On Being a Recovering Otaku, Part I

For the better part of a decade, I was a devoted otaku, or anime fan. What's so special about being a fan of Japanese cartoons, you ask? It's not as easy as it sounds. I want to take a couple of posts to talk about my experiences with anime, since becoming an otaku was a huge part of my development into the pretentious movie geek I am today. First, I want to make a few general observations on the emergence of anime in the U.S.

Every couple of months, some major paper will trot out an article on anime, which has been enjoying increasing popularity in the U.S. over the last decade or so. With some incredulity, they've chronicled the boom of the toons among older audiences, especially teenagers and twenty-somethings. The big point that most of these stories seem to miss is not that anime has arrived. Rather, anime has expanded, no longer the domain of toddlers and basement dwelling D&D enthusiasts, but of both genders, all ages, and a gargantuan DVD market that feeds into cable and web programming. Twenty years ago, distribution was non-existent, and fans resorted to trading self-subtitled nth generation VHS tapes to catch a few episodes of their favorite shows. Nobody cried foul when the popular "Macross" was combined with two other series and rewritten to become the 80s classic, "Robotech." Today, walk into any Best Buy, and you'll find dozens of anime titles on DVD, often only a few months after their Japanese release dates, featuring both dubbed and subtitled versions on every disc, and all translated with strict faithfulness to the originals. These standards were created almost entirely due to fan demand for them, long before the TV on DVD market started up. What sort of cartoons could inspire this much fuss?

To understand what the anime craze is about, it's a good idea to take a look at the home-grown product first. For a long time, U.S. produced cartoons fell into two distinct categories: a small number of prime-time comedies like "Family Guy" and "South Park" aimed at young adults, and a heftier chunk of Saturday morning fare strictly for the tots. Broadcast standards and practices for children's cartoons were notorious for their severity, where the word "kill" was verboten and young heroes were never allowed to be in any realistic peril. More insidious were the creative controls imposed by network executives, who liked simple, episodic, repetitive plots that could easily be rerun ad infinitum. Some networks even frowned on all but the subtlest hints of romance. While good cartoons were produced in this atmosphere, it still felt like a minor miracle when one emerged that could appeal to an audience beyond the 2-11 set. It's only recently that there's been any middle ground, and this has largely been due to the influence of anime.

The Japanese animation industry doesn't really look all that different from its Western counterpart at first glance. While there are titles aimed at adults, including the embarrassing existence of anime porn, the vast majority of the programs are aimed directly at kids and teenagers. Many shows are little more than hyped up pablum, often meant to help promote video games, trading cards, or toys. Look a little closer, though, and the distinctions become more apparent. One is the sheer quantity of anime in Japan. There can be thirty or forty new titles each season, for broadcast and direct to video release. Many are based on popular manga, Japanese comics, which are as ubiquitous as newspapers, and cover every imaginable topic and genre. Thus, another difference is the scope of the subject matter of anime - just about anything is fair game. There are romance anime for young adults, sports anime for enthusiasts, and late night horror anime for insomniacs. The most successful shows are usually the family dinner-hour programs like "Little Maruko" and "Mrs. Sazae," long-running, low-budget situation comedies about a toddler and a housewife respectively.

What's enjoyed the greatest success in the U.S. though, are the action shows. These are generally aimed at adolescents, and the median age of the heroes is about fifteen. Thanks to the Japanese lack of stringent content restrictions, the fights can be bloody, girls can be wooed, and most important, the stories are almost always ongoing. This allows creators to develop their characters, complicate their plots, and engage their audiences on a level that an American cartoon simply can't reach with their interchangeable twenty minute episodes. Even kid fare like "Yu-Gi-Oh" and "Digimon" are rife with cliff hangers and plot twists that can take an entire season to resolve. At its best, anime can tackle very serious themes, and do it without compromise. A popular recent title, "Full Metal Alchemist," features a pair of orphaned brothers who unsuccessfully try to bring their mother back from the dead, and then spend the rest of the series struggling with the disastrous consequences of their failure.

Another interesting factor is that many anime only run for a single season - around twenty-six episodes - and are planned from the outset to have their stories entirely resolved within that space of time. Successes like "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Cowboy Bebop," for instance, have follow up movies, but no subsequent seasons. This gives the creators much more incentive to use their material to its fullest. For fans it means not having to wait too long for the final payoff of a premise, and a welcome lack of structural safety nets. It is not uncommon for an anime hero to die in the final episode along with the villain, since he doesn't need to come back next season for more adventures.

Anime has plenty negative aspects, of course. Even the best shows will often reek of adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasies - and evidently most young Japanese men wish to pilot giant robots and land pretty, girlfriends. The actual animation quality is highly variable, and tends to emphasize design over movement. Like American shows, there are always popular trends, derivative or copycat products, and a sore lack of originality on many fronts. Yet every year, without fail, there will be a show, or two, or three that does everything right and will win more fans to the growing population of U.S. otaku. In this fashion, anime has a shot at not being just a hot new trend, but a firmly entrenched, self-perpetuating part of the cultural landscape.

But even though anime has become popular, much of the best of it is still difficult to access. In the next post, I'll talk about the anime fandom, specifically some of the fan activities that helped make anime in the U.S. what it is today.