Hey hypothetical audiences,
Welcome back to Solidarity Month, where we’re all solidarity, all the time. We’re always available for the punching of fascists, and if you reach out now, we’ll include a free upgrade to the Brass-Knuckle-Deluxe! Black and Brown people have reason again to grieve today, but I hope it’s not tone-deaf to share the overdue intro post to my What’s So Good About Anime? series!
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I know that Americans who prefer Japanese animation are often stereotyped as creepy, fetishistic, racist, and so on. Many of them are all the above, don’t get me wrong—I know all about the gross link between anime otaku and internet fascism. There’s also the stock phrase “they’re not cartoons, mom!” and the implication that anime fans mistakenly seek to elevate anime over other cartoons in order to justify watching them into adulthood.
There’s a bit of othering happening on both sides here: detractors of anime describe it as uniquely depraved (other than Ghibli, which is the only anime you can admit to watching without judgment). Meanwhile, overzealous anime otaku see anime as superior, darker, edgier, deeper than mere American cartoons.
In short, the enjoyment of anime can signal in its fans mental and cultural inferiority or superiority, depending on the biases of who you ask.
Obviously, I I think both sides are stupid here. I’m writing to discuss anime as an animation subgenre/medium with specific cultural lineage and genre conventions that may or may not appeal to everyone.
Basically, while recognizing that anime is uniquely Japanese—like all cultural products—I want to talk about the elements that appeal to me and contribute to its (semi)universal appeal.
I want to talk about the accidental properties of anime that were lacking in American cartoons as the time that anime exploded, the things Nickelodeon and Hanna-Barbera could have leaned into even before anime inspired them to do so.
I want to think explicitly about the things I try to apply in my own work even only under the surface.
I want to focus on craft and considerations that go deeper than “big eyes and blue hair.” I want to dig deeper than style.
I want to talk about what’s so good about anime.
This talk will be limit to seven elements, and they are:
S&V
Passion & Excellence
Friendship & “Collectivism”
Slice of Life & Low Fantasy
Cuteness & Femininity
Humanity & Spirituality
Beyond Good and Evil
Some are themes, some are categories, some are features/bugs.
As I write these blogs, I’ll make sure to link each installment back here. But before I jump into the 7, I want to start with the stupidest question ever:
0. What is Anime?
For some dumb reason, I want to begin with the question of what counts as anime.
My quick-and-dirty rule-of-thumb is that “if it’s primarily made by people who’ve previously worked in anime, then it’s also anime.” It’s a definition based on similarity of lineage more than the end result. Porter Robinson’s “Shelter,” the story of O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill, and Rick and Morty vs. Genocider are therefore all anime. There are a lot of very subtle elements that help each of the following feel like anime, ranging from the character designs to the color palettes to the comedic timing to the animation rate.
Porter Robinson, Quintin Tarantino, and Justin Roiland/Dan Harmon sought out folks with experience in the field of anime, and gave those creators enough creative control. Naturally, the results look like their past work. “Shelter” looks like the art of Megumi Kouno. “O-Ren’s Revenge” has all the gritty detail of Production I.G.. And Takashi Sano gives Rick Sanchez slightly Lupintic gestures--which makes sense when you realize he did key animation for a lot of Lupin the Third films. These international collaborations have so much in common with the things we consider anime that it makes sense to call them anime as well.
But according to my rule-of-thumb, Avatar and RWBY aren’t anime. They're just anime-influenced American cartoons. They adopt some of the conventions of anime, but not all. As an avid anime watcher, they have too few of the elements I look for, so few that they feel off to me.
I’ve only seen clips of RWBY, but finally watched Avatar last year and was underwhelmed. There were a lot of small things about it that annoyed me, like how the overall pacing felt uneven compared to a shonen anime of a similar length. It felt less cohesive than Soul Eater, less inventive than Bleach. They were imitating anime but getting the genre conventions wrong. They betrayed my expectations, over and over!
Okay, but maybe some of what I perceived as ‘wrong’ was intentional. Sometimes you want to subvert audience expectations, right?
