Although I shared my reasons why I blog about Anime almost two years ago, I never wrote about why I still watch Anime. Since Kai shared his thoughts about why he continues to watch Anime, I became interested in writing about it since it’s a rather diverse medium. (Image Source)
For a long time, I watched Anime since my childhood even though I didn’t watch it consistently until 2009. The first one that I actually watch was one of Hayao Miyazaki’s films titled My Neighbor Totoro. While I don’t realize the serious aspect when I watched it for the first time as a child, this film in particular shows some serious moments with two girls realizing that their mother is ill with the slight possibility of her dying. Eventually, want to go out their way to give an ear of corn with the help of Totoro.
Of course with the example I shared above, this shows that Japanese Anime tends to be deeper compared to cartoons in the west. If you watch any cartoons in America for example, it tends to focus on educational stuff (teaching people not to bully each other), children having a fun time or super heroes beating up bad guys. The problem is that it’s simplistic in nature since companies usually want kids to have parents buy their merchandise. Sure, there are adult cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy, but they suffer from the same problem of simplicity and overused slapstick comedy.
In comparison, Anime not only incorporates several aspects of Japanese culture, but often times have a deeper story that appeal to a wide demographic, not just children. This means that shows that have action will have a lot of uncensored violence. Because of this reason, some shows geared to an older audience might focus on issues that currently exist in society along with some darker moments. For example, Hourou Musuko focuses difficulties of a boy and a girl who wants to be the opposite sex along with societal acceptance of transgendered people. Because of this, I usually find that Anime can handle such a controversial issue in an immersive manner as you can relate to these characters along with the difficulties they face. This is also why drama such as Clannad tends to have more an emotional impact compared to soap opera dramas aired on television.
To me, Anime can relate to past experiences in one’s life. This is because most slice-of-life shows are set around a typical high school student’s life. It allows us to gain a perspective of our past experiences or remember the fond memories. For me, I used to play piano since my childhood and took up Clarinet during 4th grade. I enjoy playing music, although I never majored in it since there is no money in it unless you are really talented. In particular, shows like K-ON, Tari Tari and The Idolmaster (to a certain extent) tends to resonate with me as perfecting a particular piece of music takes a good amount of practice and skill (although I do a wing-job at times and manage to do good). For that reason, I can relate to Wakana when she gets over her unresolved feelings for her mother and deciding to pick up music again because of the effort it takes to perfect it. While I don’t play music on an active basis anymore, deep inside, I still have an interest in it.
Lastly, Anime has an artistic aspect that impresses me compared to Western Animation. While the quality is highly dependent on the studios, the amount of work they put in each frame and the setting is rather impressive. If you watch any shows from Shaft, Kyoto Animation, PA Works, etc, it’s hard not to be captivated by how well they capture the setting. For that reason, this adds to the immersion and escapism aspect and makes it feel that you are actually there, the kind of quality that most western cartoons lack.
Overall, I find Anime as a rich medium because it can focus on serious issues, give different perspectives of life and evoke emotions. Not only that, it’s very diverse as there are many shows that focuses on different genres and topics with endless possibilities not bounded by the laws of physics. While all those reasons make Anime a unique medium, we cannot forget that it’s fun. Just like video games, I want to sit back and enjoy myself after working on schoolwork or studying endlessly. This is why I won’t stop watching or blogging about it anytime soon.
Casual musicians ftw, lol xD I also tend to learn them quite casually too, in fact, I can’t even read notes.
Anime isn’t scared to be different, and that’s why it was able to fit into such a wider range of demographics. It can be a simple good guys VS bad guys show just like most of Western cartoons aimed towards kids, or it can talk about complex themes more for the older teenagers. Anime’s incredibly flexible, and with such high quality animation and creativity, it can be almost anything and fit everywhere.
I think the ability to fit a wide demographic set itself from western animation as the cultures are different. In America at least, parents are more likely to be offended if they see some touchy subjects or have children see violence in their cartoons. In addition, 2d animation in the West is more expensive than live action tv shows, which is why you don’t see that many animation in the West. But essentially, culture differences is a big factor why our cartoons are limited to certain genres compared to the East.
Art and animation are definitely huge motivators for my continued interest in anime. While I can appreciate cinematography in live action, and certain art styles in Western cartoons, very few have stunned me in the way that anime has. I still can’t get over the art in anime like Hyouka, Mononoke, Tatami Galaxy, and Hidamari Sketch.
I have been pretty biased against Western media these days as I don’t watch that much of it, I do admit that there are still good live action stuff, which usually have a high budget in millions of dollars. Anime only has a fraction of the budget compared to Hollywood, but it’s still its pretty amazing to see them produce high quality animation.
Nicely written article boyo. Man, it seems like everyone other than me has been deeply touched by anime. Weird. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen so much from other entertainment media, or maybe it’s because deep plots aren’t as important to me as it is to others. As for anime delving into more delicate subjects, I learned about that the minute I noticed their obsession with sexifying adolescents under the age of 15 whose water balloons are barely visible. That, and the sensitive subjects (To the West) that anime tackles.
I think people have different experiences that touch them in a certain way. Aside from that, I think Anime handles things unlike most reality shows shown on TV these days like the infamous Jersey Shore which are really dumb. Fanservice is questionable depending on the content, but mostly everything else about Anime is done better than western shows these days, although there are still good ones, but not as many.