Category Archives: thought exercise

The Beginner’s Anime

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If people ask me what they should show to others to introduce them to anime, Slayers is usually one of my first recommendations. It was one of the first anime I was proud to own, albeit in bootleg VHS fansub form. It was Slayers, specifically Slayers Gorgeous, that I believe got me into anime fandom in a major way. Sure, I loved Voltron as a kid, and I got into Dragon Ball Z as early as 4th or 5th grade, but it was Slayers that told me that Anime is Different when I walked into my high school’s anime club. Slayers was the type of thing you could show to a large crowd and get them all into the moment no matter how much anime they’d watched, which has made me always think of Slayers as a  good Beginner’s Anime. I’m sure you can think of plenty of other titles, like Cowboy Bebop, Robotech, or Naruto.

Actually, I don’t even know if anyone else besides me uses the term “Beginner’s Anime.” Pushing aside that fact, as well as the fact that people are different from one another and that there is clearly no universally acceptable standard for introducing anime to others, the term “Beginner’s Anime” implies that there are anime out there which may be too much for initial viewers, that there is a sort of conditioning or familiarizing that must occur before a fledgling anime fan can be introduced to the Good Stuff, distributed by some shady-looking guys in trenchcoats (hands up, you know who you are) in dark areas. Is it the way stories are structured? Is it the cultural differences and symbolism, the most prominent and perhaps infamous examples being the sweatdrop and the nosebleed? Is it a matter of attention span? This could go on forever and I doubt there’s an answer.

When I examine myself, I am not the anime fan I used to be. Sure, there’s a lot of factors both inside and outside the realm of anime which have influenced me and my watching habits, not least of which are the increase in availability of anime itself and the fact that I’ve simply gotten older, but I have to wonder what could have been. What about the time period I was in? I mean, the president of the anime club at the time was so proud of owning all of Cowboy Bebop that he could not wait to show it to us. It was the very beginning of the digisub age, when Napster was picking up steam and of course buying bootleg vhs fansubs was still a viable process. What about the fact that this was an anime club, a relatively social experience? Anime clubs are a dying breed today, and having a good social experience through anime may become less and less of a requirement. I even remember that when I took over this anime club a year later after the previous president had graduated, I noticed a sudden increase in the number of girls in the anime club. And then I tried to show them Serial Experiments Lain. As it  turns out, Lain is not a very good Beginner’s Anime, at least not as a social experience.

It’d be all too easy to say that every anime is a potential Beginner’s Anime. I mean, there’s a grain of truth to it all, but that sort of open-ended statement reduces the significance of all of the factors  outside of the anime-fan-to-be and the anime being watched. There are clearly some titles that succeed more than others at bringing in new fans, and I think it deserves research.

You’ll probably be seeing this topic again.

What if there was a Hot Dog Manga?

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I went to Coney Island yesterday and helped myself to some Nathan’s Hot Dogs, the world famous ones you can get at any franchise but they are especially special at Coney Island.

Yakitate Japan, Addicted to Curry, La Sommeliere, there’s all this food-themed manga in existence, so what if someone decided to aestheticize and romanticize the world of hot dogs? And I don’t mean hot dog eating, as that’d be way too easy.

Imagine a scene where a character is explaining the source from which one person made his hot dogs, and in the background as he’s explaining it you see giant vats of pureed meat and meat by-products churning around. The background itself would have bold speed lines to show the power with which the hot dog mix is being churned. It would all look beautiful.

…Maybe this would work better if it was about sausage, as it would put the creation of the actual sausages into the hands of the characters. Maybe in that case one of the battles would involve hot dogs.

(And every year all participants would put all their dreams into winning the Sausage Fest).

Fan-generated Fiction as some call it

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I recently listened to the Ninja Consultant podcast concerning the sexualization that occurs among fangirls, and the fact that this has become more prominent in recent times, with not only yaoi becoming a common sight at conventions but also modern works such as Dr. Who and Avatar: The Last Airbender being consciously aware of this fanbase. The topic of fanfiction comes up in the discussion, which is to be expected given that fanfiction and fangirls practically go hand in hand, but it reminded me of the fact that at the beginning of my own internet-based fandom I too was into fanfiction.

When I first began using the internet, my first fandom was a NiGHTS into dreams fanfiction site. I loved the Sega Saturn game to death (and still do), and I sought out other fans of NiGHTS. It was there that I found a site called “Nightopia on the Net” which would later change its name a few more times. It was here that I not only discovered other people with a passion for NiGHTS, but also stories that expanded upon the few plot details we were given as players of the game into a rich and vibrant (at least in my young eyes) universe. I’ve never read the Star Wars Extended Universe books, but I suspect the feeling was similar to anyone who is a fan of those, a feeling that the world given to us in these initial stories is so vast and unexplored that one can’t help but wonder what else is out there.

