Before I get into the anime, I want to direct you to the photos of Danz in Tokyo. Check them out here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lost-moments/
They are amazing and very addictive. Before I knew it I had browsed through 10 pages of his stuff. Almost every shot has a character that pulls you in.
Now, anime, in case you didn't know, is what you call animation from Japan. Don't call them "cartoons" because that suggests that anime is kid-safe. Some of it is, but much of it is not. A good example of modern anime that you may have heard of is
Pokemon or
Yu-Gi-Oh. Both shows are aimed at kids neither do I watch. They're also both crap in my mind.
Now, in Japan, animation can not only be for adults, too, it can be ONLY for adults. Don't EVER show a kid under 17
Urotsukidoji or
Bible Black! You probably shouldn't show a kid under 17 my favorite anime of all time,
Ghost in the Shell though it's not because it's massive, disturbing porn, like
Urotsukidoji and
Bible Black.
GITS does have a bit of nudity in it, but the themes in it are so deep no kid can keep up. I would never expect a kid to understand how cool it is to have a cyborg begin to wonder just where she stopped being human--or if she was ever human at all.
Pretty deep for a "cartoon" huh?
One thing you should think about is that even if anime is for kids, the Japanese tend to treat their kids as a bit more mature than we, in the west, treat ours. We assume that our kids would be horribly scarred by seeing any sort of realistic violence in cartoons. In anime, your kid might turn on his favorite show at 7am to see the lead blow someone's arm off. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Personally, I think this is good. Crime in Japan is virtually non-existent and I believe it's largely because they have a strong cultural line between violence in the media and violence in the real world.
I also feel like their media acts as a release valve that helps their stress and anger get expelled in other ways than committing violent acts. Of course, this is just my theory.
Anyway, so my favorite anime, as I mentioned is
Ghost in the Shell. It's based on the manga (comic book) by Japanese artist Masamune (Mah-sah-moo-neh) Shirow (Shee-doh). There were two movies made as well as a TV series, which frankly, blows away the movies. They're all available on DVD in the US, so I highly recommend checking them out. They follow the adventures of an elite law enforcement agency in the future. Most of them are cyborgs in some way and their leader, Motoko Kusanagi, isn't always sure she's a real human being anymore since so much of her is cyb(er) and so little of her is org(anic).
It's an interesting dilema, for sure.
If you ever bump into a person from Japan, don't ask them about
Ghost in the Shell. Ask them about
Kokaku Kidotai which is the Japense title for the anime (Koh-kah-koo Kee-doh-tah-ee).
My second favorite anime is a show I grew up with as a child--in the form of a crappy American censored cartoon called
Battle of the Planets. The original Japanese show (complete with characters dying in every few episodes) was called
Gatchaman and is finally showing up in the US on DVD shelves. They had rereleased
BotP with one or two original
Gatchman eps, unedited, but there was such a demand that they caved and are slowly putting out all of the originals.
Gatchaman and
BotP are both on the hokey side having been produced for kids in the early 1970s in Japan and the late 1970s in America. The story surrounds the adventures of a team of ninja-teens who battle the evil forces of Spectra (
BotP) or Galactor (
Gatchaman) who are bent on taking over the Earth. Both versions of the show present a wonderful message of team work without being unrealistic. That is to say, everyone works together, but often, they don't like it. Each character has his or her own talent but none of them are perfect human beings. So the show ends up having a lot of internal conflict which really helps kids (and even adults) learn how to better work together.
Now, there's plenty of anime that is just horrible. I can't stand a lot of it. However, you can pretty much trust a few of the bigger names out there. Some reliable titles are:
Ghost in the Shell
Gatchaman (though it is hokey)
Full Metal Alchemist
Space Battleship Yamato (hokey, but still powerful)
Metropolis
Akira
Evangelion (crazy!)
FLCL (pronounced Foo-Di-Koo-Di and is even more crazy)
Dead Leaves (though it's NOT for kids)
Memories
Metropolis
Millennium Actress (I cried during this)
Tokyo Godfathers (I cried during this, too)
I could go on, but those are my immediate favorites. Anime can be feature films or half-hour shows. Sometimes they're even multi-45-minute-miniseries like the
Cutey Honey miniseries they put out recently in sync with the live-action movie they produced.
Anime is huge--it's way bigger than animation is in the US. Here in America, animation is sort of a second-class-media. For kids, US cartoons rarely tackle serious topics or achieve the quality that would put them on the same level as
Lawrence of Arabia or
Citzen Kane. However, there are quite a few animated films from Japan that can make that claim. Like
Akira,
Grave of the Fireflies, and
Spirited Away.
So, if you're sick of American media and are looking for something that will really change how you define "cartoons", give some anime a try. If you're not sure what to go with, feel free to comment below and I'll give you more suggestions.
I've got a lot more to talk about regarding anime. I've mentioned my favorites, but there's plenty more to explore so swing by next weekend for more on Japanese Animation and thanks for reading!
