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Sunday, May 25
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

Cartoons aren't just for kids

Japanese animation finds American audiences

Turning on the TV, flipping through sitcoms, drama and court TV. Then, "What's with those cartoon characters with blue hair?" This unique programming is probably anime.\nJapanese animation, known as anime, has experienced a surge of stateside interest in recent years, and its appeal is transcending its former cult status.\nIt wasn't long ago that finding anime in the United States was a quest in itself, with buyers forced to scour trade shows only to find poorly dubbed versions of the product.\n"I remember buying bootleg videos in 1992 for $25 at comic conventions, and that was the only way you could find it," Chris Joslyn of PC Guru Comics said.\nWith popularity on the rise, features on Cartoon Network's "Toonami" and re-releases of classics like "Akira" (1988) on DVD have helped anime create some serious momentum in the United States for the first time.\n"Five years ago when I was in high school here, there wasn't any anime around -- now you can walk into any video store and find some," junior Seizo Tsutsumi said.\nSophomore Jeremy Zimmerman, who stumbled into the world of anime five years ago thanks to his brother's collection, believes Toonami programming helped set the stage for anime to reach the masses, allowing this multi-national juggernaut to find a foothold in the United States.\n"I think most people hadn't heard much about anime until series like 'Dragon Ball Z' and 'Gundam' took off and gave it such a good reputation," Zimmerman said. "The thing about anime is that there is a lot of detail put into the small things. It's not like traditional animation where it's just characters against a static background. In anime, everything is so detailed that you never know what is going to move or what is going to happen." \nThe anime craze has hit close to home in the form of IU's anime club, which holds weekly meetings to explore the art form, and of course indulge in generous amounts of anime viewing. The club had up to thirty people converge to watch at times last year, depending on what was being shown, Tsutsumi said. \nHe said the club's goal is to spread awareness of Japanese culture, but it has also served as a launching pad for those who want to try learning the Japanese language, as well as share movies in a cost-cutting fashion.\nJapanese animation spans across as many genres as modern day, live-action motion pictures, ranging from kids' comedies to adult drama and action. Its popularity is on the rise, slowly taking over spots on cable networks formerly occupied by traditional animation such as Bugs Bunny. \nThe new, "caffeinated" version of the art form made popular in the United States by Walt Disney is being re-vamped, full of intricate story lines and intense visual scenes. Many young adults of today grew up watching anime such as "Voltron," "Thundercats" and "Speed Racer" in a genre that has continued to expand, enticing younger audiences as well as college age adults with "Pokemon" and "Sailor Moon," adding to anime's growing fan base and public interest.\n Intensely detailed artwork or action often characterizes anime, separating it from traditional American animation and contributing to its mass appeal. These aren't just regular after-school cartoons, as anime targets a variety of audiences and is comprised of complex story lines, dramatic relationships, and at times intensely graphic portrayals of violence and sex. While anime is often famous for creating space-epics full of high tech robots called mecha, there are just as many comedic tales of romance and personal growth under the canopy of anime. It is this diverse array of content and artistry that has allowed animation to become a medium, like the motion picture, able to cover all facets of life, both real and surreal, stretching the imagination at every turn.\nIn addition to full-length movies and video series, anime style exists in print comics, called manga, while the style itself has even found its way visually into popular video games such as the Final Fantasy series. Anime has become so popular that one film, "Princess Mononoke," was able to land the vocal talents of Billy Bob Thornton, Claire Danes and Jada Pinkett Smith, among others, for its English-language translation, even though the U.S. release was delayed because promoters feared it would dwarf their other projects.\n"'Princess Mononoke' was actually made seven years ago in Japan -- without computer animation -- but Disney bought it and wouldn't release it (in the U.S.) because their animation hadn't progressed that far," Joslyn said.\nWhile the genre is still picking up steam in the United States, anime remains an even stronger force in its home country, devouring record after record. Last summer, "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" set attendance records in Japan, beating out features such as "A.I." and "Planet of the Apes" in theatres, according to CNN. In August, the film was on pace to beat "Titanic" as the largest grossing film ever in Japan. The question seems not if, but when, films by animation greats such as Hayao Miyazaki ("Mononoke," "Kamikaushi") will break into the U.S. box office.\nAs anime becomes more wide-spread, controversies arise. Detractors of anime often confuse it with hentai, a pornographic sub-genre, creating an unwelcome blemish on the genre, Zimmerman said.\n"A lot of people think all anime is hentai, so some people automatically are like 'oh, this is evil,' before watching the stuff."\nWhile anime allows sex to be more prominent in its stories than most mainstream American animation, other topics such as environmentalism and philosophy come into play as well, illustrating the wide variety of subjects anime encompasses. \nHistorical dramas such as "Grave of the Fireflies," a tale about two children surviving the desolate aftermath of Hiroshima, suggests that anime can be used as a tool of teaching or remembrance, just as powerful as live action films such as "Schindler's List."\n"For older people in their twenties, traditional cartoons get repetitive and boring. People want to just get into something different, exotic," Tsutsumi said. "Anime has a lot more leeway -- things don't always have to have a happy end."\nCatering to older audiences has brought the wrath of censorship, leading American distributors to often release only an edited copy of films. Some viewers believe this can take away from key elements of the story and at times create an inaccurate version.\n"Unfortunately, I think a lot of the story is lost in translation (to the United States). Things will have different meanings, because things in Japan will have different cultural references that we just won't get here," Joslyn said.\nIn addition to rich story lines, many anime characters are multifaceted, allowing the scriptwriters to fully explore all ranges of the human psyche, from the fantastic to the maniacal. \n"Take the lead character for (anime series) Trigun, for example -- he's so complex, it's like three characters wrapped into one," Zimmerman said. "There's the 'happy-go-lucky', his 'hidden past' and then your basic 'destroy evil' character."\nRegardless of censorship or cultural differences, anime popularity appears to be on a steady rise. DVD releases often give the viewer the choice of the original language version or a subtitled version, allowing English-speaking audiences a chance to experience anime. Joslyn believes this will allow a second rise of anime as audiences raised on anime enter the professional field and begin to put their stamp on the animation business.\n"I think a lot more artists are starting to pick up the style, and maybe in five years it will pick up again as kids who were in high school become artists; right now its just going to blend into pop culture"

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