Japan's Lost Generation

Anime & Society Series Part Eight

Wrapping it up with a few case studies.

Case study: Full Metal Alchemist

I find it interesting that though Sony marketed Full Metal Alchemist (FMA) to young teens in Japan, the story line and plot oft times leads to very dark places in the human psyche, this horror overtone has presented problems for distribution in America—just how much blood and gore will have to be cut out of this anime series in order to air it in the US? The solution appears that it has been relegated to Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network in the United States.

The premise of FMA is this: instead of a reality based upon the foundations of our own world's science and technology which develops increasingly advanced machinery such as airplanes and computers as time passes, the 'science' of the world of Full Metal Alchemist is that of Alchemy. Alchemy arose in the middle ages and over the centuries has been developed and refined to become the mainstream 'technology' of the FMA 'world' which appears set in a parallel timeline to ours circa 1910. Rudimentary technology does exist such as basic radios, steam driven trains, combustion cars, machine guns, and such but the power and utility of Alchemy trumps this more 'basic technology' of machines. The FMA world is one of conflict and suffering in a state of constant wars using conventional soldiers with basic armaments and uniforms reminiscent of the Austrian Army of WWI. In addition, there are elite troops, 'State Alchemists', who wield Alchemy in ways resembling today's 'weapons of mass destruction', with some of the most powerful State Alchemists able to wipe out whole city blocks.

Alchemy in FMA follows observable rules such as cause and effect, but one of the most important rules is that of 'equal exchange': To create something, you must sacrifice something of equal value. However, 'life alchemy', bringing people back from the dead, is one of the most forbidden disciplines of alchemy and is the focus of the entire FMA series— how do you measure the alchemical value of a human soul? Sure you can gather together all of the raw minerals and metals that comprise the human body in the proper proportions, but how do you quantify that immeasurable essence that is the human spirit? Once the 'life essence' departs, how can Alchemy retrieve it, and what price is paid for the effort?

A young boy barely into his teens, Edward Elric, and his younger brother, Alphonse Elric, show an early aptitude for Alchemy. When their mother dies, the brothers rashly attempt to resurrect her with 'life alchemy' that they only understand at a most basic level. This attempt to delve into this forbidden Alchemy opens a Pandora’s Box that kicks off the series. In that incident, a warped and soulless 'thing' is created that later forms into a homunculus; one of several named after the seven deadly sins in the series, and which serve to hound Ed and AL throughout the series' run. In FMA, homunculi are soulless humans—sins given shape and purpose—living examples of the hubris of Alchemists.

Also during the attempt to resurrect their mother, the younger brother Alphonse is sucked bodily into the resulting vortex that opens. The older brother, Edward, uses alchemy to save his brother by affixing Al’s soul to an inanimate suit of armor. In line with the alchemical rule of equal exchange, the gate in the vortex causes Ed’s arm and leg disintegrate leaving him with bleeding stumps in what is one of the more gory scenes of FMA. So here we have the two main characters of Full Metal Alchemist: the younger is a discorporate soul bonded to a suit of armor, raising the question on what it is to be 'human'. The older is, by our standards, a handicapped individual lacking an arm and a leg paid as a cost for the 'life alchemy' used to save his brother's soul from the vortex.

There is a strange advanced prosthetics technology in the FMA world called ‘automail’ which seems a combination of advanced quasi-robotic prosthetics encased in what appears to be medieval plate mail. Ed, a cripple, regains reasonable mobility through this ‘automail’ and later, through the application of alchemy, turns it into an advantage. However, there are several occasions where his automail is damaged and we are reminded that he is always struggling with his handicap, itself a constant reminder of his foolish foray into 'life Alchemy'.

As mentioned before, the country the FMA story is set in resembles WWI era Austria and Germany though with a government ruled by a military dictatorship. Ed becomes a ‘dog of war’, a state alchemist, in order to find a cure for his younger brother and his own lost limbs by using the vast resources on alchemy held by the military. Of course, by joining the military, the Elric brothers are drawn into the larger conflict going on throughout the world and we, as viewers, get a glimpse at the bleak state of affairs across the countryside that exist for all except the ruling military elite. The FMA world is not one of black and white, but gray where even the most noble characters of the anime have committed grave sins in the past which invariably come back to haunt them during the series' run.


