Afterword: The Future of Anime 2.0
A book like this usually ends with a list of resources—titles of anime that qualify as “required viewing,” for example. This book has no such list, for two important reasons.
For one thing, pop culture is very ephemeral. Some manga and anime titles are literally here one month or year and gone the next, and new material rushes in to fill the vacuum. Think of American television: in any given year, two to three dozen new series premiere, of which only a handful survive to a second season. Even if some of those short-lived “failures” were works of actual merit, with superior acting and compelling stories, they’re probably gone for good—even with cable channels picking up some older series.
So it is with anime: today’s masterpiece may be tomorrow’s museum piece, or may be totally forgotten, with a rapidity that would put American television to shame. In manga, the wellspring of many anime, some successful series run on for years, leaving that much less space in the magazines for a new story to catch on with the public. One solution has been to start new magazines. These come and go, and occasionally these stories will be enough of a hit that it will be animated. Still, the majority of manga appear and disappear without ever making it into animation, and even among those that do, a number of them do not make the transition to anime well, and never quite catch on.
Fortunately for the followers of popular culture—and unfortunately for writers who try to document it—these changes are continuous, ongoing. Old talents leave the scene, new talents come on; tastes change; innovations may become commonplace, and may then become boring. Still, the best of the best in anime always seems fresh, both to the veteran viewers familiar with it and to the upcoming generation seeing it for the first time—and, thanks to the Internet, more and more of the old classics are finding a new online home. Some scenes (the dozens of bodies under the ice of Pluto in Galaxy Express 999, Sharon Apple singing while flying through the streets of Macross in Macross Plus, Nausicaä waiting for certain death from a stampede of Ohmu, Ayako the miko summoning tree spirits in the Ghost Hunt series, the entire On Your Mark music video) never seem to lose their power—for me, at least.
Another factor is my own subjectivity. If you’ve paid attention, you’ve noticed this entire book is a collection of my personal favorites. It’s based on my exposure plus my experience, not limited to anime. This book necessarily draws on my entire past—from manga I read a week ago to college courses I took a decade ago—and of course anyone reading this book will have an entirely different set of exposure and experience.
Your taste comes into play as well. Even if all the anime ever made somehow became available to everyone, some titles simply won’t interest some fans. There are those who consider themselves too old for titles like Pokémon or Monster Rancher, some consider Di Gi Charat and other kawaii series too cutesy to bear, some dismiss Dragon Ball Z and Fist of the North Star as just one fight scene after another, sports stories like Prince of Tennis or Inazuma Eleven are just too sporty, and some won’t watch anime that give off even a whiff of hentai.
Three Little Words
So it’s the height of presumption for me to declare that some anime must be seen and others must be avoided. I do, however, have a few recommendations.
The first is: watch. As much as possible. Too many judgments have been passed on whole subgenres of anime, not to mention on anime itself, without really perceiving its breadth, complexity, and sophistication. No one could draw an accurate conclusion on Sailor Moon, for instance, having only seen Akira—or vice versa—and neither would really prepare you for something as freeform as Shamanic Princess or as epic as Princess Mononoke. Besides, some of the funniest anime are funny precisely because they parody other anime. (I’m thinking of Sailor Victory, which manages to spoof Sailor Moon, Evangelion, Key the Metal Idol, and a half-dozen other anime titles.) By all means focus on a genre if it’s your favorite, but don’t neglect the others.
My second recommendation: read. While anime as we understand the term has existed for just over fifty years, human beings have been around a lot longer than that. Anime is an art form that is especially good at reflecting the human condition, as well as cultural specifics unique to Japan. But you’ll be limited in your understanding of anime if you don’t read outside of anime. Many anime and manga were directly inspired by great writing. Even a casual look through a collection of videos points back to a hundred literary sources: Japanese and American history, writers from Homer to Jules Verne to Conan Doyle to Mark Twain, ecology and theology and the quest for perfection in an imperfect world. If you ignore literature and history and everything that ties into popular culture, you’ll only be seeing a fraction of what’s on the screen.
