Ask John: Should Anime be Considered Fine Art?

Question:
I read your recent reply defending anime as a fine art. While I am too for the broadest definition of art as opposed to limiting certain mediums as “not art,” don’t you think most “anime” is ultimately a commercial venture? It seems that most anime are made to adapt a popular manga because the manga is popular rather than because of the plot of the manga. Yu-Gi-Oh comes to mind, or Inuyasha.

So many anime have so little to offer especially in terms of “animation!” I am getting tired of turning on the TV only to get the same old stuff: cel shaded characters with bland coloring, jerky animation, or at worst, cut out animation with motionless, animationless characters “panning” across a screen with a flashing background. I find that lots and lots of anime, especially recent ones, fail in many respects of breaking new ground in terms of almost everything. What kind of great animation has Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh, and the new Transformers offer? There seems to be very little ingenuity and space for a broader style in Japanese animation lately.

I am just asking whether anime as a whole can be considered a fine art in a world where anime itself has become a commercial venture.

Answer:
I think my fanatic obsession with anime frequently overshadows my occasional confirmations that I do consider anime a contemporary commercial art. There are a handful of anime titles that may be considered genuine “fine art” in the sense that they’re entirely personal creations designed and brought to fruition without commercial motivation. For example, I think that productions like Makoto Shinkai’s entirely self funded Voices of a Distant Star, Higa Romanov’s full digital “anime” Urda, and Koji Yamamura’s Mt. Head qualify as examples of Japanese animation that were created entirely as a result of the desire and motivation of the artists alone. Commercial productions like Innocence, Angel’s Egg, and Nekojiro-So seem too esoteric to be honestly thought of as anime created with the intention of earning a massive profit. The productions of Studio Ghibli are, I think, commonly thought of as being highly personal and authentic and masterful, in another sense, commercially successful because of their brilliance, not commercially successful because they were specifically constructed to be commercial hits.

In my observation there’s a major trend among especially American anime fans to belittle anime as just a commercial product rather than an art form. The common argument is that many anime series are merely extended advertisements targeted at Japanese children. I’m not opposed to identifying anime as commercial art, but I don’t understand the eagerness to deny the artistic credibility of Japanese animation. Consider that the literature of Shakespeare and paintings of Van Gogh were created to be sold to the public in order to support the artists’ living expenses. Consider that we cherish the AMPAS Academy Awards that recognize artistic achievement in motion pictures, which are created to be screened for profit in movie theaters and sold on home video worldwide. In a sense, the only true “art” is graffiti and spontaneous dance and compositions never widely exposed to the public- all of which were created with no concern for commercial potential and never sold or displayed for profit. I find it ironic that we’re willing to recognize commercially produced and marketed prose and motion pictures and theater and music as contemporary popular art, but are unwilling to apply the same standards to Japanese animation.

A song by Miles Davis may not have the same degree of artistic credibility as a song by Britney Spears, but both are composed to be recorded and sold. Innocence may have greater artistic credibility than Pocket Monster, but both were composed to be recorded and sold. The difference is not between commercial versus fine art. The difference is in quality. All four aforementioned examples are commercial pop culture art, but some are more worthy of respect than others. The fact that some examples within the field are not as good as others doesn’t automatically disqualify the entire field from consideration as art. As long as one instance of Japanese animation may be genuinely considered “art,” it becomes impossible to say that all Japanese animation is not art.

To provide an incisive example, recently I’ve seen several online discussions of the announcement that 4Kids Entertainment will be distributing the Ojamajo Doremi anime series in America in 2005. Some fans have expressed dismayed predictions that 4Kids will drain any and all artistic and cultural credibility out of the show for its American release. Other fans have replied that Ojamajo Doremi is a show designed to market to pre-adolescent Japanese girls and therefore can’t have any significant amount of artistic credibility in the first place. I’m honestly disappointed that there seems to be little compromise between the two points. As a Doremi fan, I agree that the anime is primarily designed to attract the attention of young Japanese girls. But I don’t think that fact contradicts the simultaneous fact that the Ojamajo Doremi anime exhibits a conscious artistic intent expressed in the show’s warmth and compassion and humor and graphic design. Doremi has an undeniable artistic style that establishes it as literal commercial art: it’s a commercial product, and it’s also art.

The quality and variety of anime, and especially contemporary anime, may be debatable. While I believe that there’s still a satisfying variety of anime available these days, I don’t object to the common belief that the production quality and originality of recent anime coming out of Japan is in decline. After all, anime is a commercial product influenced by market trends, such as the demands of Japanese consumers and the business strategies of the corporate sponsors that finance anime, and Japanese economic conditions. But I believe that viewers who want to find the art inherent in anime can do so if they choose to. When we reduce anime to merely a stock list of genres and animation quality and compartmentalize each title into a predefined category (e.g. “magical girl show,” “giant robot show,” “harem anime”), we blind ourselves to the unique artistic qualities of individual titles. And again, I want to make it clear that some anime titles undeniably do have more artistic qualities and others. But even a so-called extended advertisement like Pocket Monster or Yu-Gi-Oh may have some unique, artistic and creative elements like costume design or story development or dramatic tone. I’m not encouraging fans to be undiscriminating, but I do think that anime fans that love anime ought to try to see the positives in anime, and be receptive to the content and potential of anime instead of discrediting it as a matter of course. I think it’s a fine personal choice to not consider anime a “fine art,” but refusing to see anime as art at all is an injustice to Japanese animation and an intentional self-obfuscation.