What is Anime Anyway?

The Top 3 - Bleach, Naruto and One Piece

https://www.theanimedaily.com/the-big-three-anime-all-you-must-know-the-anime-daily/

Good question. Anime, pronounced "an-ee-may" or "anɪmeɪ" is a type of Japanese film and television animation. It’s as simple as that.

Obviously animation exists all around the world, in the West we grew up with Disney, Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera animations which we call "cartoons". Cartoons are mostly associated mostly with the viewing habits of children.

As with Western animation, the roots of anime go back to the early 1900's but, it really started to get traction and its own style in the 1960's. Although it is predominantly aimed at the Japanese market, it's been steadily gaining popularity in the West over the last 20 years and with the rise of TikTok and lockdown causing people to look for new interests it’s been accelerating its global reach.(1)

In the 60's a manga artist and animator called Osamu Tezuka, "temporarily" adapted Disney techniques to produce animation with limited frame counts in order to save costs and help meet tight deadlines with inexperienced staff. Many of these practices stuck and came to define the genre of Japanese animation.

We might be familiar with the character of Astro Boy due to the 2009 movie, but Tezuka produced a successful TV anime in the mid-60's based on the manga of the same name.

As the popularity of manga grew, these animation techniques were used to bring the characters within the pages to life and began to serve as promotional material to sell those manga. (2)

Worldwide popularity of anime had started to grow with series like Akira in 1988, a "dystopian, cyberpunk action film" based on the manga of Katsuhiro Otomo, who also directed the anime.

My first introduction to anime was probably through my friends' children watching Pokemon in the 90’s and their love of the character "Picachu" although I never actually watched it.

My first watch was probably similar to other peoples’, Studio Ghibli's "Spirited Away". My brother recommended it and while I remember really enjoyingI never searched out any other anime. 

As I mentioned in my previous blog I really got the bug after watching Yuri! On Ice, highly successful and unusually not based on a manga. Haikyu!! my favourite anime is based on a 45 volume manga series by Haruichi Furudate, a manga they wrote to encourage people to gain interest in volleyball, initially published weekly in Shonen Jump magazine, but now published in volumes by Viz Media.

When talking about anime and manga, fans will refer to the Big 3;

Naruto - Based on the manga written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto and with 220 episodes, it tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, a teenage Ninja, striving to become a Hokage and  leader of his village, despite being an orphan and being possessed by a nine-tailed fox demon. (3) 

Bleach - Based on the manga written and illustrated by Tite Kubo, it has over 300 episodes and tells the story of Ichigo who inadvertently gets the powers of Soul Reaper Rukia which leaves him having to defend humans from evil spirits / demons, a popular trope in manga and anime stories. (3)

One Piece - Based on the manga by Eiichiro Oda. It has a mind boggling 1000+ episodes and features the story of Monkey D Luffy and his crew of pirates known as The Straw Hats.

It’s just about to get a Netflix live action adaptation, which, unusually for live action, looks promising. (3)

Outside of the Big 3 though there are literally thousands of anime, I could watch all day for the rest of my life and still not break the back of it all - hence “Too Much Content”!

They are split into demographic genres kodomo for children), shōjo/josei for girls/young women,  shonen/seinen for boys/young men, although these are only guides and you see readers now just reading what interests them regardless of the genre, for example My Hero Academia (left) is a Shonen enjoyed by many females as well as males.

Although some anime is focused on a more mature audience, most is aimed at teens plus (and I mean 13-100!!), but often has scenes of action, fighting and gore. Adult language is common, as are tropes of bullying, suicide, mental and physical abuse, parents are usually not great ones (Disney usually kills theirs off, anime make them monsters with a few exceptions). 

Fan service is often a big topic of conversation and dissent, often scenes depicting large breasts and skimpy costumes are derided as “fan service” and whilst I don’t disagree, I don’t have a great desire to see anime “sorted out”. I think it should be a case of viewer beware, if you don’t like something, then move on, vote with your viewing and watch something else. I also see a lot of hypocrisy with fan service, a pumped, six-packed tanned young man in swim shorts is also fan service!

There is a genre of adult anime works which feature 18+ content rated "R18" in Japan, and known as hentai (a derivation of “pervert”). Generally this is explicit and differs from ecchi anime which may have sexual themes or undertones without depictions of actual sex. 

Sasaki & Miyano - Wholesome BL

There is also a wide range of representation in anime, dealing with relationships between all gender groups, with genres such as BL (boys love) and Yaoi or GL (girls love) and Yuri. (4)

Anime is produced by studios. There are over 500 studios in Japan. Studios often come under fire for their working conditions, long hours, low pay often caused by the pressure to produce more and more content. The health of animators is often a cause for worry. That said, studios are under pressure from fans too, fans are hyper critical of adaptations of their favourite mangas, the animations, the use of CGI, the voice actors, pacing, all sorts of things can cause them to be praised and take their productions to the top of the rankings or destroyed. MAPPA, one of the top 5 studios, has recently been experiencing the ups and downs of popularity. It took over the animation of Attack on Titan from WiT and despite some of the animators moving over, some fans didn’t appreciate the new style, they are also under fire for their handling of the final chapters. Their recent animation of the (in my opinion) epic Chainsaw Man (below left) has seen criticism for their use of CGI, a tool which if used well can help ease the pressure on animators. It’s a shame as some of the animation in it was beautiful, but the focus was taken away by fans of other anime who wanted their own favourites to top the rankings. Other examples are Studio Pierrot’s adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul, while season 1 was well received, seasons after are not popular due to a deviation from the source manga, ironically there have been calls for MAPPA to re-animate it.

Anime releases are made in Seasons, Spring, Summer etc. They are aired on platforms, the most well known of these being Crunchyroll and HiDive, Netflix and Prime, Disney and ITVx are also getting in on the scene, with Disney securing the rights to titles like Blean and Summertime Rendering. Crunchyroll previously absorbed Funimation, both of which used to offer episodes for free, now most platforms are Premium and paid for by subscription. This makes it difficult for their teen demographic to access their services and drives them to watch on pirate sites. The industry recently cited $15 billion in losses due to piracy (5), a number widely believed to be overestimated, as if pirate sites didn’t exist, many viewers would just be unable to watch and the industry would lose the additional sales through merchandise. One of the things they fail to understand is that they drive this themselves, I subscribe (on and off) to Crunchyroll, HiDive, Prime, Netflix and Disney and yet I still can’t watch everything I want to on official platforms, some of this is down to regional licencing, but if producers want to solve this problem they need to find a way to being the content to the masses that is widely accessible and at a price point that is affordable to their main demographic, something that kids feels comfortable asking their parents to pay for.

Hopefully this has given you an idea of what anime is, I’m sure I will cover some of these topics in more detail in the future. I would be interested in your point of view too.

Source:

https://www.britannica.com/art/anime-Japanese-animation (1)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anime (2)

https://animedunes.com/what-are-the-big-three-anime/ (3)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach_(TV_series) (3)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Piece (3)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Piece_(TV_series) (3)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime (4)

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/anime-manga-piracy-2022/ (5)