Last year I had a bit of a family reunion in San Diego, and I got to see several family members who I hadn’t seen in many years. We were talking about my long sojourn in Japan, and at some point I found myself trying to explain the phenomenon of ‘anime’ to my older brother who had no knowledge of the subject. Essentially, I told him, anime was a generational movement starting in the late 1970s which was essentially about “freedom” — the freedom to create a story using the endearing medium of cell animation in which people actually died in dramatic ways instead of bailing out of the plane at the last minute, as they always did in lame 80s cartoons. The popularity of Japanese animation through the 80s and 90s was driven in part by its kakko-ii (cool) themes, such as transforming robots, destroying Tokyo and epic Magical Girl transformations, but it was also because the stories and characters touched viewers emotionally in new ways. It’s about bold new ideas which could only exist in 2D form, and loving the art styles of the characters as they constantly evolve and change. Yes, describing something as complex as anime to an outsider was difficult. How would you go about it?
Attempting to explain anime to someone is hard.