A real cheerful start for a 'target audience' of young teens—not quite G.I. Joe or Transformers is it?

And this is a growing trend in anime which is still entertaining but uses the vehicle of fantasy or science fiction to get across a more serious underlying message that the Japanese writer feels is in need of discussion and thought. And if the dark undertones of FMA are lost upon the average viewer, I believe that subconscious absorption is still taking place while people are being 'entertained'. These type of anime, started with works such as Evangelion, increasingly feature an anti-hero as the protagonist, a change which arguably reflects the changes going on in Japanese society today.

Many young children model themselves on 'heroes' and imagine as they grow up 'flying through the air' or doing some 'great deed' in their play, indeed much of the 'child play' of such children are enactments of these 'hero fantasies'. Unlike a superman or green lantern found in the US pop culture, the 'heroes' of FMA, Evangelion, and other such anime do not have lives that I'd like to trade places with in a million years. Though these protagonists wield 'power' of some sort and do heroic deeds, their worlds are grim and the lives of the main characters are filled with pain and tragedy. Of course, the trend of the anti-hero in American entertainment is nothing new and has been strong for several decades, but it is interesting to see these much more realistic and gritty 'heroes' emerging in Japanese entertainment; 'Heroes' with complex lives and no clear line of 'good' or 'bad'. Such anime are wonderful opportunities as they provide insight into the ethical and moral dilemmas facing Japanese within their own culture today.

What kept me riveted to the FMA anime series were the philosophical and ethical struggles with the price alchemy and the military took upon the character's lives. When the theme of the military is used in anime, often it is presented as a complex and conflicted topic which echoes of the current discourse in Japan. We see the dreadful might of the military, but we also see what it's abuses can do to 'civilians'. Apparent throughout the FMA series is the deep militarization of its society and the lasting damage that unending conflict causes to the FMA culture. In addition, I respect the series because it didn't pander down to the lowest common denominator; FMA never 'pulled any punches' in its original Japanese version, in addition to adult content, there were some really graphic scenes of gore and violence, though justified I think for the purpose of the story.

Consider that this was airing at 7:00PM in Japan on national TV when I lived there. Can you see the uproar in America if this was aired on a primetime non-cable TV channel? Especially now?

Images are copyright their owners.

Next: a Case study of Gantz

Anime & Society Series Part Seven

'A growing darkness in some Japanese anime may reflect a changing global consumer based world society.’

I’d like to think I am a discriminating consumer of anime. In the last two decades I have viewed anime, I went from the typical newcomer who watched anything I could get my hands on (and it was much, much scarcer at the time), to today where —unless the anime has some appeal on a story level— then I give it pass.

Which brings me to the point of this multi-post analysis of anime and Japanese society. Recent mainstream anime in Japan such as Full Metal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, Bleach, and Gantz are notable in their choice of using the storytelling device to portray dysfunctional/atypical families and social groups rather than the perceived monolithic ‘norm’ in Japan. The subject matter of these anime is also much grimmer than average…and this appears a trend in anime.

As I said previously in this series, writers bring their life experiences to the table when creating fiction. Could the loss of direction, the lack of a generational ‘goal’ for the current youth in Japan unlike their salaryman fathers and grandfathers to rebuild the nation after WWII, be bleeding through into their modern entertainment as well? After all, for entertainment to be successful in a mass market it has to resonate, to connect at some level with the viewer. Anime and manga creators are ‘reaching’ their audience, and to do that, they must reflect some aspect of what their viewers are experiencing in their own lives. So again, if you want to understand what is going on in Japan today with the young generation and by extension where Japan will be going in the future, the forms of entertainment, young Japanese glom to provide a prime window into their lives.

I will be looking at other diversions such as cell phones and gadgets in future posts. However, this blog will not turn out into Engadget (as much fun as that might be), but by analyzing these artifacts of culture we can begin to see the disconnect from interpersonal relationships many Japanese are undergoing by using the man-machine interface as a substitute for social contact.

The bigger question for me in regards to anime is this: with the growing mainstream popularity of Japanese anime to U.S. audiences, there has to be a common denominator between the two societies. Is Japanese society becoming more like American society or rather, is the younger generation of American society, the primary consumers of anime in America, living lifestyles parallel to their Japanese counterparts?