At some point, a few years down the line, I read fanfiction less and less. By this point I had been checking out fanfiction from various sources based on all sorts of series and would even actively seek out more unusual titles and concepts. Something in me began to sour, and I could no longer take fanfiction until I almost stopped reading it entirely. Back then, my reasoning was that I disliked the stories being produced for my fandoms, feeling that more than any sort of technical errors the problem was that the writers did not understand the characters. The characters’ actual personalities as displayed in their respective shows were nothing like the personalities displayed in fanfiction, and I asked (no one), “What’s the point of using these characters if you’re not going to actually use them?”

As mentioned in the Ninja Consultant discussion, it seems as if some works these days are simply there as fan fodder. Characters are given basic traits which appeal to the “shipping” side of fandom, and fans are free to ignore or cultivate any “evidence” as to whether or not their “One True Pair” could thrive. Setting aside any original creators’ desires to actively engage this line of thought, by all rights these are the people who are responsible for me leaving fanfiction in the first place.

But really was I, and am I, all that different?

Why do people enjoy pairing unreasonable characters together? To put it simply, it’s because they find the pairing to be hot. No big mysteries there. It’s what makes the Zutara pairing in Avatar so popular: a conflict of emotions, the fire/water dynamic, the idea that “if only they would get together, they would be great.” Of course, the conflict comes from actually getting them together.

Is there something wrong with this? Wanting to dive deeper into a world, to prove through fanfiction that there is so much more to a story, one can say that trying to find deeper subtext in the relationships presented is its own form of exploration. Hell, I can somewhat relate to making unreasonable pairings. I have a rather straight-laced friend who I would like to see date girls that would be all over him 24/7. Why? Because it would entertain me to no end.

Perhaps there is a threshold, and it is crossed when fans begin to believe that their opinions constitute the truth about a work, or even what should be true. This isn’t about creator’s vision vs spectator’s vision or anything of that sort, but rather to what extent people and groups begin to believe their own hype. Other than that, I think people are free to believe in whatever they want.

Even then, such a statement borders on the idea that there’s such a thing as a “right” fan and a “wrong” fan, and really, even if I find certain fans or their reasoning distasteful, I am just one person and I am not a judge of fanfiction. More importantly, I am not a judge of the heart.

After all, as Sasahara once said to Ogiue, no one can stop you from liking something.

Anime and Manga without Characters: A Thought Exercise

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First, take an anime. It can be anything.

Now, here’s the stipulation: Remove all the characters.

Too far?

Okay, try this. Remove all visual evidence of the characters. Have them off-screen at all times. Get rid of all photographs or visual indicators as to their actual appearance.

Oh, and just to be safe, have the language dubbed into let’s say…Latin.

Can you still call it “anime?”

What I’m trying to promote here with this little exercise is getting you to think about to what extent we define the “anime” style based on the characters, most likely human or humanoid characters. I know that the concept of “anime-style” visuals is in itself a shaky topic, and that there is a ton of variety already. However, at this point I don’t want to address the notion of putting anime characters in a western story, or putting western animation characters into an anime and seeing what happens. I’m saving that for another day, perhaps.

Anime and manga fans, myself included, frequently talk about how there’s more to the stuff than just big eyes, small mouths, the stereotypical fare. Tokyopop, in its efforts to distinguish its Rising Stars of Manga books, lists a number of literary devices and visual cues such as certain types of panel layouts. Scott McCloud in his “Comics” series of informational comic books says something similar.

It’s easy to say all this, but when I actually try my above exercise, removing all visual character evidence from an anime, I’m not sure what to think. Sure we can say that even if you don’t see them, there are certain aspects of anime that stand out, such as slow-paced slice-of-life shows, but that doesn’t apply to every work we see.

Here’s another one: A number of light novels written, Suzumiya Haruhi probably being the most famous at this point, are displayed with anime-style characters on their covers and in the illustrations in between. They are clearly meant to give the reader the impression that the characters are to be thought of as existing in that style.

Now remove those illustrations. Pretend they never existed.

Do you still see them as anime characters?

I believe, in the case of something like Haruhi, that it remains, based particularly on the character types. The tsundere character type that is Haruhi is tied to anime as a whole. I have to admit though, that I’m not sure how effectively I can pretend those visual never existed. It’s not easy, I know that.

There’s also the fact that I am an anime fan. I wonder how this work with someone who wasn’t as involved and interested in anime as I am. Maybe I’ll try it out with someone normal.

This brings up another question, though. If indeed there are certain factors, beyond visuals, which distinguish anime and manga, is this a limitation on their storytelling abilities?