Perpetuating the Anime Stereotype

Lori Lancaster | October 5, 2005
Well... We all know that anime is either of the pokemon variety for kids or the insanely twisted hentai stuff... So.. for your viewing pleasure:

(link) Robot Chicken Sailormoon skit.

Features pup-tent scene, so may not be work safe.

Scott Hardie | October 16, 2005
It is? I've been watching intelligent, non-twisted anime for grownups for years. Then again, I've also been listening to fanboys tell me for years that all adults in Japan watch anime, which is just ridiculous. So whatever. (And yeah, I know you're being sarcastic.)

Lori Lancaster | October 17, 2005
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Kris Weberg | November 2, 2005
An interesting(?) article on manga culture by an American comics fan:

(link)

Lori Lancaster | November 2, 2005
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Kris Weberg | November 2, 2005
Trust me when I say, as a reader of American comics, that no one here gets sued even for the most blatant swiping. More than one artist at Marvel pretty much made a career in the 90s out of swiping poses and panels wholesale from more popular artists.

Lori Lancaster | November 2, 2005
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Aaron Shurtleff | November 3, 2005
I've seen a few anime titles (I won't say which, for fear of being laughed at, or finding out that something I really like is considered "lame" by the experts), but I have another issue, that I would like to throw up for the Gods of Anime, Manga, or whatever the appropriate word is (is there a difference between the two words????)

I was at my local book megastore (rhymes with Hoarders...or Whorders!), and I was in the SciFi/Fantasy Section (THANK (insert relevant deity here...in all caps) that there are still some places that don't insist on splitting them up...although I might be the only person who likes to see them together!), which is next to the "graphic novels" section (which I guess is megabookemporium-speak for Anime/Manga (will someone tell me the appropriate word!!!). These teeny-boppers come in (by teenybopper, I mean anyone who is female and has a double digit number for their age, but is still in high school...god I'm old), and they meet up with their friends and one of them shouts out "NIHAO!!!" (or I think it's spelled like that...KNEE-HOW is how it is pronounced), to which the whole gaggle of them scream out "NIHAO!!!" (if i could make the font bigger, it still wouldn't reflect how loud or annoying that was). I think (my knowledge of such things is very very tiny) that means "Hello", but I could be wrong. Am I wrong to have been really really really annoyed by this? Are these what would be called fanboys (or fangirls, in this case)? What is the proper response to this? Am I that out of it? :(

Kris Weberg | November 3, 2005
Anime is animated. Manga is comics.

Amy Austin | November 3, 2005
Were they Chinese? Because yes, that is "hello" in Chinese, and I would have found it slightly less annoying if I knew that at least SOMEONE in the group was or that they were about to go to their Chinese lessons together.

If I remember correctly, "manga" refers to comics in general -- all "graphic" depiction, just like we say "comics" or "cartoons" -- while "anime" is specific to animation... that is, TV &/or movie cartoons/characters. Easy enough to remember -- "anime" = "animation" -- right? And having been schooled in French myself, I can't help but think of eating when I see the word "manga"... because in French, the word "manger" (pronounced with a soft "g" -- like MAWn-jhay) means "to eat". So when I think of "manga" (pronounced with a hard "g", I believe, like "mango" with an "a"... right, Lori?), I think of being unable to consume enough comics... of ALL varieties, anything you can find -- make sense?

Since I'm no Goddess of either, I hope that my answer here has been both helpful and inoffensive to all -- Gods and mortals alike. "Baai baai." [slight bow here]

Amy Austin | November 3, 2005
I hate when that happens.

Lori Lancaster | November 3, 2005
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Michael Paul Cote | November 4, 2005
Lori,
I agree with your feelings on the subject of posers, but let's not limit it to anime. Nothing annoys me more than when I'm looking at gaming supplies (I've been gaming for over 20 years) and some little (excuse the term) punk, decides to give me a lecture on the "fine art of gaming" or worse yet, describe his entire collection of Magic/Pokemon/Yugioh/ whatever cards. Blehhhhck.