Of course, words don’t only appear in books. So the third recommendation: surf. The Internet has contributed beyond measure to the growth in popularity of anime. Fans build cybershrines for their own favorites and for the entertainment and education of others, and the artists and animation studios themselves have also taken to the Internet as a way to advertise new works or commemorate the old. There’s a lot of misinformation, speculation, rumor, and wishful thinking on the Web, but also a lot of information that’s hard—if not impossible—to come by any other way.
And, of course, reading and watching can, and should, be done on the Internet as well as off. Blogs, message boards, and sites such as the Anime News Network are well established now, and no longer the work only of amateurs.
Pros and Cons
Reading may be a solitary activity, but fans of anything, from baseball teams to opera singers, like to get together with other fans, compare notes, trade information, and remember why they have that particular fandom in common. This certainly applies to anime fans.
As anime grew out of manga, anime conventions grew out of the first convention of fans of dojinshi manga; about 700 fans in the Tokyo area got together to celebrate their favorite medium in 1975. It was called Comiket, a shortened version of Comic Market. The fans weren’t the only ones paying attention: it was a ready-made marketing opportunity, and the message wasn’t lost on studios, publishing houses, and everyone from cooks to costumers. The conventions (“cons” for short) grew in size and number and are now a major part of anime fandom, especially in the United States. Every large city (and many smaller ones) has at least one con per year.
Cons have gone far beyond presenting academic research papers and selling sushi and Pocky. There is a con circuit that arranges appearances from special guests (mostly English voice actors, but also Japanese directors, voice artists, idol singers, or other industry representatives). Cosplay is no longer limited to a single fashion show event; some participants are in costume for the length of the con. Cons have included screening rooms, video game rooms, galleries displaying fan art, concerts by Japanese rock bands, and parlors for playing traditional Japanese board games like shogi and go.1
The names of these cons reflect the love of puns and multiple meanings found in the Japanese language. Columbus, Ohio has the Ohayocon, trading the spelling of the name of the state for the Japanese greeting meaning “Good morning.” The city of Guelph, Ontario, Canada has Con-G, a play on kanji, the word for Chinese characters in Japanese writing. The University of Chicago has a one-day gathering called UChi-Con, turning the name of the university into uchi, the Japanese word for “home.” Denver has one of the cleverest puns: Nan Desu Kan, based on the phrase “Nan desu ka”—what is that?
Do-It-Yourself
The first edition of this book was written at a time when animation software was still evolving. Given one extra year, the section would have had a very different focus. To be specific about it, I have seen the future of computer-generated anime, and its name is Makoto Shinkai.
Shinkai (born Makoto Niitsu in 1973) captured anime fan attention in 1999, at age sixteen, with a five-minute black-and-white piece titled She and Her Cat. An episodic look at a young woman through the eyes of her pet cat, the film’s narrative style was heavily influenced by the French New Wave cinema. Most important, though, was the fact that Shinkai created the anime on his home Macintosh computer. The short was widely acclaimed and, more important for Shinkai, opened the door for him to tackle larger projects. Just as dojinshi manga are used by the older established publishers to scout up-and-coming talent, She
and Her Cat enabled Shinkai to work on a larger project. Again, it was a home-produced anime, Hoshi no Koe (Voice of the Stars, known in English as Voices of a Distant Star), a twenty-five-minute short in color, with a subtle and sophisticated plot. It’s a love story between two teens, one of whom goes into the military to train for an interplanetary war. The only way the two can keep in touch is by texting; the farther apart they are, the longer between text messages. What kind of toll would that take on the relationship?
This led to a feature-length anime created in 2004 at a professional studio: Kumo no Muko, Yakusoku no Basho, literally Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place, known in English as The Place Promised in Our Early Days. By now the hallmarks of a Shinkai anime were well established: the somewhat muted but very elaborate color palette, languid pacing, crisp lines, and an intimate natural feel even amid fantastic events. These traits control this alternate history in which postwar Japan was occupied by two sets of foreigners: the United States for most of the islands, except for the northernmost island, Hokkaido, under the control of the Soviet Union. Neither nation’s technology, however, could have built the tall cylindrical tower on the border between the two occupying armies. The principal characters make it their business to investigate this tower, by any means, at any risk. However, this is more of a science-fiction teen romance like Hoshi no Koe, and has helped give birth to similar anime by the bigger studios (such as the TV series Eureka Seven, directed by Tomoki Kyoda, and Summer Wars, directed by Mamoru Hosoda).