When a story follows just enough genre conventions, the audience gets this feeling of familiarity that helps them understand and follow the work--but sometimes you don’t want that. So maybe some of the ‘wrongness’ was intentional, artistic decisions and creative choices. Fine. I’ll admit that it’s partly a me problem.
But plenty of the “wrongness” wasn’t just in my head. In his analysis of RWBY, video essay god Harris Bomber-Guy has documented how intending to enter a genre from the outside can result in the misapplication of tropes and an overall weaker work.
This whole genre dilemma reminds of the SF-vs-srs-lit genre wars of the book world. In that world, Victor LaValle has some relevant things through the concept of “imaginative illiteracy,” this idea “that people are trained to read the genre they’re introduced to and lack training in the genre to which they’re not exposed.”
For example, in order to “read” anime, it helps to know that a bloody nose symbolizes lust. But the old wives’ tale behind that is specific to Japan, so a bloody nose scene in an anime-inspired American work would be a little confusing. If we apply the idea of “genre literacy,” we can understand why anime-influenced cartoons may feel a little off to someone familiar with only one of the traditions.
I think that American creators tend to overestimate their genre literacy when creating americanimes. Even when their cartoons borrow elements of anime, they keep more American elements than they’re aware of, so the work is necessarily hybrid. It would be more honest to lean into that hybridity and own it, love it, to minimize imitation and maximize originality.
I think this is why I, and many other anime fans, hate when people call Avatar an anime. It just feels wrong.
The walk cycles, the background designs, the editing techniques, the scene composition—even when I can’t put my finger on it, I know when it’s wrong. Same with Totally Spies, Code Lyoko, The Boondocks, Castlevania, Neo Yokio, Blood of Zeus—no matter how good they are on their own merits, if you call them anime and and ask the audience to read them according to anime genre conventions, they’ll feel wrong.
And I’m not saying that only Japanese people can make anime. Nope! Austrian animator Bahi JD is one of my favorite sakuga animators. I respect the heck out of Angeleno Michael Arias for his direction of Tekkonkinkreet. James Turner, the British Pokémon designer, is hands-down living the dream!
All those dudes found a way to participate in the lineage part of anime. You know the adage “you have to learn the rules before you break them?” These dudes put in the time to go and learn the rules.
Not to mention that even Japanese creators can fail to follow the genre conventions adequately. The “anime” Ex-Arm is a trainwreck in part because its creators chose the wrong medium (CGI) but mostly because the staff has little experience making anime. One of my favorite mangaka, Usamaru Furuya, had more of an arts background than a manga background. So his early work Palepoli feels more like alt comix. He eased into the genre conventions over the years and eventually produced Genkaku Picasso, which is unmistakably a shonen manga.
(I prefer Palepoli, but a lot of my favorite anime bend the rules of anime, borrow the rules of high art, and ignore the rules of American cartoons.)
That said, the line between anime and animation really doesn’t matter much.
Anime is just “cartoons” in Japanese and Frozen and King of the Hill are just as much anime as Dr. Slump to the average Tokyoite.
Not to mention how all taxonomies are imperfect, and most media categories are to suit capitalism and not creators.
My Anime List agrees with me re: Shelter, RWBY, and Avatar, but disagrees that O-Ren and Genocider count. (Whatever. As long as they keep my favorite Matrix side stories and Louis Vuitton commercials, I’m happy. Their comparative analysis is useful, though!)
Most importantly, I love Panty & Stocking as much as I love Bee & PuppyCat. Both operate from an international love of animation that weds substance with style and then douses it all in uniqueness. They transcend genre and embrace hybridity and you love to see it!
P.S. Fumiko’s Confession, The Diary of Tortov Roddle, Cannon Busters, Peepo Choo, and D’ART Shtajio are doing their best to defy my rule-of-thumb. This pains me, because I love to see Black folks succeed, I love Tortov Roddle, and I regularly obsess over the independent anime/自主制作アニメーション tag on YouTube…
But again: all taxonomies are imperfect.