Aaron Shurtleff | November 4, 2005
Oh! I know Shampoo! I love Ranma 1/2! My favorite is...whatshisname...the one who turns into a cute little pig, and has no sense of direction. It'll come to me. Not that I've ever read or seen Ranma 1/2. :) I've..uh..HEARD about it. That's the ticket.

(Good cover-up! Now my secret fan-boy status is under wraps!)

Lori Lancaster | November 4, 2005
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Kris Weberg | November 4, 2005
Hey, Lori, here's what I mean about American comics having no problem with swiping:

(link)

Here, they just call it "homage."

Aaron Shurtleff | November 4, 2005
Ryoga! That's the one! :) You know (and this is probably copyright infringement, so SHH!) I had a friend who silk screened a shirt that said "Master: Tendo School of Indiscriminate Grappling", which I always wanted to steal. That was cool!

You know, I've caught a few on Cartoon Network (which probably isn't the same...or at least that's what I've heard about other shows, like Cowboy Bebop) but I always feel like I'm in the middle of the action, and I'm lost. I would have to start at the start to even give it a fair shake.

I did enjoy what little I saw of (and I'll probably mangle the names) Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective and Ruroni Kenshin.

I usually don't have a problem with gaming people, though. Probably 'cause I tend to humor them! I had one kid convinced that RPGs have gone downhill since Empire of the Petal Throne, which I've never even seen, much less played. ;D

Aaron Shurtleff | November 4, 2005
Oh! And to bring it back full circle, I saw the Robot Chicken in question, and I laughed my fanny off! :) Sailor Moon has always struck me as slightly...provocative. I swear I saw an episode once where the main character (whatever her name is when she's not Sailor Moon) was in the bathtub, and there were blur marks over her..um..boobies. No one else I know has ever seen it, but I swear it's true! It wasn't like Cops blur marks, but it was like they were actively trying to disguise the fact that the original cartoon had naked..um..tatas.

God, I need a life... :(

Lori Lancaster | November 4, 2005
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Kris Weberg | November 5, 2005
In fairness, I think it's a more general difference between European artistic traditions in general and Japanese traditions.

"Western" art (and here, I generalize grossly) was academy art for centuries; remember Greek geometrical concepts like the Golden Ratio (a spiral pattern) and so on were considered as if they were the only "good" composition methods from the Renaissance into the 19th century, when things like Impressionism finally take hold. And Impressionism, remember, was very controversial when it started precisely because it broke with centuries of common wisdom about how one painted a subject.

There's a whole language of compositional motifs in Western painting. In a sense, "swiping" is the basis of Renaissance oil painting. As such, I can understand why Western comic book artists don't see it as some sort of gross unoriginality -- the cultural tradition prior to relatively recent times almost demands it.

Lori Lancaster | November 11, 2005
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Scott Hardie | November 19, 2005
I could be wrong, but I bet those coaches were just as far out-of-line in Japan as they were here, certainly fired and probably facing jail time. That's why the incident made the news, right? But it's still strange the ways in which Japan is both more open and less open about sex than we are. The blurring of genitalia, even in pornography itself, seems especially weird to me. I guess it's a law, since the blurring only occurs in such tiny areas that... Oh crap. Did I just type too much? :-)

A few nights ago I watched "Inside Deep Throat," the recent documentary (link) about the groundbreaking porn film of the 70s. The doc itself was mildly interesting, but what it really got me interested in was the Nixon-commissioned study of pornography in the early seventies. After conducting several years of scientific, empirical research on the subject, the scientists concluded the pornography had no actual detrimental effects on adults. What did the Nixon administration do? They threw out that conclusion, convened a second study that collected only anecdotal evidence, and published the second conclusion that pornography turned people into deviant freaks. Sorry, forgive my "moral relativity" here, but if genuine hard science told me my moral beliefs were flat-out wrong, I'd get some new moral beliefs.