There is a third possibility: From a globalist perspective, has the growing interconnectedness of the world market acted as a great socio-cultural leveler by offering the same products everywhere? Has the consumer materialism we are bombarded with from birth stripped away a strong sense local cultural identity that was once transmitted by parents and family? Is our sense of identity now created by absorption of the movies we watch, the adverts we see? What really are differences in worldwide youth communities when information is ancient when it is a day old and commercial products can be at your doorstep in 48 hours?

Is the reason anime appeals to many youth worldwide today because anime is simply an export commodity of Japan and our ‘youth culture’ today is universal in nature and shapes young Japanese, Chinese, Europeans and Americans into global consumers who identify more strongly with a material product that ‘I simply must have’ and so clouding the older human questions about existence that have crept up with every generation of humanity: ‘why am I here?’ and ‘what is life all about?’ Are youth worldwide drawn to anime because they are starving for stories, wisdom about the whys and wherefores absent in their own daily lives? Questions that are not answered by the ever growing pile of ‘stuff’ and ‘things’ in their lives? Could the simple reason that anime has appeal word-wide is that the youth generation in most every country are becoming increasingly the same in outlook and life philosophy; a sameness that global consumerism breeds?

I may comment on Japan’s Lost Generation here on this blog, but I have run across so many opinions in my research that point out this ‘lack of purpose’ seen in the hikikomori, NEET, Parasite Singles groups in Japan are by no means UNIQUE to Japan.

What is happening is that the media in Japan is acting as a mouthpiece for the elite who are trying to reshape public discourse, and so the media comes out in criticism of these youth trends in Japan; youth reacting to the economic malaise in their country and the lack of direction for them and their peers that existed for previous generations. These youth, a mirror on their society, are simply reacting to the world around them and they are dissatisfied with the options being presented to them by society. And how the mass consumerism fits it in is that through the international goods they buy and consume, Japanese youth are getting a sense that there is something better out there, but not quite sure of how to get at it.

When the western media pick up these stories and report about things such as hikikomori, they simply regurgitate what was printed in the Japanese press with no fact checking in what is either intellectual laziness or an eye to what sells papers over truth (as if this is something that is news in recent months in the U.S.). The Glocom website and others point out that despite the nihonjin-ron sentiment of these issues in Japan now, Parasite Singles exist in the UK and Europe, and most definitely in America (though the American press doesn’t frame it as such— here it’s ‘depression’, ‘autism’, ‘ADD’, etc—and hey, lets medicate that problem away with Xanax or Zoloft rather than looking seriously at the problems causing these issues in the first place). This blog is about Japan’s Lost Generation, but increasingly in my research I’m finding that the youth problems in Japan are worldwide, the only difference with Japan is their press is putting Japanese youth under the microscope for all the world to see.

Next in part eight: Wrapping it up with a few case studies.

Anime & Society Series Part Six

'Storytelling is a window into an insider’s perception of their own culture.’

Another phenomena I’ve noticed in recent years related to anime is that U.S. distributors no longer assume all anime is kiddie anime like Sailor Moon, so there are now venues like Adult Swim on Cable television that allow for more mature themes to hit the airwaves using animation as a medium. As a result, there is far less modification of Japanese anime, dumbing down, for those anime that do make it to air in America.

As I’ve pointed out in previous segments of this series on anime, you can see there is a straining process going on in the anime market both in the Japan and the U.S.: a Marketing Darwinism that most likely encourages the promotion and development of mainstream stories which will appeal to the largest possible segment of the consumer population.

What does this all mean for a Sociologist?

It means two things:

One is that the anime that makes it to market is the most marketable, and taking the distortion of the drive for ‘entertainment value’ into account, it provides stories that could be considered to have some sort of resonance with the peoples lives who consume the product.

It also means that inadvertently, we are looking through the eyes the anime’s creator through the story he tells: a story steeped in his own social and cultural influences. We get a window into how that Japanese artist perceives his world:

For example, a Japanese writer may set a story in a Japanese high school as a backdrop. There are so many examples of this in anime such as the 1980s anime Ranma or the new 2004 anime Bleach. For those outside of Japan, the structure of a Japanese school with its school uniforms and its accompanying tight social structure is outside the experience of most western viewers. Therefore, what was just an establishing back-story for the anime creator upon which to base his story, becomes an intriguing window into Japanese society for the western viewer from an insider’s viewpoint—idealized images as well as criticisms. Japanese Family structure portrayed in anime is another interesting sample to pay attention to in this regard.

