ANIME IS NOT EQUAL TO CARTOONS

A: Hey, what are you doing tonight?
B: Oh I'm gonna watch some anime
A: Anime? Whats that?
B: You know, Japanese animation
A: Oh, you mean like cartoons?
B: ANIME ARE NOT CARTOONS!

a few days later A was found lying dead in a ditch.

Asking somebody "Do you like anime?" is as broad as asking "Do you like movies"?

A general definition of anime would be to say that anything animated in Japan with a Japanese director/producer is anime, but everybody has their own opinions, some going with the former, and others preferring to believe that anything distinctly Japanese-looking is anime.




There is anime for children, teens, adults and every sort of age group you can imagine. One of my friends once said "I don't believe emotions can be portrayed properly through animation" Well, the case is completely different with anime. You can have a good anime, a bad anime, just as you can have a good or a bad movie, and some can move you to tears.

Many people generalise anime the way they generalise cartoons. When you think "cartoon", the first things that will pop up involuntarily in your mind are "The Powerpuff Girls" or "Scooby Doo" or "Dexter's Lab". i.e. animated series aimed at the preschool/middle school audience intended for laughs. Not that there's anything wrong with those cartoons--they're classics--but the point I'm trying to put across is that anime cannot and should not be generalised to just that.

Of course, there are anime that cater to that audience, like Pokemon or dragonballZ, but there's a far wider range. Did you know that had it not been for anime, The Matrix would not have existed? They pointed at an anime called 'Ghost in the Shell' and said "We wanna do that for real".

Anime explores various themes, just as movies do. There are anime about anything you can imagine. Photography, Dance, Fashion, Slice of Life, Mystery, Psychological, Motherhood, Poverty, School, Business, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Mech, Homosexuality, Prostitution, Romance, Thriller, Detective, Religion, War, Comedy and Horror to name just A FEW. Oh, and also blue films.

Not all anime characters have big eyes, weirdly coloured hair, and any other stereotype you may have in your mind. And added to that, just because an anime character may have purple eyes or green hair doesn't make the theme or plot line any less mature.

Another friend once said "Japanese animation is pretty bad in general isn't it"? Not realising that the only "anime" she had ever watched were cut scenes from a Japanese video game.

Many people even chose to refer to anime as an art form unto itself. The styles can vary from artist to artist or from studio to studio. Some have wild exaggerated styles, some conform to reality, and some are everything in between. Artbooks are sold (books containing art from a particular series), often at exorbitant prices, and people buy them. In many anime, great attention is put into the background of the scene, the detail sometimes bordering on photographic realism. I'm not saying that all anime offer mind blowing visuals-- just that the spectrum of quality is as broad as that of movies.









Now, on to the money and popularity.
The anime market for the United States alone is worth approximately $4.35 BILLION, and thats excluding the rest of the world and Japan itself. Fans engage in cosplay, which means dressing up as an anime character. A certain anime series (one of my favourites) from the 1990s called Neon Genesis Evangelion was such a hit that it is currently being remade by the same director as a set of four movies, so that he can do it with better visual effects and a clearer storyline. The Blu-Ray release of one of the movies in the series became the overall number one Blu-Ray selling in Japan.














Anime conventions are held every year in different parts of the world, where anime fans from all over the globe can gather, meet and partake in various anime/Japan related activities. Companies also attend to promote upcoming titles and products. Anime EXPO is probably the most popular convention, held every year for four days, normally in Los Angeles. The attendence for the year 2010 alone was 1,05,000.
How I wish I could capitalise numbers...
There are so many more things to mention, such as the setting up of statues of iconic anime characters or entire streets in Japan dedicated only to anime, or the magazine Business Times doing a cover issue on anime as an export...but I'll stop for now...and i wanted to put up more pics and arrange them properly but the blog wouldn't let me :/ maybe I'll do a presentation in class or something later...

I guess the point I'm trying to put accross is that if you think that anything animated is "just a cartoon" and meant only for kids, then its your loss.

I am B, and you could be A. ;)
-Winona