And yet, for his most recent feature anime, Makoto Shinkai has used the facilities of a major studio to tell a mainstream story—on his own terms—and do it very well. Titled in Japanese Hoshi o Ou Kodomo (Children who Chase a Star), its English title is Children Who Chase Lost Voices, which is a bit more accurate. A much better description would be the title Princess Mononoke, Part 2. San and Ashitaka are replaced by a student named Asuna and her substitute teacher, in a pastoral rural Japan very like the world of Tonari no Totoro or Omoide Poroporo: no computers, no modern distractions, and the highest hi-tech communications device is an old crystal-set radio. Asuna takes this out to the countryside, listening for the mysterious singing she heard one time. These trips allow her to meet strange monsters and a boy who protects her, and gain access to the Underworld.
Science fiction is full of stories of subterranean civilizations, but this one has its spiritual roots in Shinto. The biggest hint is when the substitute teacher—who is there because the regular teacher is about to have a baby—reads to the class from the Kojiki, Shinto’s—and by extension Japan’s—creation myth. He reads about how the goddess Izanami died, and how her sibling/lover Izanagi traveled to the underworld to bring her back. He could not do this, but the teacher, whose wife died while he was at war, has resolved to succeed where a god has failed.
In the end, he sees her spirit in the underworld, but the only way she can again take human form is to take over Asuna’s body, which would mean killing her. He takes this option seriously for a moment but ultimately lets it go. Asuna, who is shown conversing in an early scene with her late father through the household shrine, understood life and death as bound together.
If Princess Mononoke is Shinto 101, Children Who Chase Lost Voices is Shinto 201. The characters—and the audience—are reminded of the wisdom of Shinto out of which Japan and its culture arose, and the need to respect and cherish life so that we may be respected and cherished in return. A similar message is part of Mamoru Hosoda’s second feature, Summer Wars, with the ninetieth birthday celebration of the matriarch of a large and boisterous family contrasted with imminent Armageddon brought about by a hack into a social media program (which, in a delightfully modern gag, is presided over by two moderators: yin/yang whales named John and Yoko).
Homemade anime is obviously not for everyone, but it’s an extension of an essential part of Japanese pop culture, one which has pervaded this book: dojinshi. It’s the equivalent of the “underground comics” of the 1960s in the United States. Some were produced by amateur artists spinning off variations on already-established characters or creating whole new characters, scenes, and adventures. Others were the work of semi-professionals who chafed at the restrictions of the established syndicates and the Comics Code.
There are two important similarities between dojinshi and underground comics. The first is that popular comic characters are put into bizarre, often sexual, situations. (We’ve already seen that Japanese pop culture has a higher tolerance for sexual activity than its Western counterpart.) Second, and more important than sex, is the fact that an artist is using someone else’s characters; on both sides of the Pacific, this is illegal.
The difference between the two cultures seems to be the statement that the artist is making. In the West, where comic content has to meet the Comics Code or be declared “underground,” the non-Code artist may use a Disney character to make a statement about American society and freedom of the press, or about the vapid blandness of the Disney universe. In any event, they couldn’t be considered fans of Disney while subjecting those characters to sarcasm and mockery. Owners of such characters, or protectors of a certain image associated with those characters, tend to sue.
Japanese dojinshi artists, on the other hand, are truly fans. Even if the content is outrageous, the attitude underlying the comic is respectful and enthusiastic. There’s all the difference in the world between Western underground comic artists staging an orgy of Disney characters, and the CLAMP collective’s first dojinshi manga, which created gay pairings for the knights of the popular manga/anime Saint Seiya (known in the West as Knights of the Zodiac). They weren’t out to make a statement; they were playful, thinking “what if . . . ” and following that thought.
