I saw a meme a while back and it got me thinking about the nature of anime. I'll share the meme below after the cut but do we ever really think about just how strange anime really is. Not to say that western cartoons aren't strange, many of them are, but anime just has this other realm of strangeness that no one really points out...except for now...here we go!
After seeing this meme (no clue what anime this is, though) I started thinking about anime and it's strangeness. Specifically "Durarara", for all intents and purposes "Durarara" is a pretty down to earth anime about a city overrun with gangs and crime and it would be a simple story...if it weren't for the (incredibly sexy) dullahan (headless fairy of Irish folklore) working as a courier. Just how on Earth do you explain such a series to people? And oddly enough "Durarara" doesn't really play up the supernatural aspects of their series...like that there is a dhampir (daywalker) roaming about and apparently a hoard of zombies controlled by a sword obsessed with love who are sleepers and can be activated at any time by the wielder of the sword...what the f*ck is this series?
Consider the "Dragonball" series, it's basically about a guy who likes to fight, Goku saving the world is essentially a side-quest to him, although he hates a bully, Goku is more interested in fighting someone who is strong...hence why he put a hit out on himself just so he can face Hit again at his top form...what the f*ck is the "Dragonball" series? Not to mention "Assassination Classroom" a story that is by all account horrifying and yet is played mostly for laughs, with Koro-Sensei being some kind of yellow semi-humanoid tentacle monster...and everyone just accepting his strangeness and he has the ability to destroy the moon and he's teaching high school before he destroys the world...unless they can kill him...what the f*ck is "Assassination Classroom"?
Basically, Western cartoons are much more straight forward than anime, and yeah while anime is straight forward...explaining them to people who aren't initiated (but we are initiated, aren't we Bruce?) and by that I mean people who are aware of just how bizarre anime can be will make you sound like a lunatic. After all, there are countless memes of people watching a wholesome anime, and right when there is one scene of fan service the uninitiated enter the room and demand to know what you're watching and you're left looking like a perv who jerks it to real girls...I mean 2D girls...that's what I meant...that's totally what I meant...
So anime also invented several genres one being harem anime, in which a male protagonist is surrounded by beautiful women who vary in personality but are all working towards the goal of jumping his bones, there is Isekai which is essentially in western terms "a fish outta water" story, but this means a hero (mostly male) traveling to a different world and this genre has recently become extremely popular but all of these again lend themselves to the bizarre nature of anime. Now bear in mind "The Simpsons" and "King Of The Hill" have bizarre elements within but the shows don't take much explaining, both are essentially satires of the American experience, one (The Simpson) being far more absurd than the other. Japan doesn't quite do satire as much as Americans do.
Another genre in anime is "slice of life" which is just as it sounds, about the day to day life of a character, and while these shows seemingly have no plot the storytelling in most of these are simply amazing. While not entirely a slice of life anime, "A Sister Is All You Need" is a perfect example of a seemingly plotless anime about a writer and we're simply watching him do things with his friends and work towards the completion of his book and its fun to watch. There was an episode where the majority of it was them simply playing a board game (a board game that actually exists, mind you) and it was fun to watch and made me wanna purchase said board games.
Anime is such a strange animal because it lends itself to a reality that is hyper-realistic, exaggerating almost anything to comedic proportions from male sexual arousal, to incredibly bizarre scenarios that most of us can't even fathom that are merely brushed off as just a thing that happened, to taking something that should be outright horrifying and making it comedic, in the case of "Shimoneta" where children are made to wear monitoring collars that report their every action to the government in hopes to crack down on lewd behavior...as Orwellian as that sounds...this is a comedy.
Putting anime in a box is hard to do unless that box is specifically designed for anime, no way is anime going to be able to put in a box as merely a cartoon. While famed shows like "Justice League", "Batman The Animated Series" and "X-Men: The Animated Series" feature some adult themes, children can watch them without adults intervening, the same cannot be said for anime. And that's not because anime is risque' or features violence or whatever, it's because anime unleashes the full power of animated storytelling to do things live-action can't, a few examples would be the exaggerations of reality I discussed earlier. Without the fanfare and effects of animation moments like striking a pose after introducing oneself or shouting down an opponent would come off as extremely awkward.
Not to mention can we just discuss how strange "Tenchi" is? Not only does the show have a spin-off but it features several series which (kinda) tell the same story and features the same character albeit a touch different: "Tenchi Muyo: Ryo-Ohki", "Tenchi Universe" (which sucks), "Tenchi In Tokyo"...not to mention "Pretty Sammy" the Sasami spin-off. Why so many re-tellings of what is essentially the same story? The only equivalent to that would be Marvel's Ultimates Universe. "Tenchi" is easily an outlier for this kind of thing, even by anime standards.
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| Kyione saves this abomination... |
Also, can we quickly give credit to "Dragonball Z", one of the very few animes without fan-service and a prominent perverted character, yes, Master Roshi is a pervert but he's not featured frequently enough to make his perversion as a hindrance to the series as a whole. Fighting aside, "Dragonball Z" is actually surprisingly wholesome and is more or less unique to the anime world. It's not overly dark, serious when it needs to get serious, comedic at times, and sometimes just downright goofy, but I have a hard time making heads or tails of the series because sometimes the series doesn't take itself that seriously. Anyways, those are my thoughts on anime. Lemme know what you think and I'll catch you guys later!
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