Storytellers from all walks of life have something to say; they have some point they are trying to make to their audience. It was once said that people need food and water to survive, but they need stories in order to live, in order to know HOW to live.

I write fiction as a ‘second career’ and as a story teller, I naturally want to sink my teeth right into the development of the story, to let the plot twist, wend and grow… first however, I need a plausible setting, an atmosphere, a concrete grounding in which to base my tale— the more grounded in reality my background setting, the better—especially if my story’s uses the horror, science fiction, supernatural or even comedy genres. For example, in science fiction there is a grounding in existing life and technology to show you that this is a possible ‘future’ of your own reality and so pull you into the story with a basis of comparison. In most cases, the storyteller draws from personal experience to create the establishing groundwork for his fable. While the main story line might be a crazy comedy or supernatural horror, there needs to be calms of normalcy for the jokes/scares to work.

The medium of animation provides a very flexible medium for storytellers, no matter what the genre, who can’t afford live actors or the big budget CGI effects a Hollywood blockbuster might be able to utilize.

This is where the treasure trove comes in for those who are academics or simply interested in Japanese culture: Anime and manga creators are indeed providing a glimpse into their society, oft times with social commentary attached— even if they may only being do so subconsciously. They provide a glimpse even direct observation by a researcher may not easily afford as observing someone in their home turf may make them self conscious and affect how they behave, thus ‘spoiling the broth’ as it were.

Images are copyright their owners.

Next in part seven: A growing darkness in some Japanese anime may reflect a changing global consumer based world society.

Anime & Society Series Part Five

'Not just for kids— Anime and Manga and cultural perceptions in Japan and the US’

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Well, I’m back! Classes are done and the bugaboo of semester term papers are dealt with so its time to breath life into this blog. For those of you wanting something different on the blog, there are only a few more parts left in the anime series where I get to the meat and bones of the issue and how it relates to the youth in Japan today (as well as the West). From there, I will tackle some other topics a little more on ‘target’ in the news of late such as the geriatric set in Japan and how they effect Japanese youth and their mass retirements may portend for the future.
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Invariably, anime gets into the old rub of cultural preconceptions; it seems that, with the exception of the youngest generation, common wisdom in America is that Animation and comic books are the purview of the child. These medium are just mindless entertainment for kids: US companies seem to agree with this if you look at production quality and toy marketing tie-ins of GI Joe and it’s ilk; they are just thirty-minute advertisements for an action figure.

Birth in Japan as a manga

The Japanese market is not like this to such an extent however; sure there are marketing tie-ins but they seem to be much more diverse in range and in much higher in quality— not a toy that breaks upon touching it. In Japan, the primary tie-ins are manga, Japanese comics, which have a large readership nationwide and a great proportion of the readership are adults. Many of these manga come out weekly in black and white anthologies 500 pages thick like Shonen Jump.

The stories and themes are adult, sometimes overly so, and many manga deal with stories that could be affecting real people. When a particular series can survive in for a length of time in one of the big anthology manga, as unpopular strips are dumped quickly, it might even get compiled into a book and if it’s really good, net a anime series on Japanese television.

If that anime series is popular, it gets picked up by US distributors. And the interval between airing in Japan to US distribution is dropping. A recent example of this a series called Full Metal Alchemist, which had a two-season run of 52 episodes in Japan that just finished this summer and is now on the Cartoon Network's 'Adult Swim' in America. Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex is another thoughtful anime that has been picked up for Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network.

The next generation of anime: blending CGI and cell animation

On the big screen, in the last few years the sophistication of anime in terms of both storytelling and technical achievement has become amazing. When I lived in Japan in 2004, three movies that stood out were Steamboy, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, and Appleseed.

See for yourself:
Here's a trailer for Steamboy.
Here is a trailer page for Innocence.
And here is the Appleseed trailer!!!. (When I first saw this trailer, I just about plotzed!)

From a technical standpoint, the last two movies are the most impressive as they blend cell animation used for most Anime with CGI. Innocence suffered from a little too much exposition in the plot department, but it successfully brought an animated ‘film noir’ effect to the screen and was masterful in that sense it appeared to have an almost ‘Blade Runner’ feel to the movie.

