Two Christmases ago, one of my presents was a shirt. It was a nice black shirt, my favorite color, with the words, “It’s an anime thing, you wouldn’t understand.” written in red on it. My initial thought with this is that, “Only took them three years or so to award me this shirt for my dedication to this medium.”
In truth, I believe there is some honesty reflected in those words. Anime, to me, has a feeling and entertainment value to it that I would proudly declare is separate from shows in American and European television. Many of the latter play fairly close to their respective genre. You know you’ll get mystery from Sherlock or Criminal Minds, romance and drama from Gilmore Girls, and comedy and the occasional feels from How I Met Your Mother or New Girl. You always know what you will get from these shows because they know their audience. Anime also knows it’s audience, but what we want goes deeper than genre tropes and givens. There are always humanistic aspects to this medium that I never see done as well elsewhere.
Take Pokémon, since everyone seems to be into that with the popular mobile app. Watching it as a child, I was enchanted with tales of colorful creatures fighting in spectacular battles and how a kid form Pallet Town was going to be the Pokémon Master. Coming back to it at a later age, I saw a tale of a boy who came to see the world and the uncountable ways people lived with the creatures living in their world. Ash didn’t always agree with how some people treated their Pokémon because it was different from his, but so long as they were good of heart, he learned to accept and support their right to their own lifestyle. There was also the problem of traveling cross-country and how sometimes you have to work for your meal that day. Even the movies, at least the first four, come along with deep messages that speak not just to the world of Pokémon, but our world as well.
For many, anime is full of super-powered individuals fighting out for the fate of a world or a village in any manner of creative fashions. To me, there is a humanistic aspect written well into these shows and movies that often gets overlooked. I keep coming back to these shows because of how engaging the moral dilemmas, identity crises, and self-confidence issues are. They tackle these topics and much more in a way that I become invested in the show, from the notable heroes and villains all the way down to minor characters. Everyone feels alive and real in anime, and I highly suggest everyone look into this medium of entertainment.
Whether it be something popular like a Studio Ghibli film or something more obscure you run across while surfing Netflix or Hulu, allow yourself the chance to see just why anime is enjoyed so passionately by people all around the world.
