Ask John: Does Anime Have to be Japanese?

Question:
I happened to catch an article on The Escapist that asserts that anime isn’t about where it came from, but [is] more of a “style.” I think anime is unique not just because of where it comes from but also because it is a business targeted at a native audience. That audience is almost never world-wide. Imitating the “style” or plot tropes isn’t enough, in my opinion. Do you have any specific thoughts about the article?

Answer:
I have no right to dictate what anyone else should believe, and individuals who choose to reduce anime to merely a visual design aesthetic may do so. However, my own considered opinion is that anime is not merely a “style,” nor can anime be easily replicated. Anime developed in Japan and is a unique expression of distinctly Japanese ideosyncratic ideology, philosophy, and artistic sensibility. In other words, exactly what makes “anime” distinctly and exclusively Japanese animation is the ideas that underlie anime, not its superficial visual appearance. Certainly narrative approaches such as drama and comedy are universally recognized, but the particular sense of exactly what is “dramatic” or what is “funny” varies from culture to culture and country to country.

Would any American animator or animation studio originate an idea for an animated series that revolved a governmental conspiracy to de-evolve the human race into a single amorphous living entity with a collective consciousness in order to permanently eliminate psychological alienation? Would any American animation studio think of creating an animated series founded on the philosophical question of whether man-made objects can have a soul or whether an artificial object with a human consciousness is human? Would any American animation studio conceive of an animated series based on two brothers who lose part or all of their physical bodies after using black magic to try to resurrect their dead mother? Would any American animators independently think of an animated series starring a boy who plays “onigokko” against an “oni” alien for the fate of the world and wins by exposing the alien girl’s breasts? Would any American studio ever conceive of an animated series starring high-school girls who are actually anthropomorphized assault rifles? Would any American animator ever envision creating a first-person perspective animated documentary about field testing a military bipedal tank in a civil-war ravaged Middle Eastern country? Would any American animation studio ever consider animating four elementary school girls who sit in a bedroom and tease each other for twelve episodes? Would any American animator consider producing a two-season long animated historical drama about the life of a Victorian era British maid? Japanese anime has told all of these stories and countless other narratives that would be inconceivable for American commercial, professional animation because Japanese anime is based in a fundimentally different mindset than American animation.

American animator Monty Oum’s upcoming original animated series RWBY ably proves that American animators are capable of emulating and being inspired by Japanese animation, but American animators can’t write Japanese stories because they don’t think the way native Japanese writers think, don’t have the same experiences and perspectives that Japanese writers do. Conversely, Japanese animators can’t create authentic “American” cartoons because they don’t have intuitive personal familiarity with American psychology. A critic may argue that mainstream Japanese society uses the term “anime” to refer to any animation. But mainstream people ignorant of the nuances of anime using the term as a generic catch-all doesn’t make their use of the term correct. If the word “anime” does indeed refer to any animation, then Scooby Doo, Looney Toons, Snoopy Come Home, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Toy Story, and Shrek are all anime. Obviously such a broad, generic definition of “anime” is useless and even count-productive in practical English discussion.

As The Escapist’s observer Chris O’Brien states, certainly, the influence of anime, “Now stretches far outside the confines of the tiny island country in the Pacific from which it originates.” But inspiration does not change an artist’s cultural perspective. An American writer, director, and film crew in Hollywood may be able to create a film very comparable to a native Bollywood or French or Iranian movie. But if a native Indian, French, or Iranian writer, director, and crew had made the same movie in India, France, or Iran, the resulting film would be noticably different from the American interpretation. American animators certainly can create animation inspired by anime and very similar to anime, but the very reason we use the distinct term “anime” instead of just lumping all Japanese animation into the same category as American cartoons is because anime – animation conceived by a Japanese mindset – will always be culturally different from animation created within an American frame of influence, inspiration, reference and knowledge. Anime is not just big eyes, vividly colored hair, and “themes like family, friendship, fear, and death.” Any animation that incorporates stylized character design, big eyes, and “family, friendship, fear, and death” is not automatically anime because the nuances of interpersonal relationships, exactly what people fear and don’t fear, and the way people psychologically approach death are different between Americans and Japanese. When foreign artists whitewash and replace, or even simply fail to comprehensively and authentically evoke all of the cultural nuance intrinsic in anime, which includes the way teenage anime characters treat and speak to each other, the way community relationships work, the psychological sense of responsibility to abstract social standards, types of humor, and the unique artistic perspective behind narratives and literary tropes employed in anime that seem bizarre to Americans, like anthropomorphized assault rifles, train stations, countries, and soda cans; superheroes powered by teenage girls’ breast milk; vampires that produce too much blood instead of drinking it; and catgirls that shoot silly-string out of their eyeballs, what we get is “anime-style” or “anime-like,” but not genuine Japanese anime. Americans certainly can create something comparable to anime, but anime by definition is Japanese animation, and only Japanese creators can create Japanese animation. Any English language definition of “anime” that is not “Japanese animation” is a superficial and incorrect definition that cannot hold up to rational academic scrutiny.