I Like Anime. Wanna Fight About It?

So yeah, I like anime. Many people who know me know I like cartoons in general. More often than not, I'd rather watch a cartoon than any live action show on TV. In the past few years, though, my interests have shifted from what you'd find on Cartoon Network to mostly anime. This has as much to do with quality as evolution of interest.

It isn't always easy being an anime fan, though. As a 30-something I've found it awkward telling people that I do like it. It has to do with the popular, skewed view of what anime is. Thanks to a few shows which are either popular now or have been popular in the past there is a view of what anime is which isn't entirely accurate. Yes, there are series which star pointy-haired, super freaks out to save the world from grotesquely strong aliens. And we can't talk about anime without talking about giant robots piloted by emo teens (hell, anime practically invented emo). Finally, yes, there are innumerable series which portray tentacled creatures having their ways with women. Once one gets past these generalizations it isn't hard to see that anime is much like any other form of entertainment: there are genres, sub-genres, cross-genres, sub-cross-genres and so on ad nauseum. Unfortunately, these get swept aside by the public-at-large because all they see are the shows that have become annoyingly popular or stereotyped. I will be fair though, much like any other genre, it is easy to find rehashed ideas. This seems to have become a bigger problem in the past decade due to what some are calling an "anime bubble".

Another issue I think the non-anime watching public can't get past is that "cartoons are for kids". This is a cultural issue which has become the case more in the past 20 years since the Children's Television Act was signed into law. I don't know about you but as someone who watched cartoons in the decade-plus prior to and well after it's enactment I saw a significant change in the quality of animated entertainment. The notion that "cartoons are for kids" became more and more a reality. Granted, there are cartoons which harken back to a day before the drivel but unfortunately, they are few.

"Well, what about The Simpson or Family Guy?" While I'm a fan of these shows The Simpsons hasn't been very relevant for at least 10 years and Family Guy points to another problem I've developed with American animated entertainment; that of extremes. We either make cartoons for children or we make cartoons for adults (see Adult Swim's original shows. Although, to be fair, they show anime, too). There typically is no middle ground (save for at least the one example mentioned above). Anime series, on the other hand, often appeal to a range of age groups. That appeal probably has to do with one of the things I enjoy about anime. One can be watching a show which is emotionally involved only to have the tender moments broken up with subtle bouts of humor.

Once you get past the blobby eyes in so many of them it is easy to see that they often portray their stories in the same manner we as living beings face our lives. Understandably, we don't deal with the often fantastical aspects of their stories but that's contextually irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, we don't manage our lives strictly using crude humor (or humor in general, for that matter) nor do we make everything fluffy and gloss over the difficult aspects in juvenile ways. We apply all of our emotions and cognitive reasoning in order to understand and deal with our situations. Most anime does the same. Even the popular shows about the pointy-haired super freaks.

That actually hits on a big reason for why I like anime so much. Even being animated they tell essentially the same stories that live-action shows often do. However, I prefer anime over said live-action shows because it's not only easier to get past the hokiness of some of the narratives but they actually embrace it whereas live-action shows often do their best to portray fiction as possible reality. In other words anime doesn't take itself too seriously.

So yeah, I like anime.