Appleseed, based on a manga by the same creator of the original Ghost in the Shell manga, Masamune Shirow, and both Appleseed (directed by Haruka Handa) and Innocence (directed by Mamoru Oshii who's done an insane amount of anime movies), are simply a stunning executions of what promises to be the future direction of the anime genre. And the social commentary in Appleseed isn’t half bad either. Go read the Wired magazine treatment on this movement to CGI blending for more on this.

While Anime has been around for fifty years plus since Atom Boy, I think it’s reached maturity as a storytelling medium and may rival Hollywood in certain genres in the years to come.

Images are copyright their owners.

Next in part six: Storytelling as window into an insider’s perception of their own culture

Anime & Society Series Part Four

'Tinkering too much, The US Commercial filter on Japanese cultural exports.'

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ZOIKS! I did it again! Almost a week since a post. Well in my defense I am in the throes of semester finals at my University. Look for a more consistent posting schedule after next week.
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While the newest generation of anime fans gripe about liberties taken with their favorite new anime by US distributors, they should realize the awful hatchet jobs done in 1980’s when anime series were first being imported by American distributors. In the interests of making anime viable for a US market, they ended up filtering anime classics such as Final Yamato (named Star Blazers in the US), SDF Macross (Robotech in the US) and others so that they could be marketed to better appeal to ‘American audiences’.

SDF Macross and Robotech

For example , when watched side by side, the original Japanese anime series SDF Macross and Robotech, its American version, are almost two totally different works both in terms of mood and atmosphere. The characters have different names (Ichijyo Hikaru is ‘Rick Hunter’ in Robotech), all of the original music is stripped out in the Robotech version, and some of the editing done to SDF Macross in order to make it into the US Robotech alters some of the original intentions of the Japanese creators of Macross. In the original, the dialog is a lot rougher and there are battle scenes that provide glimpses of dying solders and civilians that are cut from Robotech. The storyline and motivations of characters in Robotech are often choppy or haphazard in segments and I used to think this was just how the anime was until watching the original SDF Macross.

Robotech even took three separate anime TV series in Japan, SDF Macross, Super Dimension Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada and jumbled them into one three season Robotech run in the United States. Moreover, production quality back in the day for American versions left much to be desired: As much as I was a fan of Robotech as a kid, the dubbed English dialog is just painful to hear today.

War and lost innocence

If you watch SDF Macross in Japanese but with the more accurate subtitling in English, the series has a harder and grittier edge to it. SDF Macross is a war story, it’s about the lost of innocence as a young man, Ichijyo Hikaru, who at the outset is totally against war and killing, and is swept up by events out of his control into a conflict with an alien race in what is only the second encounter with aliens in the history of humanity, only after the discovery of the crashed alien ship the series is named after. Over the course of the series, Hikaru (Rick Hunter) becomes hardened to killing and something dies inside him.

In a sense, the original unfiltered anime of SDF Macross deals with the issues of identity Japan as a nation has been struggling with since WWII. You can see these recurring themes of war, the pursuit of peace, nuclear conflict, and mass catastrophe to civilians in many stories within the Japanese entertainment industry. These tropes have reached almost a meme as so many Japanese writers and moviemakers feel the need to struggle with the social conflicts within Post-WWII Japanese society in their works.

Godzilla and the A-Bombs

Godzilla, a sci-fi and monster classic, at its very core is a commentary on the nuclear age. The tromping around of the monster devastating Tokyo time and again in these movies by destroying whole swaths of the city has echoes in the firebombing of Tokyo by the US in WWII as well as the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Godzilla is the personification of such devastation felt collectively by the Japanese, if even on a Jungian level, cloaked in a fictional movie.

Akira and war

The much acclaimed Akira anime on some levels also struggles with the nuclear age, the military as well as the damage they do to a society. Since 1945, Japan has been one of the rare countries to not invest more than 1% of its GDP in a standing army or regional conflicts. Though opponents to the Self Defense Forces, SDF, may decry otherwise, Japan as a country has a clarity in being free from conflict that many other nations in the world are currently embroiled in, willingly or not. Japan’s citizens have a perspective on war, both from the losses in WWII and from the current calm in the eye of the storm, very few countries outside of Europe can claim and the creators of works in Japan such as anime struggle with these dichotomies. For example, Gundam is yet another anime that picks up the theme of war and the conflicting duties of a soldier. Getting back to our original focus, Robotech is yet another variation of this theme and by filtering it in the US, much of the message is watered down and lost.

