“And the Oscar goes to . . . Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away!”
During the Academy Awards this year, an anime movie called Spirited Away won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was the first anime movie ever to receive such an honor in the United States. This prompted many people to say that anime is finally beginning to hit the mainstream. However, what they don’t realize is that it already has.
Anime, the slang term for Japanese animation, is a type of cartoon that is characterized by crazy hairdos, large eyes, and weird facial expressions. It is most definitely not a normal cartoon by American Standards, however. More often than not, anime contains adult themes and deeper meanings of seemingly shallow things.
Anime has been with us for sometime now. In late September of 1963, a show called Astro Boy appeared on the American front. This show was the first anime show ever to be aired regularly on American TV. A few years later in 1967, the baby boomer generation watched the first Speed Racer, which was also an anime show. However, neither of these were actually labeled as anime. They were both just another cartoon.
With Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, however, many things changed. For one, the mondo-popular Sailor Moon appeared June 1, 1998, followed closely by the release of the equally-popular DragonBall Z on August 31 of the same year. These two shows became an integral part of American pop culture, and soon, people everywhere were talking about “DBZ” and Sailor Moon. Elementary school kids had lunchboxes portraying their favorite characters, and weekday afternoons from 4:30 to 5:30 were virtually silent, save for the sound of the shows coming from TVs in the homes of Americans everywhere.
These two shows, although they were anime imports, were heavily edited. For example, in DBZ, they erased any trace of ANY objectionable material, including guns, alcoholic beverages, and suggestive dialogue. In fact, they edited an entire character out of the show, renamed other characters, and drastically changed personalities. In the Japanese version of Sailor Moon, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune were lovers; in the United States, their characters were changed to be cousins. Gives “kissin’ cousins” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
It is not uncommon for anime shows to be edited in such ways. In Japan, anime is made for adults, not children. Children do not have time for fun. When you walk onto a Japanese subway, many of its passengers will be reading “manga,” a type of anime comic book. For this reason, “adult themes” frequently appear in many anime shows. However, in America, they are edited out.
When the late 90’s came along, it brought with it the most popular kids show of it’s time: Pokemon. Most people at least heard something about the Pokemon phenomenon. It sparked plush toys, a clothing line, a card game, at least three movies, and a whole lot of controversy. Angry moms declared it satanic because it taught kids to pit their “pet” Pokemon against other people’s Pokemon and (GASP!) knock them out. But really, Pokemon teaches values that are not present in other cartoon shows. For example, instead of growling and being bad losers, most of the characters on the show bow and congratulate their opponent on their win. Even during the battles, each team takes turns. Compare this to other shows. Fighting with turns? What, are you kidding?Just take a look at other shows of the time. The fights were free for alls! Even the beloved Bugs Bunny frequently delivered blows below the belt.
Towards the beginning of the new millennium, Cartoon Network aired another block of programming devoted mostly to anime. It showed late at night, and was called “Adult Swim.” It proved to many people that anime is not just for kids, and furthermore, some shows are not for kids at all if you get my drift. The show Cowboy Bebop contains smoking, more deaths-per-episode and blood that thought humanly possible, and also, the Earth had been devastated in the show. That’s not kid stuff at all.
And now Hayao Miyazaki comes along with Spirited Away, and people are proclaiming it the “Big Bang” of anime in the mainstream? I say no. It was not sudden at all. It has been here all along, but it is only now that people are beginning to recognize it for what it is.
yeah.. i wrote this a while ago... right after the oscars. tell me what you think.
-Cheelala
