Ask John: Where Have the Ugly & Stupid Anime Characters Gone?

Question:
After reading the latest preview to some show, which included a line saying “revolves around an exceptional student attending an elite school for geniuses,” I can’t help but to think that nowadays anime has become inspirational and elitist, even discriminatory, if you ask me. I think anime in the 70s to 80s was more including and positive, and it wasn’t afraid to show all kind of characters, from all social and intellectual conditions. Do you agree to this argument? Where are the poor, ugly or stupid in contemporary anime?

Answer:
This is a fascinating question in part because it points to an evolution in anime that I doubt I would have ever noticed on my own. Vintage anime that revolved around less than brainy characters immediately spring to mind, including Tensai Bakabon, Sarutobi Ecchan, and Dokonjo Gaeru. Anime about poor, dysfunctional but loveable families like Jarinko Chie, Dame Oyaji, and Moeretsu Ataro seem less common now as well. In recent years, even anime starring destitute characters like Binbou Shimai Monogatari and Baka to Test to Shokanju still depict their poor characters as attractive and stylish. Contemporary domestic comedies including Atashinchi, Gokyodai Monogatari, and Mainichi Kaasan don’t depict especially lower class or ignorant characters. While attractive, stylish, intelligent, or, at minimum, ordinary characters have never been under represented in anime, anime from the 70s and 80s, particularly, did seem to have a broader spectrum of character circumstances and types than contemporary anime does. However, I don’t believe that this change is a product of a conscious effort to make anime more stylistically narrow or exclusionary. Rather, I suspect that this gradual change has evolved in response to the changing audience for anime and marketing of anime.

I think that the audience targeting of anime has been evolving and developing since the outset of the medium. Through the decades, producers, sponsors, broadcast networks, and production studios have gradually become more savvy about recognizing audience potential and addressing it specifically. During the 70s and 80s much of anime can be said to either skew toward a broad, mainstream audience or a strictly otaku audience. Of course, there were subcategorizations like shoujo and shounen anime, but the very narrowly defined genre categories that anime has now, such as eroge adaptations, moé, tsundere, bishounen, and mahou shoujo for men, didn’t exist in the 70s and 80s. It’s during the 1990s that the anime industry began prominently developing anime targeted at very specific niche audiences. That tendency has become more pronounced and prominent in the early 2000s, resulting in a seemingly smaller number of anime intended for broad, mainstream consumption and a greater number of otaku oriented shows targeted a specific segments of the otaku viewing audience.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, anime has become tremendously more narratively sophisticated, and the average level of anime art design and detail has risen significantly. As both anime and anime viewers have become more stylish and sophisticated, anime characters have evolved in reflection. I don’t think that the anime production industry is consciously trying to exclude or ignore ugly, stupid, or low class protagonists. Rather, the type of protagonists that viewers want to see in anime has changed. During the 70s and 80s, when anime was aimed at mainstream viewers and influenced by the tastes and attitudes of average Japan, anime reflected an ordinary Japan still in the shadow of the 1950s and 60s. However, the artists behind today’s anime, and the consumers that drive the contemporary anime market in Japan, were born in the affluent 70s and 80s and prefer the homogeneity of contemporary otaku genres like harem anime, moé anime, and mahou shoujo anime.

During the 70s and 80s, anime exhibited the tastes and influences of anime creators and was influenced by the social spirit of the times. Contemporary anime is more heavily influenced by the more sophisticated style of the contemporary era and the tastes of anime consumers and viewers more than anime creators. So if a wider diversity of anime character types in the 70s and 80s reflected what anime artists were interested in depicting, a narrower variety of anime character types and circumstances in contemporary anime reflects what modern otaku are interested in seeing. While the characters of mainstream 70’s and 80’s anime reflected the spectrum of society, modern otaku anime largely sticks to satisfying the desire of otaku to see characters like themselves or characters they relate to, thus, I think, if it is elitist or discriminatory, it is that way unconsciously, with selfish but not malicious intent.