Filtering from a sociological perspective

From a sociological perspective, the cultural filtering performed by US distributors of Japanese anime due to the perceived marketability of the original Japanese product hasn’t stopped either, the biggest strain comes with anime marketed in Japan to pre-teens which have themes intermixed with mature storylines; when these anime arrive in America they end up being heavily censored, with whole episodes sometimes omitted from the run in order to conform with American standards of what is morally acceptable to show to American youth. I understand that Sailor Moon, that old favorite with the pre-teen set, had to have nearly an entire season cut from it’s US distribution because of a lesbian relationship between two of the show’s characters which ended in a suicide.

Shocking you say? Not, really. Not for Japanese manga and anime storytelling. This merely highlights the cultural differences between Japan and America.

Images are copyright of their creators.

Next in part five: Anime is not just for kids!

Anime & Society Series Part Three

'Studio Ghibli and Disney; ‘The filtering process of anime by the West laid bare.’

But that's not my beautiful wife, not my beautiful car, not my beautiful life...

Welcome to part three of this series at Japan's Lost Generation which looks at the medium of anime. Perhaps you are wondering the point of this series on a blog focused on youth problems like hikikomori, Neet, suicide, enjo kosai and Parasite singles among other things... in answer to this, I ask that you be patient— I'm getting there, but I feel I need to establish a background for those readers who may only have a passing knowledge on the medium of anime and the issues it presents in the West.

I think anime is an important medium worthy of serious academic research, and it presents an invaluable window into Japanese society. The point behind the parts one and two of this series as well as segment three is to outline the difficulties in using the Japanese medium of anime and manga as a source material on understanding Japanese society and culture. For those unable to understand the language of Japanese nor able to hop on a plane and buy anime DVDs and manga magazines direct from Japan, they are invariably going to have to rely on less than 'pure' sources of anime.

What that leaves most of us, in terms of access to anime, are Western distribution models and perhaps online resources such as this blog. However, it would seem that we are at the mercy of Western commercial market forces in what actually reaches our store shelves, and that is part of the problem; the first three parts of this series as well as part of the fourth is setting the stage so that the reader can understand that though anime is an excellent source of information on Japanese society, the problem in the West is that this content is filtered by the big western distributors by what they believe is in our 'best' interests in terms of salability and FCC regulations. Anime portrays the fears and dreams of mostly young Japanese animators and writers in their twenties and early thirties, through their stories we get an insider's glimpse of what social forces are churning Japanese society today and causing phenomenon like hikikomori. However, in the West, what we end up getting is an edited version of Japan which conforms to commercial or moral perceptions rather than reality. In future parts of this series I will get down to the 'meat and bones' of the anime issue in Japan and discuss some of the darker topics Japanese animators are tackling based upon what they see in our society. All I ask is that you hang on for the ride.

Below I present Disney and Studio Ghibli as a sort of 'case study', if you will, of how things go south. This entry is a bit longish, but I will try to chop the others into smaller bits so the blog doesn't suffer from three day gaps—I'm also dealing dealing with the usual end of term papers crush so I apologize for those who are waiting for each part of this series. They are coming.

Disney acquires rights to distribute Miyazaki films

Today, the newest big production anime by industry giants such as Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli are licensed by massive media conglomerates in the West such as Disney. The idea of having a powerhouse like Disney as a world distributor of anime house that has netted the biggest box office ever in Japan such as Princess Mononoke (Jp:'Mononoke-hime') or Spirited Away (JP:'Sen to Chihiro no Kamikushi') seems at first glance like a match made in heaven. It appeared that Disney had acquired all terrestrial rights to many of Studio Ghibli’s Miyazaki's films, the man who is considered by some to be the new ‘Walt Disney of Japan’ in terms of his visionary works and the beauty of the final movie products. At first, there was great excitement amongst Western anime fans as Disney’s acquisition meant that anime would finally be mainstream in the United States. However, though Disney acquired the rights to Miyazaki’s films, it seemed that afterwards the company sat on them, and sat on them, and even today sits on them.

