's inherent in the anime industry at this point. It's true that we're not getting Eva, Akira, and Bebop every year, and the industry may be temporarily stagnated, but I think it still manages to produce a few standouts now and again. I think we were just spoiled by the golden age that was the late 80's and 90's (seriously, what did they put in the water then?).

Honestly, western animation is borderline dead to me at this point (or, at least, American animation, which is practically the same thing). It's difficult to find anything that's traditionally animated anymore, and it's impossible to find anything not aimed at children. As a result, I find western animation incredibly constricted, and it rarely lifts itself above mediocrity. I loved Up and the Secret of Kells, but these sorts of things are few and far between.

I'm not doom and gloom, though. The market has a tendency to shift. Eventually the Japanese market will stop worshiping the highschool romcom and move onto something else. Hopefully something involving sad robot man creating something non-Eva related. (Seriously, asshole, release the blu-rays and move onto something else).

 

[Julius Terrell]

I hate to be the one to say this (having had a healthy interested both in Japanese bred manga and animation, and stateside comics and animation) but I think part of the reason people engage in vain reductionism when speaking of anime is because of its lack of willingness to draw inspiration from outside sources. Now I realize some of you might be ready to start listing all the anime which you feel prove me wrong, and I will concede that certain films do stand out and are widely recognized by the anime, the film, and the art critics alike, but a lot of times those horses die and keep getting beaten.

I think Hayao Miyazaki sumed upt best:

?Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know.
It?s produced by humans who can?t stand looking at other humans.
And that?s why the industry is full of otaku!?

This is why satoshi Kon was such a trailblazer. It's so sad that most people will never experience all the great masterpieces that I've seen over the years. To be fair, these masterpieces are buried under all the things that people stigmatize Japanese animation for.

Japan is no different than America in the fact that they just want to keep making money by depending on what works.

 

[Dizchu]

From my experience many anime fans see anime as one thing. You have sites dedicated to keeping track of how many animes a person has watched, as if it's a competition. It's also seen as very novel, you'll get people clumsily trying to appropriate otaku culture (which does not represent Japanese culture at all), they consider anime to be part of their identity, and so on.

As for me, I don't watch anime regularly. Only when it specifically interests me. I love the art styles of many Japanese anime artists and have used aspects of it in my own art style, but I don't pretend that I am Japanese. As stated earlier in the thread, anime isn't sacred. It's a collection of (highly varied) works that, like all art, should be dissected and appropriated to create new things (though preferably with an original flair).

But to be honest, most anime is trash. Because most stuff is trash. People like trash and that's okay, I too like a fair amount of trash. I just don't like it when both anime fans and non-fans overlook truly inspired works of art because of it. The same goes for music and video games and so on.

 

[laggyteabag]

Well sure, saying "I like anime" is about as useful as saying "I like music" or "I like games".

That being said though, I tend to give the people the benefit of the doubt. If I say "I like _______" I generally assume that they understand that when I say "I like __________" it doesn't mean that I like everything that can be classified as _________.

The reason why I like the anime medium in general is because you can do some really cool and crazy things that you cannot do in live action TV show due to budget reasons. Imagine trying to recreate Kill la Kill in live action. It would be awful, and look ugly as hell. But just because I like that aspect of anime, doesn't mean that I like every kind of anime. I have probably dropped more anime at this point than I have watched to completion, and that is okay.

The only reason why I would say "I like anime" is because it is a lot easier than saying "I like ____________, _____________, _____________, ____________ and anything by ___________, but I don't like ___________, ___________ ..." etc.

 

[hybridial]

But to be honest, most anime is trash. Because most stuff is trash. People like trash and that's okay, I too like a fair amount of trash. I just don't like it when both anime fans and non-fans overlook truly inspired works of art because of it. The same goes for music and video games and so on.

This, oh god, so much this. I'm always told though that it's a bit senseless to get angry over it and that you just have to let it go sometimes, and what's important is that you yourself have true appreciation for the art that speaks to you.

My favourite anime is Devilman Lady. Which might look like a moderately less strange title if you have some awareness of Devilman. But nonetheless, I know why it's a very obscure title from the late 90s that isn't particularly noted by the community at large; it's everything that modern anime isn't. Used to be more common to have more serious, dark titles with more emphasis on atmosphere than flashy colours and having a semi-realistic look as opposed to moe. It's not perfect, there's issues to be taken with the story, but I've never seen anything with the same intense feel to it, and as long as I have not it'll remain my favourite show of any kind.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

It?s because most people aren?t going to bother trying to learn a medium?s distinctions of genre if it?s too niche and foreign to them. It?s like how, when people think of ?Bollywood? films, all they think of are the bombastic musicals and comedies. Or when I think about classical music, I just think of Mozart and Beethoven.

It doesn?t annoy me too much, because I don?t really talk to anyone about anime and even if I did, I?d imagine the only conversation about it I?d like to continue with would concern someone who is already a fan of at least one anime show I like.

But yes, there is a world of difference between Dragon Ball, Death Note, and JoJo?s Bizarre Adventure, even if they?re all aimed at the same demographic. Yes, demographic, not genre.

 

[Risingblade]

Not really, people do with just about everything.