You’ve heard about it. You know what it is and may also have seen it on TV.
It’s a little thing called anime. Cue the inevitable eye roll followed by, “Ugh, those weird Japanese cartoons?”
All jests aside, anime has slowly been ingraining itself into American pop culture, gaining more and more fans along the way. The main counterpoint to this may be that anime doesn’t make up too much of the American entertainment industry; yet, despite how small that proportion may be, it’s enough. It’s enough for studios like Funimation to dub hundreds upon hundreds of anime in English because people enjoy them so much. It’s enough for merchandise to trickle over from Japan into the States. It’s enough to realize that anime is a sort of “silent pop culture”; one that not only has an audience, but has vast potential as an animation medium and a bright future in this country.
Those uninitiated in relation to anime have many questions to ask and cynicism to express, and rightly so. Take a look at nearly any anime in existence and it becomes easy to see that it is a world apart (well, technically, a hemisphere apart) from Western animation. Many concepts in anime can be perceived as strange, from unorthodox storytelling to diverse symbolism to something as seemingly small as blue-haired characters. This strangeness, however, is at the core of why it is so appealing to many Americans and why it has grown in popularity. Coupled with some key timing and a helping hand from certain networks, the distinct features of anime helped turn the genre from a niche market into the animation craze it is today.
Anime series such as “Dragon Ball Z” or “Sailor Moon” made a big splash in the States because they were in the right place at the right time. Before the mid-to-late 90s, anime was in very short supply; only a handful of series like “Speed Racer,” “Voltron: Defender of the Universe,” and “Battle of The Planets” gained followings, and even then, those followings weren’t enough to conclude that anime had a definite presence in America. Naturally, when the 90s came around, shows like the previously mentioned “Dragon Ball Z” were practically unprecedented in terms of animation quality, acting, story, and overall appeal. During the 90s, anime was a new, fresh form of escapism bursting with original ideas and fun. But it didn’t end there.
Enter the early 2000s. By the turn of the millennium, Cartoon Network had a new programming block known as Toonami: a large chunk of air time dedicated to anime shows and films from all manner of genres and styles, such as “Inuyasha,” “Gundam Wing,” “Bleach,” and “Naruto.” Given that the internet wasn’t really used for streaming shows during this time, Toonami became the place to get hooked on anime. Because of Cartoon Network’s burgeoning popularity, the anime audience in America became more numerous. Escapism was still an important component of what made anime so great, but that wasn’t the only thing that boosted its popularity to new heights. By this time, Toonami and film distributors and studios like Miramax introduced newer, more complex kinds of anime—ones that were smart, creative, and simply unforgettable.
Films like “Spirited Away” and “Ghost in the Shell” and shows like “Cowboy Bebop” even further differentiated anime from Western animation. These kinds of projects showed the medium was capable of subtlety, intricate and compelling narratives, challenging established beliefs in the real world and inspiring new ones to be created, and overall growing closer to audiences’ emotions and ideals through ingenious writing, cinematography, and other elements. This is perhaps one of the most critical reasons why we still hear about and see anime today; why, although its place of origin is many, many miles away, it is something that people hold near and dear to their hearts just as people treasure facets of homegrown American culture. It is on the whole a beautiful, promising art form, the likes of which we don’t see too often from creators in any country, in the United States or otherwise. It is so revolutionary that it has gone so far as to inspire famous, acclaimed films such as “The Matrix.”
Is anime perfect? Well, just like Western animation, it isn’t. But—just like Western animation—it’s a platform for remarkable ideas and projects. And to this day, it’s an animation medium that continues to demonstrate excellence and deserves respect and recognition. There is a reason executives from Cartoon Network or Miramax or Disney even bothered to bring anime westward in the first place. They see the potential it holds.
And you know what? Those “anime nerds” people speak of see it too.