Disney struggles with cultural differences

My general sentiment is that Disney botched its initial handling of it’s first Miyazaki film, the distribution of Princess Mononoke for a number of reasons. First, Princess Mononoke is a very violent ‘cartoon’ with adult themes by Disney standards. Disney didn’t seem sure what demographic to market this anime to: should they edit it and push it on the usual pre-teen crowd like a ‘cartoon’ of the type that Disney’s animation houses were accustomed to churning out every season? Should they advertise it to adults? And if so, how would they get past the fact that it was a serious storyline in the medium of animation? How would they lure American adults to the theater to see the anime? What Disney ended up doing is it initially went for the 'limited distribution' model showing the film in small art houses and all but squashing hopes of a run in mainstream cinemas— where it was shown in Japan.

Built-in fan base for anime in Japan not comprable in the U.S.

Here again, the method mentioned in part two of this series of 'concept-to-manga-to-anime' in Japan simply doesn’t work in to that extent in America. The only exception to this would be the surge of American superhero comic book characters that have found their way onto the move screen as big budget productions, such as many Marvel Comics' titles Spiderman, Daredevil, Blade, Hulk, Punisher et al. DC Comics has also boasted a series of films based upon their Batman and Superman properties. However, these American examples do not parallel manga as Hollywood is banking on the casual viewer of a comic book movie to see it partially out of nostalgia of reading the comic as a kid. Most adult viewers do not read comics with the weekly frequency or volume as manga is read in Japan.

Disney’s formulaic cute ‘mascot’ characters

Another problem for Disney is Miyazaki’s films lacked the formulaic cute little ‘sidekicks’ incorporated into EVERY Disney animated story, no matter how serious or adult the themes in the content of a Disney animated film. Examples include the dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy in Mulan and the gargoyles Victor and Hugo voiced by Charles Kimbrough and Jason Alexander respectively in the Hunchback of Notre Dame. For adults, these ‘sidekicks’ are ploys to keep young children entertained while watching a movie that is perhaps above their cognitive comprehension. However, for older children and adults Disney ‘sidekicks’ serve as an irritant that distracts from the storyline and presents yet another stuffed-toy based-on-the-movie they will have to buy for their child when they leave the theater.

Bad voice acting/no top draw stars

Another glaring problem is, until recently, with CGI visual feasts like Shrek with Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy, Disney and other Western distributors didn’t really seem to put much though or investment in ‘voice actors’ for English dubs of Japanese anime productions. ‘Voice acting’, or the reading of lines by a person for the animated characters on the screen, is a big industry in Japan with some voice actors being as popular and loved by the Japanese public as regular movies stars and singers. This voice acting also carries over into Japanese voice actors for dubs of live-action flicks like Minority Report. The Japanese voice acting industry actually tries its best to consistently assign one voice actor to say, Tom Cruise, and that Japanese voice actor does all voice dubbing for Tom Cruise no matter what movie he appears in; no matter the American distributor. So for a big budget anime in Japan like Ghost in the Shell Innocence, the voice actors employed are top notch. However, the same cannot be said for American dubs of Japanese anime; its getting better, but some of the worst examples of extremely bad voice acting comes from the 1990’s in series like Ranma where it seemed they just yanked random people off the street and paid them minimum wage to read lines.

Growing pains: Western distributors slowly adapt to the demands of anime

When Disney acquired all terrestrial rights to Miyazaki films, there was a fear that it would be handled badly, and the corporate culture that pervades such multi-national ventures, the formulaic approach, and the low priority on voice acting had a lot of dedicated anime fans in the west fearing the worst: were Miyazaki’s works going to end up in a vault somewhere undistributed by Disney because their corporate culture was unable to assimilate Japanese animation?

Well obviously, that didn’t occur, but it has been a painful growth process for Disney and other large distributors in America as they took hugely popular anime from Japan thinking they were going to rake in the cash, but managed to alienate even the core anime fans in the West because of arbitrary censorship, sloppy voice acting, and the wholesale altering of some series out of sequence. For those unable to invest the time in learning Japanese, Western distributors remain the best source of anime, but if you have the patience, you may want to try turning the subtitles on the next time you watch a DVD of anime and listen to the show in it's original language.

Note that images are copyright Ghilbi Studios or their respective holders.

Article by Michael Dziesinski

Next in part four: Tinkering too much, The Commercial filter on Japanese cultural exports