For this reason, dojinshi do not seem to be ripping anybody off. A few actually rise to the status of companion volumes to the original manga (the word dojin means companion). Of course, some dojinshi art is amateurish, and the “plot” is basically one joke, but it’s understood that they’re not trying to pass themselves off as the real deal. It’s the dream of just about every budding manga artist to land a series in a major magazine, and the dream starts early when the magazines themselves encourage readers to submit their own “fan art” versions of popular characters.
Such success is easier to find in manga than in anime. After all, in the beginning, every artist starts out alone with just a pen and paper. Since most manga are no longer one-person works, an aspiring artist can join another artist’s staff, doing fill-in and clean-up artwork to perfect the craft. Animation, however, is always a corporate effort, employing a host of artists, writers, voice actors, composers, musicians, and representatives selling the product to television networks or DVD companies. There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as dojinshi anime.
But wait a minute . . .
I Want My AMV
Just as the Internet spawned global interest in and knowledge of anime, the new fans have used anime in their own ways. It’s impossible to trace the Anime Music Video (AMV) back to its source, since the Internet and home-based PCs are merely the latest ways of modifying pop culture that’s already out in the marketplace.
The name of the game is bricolage. According to the dictionary,2 bricolage is “a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.” Informal examples of bricolage have been popping up in all media. AMVs, however, usually involve a lot of planning and labor, especially if trying to synchronize movements to a musical beat or singing to lip-flaps that, when they were created, had nothing to do with the AMV director’s hoped-for result.
AMVs are literally beyond counting. More are created every day somewhere in the world and posted to social networking sites like YouTube or animemusicvideos.org, which, as the name suggests, is now a club with membership, rules, contests, information-exchange forums, and other features placing it somewhere between professional video editing and amateur fun and games. AMVs also vanish from time to time, as the copyright holder for music or visuals decides that their work is being used unfairly.
From the sheer number of examples, there’s no such thing as a “typical” AMV. At their best, they can be humorously ironic in the combination of audio and video from two or more different sources, and sometimes they’re only meant to be fun, or lyrical, diversions. Only very rarely does an AMV rise above the fan level. Offhand, I can think of one such moment:
The music track is the Kenny Loggins song “Footloose,” written for the movie of the same name. One verse includes the somewhat clichéd lyric “You’re burning yearning for somebody to tell you that life ain’t passing you by.” The final part of that line is illustrated with an anime clip of two young fair-haired boys speaking to someone lying in bed. Then it hits: it’s the scene from Fullmetal Alchemist in which the Elric brothers are trying to cheer up their mother. It’s no use; she’s dying, and the viewer knows, even without being able to articulate it in complete prose sentences, that her imminent death will trigger the entire plot of the series. By using the song lyrics literally, that one brief connection of words and music packs a lot of unexpected meaning into a small moment.
And there’s more to come. As of this writing, the technology has expanded, as technology—especially computer technology—tends to do. The AMV creator is no longer limited to cutting and pasting clips; the technology now exists to allow characters from various anime to exist in the same frame. One fascinating modern video incorporates characters from a host of Disney movies (including The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Treasure Planet, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame), as well as animation from other studios, “interacting” with each other. At this rate, there’s literally no way to tell what might happen next.
All of this can literally change tomorrow. Not too long ago, a Pentium I chip was state of the art, and a one-gigabyte home computer was the stuff of science fiction. Home desktop computers now store 500 gigabytes as a matter of course. I suspect it’s still going to be a long time before a single fan at a home computer can idly whip out an animated scene as fully realized as a scene from Toy Story or the Final Fantasy videogame series. I also know that somebody out there is busily trying to design software to give a user just such power. That software designer may have a friend who’s thinking about a game he played as a child, which he may try to turn into the next Pokémon. The day of dojinshi anime may not be too far off.
I for one can hardly wait.
1. The American interest in go, a traditional territory-capture board game, traces back entirely to 1998 and the publication of Hikaru no Go, a manga drawn by Takeshi Obata and written by Yumi Hotta, and its subsequent anime. For more on this series, see the suicide section in part 1, chapter 16.