Anime might be popular in nerd culture, but that doesnât mean people always understand what anime is all about. In fact, people often get anime all wrong.
Anime sometimes has a stigma for people who donât watch it. Or, people make misconceptions about what anime can be, as well as assumptions about the type of people who like anime.
Though itâs a couple of years old, a very informative lecture from an event called AnimeFest has started making the rounds again today, and I thought it was worth sharingâespecially since, criminally, only a few thousand people have actually watched it as of this writing. The lecture, which is led by anime expert Jonathan Clements, is a must-watch even for anime veteransâthere is a ton of anime history contained within, and Clements breaks down many things that people donât understand about anime:
The video, however, is almost an hour long. If you donât have time for that, hereâs some of what Clements argues in the lecture:
There isnât necessarily a unified opinion on what anime is. Of course, when people use the word, they often mean something like âanimation from Japan,â but arguably, thatâs not all of what anime encompasses.
Anime is not always high-quality. Anime shows often take a lot of shortcuts, so they can fill the 30 min episode format while saving money. This is why things like transformation sequences, and long opening songs exist! Itâs particularly bad with early anime, which is considered kind of terrible. For anime fans, this one is a âno-duhâ point, but consider that, for many people, their only knowledge of anime comes from things like Miyazaki filmsâwhich is not representative of all anime. (As a side-point, itâs also fascinating to hear how anime pioneers tried to make anime work in the early days, and the tensions/problems that came with that. Miyazaki had some major beefs with cheap anime makers!)
The western world has in fact influenced/changed animeâthey can put stipulations on the format (they having episodes be self-contained, rather than continue a storyline), and demands on how certain races can be depicted in the shows. One early anime show, Kimba The White Lion, for example, had Americans pushing to get black people off the showâwhich, by the way, takes place in Africa. They settled on letting the show depict Africans, but âonly if they were good.â Later, Disney purchasing Miyazaki films also influenced how some anime was depicted. Princess Mononoke, for example, was sped up.
Anime did not always sell itself on its Japanese identity, because that makes it less marketable. Early anime was sold to audiences outside of Japan, but only if anything overtly tying the anime to Japan could be scrubbed out. So: references were changed, names were changed, locations were changed. Even if it meant the anime had to pretend ridiculous things, like having what is obviously Tokyo referred to as Paris. And remember âdonutsâ in Pokemon? It wasnât until Akira that anime could start selling its Japanese identity to the rest of the world.
Violence and sex werenât always a subject anime felt comfortable depicting. That changed with the advent of video, which could bring programs to specific audiences that wanted the content, without having to worry about conforming the content to television standards. Hilariously, some early erotic anime was imported by other countries accidentally, before the world really know what hentai wasâŠand it sold out quickly.
Once erotic anime, like hentai, started floating around, it changed the public perception of anime fans. According to some people, anime is just a thing for pervertsâbut thatâs not the case at all. Essentially, people started using anime as a way to be racist to Japanese people.
People who purchase hentai, or erotic anime, are not always anime fans. In fact, theyâre often not! Anime fans are a small niche compared to the wider number of people who sometimes buy hentai. But, anime fans are the ones that will take all the blame for the misconception.
People blew up the Pokemon anime incident that made some kids feel ill thanks to certain flashing imagesâthe number of people this affected is probably lower than what the media made it out to be.
Thereâs this perception that just because something is Japanese, it has the special power to manipulate or corrupt children, or that Japanese trends are ploys to undermine western nationality. Again, this might be racism at work.
Not every anime show or film is hugely popularâmany are very niche. This also means that not all anime is the same: there are a a huge variety of anime shows, though only a few types get widespread attention. The result is that some anime shows sell for an incredible markup in Japan, because companies know that only a very limited audience is going to buy it.
These points are expanded upon in the actual video, so you should watch it if you have the time!
